«I BELIEVED, I PROMISED, I RECOVERED!»
Artemides Zatti: Gospel of vocation and a Church that cares
“The mosaic of our saints and blesseds, though rich enough in the
categories represented – Founder, Co-founder, Rector Majors,
missionaries, martyrs, priests and young people, still lacked the
figure of a coadjutor brother. Now, even this gap is being filled.”
The
above is how Juan Edmundo Vecchi, eighth Successor of Don Bosco,
began his letter for the occasion of the Beatification of Artemides
Zatti.
If
the “mosaic of our saints” was missing a tile, today this
mosaic has a very special glow to it because, in a few weeks, we will
experience a great gift from the Lord: to see one of Don Bosco’s
sons, a Salesian coadjutor brother, Italian emigrant to Argentina and
nurse, canonised by Pope Francis on 9 October 2022.
This
mean that Artemides Zatti will be the first
Salesian saint not a martyr to be canonised.
Undoubtedly, the canonisation of the first Salesian saint and
Salesian coadjutor brother offers and will continue to offer a note
of completeness to the range of models of Salesian spirituality which
the Church officially declares as such.
Let
me quote the beautiful personal testimony, filled with spiritual
depth and faith, given by Artemides Zatti in 1915 in Viedma, at the
inauguration of a funerary monument placed over the tomb of Father
Evasio Garrone (1861–1911), a well-deserving Salesian
missionary and considered by Artemides to be his distinguished
benefactor:
If
I am now well, in good health and in a position to do some good to my
sick neighbour, I owe it to Father Garrone, a doctor. Seeing my
health deteriorate day by day, since I was suffering from
tuberculosis and frequently spitting blood, he told me point blank
that if I did not want to finish up like many others I should make a
promise to Mary Help of Christians to always remain at his side,
helping him in the care of the sick, and that if I trusted in Mary,
she would cure me.
I BELIEVED,
because I knew by reputation that Mary Help of Christians helped him
in visible ways. I
PROMISED,
because it was always my desire to help my neighbour in some way.
And, since God listened to his servant, I
RECOVERED.
[Signed]
Artemides Zatti”
We
see that the generous and confident soundness of Artemides Zatti’s
Salesian life was based on three verbs. To appreciate the gift of
holiness of this great Salesian Brother, we would like to meditate on
these three verbs and their extraordinarily good fruits, so that they
may deeply touch the desires, dreams and commitments of our
Congregation and of each of us, and foster a renewed and fruitful
fidelity to Don Bosco’s charism in us all.
A
profile of Artemides Zatti
Artemides
Zatti was born in Boretto (Reggio Emilia) on 12 December 1880 to
Albina Vecchi and Luigi Zatti. This peasant family raised him to a
life that was poor and hard-working, enlightened by a simple,
straightforward and robust faith which guided and nourished his life.
At
the age of nine, Artemides began work as a labourer with a nearby
well-to-do family in order to contribute to the family economy.
The
Zattis emigrated to Argentina in 1879 and settled in Bahia Blanca.
Artemides was seventeen when he arrived there, and he soon learned to
cope with the hardships and responsibilities of work while still
within the bosom of the family. He found work in a brick factory, and
at the same time he nurtured and grew in a profound relationship with
God under the guidance of a Salesian, Fr Carlo Cavalli, his parish
priest and spiritual director. Artemides found Fr Carlo to be a
sincere friend, a wise confessor and a genuine and skilled spiritual
director who formed him to a daily rhythm of prayer and weekly
reception of the sacraments. He established a spiritual rapport with
Fr Cavalli and one of collaboration.
He had the opportunity to read Don Bosco’s life in the parish
priest’s library and was fascinated by it. This
was the real beginning of his Salesian vocation.
In
1900, by now a twenty-year-old, at Fr Cavalli’s invitation
Artemides asked to enter the Salesian aspirantate at Bernal, near
Buenos Aires.
But
in 1902, when it was time to enter the novitiate, Artemides
contracted tuberculosis. Fr Vecchi, in his letter, tells us: “Because
of his reliability, the superiors entrusted him with the task of
assisting a young priest suffering from tuberculosis. Zatti carried
out the work with generosity, but soon afterwards caught the same
disease himself.”
Seriously
ill, he returned to Bahia Blanca and Fr Cavalli sent him to Viedma,
entrusting him to the care of Salesian Fr Evasio Garrone, who was a
competent physician thanks to his long experience, and director of
the San José hospital founded by Bishop Cagliero.
I
find it very significant to recall that Artemides met Ceferino
Namuncurá – today Blessed – in Viedma. He had come
from Buenos Aires and had also been affected by tuberculosis. Despite
their difference in age, the two had a warm relationship until
Ceferino left for Italy in 1904 with Bishop John Cagliero.
After
two years of care in Viedma, though with unsatisfactory results, Fr
Garrone sent Artemides to ask to be cured through the intercession of
the Blessed Virgin by making a vow to dedicate his life to caring for
the sick. Having made the vow with keen faith, Artemides was cured,
and in 1906 he began the novitiate.
Due
to the risks associated with his prior health circumstances,
Artemides had to renounce his resolve to become a priest and he
professed as a coadjutor brother among the Salesians of Don Bosco on
11 January 1908. This meant a huge growth in faith for Artemides.
Indeed, he did not abandon his idea of being a Salesian priest and he
continued to think about a priestly vocation in the Salesian
Congregation, especially when it seemed his health had improved.
Therefore “it is touching to note his unswerving attachment to
his vocation, even when it seemed that sickness had removed any
possibility of achieving it. He wrote, for example, to his relatives
on 7 August 1902: ‘I want you to know that it was not only my
wish, but also that of my Superiors, that I should receive the
cassock; but there is an article of the Holy Rule that says that no
one can receive it who has even the slightest problem about his
health. And so it means that God
has
not yet found me worthy to wear the cassock, and so I trust in your
prayers that I may soon get well and see my desire fulfilled.’”
But
in the end, given the circumstances of his illness and also his age
(23-24) the Superiors had to suggest to Zatti that he make his
profession as a Salesian brother. It was certain that “it was
the total donation of himself to God in Salesian life to which
Artemides aspired in the first place.”
Even
on this decisive point for his life, Zatti was growing in maturity.
Again, we read in Fr Vecchi’s letter: “Priest? Brother?
He himself once said to a confrere: ‘you can serve God as a
priest or as a brother: before God one is as good as the other
provided you live it as a vocation and with love.’”
On
11 February 1911 he professed perpetual vows and the same year,
following Fr Garrone’s death, he took his place, first as the
one responsible for the pharmacy attached to the San José
hospital in Viedma and then – from 1915 – as the one in
charge of the hospital itself. Hospital and pharmacy would become
Artemide’s field of work.
So,
with enormous energy, sacrifice and professionalism, Zatti was the
soul of the hospital from 1915, for 25 years. But in 1941 it had to
be demolished: the Salesian superiors had decided to use the land
occupied till then by the health facility for the construction of the
bishop’s residence. Artemides suffered intensely at the thought
of the demolition, but in a spirit of obedience he accepted the
decision and moved the patients to the premises of the Sant’Isidro
Agricultural School where he established a new set of arrangements
for the care and assistance of the sick and poor.
