There is much mystery in the story of GiovanniMaria. How can a small child become conscious about the meaning of suffering and death? How can a sick child bear his cross with a total relationship with the crucified Christ, to the point of sensing Him living and present in his own life? Even more, how can a child only few years old become a guide for his relatives and for the people he meets? These are extraordinary aspects of a life marked by the ordinariness of human suffering, which challenges and shake us, especially if involves an innocent life, a child full of life and joy. But the strongest question I have in my heart is this: what does the Lord want to tell us through him? What is the gift He wants to give us through knowledge of the experience of this child?

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I always have had a great esteem for the Chatholic Church in the United States. I have seen how it has been able to combine the authentic tradition of our faith with the always more widespread modern mentality. Visiting the United States and especially New York, has been an incentive to understand the meaning of evangelization in a deeper way, as the heart of the life of the Church. During summer holidays I frequented some parishes in the Big Apple, to improve my English and to gain pastoral experience. Surely I never would have imagined that in this city I would take part in the special story of GiovanniMaria and his mother Cinzia. A story that got me involved very deeply on a human and spiritual level, which for a priest always correspond.

 

I only had the occasion to know directly a small part of the experience that Giovanni Maria had with Jesus, the Holy Virgin Mary and the Saints, whom he met as friends on the way to the ultimate meeting with the love of God. But something appears very clearly in his short but intense life. His existence has the light of a pilgrimage, led by providence, where his relatives, friends, acquaintances, other patients, medical staff, priests, religious sisters, all have been involved in discovering or rediscovering the reality of suffering lived shared with Christ, in prayer, as salvation, as a life changed, a life that becomes worthwhile to be lived because touched by Love. We live our life trying to avoid frailty, suffering and pain. A child a few years old came to remind us that “the Cross is beautiful”, as Giovanni Maria repeated to his mom Cinzia. Let us retrace together the events of his life, through play, school, visits to holy places, from one side of the Atlantic Ocean to the other, in hospitals, places of holiness in the suffering Christ.

 

I remember his gaze, his lively eyes, short chats when playing together, when I saw him concentrated on some thoughts. I feel him living and present in my prayer, I find myself entrusting to his intercession my life and the situations, needs and difficulties of many people. I felt his attention, interest and friendship for me as priest, with the same reverence he showed for the Holy Eucharist. It has been a great grace for me to celebrate the Holy Mass in front his mortal remains, during the stop in Rome on his last pilgrimage from New York to Veneto. We surely remember him as he was here with us, but we can believe that now he is even more alive, telling us through the lives of many people that “the Cross is beautiful”. 

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father Giovanni Biallo

Spiritual Assistant  

Opera Romana Pellegrinaggi