Father Giacomo Spagnolo, a life totally given

We need to often hark back to the figure of our Founders. Due to the exemplary nature of following Jesus, their life is like a living reading of the Scripture.

Father Giacomo Spagnolo is a shiny witness to the Gospel of Jesus, ruling passion of his life. Leaving the green light to the action of the Spirit, it made him capable of living the high standard of Christian life in the ordinariness of his experience as a missionary priest, Father and Founder of the Missionaries of Mary. With eyes fixed on Jesus, he lived and proposed with joy and conviction to us, his daughters, the values not to be lost, in the evolution of times and situations. Like every human being, Father Giacomo experienced the daily struggle of living with its joys and sorrows, limits and imperfections.

A belief felt since his youth can be considered the keyword in the human and spiritual story of Father Giacomo. On January 9, 1934, just before turning 22, as he was preparing to make his perpetual profession and be ordained a priest, he wrote to the superior general, Fr. Amatore Dagnino:

What I always strive to do is to strengthen my will in the service of God and to surrender my nothingness into His hands so that He does …. These are the theoretical principles on which I want to imbue my active life as a Priest and Missionary and which I wish to become my blood and my life...

The word everything, written behind a postcard depicting the crucified Jesus, was the spark that gave life to our missionary family. The Crucifix, the Everything of God for us, is the key reference for the Missionaries of Mary, engendered by this thought of wholeness. In our life, Christ is the center, explicit and fully sought, loved, and highly esteemed. Mary is for us the orientation and the most direct and easiest way of keeping us in constant contact with Him.

The missionary vocation is understood as full availability, with-for-in Christ, to the action of God's merciful omnipotence for the generation of God's children. Contemplating the almighty Mercy of God, participating in the paschal mystery of Christ, having Mary as teacher, becomes for Father Giacomo the source of a profound and authentic humanity. This is the path he followed and proposed with deep conviction to his daughters. One of its hallmarks is the practice of mercy: God's maternal tenderness - he states - will also be our way.

Among the features that stand out in  p. Giacomo's personality there is keen intelligence, open-mindedness, and generosity of heart.

A sound spirituality is the foundation of a broad educational approach. Father Giacomo cares that the missionaries grow in human maturity and that they are formed in a strong spirituality, in the climate of freedom as daughters of God. From the beginning he indicates the need to do everything with an apostolic spirit and to have great ideas, abandoning the narrow-mindedness of certain selfish fussiness. The Father is against meticulousness and smallness. He just wants the fundamental concepts of religious life to remain clear and solid in us, to travel the path of holiness with ease and joy.

Psalm 130 is particularly dear to Father Giacomo. According to the father it outlines normality and moderation; at the same time, it expresses the serenity and tranquility of those who trust and hope solely and constantly in the Lord. It was precisely his full entrustment to the Lord that allowed him to maintain and radiate serenity amid the misunderstandings and tribulations that he did not lack. The Father reminds us that perfection is not expressed in exceptional things, which arouse wonder, but in small things, experienced with constancy and with great love. This is the precious gift that we wish to welcome with gratitude and experience it.

Father Giacomo, together with our Mother Celestina, is one of those stars that light the way and guide our path. Jesus is the light, the sun. To reach him we need witnesses who, by radiating his light, encourage us to faithfully live our call in today's mission. Father Giacomo is this kind of witness.