After
further years of intense service, and by then relieved of the
responsibilities of health administration, following a fall during
some repair work in 1950 clinical examinations revealed a tumour on
the liver for which treatment was in vain. He accepted it and
knowingly followed the development of the illness. In fact, he
prepared his own death certificate for the doctor! His suffering was
constant, but he spent his last months in expectation of the final
moment he had prepared for when he would meet the Lord. He himself
said: “Fifty years ago I came here to die and now the moment
has arrived, so what more could I wish for? I have spent all my life
preparing for this moment…”
His
death occurred on 15 March 1951 and the spread of the news mobilised
the population of the whole of Viedma to pay a tribute of gratitude
to this Salesian who had dedicated his entire life to the sick,
especially the poorest of them. “The whole of Viedma did honour
to the “kinsman
of the poor”,
as he had been known for some time;
the
one who had always been ready to welcome those with particular
maladies and people who came from the distant countryside; the one
who had been able to enter the poorest of houses at any hour of the
day or night without causing raised eyebrows; the one who, though he
was always ‘in the red’, had maintained a unique
relationship with the city banks, which were always open to
friendship and generous collaboration with those engaged in the
medical care of the citizens.”
People
came from everywhere for the funeral, confirming the reputation for
holiness that surrounded Artemides Zatti and that prompted the
opening of the Diocesan Process in Viedma (22 March 1980). Zatti was
declared Venerable on 7 July 1997 and St John Paul II proclaimed him
Blessed on 14 April 2002.
God’s
pedagogy in his saints
To
better understand the figure of Artemides Zatti we have the valuable
guidance of a richly significant theological principle which comes
from the pen of Hans Urs von Balthasar:
Only
the picture [of Jesus] the Spirit keeps before the Church has been
able, down the centuries, to change sinful men into saints. Any
presentation of Jesus which claims to mediate knowledge of him must
be subjected to the same criterion: its power to change lives.
Balthasar,
in these words, points out the evidence that has always accompanied
the history of the Church: the action of the Spirit manifests itself
as a transforming power in human life, testifying to the perennial
relevance and vitality of the Gospel. In this way, the good news of
Jesus continues to live and spread according to the rule of the
Incarnation and, especially in the flesh and lives of the saints
because of their profound consent to the Spirit, Easter bursts forth
in the historical present of the ever new here
and now
where wonders that confirm the faith of the Church grow.
The
saints, then, are the achievement of the Spirit. In the simplicity of
their transfigured lives they offer precise features of the Son that
are given by the Father to this world of toil, in the relevance of a
time and proximity of places in need of salvation and hope.
If
God guides his Church through the obedient life of his most docile
and daring children, reflections of the Gospel must first of all
shine through each of their stories that transform a
day-to-day biography into a hagiography.
And then, it is we who must recognise the seeds of Easter that are
capable of triggering renewed ecclesial journeys among the people of
God.
Artemides
Zatti confirms this rule of holiness: hagiography is the light of the
Spirit emanating from the simplicity of his biography, so convincing
because it is lived in the fullness of humanity, and so surprising as
to make visible “a new
heaven and a new earth” (Rev
21:1). Thus, the seeds of Easter, the gift of the life of this
Salesian coadjutor brother to the world, transformed places of
suffering – the San José and Sant’Isidro hospitals
– into extraordinarily radiant seedbeds of Christian hope. “His
was an active presence in society, completely animated by the charity
of Christ which drove him on!”
It
is then possible to meditate on the gift that the Spirit gives to the
world, the Church, the Salesian Family with Zatti’s holiness, pausing
first on the brilliance of his biography, his life story – a
fully embodied Gospel of vocation, trust and dedication – to
then go on to consider the paschal power of his apostolate, building
up in his hospitals the Church that cares for people, is close to
them, saving them, sharing in the redemption and nourishing the faith
of the people of God.
If
we want a concise expression of the secret that inspired and guided
Artemides Zatti’s life, the steps he took, his work,
commitments, joy, tears…, then Fr Vecchi’s words sum it up nicely:
“following
Jesus, with Don Bosco and in Don Bosco’s manner, always and
everywhere”.
1.
A MAN OF THE GOSPEL
1.1
The Gospel of vocation: “I believed”
The
story of Artemides Zatti strikes one for its vocational
distinctiveness above all. A luminous vocation because it is purified
by a mysterious pedagogy of God that unfolds in his life through
different and demanding mediations and situations. Christian life is
the shared inspiration of Artemide’s family, who interpreted
everything in the light of the mystery of God; It would be Argentina,
their second homeland reached through emigration, that would
demonstrate the Zatti family’s rootedness in an uncommon faith.
Cardinal Cagliero
wrote:
Our
compatriots, even those who belong to the most religious populations
of Italy, seem to change their nature when they arrive here.
Immoderate love of work, the religious indifference prevailing in
these countries, very frequent bad example… brings about an
incredible transformation in the spirit and heart of our good
peasants and artisans. In exchange for the handful of scudi
they earn, lose their faith, morality and religion.
The
Zatti family would not succumb to the influence of their environment.
On the contrary, they stood out for their fervent, forthright,
courageous religious practice, free of human respect; and Artemides
would continue to nurture an intense relationship with God within the
family, substantiated by prayer, hard work, uprightness, so,
everything
leads us to believe… that the religious formation that the Servant
of God received as a child and in his early youth… must have been
privileged and in such a way as to explain the spiritual attitudes
that he maintained throughout his life.
Artemides’
experience reflects the luminous discretion of the “high
standard of ordinary Christian living” (Novo
Millennio Ineunte,
31) the fruit of an exclusive rootedness in God, of a faith lived as
courageous and radiant obedience because it was free, joyful and
fruitful.
When
Salesian Fr Cavalli, Artemide’s parish priest and guide on the
ways chosen by the Spirit, needed to support him in his choice of
life’s ultimate direction, his discernment would be simple and
clear: he would see that the call to give himself totally to God as a
priest resonated in the heart of this young man in an integral and
pure way, untainted by self-seeking and self-interest, but ignited by
the desire to serve the Gospel of the Kingdom.
And
because of Artemides’ characteristic readiness to give of
himself, God did not limit himself to calling him, but was able to
pour into him the incontrovertible sign of his presence: the cross
his Son bore. Thus, at the very heart of the vocational discernment
of this young man eager to become a priest, the seal of God’s
predilection becomes recognisable: Artemides, accepted in Bernal as
an aspirant, is asked to carry out a risky service, the care of a
priest suffering from tuberculosis – as mentioned earlier. This
unstinting service led Artemides subsequently to contract the disease
that would demand the sacrifice of his vocational dream: Zatti would
be a Salesian, but not a priest.
Here
we recognise the power of the Gospel unconditionally accepted in the
lives of the saints; a power that provokes a pure vocational response
because it is guarded by a heart not only detached from evil –
an essential condition for listening to the voice of God – but
also capable of freedom with respect to good, an essential condition
of a rock-solid faith in the Absolute that is God.
