S. Messa XXVII Dies Natalis Enzo Piccinini – Saluto Vescovo di Parma

Bishop of Parma

Enzo Piccinini, a figure and a man who takes me back in time. When the Diocese of Modena Nonantola was a hub of youth ministry and I was a theology seminarian. In Serramazzoni, in the summer, we gathered with associations, movements, and the parishes’ “backyard” ministry. I met him there, as on other rare occasions. An open, confident smile that broke down those treacherous steps between groups. Then the memory of the accident and the history that is today. “E’,” the present tense of the verb “to be,” indicative, because Enzo “is” and not “was.”

He is in the Father’s house in that “eternal today,” the certain condition of eternal life. Astonishing, unimaginable to us fragile creatures and, speaking for myself, marked by sin. God’s eternal today is love, joy, and a full existence that we can sense from the glimpses of love and beauty that the Father offers us and that we, despite everything, by grace, are able to experience here on earth.

Enzo Piccinini, like Giancarlo Rastelli, Odoardo Focherini, and so many others, is a layman, a husband, a father, and a doctor.

The call to life and baptism gave rise to the vocation to marriage, colored, for these figures, by demanding professions, dedicated to others, in care and communication. But that’s not all: a further calling demands a “martyrdom,” a testimony that touches the depths of the person and goes beyond reasoning, suppositions, and calls for prudence—even if true, but transcended in a “beyond” that only the Lord knows.

While the slanted headstone in the Cittanova di Modena cemetery, next to that of a close friend and esteemed people, might suggest a “was,” the reality lies in the present, which is also the future: the “will always be” of a continuing today.

First and foremost, in reality: eternal life is beyond time, a condition—how poor our words!—that the Lord guarantees in that “place” prepared for Enzo and for us. But it is rooted in the future of the lives of those who knew him and who drew from him faith, courage, and love. His family and many friends, fueled by his enthusiasm, cared for—a physician of body and soul—in their labors that call upon a companionship ready to reassure, support, and give strength.

But also the future of prophecy. Today, it is sought as the water that generates and the light that illuminates the path and points the way. Even slow steps, in the circle of light from an ancient lantern—”Your Word is a light to my feet”—so as not to stumble and reach the goal—”the city set on a hill”—seen in the distance, luminous, even if it must be reached by paths still being discovered. Prophecy is having the friendship of the One who entrusted it to us at His Last Supper, the companionship that assures us as we reach the homeland of all. Expressed in the humanity that the Father wanted for his Son, with the wisdom the Spirit offers, never in fearful concealment, never in rude affront, always in the sincere charity of the Truth given.

Enzo among the multitude who inhabit the city of God, because he dwelt with God, the city of men.

Bishop of Parma – Enrico Solmi