Piano di Sorrento, Mons. Arturo Aiello on the transfer of Don Pasquale Irolla: “From this thing a good will be born”

Piano di Sorrento. The bishop presided over the religious celebration this evening in the Basilica of San Michele Arcangelo Archbishop Arturo Aiello who, during the homily, addressed the community addressing the theme of the forthcoming departure of Don Pasquale who will leave the Carottese parish in September to be transferred to Capri: “Many things are always lost, important things are often lost. We pay a lot of attention to those useless, superfluous or even harmful, we keep them with great care. The sacred Book that we must find has been lost, among other things in these difficult times and where problems add to problems but the Book saves us, the Book tells us who we are and who God is and how we can turn to him . Everything is written in the Book, it is the Book of love and when love is authentic, it hurts.
The essential is in the question: “Do you love me?”. And then there is an addition: “Do you love me more than these?”. First of all, the request for love, because faith is nothing more than a relationship characterized by a very strong love of which the heart of Jesus is an icon. Either you enter into love or you are just a spectator of life. This concerns the whole of life, even for those who do not believe. “Do you love me?” Jesus asks me. Each of us must go beyond his sadness to enter this spring. The Song of Songs, which is a poem about love, continually evokes spring as the place where after winter life flourishes again, research flourishes again, the desire for the other, for the other.
And then Jesus specifies: “Do you love me more than these?”. And here the possible readings are two. The first is “Do you love me more than they love me?”, But I do not think that Jesus made fires light in the jealousies that already existed in the college of the Twelve. Instead I like the second version of this “more than these” and it is: “Do you love me more than you love these?”. It is a difficult question because for you it concerns your children, your husband, your wife, the boy or girl I am dating, that is, they are not passersby, they are people to whom we are connected and on whom ours depends. happiness. Jesus asks for an adhesion above everything and everyoneJesus does not want contenders, he wants to be the first. Either we enter into this logic or all the things that change in our life, even the parish priest, risk constituting serious problems even obstacles to faith.
When a month and a half ago, just back from his meeting with the bishop, Pasquale told me by phone this thing in return, I said to him: “Pasquale, I could write a Treccani, an encyclopedia, on goodbyes, because I know everything about it. bitter”. To tell him that I was next to him, I supported him. He edified for me his immediate adherence to the bishop’s proposal. And some of you will be thinking. “Then he doesn’t love us”. Here, this is emotional blackmail. This choice does not mean that his community is not bitter, it does not mean that he does not love you, but it means Jesus above all.
This is the love that moves us, this is the love that moves the sun and the other stars. It is for this love that we enter and leave a community, we enter and leave life. It is for this love that we meet, it is for this love that we say goodbye. We have already experienced these things in June 2006. I was trying in every way to console you and I was interiorly disconsolate.
We belong to the church of Jesus and if we belong to the church of Jesus you will certainly accept with docility, despite the difficulty, what I am telling you. If we are the church of Christ, it is he, yesterday, today and for centuries. It is he who remains, it is he who must remain when we disappear.
Of all your reactions, for some I lovingly reproach you, especially those on the web. That of the very young of the other day seems to me to be the most beautiful. It was nice to stand up on the counter and say: “Captain, my captain”, but remember that the captain must be internalized. They can’t understand it now, but you can. It is not important that the father is eternal, no father is, no bishop, no parish priest. And we have experienced it. But then if something good has come to us then we keep it. And then “Captain, my captain” and you stay just because you goperhaps you remain in the act of leaving.
Among the many expressions of closeness, affection, sadness, received in June 2006, the thing that struck me the most were the voices of those far away, not of the loyal ones, not of those of the first counter, not of those who had all the stamps of the month of June since 1980 in which I had started this preaching. But those I had never seen or even sometimes I had warned against, annoyed with respect to what I was doing and planning in those times. And I remember well this message that came to me from two or three different parts, but it had the same paradigm that is: “we never came, but we are sorry that you are leaving because for us you were there”.
We look like ships but we are islands with a lighthouse in the night. How do you tell a lighthouse from a ship? Sailors know this well. But for us it is a light and we say it will be another ship instead it is an island with its lighthouse. There are distances that are nearby.
Jesus makes himself concrete through visible people, voices, sensitivity. We have to thank Pasquale because he has taken on a difficult inheritance, others would have shirked, and he did it by being himself. But the story continues.
So I would like that after the controversies, after the delegations, congresses and conferences on the Giuspatronato to be postponed to other times. We can also discuss but not now. We can also discuss next year but not now. I would like the time to begin for you when we get down on our knees for him and for us.
Tonight, even with so much difficulty and sadness, I would like each of you to renew your love for Jesus. Then everything becomes easy also because this is not a dialogue between lovers or in love. How love crowns you crucifies you. And true love crucifies you. You have experienced it in your families, we have experienced it, Don Pasquale has experienced it and experiences it.
So we accompany Don Pasquale in these times, in these last months when the most difficult thing is to prepare the suitcase of the heart. Let’s accompany it with prayer and let’s say that from this thing will be born a good for you Pasquale and from this thing will be born a good for you community of San Michele Arcangelo. And it is not a consoling word because Jesus does not disappoint us. The words of the shepherds also fade away but the word of the supreme shepherd remains to whom we always relate ».

Piano di Sorrento, Bishop Mons. Arturo Aiello: “Pasquale will take you to Capri and you will carry him in your heart”