Walking
in the luminous darkness of faith, Artemides sacrificed the desire to
serve the Church in the ministerial form of the priesthood, while
embracing its essence, according to Christ “who through the
eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God” (Heb
9:14).
The
characteristics of the gospel of vocation are thus recognised,
indelibly, in the fullness of self-sacrifice that sealed the
beginning of Zatti’s Salesian life well before crowning its
fullness.
And
fidelity to the lay form of Salesian life, embraced out of pure love
for God, would be full and convinced, far from any regret, and would
unfold in a convincing and contented existence.
This
is the gospel of vocation, the good news of God’s call
individually reserved for each of his children, a call of which God
alone knows the purpose, the reasons, the destination, the concrete
unfolding. A call that becomes perceptible only in the pure
correspondence of love which, in turn, wants “to rid itself of
its most dangerous enemy, its own freedom of choice. Hence, every
true love has the inner form of a vow: it binds itself to the beloved
– and does so out of motives and in the spirit of love.
The
gospel of vocation,
in Zatti’s holiness, is the gospel of pure faith: the good news
of the healthy breath of the heart that savours freedom in obedience
to God’s plan, guardian of the mystery of every life called to
be a fruitful branch of the true Vine, entrusted to the wisdom of the
“Vine-grower” (Jn
15:1).
Read
with the “categories” of our time, Artemides Zatti’s
holiness provokes “vocational fear”, fear that clutches
the heart in mistrust before the mystery of God. The gospel of
vocation announced by the life of this Salesian coadjutor brother
saint shows that only by corresponding to God’s dream is it
possible, at any age and in any situation, to overcome the paralysis
of the ego, with the poverty of its gaze and its measures, and the
narrowness of its uncertainty and its fear.
When
Fr Garrone – a Salesian of outstanding virtue in his own right,
in addition to the great medical competence he had gained through his
generous service to the sick – encouraged the
tuberculosis-stricken Artemides to ask for the grace of being cured
through the intercession of the Virgin and with a vow to dedicate
himself to the sick for the rest of his life, Zatti’s faith
gave proof of itself: simple, selfless, unreserved and encapsulated
in the phrase: “I believed!”
“I
believed”. That is, when a word or two is enough to speak one’s
faith, because faith is pure; and only this faith is vocationally
generous because of the lightness of its purity that “gives
wings to the heart and not chains to the feet”.
Artemides
Zatti’s holiness reaches out to our own vocational journeys, as
tired and dreary as they sometimes are, with the disruptive force of
an “I believed” that never failed: faith’s present
moment that continues throughout life and makes it credible. His was
a faith of continuous
union with God.
In the collection of testimonies, Archbishop M. Pérez said:
“The impression I received was that of a man united with the
Lord. Prayer was like the breath of his soul, all his behaviour
showed that he lived God’s first commandment to the full: he
loved him with all his heart, with all his mind and with all his
soul.”
We
are called to see the value of Zatti’s testimony for renewing
the ardour of our vocation ministry and to offer young people the
example of a life that the solidity of faith makes complete, simple,
courageous by the power of the Spirit and the docility of the one who
is called.
1.2 The Gospel of trust: “I promised”
The
gospel of vocation
which Zatti is testimony to, enlivens the second verb of fundamental
importance: promise.
We
often experience the weakness of human promises today; we fear their
unreliability, their inability to be definitive: hence the vocational
‘winters’ that are affecting the family, Congregations
in many parts of the world, the Church – and that make it
urgent to proclaim the Gospel of God’s call and the believer’s
response.
Reflecting
on the essence of vocation, which is the result of genuine belief,
Von Balthasar writes: “There is no progress in love without at
least a modicum of this attitude
of self-surrender…
[Love]
wants
to abandon itself, to surrender itself, to entrust itself, to commit
itself to love. As a pledge of love, it wants to lay its freedom once
and for all at the feet of love. As soon as love is truly awakened,
the moment of time is
transformed for it into a form of eternity…
timed love, interrupted love is never true love.”
Even
at a young age and precisely at a moment of great trial, Artemides
Zatti felt the call to the fullness of self-commitment through a
radical and irrevocable promise. When he was much older, testifying
to the gratitude he felt towards Fr Evasio Garrone, his benefactor,
and recalling the beginnings of his own journey of consecration,
Zatti was able to be succinct and to the point in presenting what was
at the heart of his youthful compliance with the Lord’s call:
“I believed, I promised.”
Zatti’s
“I
promised”
followed his “I
believed”
but it also shaped its radical nature and human and Christian
quality. Artemides believed because he promised and not only promised
because he believed: in him we see realised the rule of faith which,
if it cannot count on the readiness to promise, to surrender oneself,
descends into spiritual interest, mere social service and religious
contract.
Zatti
did not wait for guarantees before risking his life. He did not ask
for the right to “a hundredfold here below” as the prior
condition before casting his nets; rather did he “readily offer
to assist a priest suffering from consumption and contracted the
disease: he never uttered a word of complaint, accepted the illness
as a gift from God and bore its consequences with fortitude and
serenity.”
Thus
Artemides’ generosity was something he paid for even before his
religious profession, and it was a high price: a debilitating
illness, a shattered vocational dream, acute suffering, and –
above all – total uncertainty. But at the crossroads of faith
and promise, the gospel of vocation brought about the wonders of
holiness in this life, right from his youth.
Zatti’s
promise was pure, disinterested, like his faith, and it meant that
the integrity of his abandonment to God’s plan and the
generosity of his self-giving and self-commitment shone forth,
showing his genuine theological depth: Artemides made his own the
life of the obedient Son who allows himself to be totally dictated to
and destined by the Father’s love for the salvation of the
world.
Zatti’s
vocational alphabet was as profound as it was simple and clear: “I
believed, I promised”. Zatti believed and promised as radically
as the Gospel because he had already practised the Lord’s
Passion as the rule for his faith and dedication, as he never tired
of saying in his letters to family members: “Our joys are our
crosses, our comfort is in suffering, our life is our tears, but with
the ever dear and inseparable companion by our side, the hope of
reaching beautiful paradise when our pilgrimage on earth is
completed.”
The
cross is the rule of faith, and teaches how Christian belief is not a
mere knowing something but entrusting oneself to Someone by promising
Him not something, but oneself. Formed by the cross, even before
undertaking the journey of religious life, Artemides did not promise
but
promised
himself,
did not make
a vow,
but vowed
himself,
and thus reflected the features of the Son who “came into the
world… he said: ‘Sacrifices and offerings you have not
desired, but a body you have prepared for me; in burnt-offerings and
sin-offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said: “See,
God, I have come to do your will, O God” (in the scroll of the
book it is written of me)’” (Heb
10: 5-7).
And,
still in the school of the Lord Jesus, Zatti learned that the radical
nature of promising oneself is matched by the growing boldness of
faith. Those who give themselves completely to God can abandon
themselves to the certainty of receiving everything from Him, and
Artemides never tired of reminding us of this in his letters: “I
recommend that you should not be afraid or ashamed to ask for graces.
Ask, and you shall obtain; and the more you ask, the more you shall
obtain; for the one who asks much, receives much; the who asks
little, receives little; and the one who asks nothing, receives
nothing. […] I will not stand here listing the graces that you must
ask for; you know them well. I only place one before your eyes: that
we may all love and serve God in this world and then enjoy Him in the
next.”
