My unforgettable meeting with Enzo

My unforgettable meeting with Enzo

In the early days of the Boston community, Enzo Piccinini came from Italy to visit our community as a visitor (a person appointed by the CL Movement to follow the communities and help them on their journey of faith, ed.). On every occasion I had the opportunity to spend time with him, he always seemed dynamic and full of life! He took an interest in our lives, whether we met at Mass, Sunday brunch, or some other convivial moment.
During one of his visits, he joined us all at my house, where we met for lunch and a movie. I was thrilled with this opportunity because I wanted to share with everyone a video my father had sent me about the life of Saint Faustina and the message of Divine Providence. After watching it, we stopped to discuss it together to “give our opinion,” as we learned to do in the Movement.
Halfway through our discussion, Enzo became very animated and enthusiastic, wanting to help us see something “more” than what we were seeing. He asked us, “What is mercy?” and again, “What experience do you have of mercy?”
Faced with these questions, we struggled to come up with possible answers, which, however, were rather abstract and thus left Enzo clearly dissatisfied. True to his temperament, he became even more fervent, insistently inviting us to reflect on the concrete meaning of mercy in our lives.
Gesturing in his trademark Italian manner, Enzo persisted in the discussion with great emotional intensity, explaining that Fr. Giussani had never placed much emphasis on devotional practices, that prayer in our private lives is not the only way Christ reaches his people. In the end, we parted feeling deeply perplexed, all of us dissatisfied and disconcerted by the way the evening had ended.

Over the next week, I received several calls from friends complaining about Enzo’s strong temper and the fact that he hadn’t been “polite” at all; I was forced to admit that it did seem like he hadn’t appreciated the film, downplaying it, and this was very confusing.
Throughout that week, however, the questions Enzo had posed continued to stir within me, and I asked God to help me understand; I knew he cared deeply about each of us, but it all seemed contradictory.
As I reflected more deeply on my experiences with the CL community in Boston (and across the East Coast), I slowly began to understand that it was IN THIS PLACE that God’s mercy had repeatedly shown itself to me, in a very concrete way, since the first moment I encountered CL. This new life continued to be given to me in the diversity of all these faces that were given to me in the community. It was HERE that my faith was both nourished and challenged. These friends challenged me to ask life’s questions (and encouraged me to live out the questions I had), so that I could discover the meaning of everything!
At the next community school (the main periodic catechesis meeting of the CL Movement, ed.), I felt compelled to share with others how important Enzo’s presence at the “movie night” had been for me, and how much I needed that unexpected “scandalous encounter” to more fully recognize Christ’s presence in my life.
Christ had used Enzo’s presence to reawaken within me the great question of God’s mercy, and He had done so precisely through his strong personality and temperament. This visit from Enzo left me changed, with a new openness to continue on this path that had been given to me, in which Christ accompanies me on the journey toward my happiness, through these many and varied friends whom I did not choose.
I am deeply grateful to Enzo for “awakening” me to the mystery of God’s mercy, inviting me to see more than before, and encouraging me to continue to judge daily experiences through shared life in community.

With great gratitude,

Marie (Dieringer) Fessenbecker

Milwaukee, WI