Dear Jean, writing you this open letter pulls me back more than twenty-five years, to a young seminarian preparing for the priesthood, meeting you for the first time at a gathering called "Katimavik" in Lierna, on Lake Como.
I had never heard God's word explained that way before—a way that spoke of life, to life, to the heart itself. My theological studies and biblical training at the time were something else entirely. But from that moment forward, my formation for the priesthood and my early years as a priest were deeply shaped by what I can only call your way of seeing and listening. Without quite realizing it, you became my companion on that path. You taught me, really, how to be a priest.
Your way of looking at young people, that fundamental task you always called "revealing to another their own beauty"—it illuminated something in me. Because I believe that is the heart of the Gospel, even now, all these years later. It was the way Jesus looked at everyone, especially the small, the poor, the last. But I discovered it was also the way you looked at me. You taught me to make peace with my own fragility, my limits. A priest is not always helped to see his own fragility, and that is why he cannot accept it in himself or in others.
For about ten years afterward, I worked with the formation of young priests in the Diocese of Milan. I found myself constantly borrowing from your books and your retreats—so many precious insights and reflections for the human and spiritual growth of a priest. I drew on them all the time.
Today, even now, after so many years, if I am still an assistant with Fede e Luce, if I can speak with parents of struggling young people in my parish, if I can speak of Jesus and the Gospel in a particular way—I owe it all to you. To your testimony. To the way you explained the Gospel, with all those examples and stories you always shared. I don't think I ever told you, but I want to thank you now. And I thank God for that providential meeting. You and Cardinal Martini—who always held you in such high regard—are for me the two great witnesses of faith and of God's face. For my faith. For my ministry. For everything.