1.3
The Gospel of dedication: “I recovered”
“I
recovered”
is the verb with which Zatti sealed the event that introduced him to
Salesian life.
What
does
“I
recovered” mean?
Certainly,
the tuberculosis that had undermined his health was overcome by Zatti
and in a way that surprised the doctors:
“In
the Viedma Process, the court asked whether the recovery was
miraculous. As far as we know, it was not instantaneous but,
according to the doctors… who knew Zatti well until his death, it
was extraordinary due to the scarcity and ineffectiveness of the
cures of the time, the continuity of his recovery and the more than
normal physical robustness that the Servant of God always enjoyed,
despite his life of hardship. Our Lady’s intervention seems
undeniable, whether it was a miracle or an extraordinary grace.”
The
finger of God, however, acted in its own unmistakable style: God did
not eradicate the illness by restoring Artemides’ life to its
pre-disease condition, nor did he unravel the mystery typical of
every divine design and human existence. Thus, as we know, “while
noting the improvements in the Servant of God’s health, the
Superiors were not fully persuaded about his future chances.
Tuberculosis, in those days, never gave certainty of recovery and
definitive cure; the curriculum
of studies that the Servant of God would have to tackle at his age
(23-24), was still long and certainly not suitable for someone who
had had tuberculosis; on the other hand, he had already begun to work
in the Pharmacy, in an occupation suitable for a layman, and
everything leads one to believe he did so with success and mutual
satisfaction; perhaps Fr Garrone was exerting some pressure to keep
him with him in his work. Given all these circumstances, the
Superiors, then, had to put it to the Servant of God – who
certainly, from all that appears in his writings, had decided to
leave the world and consecrate himself to God – to become a
Salesian religious, but as a coadjutor (brother): the solution seemed
the most prudent in view of his still uncertain health: material work
required less effort than a long period of strict studies.”
God’s
mystery deepened with his cure, and Artemide’s faith was asked
for a purification that was perhaps more severe than the one imposed
by his loss of health: to sacrifice the direction his
vocation
was to take.
Thus
Artemides was led to deepen the path of purification that God
required of him: deliverance from illness was not a regaining of the
strength which allows an enterprising young man to “take hold
of life again”. In its own way his recovery became the desert
of a new poverty, so that Zatti’s life would be a free space
for God in the radical call to a new abandonment.
God
cured Artemides of tuberculosis in order to renew in him the miracle
of salvation from self-attachment, of detachment even from his own
good plans: “It is to be assumed that abandoning the aspiration
to the priesthood was a great spiritual suffering for the Servant of
God, such was the impetus and spirit of sacrifice with which he had
undertaken the journey towards this goal. However, it is marvellous
and indicative of extraordinary spiritual strength that there was
never a word of complaint or even a word of regret or nostalgia…
for this reversal in the perspective of his life.”
“I
recovered”, then, is the voice of coherence in Zatti’s
vocational alphabet. When God calls and his creature responds, the
Spirit does not merely repair human precariousness but fulfils God’s
dream “See, I am making all things new” (Rev
21:5). Thus, while sickness inclines the human heart to withdraw into
itself, Zatti’s believing and promising, nourished by love for
the Lord Jesus and the Cross, produced true health: greater
self-forgetfulness and unconditional submission to God, which led him
to be the humble apostle of the poorest, the sick and, among them, to
become the apostle of the strangest cases; in short, apostle of the
abandoned and discarded of this world.
The
Artemides reborn to greater poverty had surrendered himself even
further, in full and active trust, to the Father’s plan: “Ex
auditu
I can say that [in the life of the Servant of God] there was a
general desire for God to be glorified. As I knew him, I can assure
you that he lived for the glory of God.”
The
subordination of everything to the glory of God and the sacrifice of
one’s own views – including one’s plans for the
good – in order to comply with God’s wisdom, which alone
realises the fullness of Love, would be essential not only to the
spiritual experience of this extraordinary Salesian but also to the
pedagogy
of pain
that he would practice due to the specific nature of his mission.
In
Zatti’s “I recovered” not only a grace but a school
was fulfilled, and both were moulded by the finger of God for the
good of his brothers and sisters: free from illness, Artemides would
serve the sick for a lifetime, after passing through the true
recovery
that would make him a true
doctor
for the creatures he would bend over.
“He
often made the sign of the Cross and had the sick make it; he loved
to teach it to children. Faith and medicine formed a symbiosis in
him; without faith he did not cure, nor did he cure without medicine.
Nor did he see any dichotomy between the soul and the body; the human
being was one, and he cured this human being: body and soul.”
Only
because he was led by the hand of God to experience healing as dying
to self could Zatti be close to the sick with the medicine of
Incarnate and Crucified Love, dispensing comfort, light and hope.
2.
AN
EASTER WITNESS
If
– because of the way he was reached by God’s call –
the Gospel
of vocation
shines out in an original and very relevant way in Zatti’s
life, his apostolic sowing is fulfilled as the skill of caring in the
light of Easter.
Being
consistent with Easter is the rule of fidelity of every Christian
apostolate: the practice of this rule reaches splendour in the
saints, bringing the life of God into the labours of human beings,
history, the world, thus building up the Church.
Zatti
practised the fatigue of human suffering with paschal passion and
thus built up the Church as a true field hospital (as Pope Francis
continues to say today), precisely by transforming two hospitals
built “at the end of the world” into living cells of the
Church.
The
hospitals, first of all the San José and then the Sant’Isidro,
were a valuable and unique health resource for the care of the poor
in Viedma and the Rio Negro region in particular at the turn of the
century (19th, heading into the 20th): Zatti’s heroism made
them places that radiated God’s love and where health care
became an experience of salvation.
Zatti
consigned his life to the parable of the Good Samaritan. The
Samaritan is Christ, God who is close to us (in his Beloved Son) and
who knows of no indifference or contempt but offers himself, in
advance, to healing even the least of his sons and daughters through
the closeness of love, so that the evils of history will not condemn
any of these little ones to perish outside Jerusalem.
Here
is God’s miracle: in that pocket handkerchief piece of
Patagonian territory where Zatti’s life flowed, a page of the
Gospel came to life. The Good Samaritan found a face, hands and
passion, above all for the little ones, the poor, sinners, the least.
Thus a hospital became the Father’s Inn, became a sign of a
Church that sought to be rich in gifts of humanity and Grace, through
self-giving, service and living the commandment of love of God and
neighbour.
There
are numerous witnesses who allow us to contemplate the experience of
the Church accessible in that field hospital brought to life by
Zatti’s heart on fire: by letting them speak, the charm of
Artemides concerned with curing those who entrusted themselves to him
emerges once again, both with the remedies of his medical skill, his
presence, sympathy, prayer for all and with all, and with the
everyday expression of faith of this humble Salesian. All this
certainly proved more effective than many medicines.
2.1.
Easter care and service (diakonia)
of wounded lives
Where
there is holiness the Church spreads, and where the Church is built
up there is holiness. Those who met Zatti, those who were welcomed
into his hospital, experienced fraternity and experienced the Church
in this fraternity.
