“It is precisely because they share the foundation and the meaning of life—Jesus Christ —that the first Christians feel their tendency to share everything, and in a more profound sense, to conceive of their own common material and spiritual resources as a rule of their co-existence” (Giussani, Why the Church, p. 98)

What a grace is the preference and embrace of the people of God towards our life and experienced at this level!

Approximately three months ago, my husband and I were contacted by our adoption agency in Indiana for the possibility to adopt Sofia, our second daughter, now. The time between the first contact and Sofia’s birth was quite intense. Several new facts happened: from the meetings with the birth-mom, the wondering about the agency that the good of the baby was sincerely put in first place, and to the difficult status of the birth-father…Mean while, we had to plan for our stay in Indianapolis. We had to figure out the optimal solution also for our first daughter, Maria. We wanted her to participate with us in this, although we couldn’t take her to the hospital until the very end. And until the very end we had no certainty about the birth-mom’s final decision regarding the placement.

So we asked hospitality to a family of the movement in Indianapolis. We were a little hesitant asking. We would have invaded their house: they already have four kids; so, the six of them plus three of us…and a potential newborn (with all that it entails).
Well, they immediately welcome us in their home. Actually, Marta also looked after Maria while we had to go to the Hospital to wait.

Up to this time and in particular at the hospital, we perceived the waiting quite long as it was filled with unknowns. What will the birth-mom decide? And what a difficult moment for her! Will we adopt or not? How would Maria react in either case? In this turmoil, we were actually discovering in us a firm and yet dramatic certainty that, no matter what, the good for the baby was already in God’s hands… A certainty sustained by the strong experience of God’s companionship in our life, particularly in these last few months. Friends of our community here in Chicago, of our own parish, and from communities in the US and Italy, together with our families, accompanying us in many ways (in prayer or through concrete help or by simply being with us). How beautiful it is to live life not alone but with your hand in His concrete hand!

During the week in Indianapolis, one of the things that struck and moved us was the nature of the time together with our hosting friends: it was not merely the sharing of material needs, but a life together (family life, Filippo’s birthday, events with the community, visitors coming and going), a life shared in its totality…in the attention to each other, in the level of our conversations, and in all this with all the sacrifice and additional energy required by the situation. At the table before eating, we learned from our friends a beautiful prayer that we have now made our own. It says: “Lord, grant us that You be always our guest”: a longing continuously putting our friends’ freedom in motion and contagiously our own.

Coming back home, many people when hearing the news about Sofia would react as if we were heroes or we were particularly kind, doing something they will never be able to do. As if adoption was some sort of greater philanthropy. But in truth, this miracle, which has happened to us again, was the natural consequence of this experience of hospitality, which first of all has had the form of an embrace towards us and secondly has become the “ideal of life” – we desire it.