Dear friends,

This morning, our dear Fr. Fabio was called back to the Father’s house, after a life marked by following His face, as it is present in our communion, within the life of the Church that he served as a priest.

The Lord’s “whisper in the wind” reached him as a teenager when his pastor suggested he seek out a priest working with students in Milan. He was just 15 years old when he first heard Fr. Giussani speak, but the encounter was so decisive in developing his personality that he remembered it the rest of his life. “I had the distinct impression that, until that day, my being Christian limited my humanity, because the people who took Christianity less seriously seemed more fully human to me. Meeting Fr. Giussani coincided with an experience of the fullness of humanity. My ‘I’ was finally realized in its humanity.”

With Fr. Giussani, he experienced the exaltation of his reason in relationship with everything; from that first encounter, one phrase remained fixed in his memory: “Panta dokimazete, to kalon katechete (1 Thes 5:21). Test everything. Retain what is good.” It was a commitment he never abandoned, and his passion for a faith that was reasonable, capable of encountering and bringing the best out of all that is true, beautiful and good, was contagious for all who met him. Think how many among us have benefited from it!

Christ’s resurrection makes us look with certainty on the fulfillment of his destiny in the merciful embrace of our Father.

We ask the Lord that we come to be, like Fr. Fabio, sons and daughters in the Son, to carry on the witness given to us by a man who let himself be seized by Christ, giving in to His winning attraction.