In
the radical style of the Gospel, Zatti lived the certainty that
service, the characteristic feature of his vocation – diakonia
– makes the face of the Church credible, recognisable, lovable.
The door that is service attracts the human heart, especially when it
is tried by life and suffering, and opens to the experience of
meeting Jesus the true Good Samaritan, and Zatti did his best to live
as a Good Samaritan.
“The
hospital and the houses of the poor, which he visited night and day
using a bicycle now considered a historical relic in the city of
Viedma, were the front line of his mission. He lived the total
donation of himself to God and the dedication of all his strength to
the good of his neighbour.”
Zatti
was a witness of service, and just as Jesus gave himself up to the
end, Zatti carried out, to the point of heroism, in the footsteps of
his Lord, a fully Christian gift of self and diakonia.
It is worth emphasising, in the unanimous words of witnesses, the
extraordinary characteristics of Zatti’s evangelical diakonia:
the universality of his dedication, the totality of his self-giving,
the generosity born of God being at his side, in obedience to Him,
accomplished in Him and for Him.
That
Zatti’s service knew of no favouritism, made no preference of
individuals was visible to all who knew him: “I know that he
visited the prison to look after the sick. He was helpful and
friendly with unbelievers and enemies of the Church. I remember a
doctor commenting on the title of Father Entraigas’ book ‘The
Kinsman of All the Poor’ saying that it should be corrected to
‘Kinsman of everyone’ because of the fairness with which
he [Zatti] did not distinguish between all those who sought him
out.”
If
there was a preference for someone in Zatti’s service and
self-giving, it was the preference taught by the Good Shepherd,
sensitive above all to the fate of the most injured and lost sheep:
“It was one of [Zatti’s] predilections that he gave
himself totally to God in these humble, defenceless people or those
with infirmities that were so repulsive that when someone wanted to
send them to a hospice because they had been in the San José
Hospital for many years, he replied that these true lightning
rods
of the Hospital should not be abandoned.”
Zatti,
then, served with his whole self, consuming himself in generosity
without measure in the most disparate forms of feverish activity
aimed only at meeting the demands of all: “Since his kindness
and good will in serving others was known to all, everyone turned to
him for the most disparate things… Rectors of houses in the
Province wrote to him for medical advice, sent confreres to him for
assistance, and entrusted service people who had become incapacitated
to his hospital. The Daughters of Mary Help of Christians were no
different from the Salesians in asking for favours. Italian migrants
asked for help; those who had been well cared for at the Hospital had
people write to Italy, asked for files, as if it were an expression
of gratitude, and sent relatives and friends to be cared for because
of the respect they had for his care. Civil authorities often had
incapacitated people to care for and resorted to Zatti. Seeing he was
on good terms with the authorities, prisoners and others recommended
that he ask for clemency for them or get their problems solved.”
Zatti’s
service was continuous and selfless and precisely because of this,
unrestrained by touchiness, ingratitude, lack of correspondence or
nagging demands: “Concern for his neighbour in the servant of
God was extraordinary in his daily work; from morning to night he
lived for his beloved sick. These circumstances increased at night,
when no matter what time they called him, he would rush to them… I
know that he often had to suffer the excessive demands of some
patients, their inordinate needs, whims as in the case… of patients
with mental illness. The Servant of God never lost his patience. I
remember seeing him on more than one occasion go out in bad weather,
cold and rain on his bicycle (not the latest model) to care for the
sick among the population, riding along quite impassable roads.”
What
deeply marked Zatti’s diakonia,
his service to all, was his being in the company of the Lord. No one
missed how competent this generous nurse was, but equally evident was
his being on a mission with Jesus:
“One
very concrete personal item: I was a novice and then a newly-ordained
priest, and I came to Viedma because of some pustules especially on
my neck and face and the Servant of God always welcomed me with a
smile, cured me by cauterising me with a hot tip,
humming
the Magnificat
while he worked and then encouraging me to offer these sufferings up
for holy perseverance in my vocation.”
Again,
obedience to God and his plan shone out in Zatti as the soul of
humble and trusting service meant to inspire feelings of abandonment
to God in the poor and the sick. Everything found inspiration in God,
and Zatti carried out everything in accordance with God’s
command, so that the service of this great Salesian was a continuous
and fascinating practice of the precept of love:
he
“loved
God above all things. For him all things of this earth were passing
and secondary. For me, Zatti was constant, unwavering in his love for
God and in his piety. Not only in acts of piety but in all service to
his neighbour he always kept the name of God on his lips. He urged
all those close to him to live prayerfully. Zatti was always an
example, his piety was above the ordinary.”
Zatti’s
service, however, as is always the case with saints, was a diakonia,
a service performed certainly in obedience to God, but above all in
the name of God, lending God his face, his heart, his hands in the
certainty – a source of great boldness – of being but a
small instrument of his great Power and Providence. Thus Zatti worked
with extraordinary generosity but with total abandon because he knew
that it was his Lord who acted in him: “He always hoped and
trusted in God. The serenity with which he overcame difficulties was
a demonstration of his hope in God. He always said: ‘God will
provide’, but he said it with full confidence and hope.”
Zatti,
believer and true man, was “moved by love for his neighbour,
because he saw the suffering Christ in every sick person. Such was
the kindness he showed the sick that he did not deny them anything”;
“For the Servant of God, love was manifested in the charity
with which he assisted the ‘other Christs’. With his
Gospel notion that whatever his disciples would do for their
neighbour they would be doing to Christ himself, the Servant of God
habitually behaved charitable towards all, even when dealing with the
unbelieving or indifferent.”
Either
by outwardly living a Church of service capable of reaching out to
its poor, or by serving those who knocked at the doors of his
hospital – first at San José and then at Sant’Isidro
– so that they might encounter God’s love there, Zatti
gave his whole self to God, becoming a servant of the Lord, an
authentic missionary of the Church in the name of the Lord Jesus.
2.2
Easter
fraternity and communion (koinonia)
in shared life
Zatti’s
holiness brings us to the heart of the Church not only because of the
uniqueness of his diakonia,
but also because of the quality of communion that flourished through
his giving of himself to others. What communion was for Zatti is
attested as much by the testimonies of those who witnessed its
action, as by the way in which he went through the most trying
moments that marked his life.
A
particularly painful event for him occurred when his superiors opted
for the demolition of the San José Hospital to which Artemis
had dedicated all his energy; Viedma lacked the premises for the
episcopacy, and in order to build a suitable bishop’s
residence, it was decided to demolish the old hospital, with the
burden of transferring all health services to the premises of the
Agricultural School of Sant’Isidro, the site of another
Salesian work in Viedma.
For
Zatti, the demolition was not a simple building operation, it was a
raw and crucifying trial: not only did the rubble of an old hospital
lie before his eyes, but the doubt that his life might have collapsed
with those walls,
and that his renunciations and privations, misunderstandings and
vigils, headaches and sweat, dedication to others and self-sacrifice
had also ended there. Zatti was not spared this chalice, but remained
upright with Christian fortitude and gentleness: “at the time
of the demolition of the San José hospital, he had first
proposed that the bishop’s palace be built elsewhere and the
land be exchanged; then, given the inexorability of the demolition,
which… he felt enormously because of his extreme human sensitivity,
he did not rebel or protest; on the contrary, he calmed those who
tried to make him rebel.”
As
is always the case in the lives of saints, the trial was both a dark
crucible and a luminous demonstration: with his serenity of spirit
and alacrity in setting up the new health services building, Zatti
showed what the foundation of his dedication was: the real hospital
he had built could not be reduced to rubble because it was an
invention of charity, the charity that “never ends” (1
Cor 13:8),
and
that expresses the miracle of communion, a reflection of the eternal
life of God. Zatti’s true hospital was not an earthly building
dedicated to San José or San’Isidro; in those rooms, his
professionalism welcomed everyone, through the door of service, so
that they might experience the true and full tenderness of God.
Zatti
did not preach the catechism of communion, but by his holiness he
embodied it; and his
hospital
was not an imposing building, but an evident, daily miracle of
service and communion. There “The Servant of God directed the
staff, which was made up of various people who lived in the hospital,
like a superior of a religious community… The staff loved him,
revered him and followed his rules to the letter. Nobody ever lacked
what was necessary: moral, spiritual or technical for the fulfilment
of their duties, and this because of the personal concern of the
Servant of God.”
That
it was Zatti’s spiritual stature that made him the architect of
communion is everyone’s belief: “During the years I was
at school in the College of St Francis de Sales, the Hospital was a
dependency of the College and one knew everything that went on here
as well as there. I never heard of any quarrels or misunderstandings
between Zatti’s co-workers that could have any relevance and be
the cause of gossip in the village or in the school.”
Christian
communion, when it is brought about, does not go unnoticed for its
beauty that surprises a world laid low by rancour and division; it is
only the saints, however, who know the price of communion at its
fullest, how it is quite foreign to on-the-spot reaction, artificial
sympathy or ease without sacrifice. The saints know how much
communion costs because they know what its source is: the Lord’s
wounded side, which performs the work of reconciliation among and
with human beings.
Zatti
knew that only the Blood of the Lord creates communion, and he chose
the path of faithful and daily participation in the sacrifice of the
Son with a smile on his face, fortitude in his soul, peace in his
heart, his hands pierced by work and fatigue. Making the commitment
required by his sacrifice almost imperceptible, Zatti “was a
man who radiated peace, [a man] of action, dynamic, who showed no
nervousness, was cheerful. It was common for him to joke… to cheer
up a sick person… He was a man who did not waver in his religious
practices… a sign of his effort to improve himself.
Personally, what I noticed most about him was his charity and
humility.”
Zatti’s
humility built up the Church and made the communion of which he
himself was the creator a Christian communion; those who do not die
to themselves every day day, carry with them the heaviness of
selfishness that wounds communion. Only humility heals relationships
and overcomes the lure of power, control, seduction, prevarication.
Without many words or speeches, Zatti knew that only with humility
can one be the builder of koinonia
which is the result of and condition for effective and unobtrusive
diakonia
that does not create dependence but restores dignity; only humility
serves in a generative way, fostering a communion that nurtures bonds
and promotes autonomy. Humility is God’s virtue because it is
the secret of every father, the hope of every son, the spirit of
every true life.
Zatti
was able to be a servant and creator of communion because of the
humility that made him a simple child of God, alive with the life of
the Spirit, and father of all: “I believe that in Zatti’s
relationship with his co-workers there were never any problems
because he was like a father to everyone. I remember that everyone
missed him a lot when he was away in Rome for the Canonisation of Don
Bosco”;
“Zatti’s relationship with the hospital was like that of
a father. I know of no misunderstandings or difficulties: if there
were any, I believe they were not on his part. From the nurses with
whom I dealt…, I heard nothing but praise and no complaints.”
2.3
Easter
closeness and the martyria
of life without end
Our
confrere Artemide Zatti truly testified by his life (martyria)
that the Lord is risen. “I am the light of the world” (Jn
8:12) the Lord said of himself. The Gospel is Light that seeks to
penetrate people’s lives, and Light for the world is the
Church, God’s living sacrament. Zatti’s holiness,
nourished by the Jesus’s Passover, is also light, and the poor
and sick of Viedma in particular experienced this. Zatti welcomed
them through the door of service, kept them within the walls of
communion, but so as to offer them, through his testimony of life,
the light of the Gospel, the splendour of Easter that illuminates the
Church.
Believers
and non-believers alike were thunderstruck by Zatti’s words and
gestures; his testimony was shadowless, extraordinarily Salesian,
reached everyone and proclaimed two decisive features of the God of
Jesus through two words: Providence and Paradise.
There
is no Church where there is no explicit proclamation of the name of
God, a proclamation paid for with the martyrdom of life, in the sign
of blood or charity; where Zatti’s service and communion went,
the proclamation of the name of God, of these two names that are so
Christian and so Salesian, resounded: Providence and Paradise.
Zatti
proclaimed with his life that everything in God is love, but
concrete, attentive, boundless and detailed love for each creature:
God’s love is Providence. God’s Providence, however, is
not timeless but eternal, and then comes the second name: Paradise;
Paradise is the proper name for God’s desire in history to
provide for his creatures in order to have them with him forever, for
eternity.
Zatti
was a teacher of this Christian alphabet: “It was his constant
desire that the Lord be known and loved. He testified to this by the
joy he expressed when a new patient, who knew nothing of God, became
a devout Christian. His first concern was to look after them in a
caring manner and inspire confidence in divine Providence.”
His
sense of Providence was not the obligatory response to precarious
conditions, a sort of last resort offered to shipwrecked people so
they didn’t founder in difficult times. Witnessing to
Providence for Zatti meant teaching them to talk to God, call him by
name with Christian trust, because “he was very much convinced
of the Gospel principles and one that was firmly engraved on his
heart and mind was ‘strive first for the kingdom of God and his
righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well’
(Mt
6:33). He had learnt in Don Bosco’s school – having read
much about his life – never to mistrust God’s help,
especially when he is honoured, as he wishes, in each of our
neighbours.”
But
a Providence without Paradise would not allow the proclamation of
God’s name to withstand the impact of history with its burden
of fatigue, suffering and death. Inside and beyond the hospital,
Zatti inspired a Church that was always visited by pain and death,
and this demanded a fullness of faith and witness, demanded that he
proclaim the name of God’s only wish for humankind: Paradise.
When he bore witness to Paradise, Zatti showed his certainty
“regarding eternal life and its acquisition by grace and good
works; this he manifested especially in the face of death… I
personally heard him rejoice at being able to give religious
assistance to the sick and exclaim… ‘Today we have sent two
or three to heaven’”
With
these two names of God, Zatti evangelised life and death, joy and
pain, health and illness as true Christian witness, as a martyr in
the daily martyrdom of charity. Zatti’s proclamation and
martyria
did not divulge a Gospel of circumstance or opportunity but spread
Salt, Light, Yeast, lent face, heart and hands to a Gospel that asks
for life and pervades it throughout, dissolves conundrums and
conquers anguish with the warmth of Truth:
“From the time I knew him, he always gave more importance to
religious practices than to his work, although he did this with
perseverance. He often quoted the Scriptures, especially the Gospels,
to console the sick or encourage virtue… It was very difficult for
him not to put a spiritual thought into his conversations. Once,
while talking to him, I mentioned the discovery of some new medicines
such as penicillin and sulphonamides; the Servant of God listened to
me and, when I finished speaking, he said: ‘It is true, it is
true, but people will still continue to die’.”
The
truth of the Gospel in its entirety enlightened Zatti’s
hospital, as it had enlightened the Oratory in Don Bosco’s
time: that is why in the hospital at Viedma, as within the walls at
Valdocco, death was not feared, nor were expedients multiplied to
soften the scandal of death or hide its evidence, deceptions that are
dangerous to the human heart. Zatti faced death with the testimony of
the Gospel of life: life with its feet on the ground, and therefore
industrious and practical, but with its heart in heaven, and
therefore confident and serene: “the only motive of his life
was the expectation of a heavenly reward. He never acted to gain
money or reputation, but did everything in the hope of future
happiness.”
Albeit
in all simplicity, his commitment to live the Gospel with his heart
rooted in the ultimate prize was to bring the God of Providence and
Paradise into every human wound and death, so that Life and
Resurrection might flourish there. This made Zatti’s testimony
blessed and he invoked its presence when the precious and rare
medicines of hope and consolation were indispensable. The whole town
of Viedma knew this, as witnesses have confirmed with astonishing
unanimity: they all called on Zatti, and he would rush to hearten and
console, giving this Christian medicine that he drew upon for his own
life in the Grace of God, from the Spirit himself, the Consoler.
Thus
it became “extraordinary in the Servant of God that he was able
to instil hope in the sick, a fact that contributed almost
miraculously to healing by uplifting the soul of the suffering
individual.”
Zatti
bears witness, including to the martyrdom of charity, that the Lord
is God of heaven and earth. Zatti bears witness to this with the
passion of the saints which knows no measure: “I remember one
patient telling Zatti that he was always preparing him for heaven but
that he needed to prepare him a little for earth. Another fact shows
the atmosphere of the hospital: a nurse once insisted on preparing a
patient who was not so sick for death and who is actually still
alive.”
2.4
Easter
joy and the liturgy of life redeemed
With
his extraordinary fidelity to the central occasions of Christian
life, Artemides Zatti was nourished by the Bread of the Word, the
Bread of Forgiveness, the Bread of Heaven, and his life was
transfigured, ever more intensely, for the benefit of a mission rich
in fruits that grew. Thus, the life of Grace, intensely lived by this
son of Don Bosco, reached out to all those who met him, without
distinction: the sick and co-workers, confreres and authorities, the
poor and benefactors, in Zatti they touched the life of the Lord
through the power of the sacramental mystery that is shared among
people in the communion of the people of God. And so the whole
Church, in the sacraments, by the power of the Holy Spirit,
celebrates the Paschal Mystery and ensures nourishment for people
through the sacraments for the journey and for remedies that heal
humanity wounded by evil and death.
This
is the Church: It flourishes and grows where service and fellowship
proclaim the name of God, bear witness to the Word of Jesus, are
nourished by His Body, healed by His Forgiveness. Zatti did not
simply do all this, but was all this. Because of his correspondence
to Grace which made his life holy, we recognise not only the Lord’s
gestures and words in him, but experience his very life: Zatti was a
“living tabernacle”, and his radiant testimony aroused
questions, intentions, conversion, even in those who were far from
close participation in the mystery of the Lord.
Zatti’s
dedication, revealing more than human roots, becomes a universally
convincing proof of the supernatural power of the sacraments; his, in
fact, was “a supernatural and extraordinary love of
neighbour… He was willing to make any sacrifice and that is why the
difficult seemed easy for him. I think the difficult circumstances of
his charitable work were the shortage of personnel, the demand for
his assistance at all times, not being affected by bad weather,
serving all kinds of people. I remember a relative of mine who was
ill coming to visit on a day when the weather was very bad, and when
someone asked him, ‘Are you going out in this weather, Bro.
Zatti?’ he replied: ‘I don’t have any other kind of
weather!’”
It
is a rule of the Christian liturgy to be able to give good proof of
itself in the life of the believer through order, harmony, effective
and supernatural energy. Zatti was a Christian, a consecrated
Salesian layman of Don Bosco. He was a living stone of the Church, a
witness to Easter, because the commandment of Love became visible in
his works, and that made people recognise God in their neighbour and
their neighbour in God. But through his life Zatti also taught that
the strength needed to practise that commandment is supernatural and
can only come from God, from his sacraments and from prayer and union
with Him.
“Zatti
practised charity in difficult circumstances due to a lack of
financial resources. Also because his activity went beyond the
ordinary, due to the amount of hours he dedicated to his commitments
without omitting his religious obligations. Knowing him as we did, we
wondered how he could sustain such great effort without the rest that
is usually considered necessary.”
Two
episodes are worthy of recall as an example of the liturgy of life
which made Zatti was first a disciple and then an apostle of the
Crucified and Risen Lord; firstly, the demolition of the old San José
hospital, with the need to transfer the sick to Sant’Isidro: “I
have no information that Zatti was notified of an eviction date, and
he certainly had not received anything from his provincial, otherwise
I would have known… The emotional state into which Zatti fell when
the sick had to be removed in case the rubble fell on them, could
have been psychologically fatal. He wept bitterly, but after praying
before the Blessed Sacrament, he set to work with calm energy”;
and
then there
was
his service to the dying: “A young man was about to die, and
Zatti was conversing with him after giving him communion; at a
certain point the young man began shouting ‘Zatti, I’m going to
die!’ and at the same moment got out of bed; looking him in the
eyes, Zatti smiled and said: ‘How wonderful, you are going to
heaven!’ and the young man fell back with a smile that copied
Zatti’s, and which remained etched on his face.”
This
is what happens when the Eucharist becomes life and the Paschal
Mystery becomes daily practice: human greatness is transformed, by
the power of the Spirit, and every action of a believer is performed
in Christ, for Christ and with Christ, making life a liturgy and
transfusing the holy gifts of the liturgy into life.
Our
dear Artemides Zatti, indebted in everything to the Mysteries of the
Lord, knew that everything could only be achieved thanks to Him;
hence his humility: “I remember that, as my brother Salvador
was very ill with typhoid fever, the Servant of God went to treat him
several times a day. On one occasion, meeting up with him on his way
to Salvador’s house, I was distressed and said to him: ‘Bro.
Zatti, please save my brother!’ He turned and looked me in the
eyes, and said sternly: ‘Don’t be blasphemous, only God
saves!’”
Artemides
Zatti’s was a life of self-gift, communion, and witness to the
risen Lord. A life full of graces that led him to a fully Christian
death: “Asked if his pain was constant, strong or otherwise,
without answering directly he said to me: ‘It is a means of
purification and I am happy because I realise that I am completing
the Passion of Christ, something I have inculcated so much in the
sick.’”
And
Zatti’s offering as the seal of his liturgy was complete,
unobtrusive, serene and joyful. It deserves to be summed up in a
little story in which, behind the veil of sympathy, Zatti gave those
who were looking after him the meaning of his life, which God was
able to squeeze out to the full because it was mature and complete. A
few months before his death, smiling about his illness – liver
cancer that turned his face yellow – Zatti told a nurse that he
(Zatti) would soon be coloured, too, with make-up! His, however,
would be like it is in lemons, the colour of maturity which means the
fruit is ready to be completely squeezed: “You wear make-up? So
do I! Within six months I will demonstrate it. The lemon is of no use
if it is not yellow.”
3.
INVITATION TO A SPECIAL COMMITMENT
This
was the title of the last part of Fr Vecchi’s letter to which I
have referred several times, and which I would like to keep and share
now. In the previous pages I have attempted to outline the
extraordinary figure of our Salesian coadjutor brother Artemides
Zatti in a simple but incisive manner. His life’s journey,
imbued and filled with God, is more than evident. As is his holiness.
Faced with this great figure, we see the need and importance in our
Congregation of a special commitment to promote this beautiful
vocation today. I make Fr Vecchi’s words my own in asking of
every province, every community, and every brother in the coming
years, as of now, “a
renewed, extraordinary and specific commitment for the vocation of
the Salesian Brother within
our
vocational
pastoral work: in praying for this, in suggesting and proclaiming it,
in welcoming it and following it up, in living it personally and
together in the community.”
There is no shortage of valuable publications on the figure of the
Salesian coadjutor brother;
Perhaps what we need at this time is to make our commitment more
convincing. I have often said in my visits to the provinces and also
in my letters that we must first of all be men of faith,
more than ever abandoned to the Lord today. Many other strategies and
plans can help us, but they will not get us out of a profound
difficulty.
Only trust
in the Lord and recourse to him will.
The following testimony of a brother confrere has, in my opinion, a
particular force to it: “Today too resounds the call ‘Come
and follow me’. And I find it always a source of wonder that
even today there are young men who seem to lack nothing they would
need for heading towards the priesthood, and instead they choose to
become consecrated laymen in the SaIesian Congregation. And so in our
pastoral work for vocations we must have faith in this vocation which
is complete in itself, and pass on to others esteem for it as by
osmosis, without any forced comparisons or distortions in respect of
the clerical figure. We must be convinced that there are young men
who do not identify with the priestly model, but are attracted by
that of the consecrated layman. What are the reasons for this choice?
All reasons are insufficient: fundamentally it is a mystery of Grace
and freedom.”
At
this point, I would like to invite you to take a closer look at
forthcoming publications on both Saint Artemides Zatti and the
vocation of the Salesian coadjutor brother in our Congregation in the
various regions, and in the proposals of both the Youth Ministry and
Formation Sectors that will undoubtedly reach us from now on as a
help to the intercession that the new Salesian saint will provide for
everyone and, undoubtedly in a very special way for his Salesian
coadjutor brothers in the world, those who are already here and those
to come by the Grace of God.
The
power and beauty of an invitation
I
believe we should not end our discussion of the life of Artemides
Zatti without evoking, once again, a letter from 1986 from Cardinal
Jorge Mario Bergoglio, today Pope Francis, written to a Salesian,
testifying to a grace received through Zatti’s intercession.
The
story is well known: when he was Provincial of the Jesuits in
Argentina, Father Bergoglio entrusted to Zatti the request to the
Lord for holy vocations to the lay consecrated life for the Society
of Jesus, and his Province had the grace, within a decade, of
twenty-three new religious brother vocations.
The
episode is relevant not only for the main characters in that story –
the Master of the Harvest, a Salesian coadjutor brother saint, the
current Successor of Peter – but for its content: the
vocational power of Zatti’s testimony.
It
is astonishing that the first Salesian to be canonised, and not
because of blood martyrdom, should be a brother, and a brother who,
in radical obedience to God, renounced the very form of vocation by
which he had been fascinated, that of the priesthood, to be with Don
Bosco, and then carried out a sacrificial service in the world of
sickness and suffering.
However,
the strong beauty of this testimony cannot escape us; in him shine
the fundamental loves that must enkindle the Salesian’s heart:
love for God and his will, love for our neighbour in whose suffering
limbs we see the Face of Jesus Crucified, love for the Mother of the
Lord, Mediatrix of all grace, love for Don Bosco who promises bread,
work and Paradise to every Salesian.
These
loves shine forth in the luminous grandeur of Artemides’
religious life, embraced joyfully and radically and with generous
resourcefulness.
Our
confrere Artemides Zatti shows us how sensitive the world is to the
witness of religious life, provided that this witness is true,
credible, authentic: the triumph of his funeral, his reputation for
holiness, the veneration of his tomb are clear signs of how much
everyone recognised the finger of God in action in this generous and
faithful Salesian: “In proportion to the inhabitants of Viedma,
the number of people who flocked to the funeral was impressive. From
everywhere came humble people with small bouquets of flowers. In
addition to the authorities, there were many other people. In the
days [following the death] people were convinced that a saint had
died; some went to the grave hoping for miracles: they prayed,
brought flowers.”
Artemides
Zatti’s life woke up a city, and today it touches the whole world
because it spoke of God: he brought the perfume of God’s
virginal and fruitful love among the poor and the sick, with an
exemplary practice of chastity; he gave everyone the richness of
faith, paying for it with a beloved poverty to the point of giving up
his own room to a sick person or bringing a deceased person there to
remove them from the sight of other patients in a final gesture of
tenderness and pity; he taught true freedom, obeying the will of the
superiors at the cost of bitter tears, recognising them as mediators
of God’s plan.
An
exemplary religious, by this testimony he teaches everyone that the
health to be guarded above every other good is that of the soul, our
soul that is so precious because it comes from God and aspires to
him, often unconsciously, in the desire to find eternal Love in his
arms.
May
Zatti’s loves kindle our loves; may his witness to the Absolute that
is God, the greatness of the soul and our true homeland inspire our
gestures and our pastoral passion for a new apostolic fidelity and
renewed vocational fruitfulness. May we never lack, as Artemides
Zatti always sought, the maternal protection of Mary Help of
Christians, and may the devotion to our Mother in every Salesian
house in the world, and in every corner where the Family of Don Bosco
is found, be a sure road that helps us to live a holiness like that
of our confrere.
I
conclude these words by proposing a prayer to the Father through the
intercession of the new Salesian coadjutor brother saint, Saint
Artemides Zatti.
Prayer
of intercession
to
ask for vocations of lay Salesians
O
God, who in St Artemides Zatti
have
given us a model Salesian coadjutor brother
who,
docile to your call
and
with the compassion of the Good Samaritan
made
himself a neighbour to every human being,
help
us to recognise the gift of this vocation
which
testifies the beauty of consecrated life to the world.
Give
us the courage to propose to young people
this
form of evangelical life
at
the service of the little ones and the poor,
and
make those whom you call to this path
respond
generously to your invitation.
We
ask this through the intercession of Saint Artemides Zatti
and
through the mediation of Christ our Lord.
Amen.
With
true affection and united in the Lord with mutual prayer,
I
am yours sincerely,
Ángel
Fernández Artime, sdb
Rector
Major
