The extraordinary privilege, shared, of listening to
an elderly, active 'vegetable'!
ROME: 21st January 2006 -- Just once in a lifetime,
perhaps, one has an extraordinary privilege, an
almost unspeakable privilege. I had it tonight. It was
shared with many others, hundreds of others, but that does not detract
from the power of a privilege uniquely granted .
It deserves to be shared even if there is no possible way that the
emotion of the moment can be shared. And it came from listening
to, and translating, the witness of a holy, 93 year-old or thereabouts
woman with a firm voice and an absolute command of her subject and her
language. Her name is Enrichetta Beltrame Quattrocchi. She
is the daughter of Blessed Luigi and Maria Quattrocchi who were
beatified in 2001. They are the only married couple in the entire
history of the Church who have been beatified, and the event that
changed their lives in early married life was the birth of Enrichetta,
whom the gynaecologist had said would be born a vegetable, with only a
5% chance of survival by the mother. The mother, as it turned
out, survived her fourth child's birth, survived her husband (in
a totally different sense!), was beatified along with him, and the
'vegetable' is one of the most delightful nonagenarians one could
possibly have the privilege to translate for!
Oh, and one more thing, not just a 'by-the-by'
either. Enrichetta, at 90 years plus, joined the Salesian Family
as a consecrated member of the TR or Witnesses to the Resurrection, a
fully-fledged part of the Salesian Family who witness to Paschal Joy as
a specific element of the Salesian charism. She made it a point
this evening, to highlight the connections between her upbringing and a
Salesian upbringing that brought her to this decision. When John
Paul II beatified her mum and dad, his summary expression of the reason
for this choice on the part of the Church was: "They did nothing
extraordinary; but they did everything ordinary extraordinarily
well". Have we not heard that one before somewhere?
Enrichetta's half hour exposition of her parent's
'ordinary' but extraordinarily well-lived lives was
breath-suspending. 250 or more members of the Salesian Family had
already listened to several hours of what is called 'testimonianze' in
these parts. And it's witness, no doubt about that. They
willingly lent themselves to more. She told us how her mother (who must
have been the one who told her this) was proposed to by her father
while she played 'Clair de Lune' one evening on the piano.
Actually she told us that this was by Beethoven. Translators must
be faithful; I've played Clair de Lune myself, and I always
knew it to be a haunting full-loud-pedal piece by Debussy, but no
matter, at 90 and something. She told us too, how in their
courtship and early married life (she actually made the point that her
unexpected survival and her parents' decision to go ahead with their
'vegetable' was the turning point) the most spiritual thought they
expressed was a literary 'million kisses on your hands'
stuff, reminiscent of some of Andrew Marvell's poetry. But things
changed. And how wonderfully they did so. Her father was
deputy attorney-general for Italy and sheltered desperate undesirables
under the very noses of the government during WWII (their home was part
of the Ministry of the Interior building in Rome). Her mother was a
writer and left a pretty full description of how they brought up the
children. Enrichetta confirms each detail. She says that
her mother's written description is probably as good as you would get
as a 'manual' for parents on how to bring up the kids.
Obviously I can't delay on all the details. A
copy of her talk will eventually find its way into every Salesian
communality worldwide. That was promised this evening. She,
in her turn, has given the Rector Major a 'first class' relic of her
parents. My reflection, as she concluded, was that whereas in
almost any other context it would be decidedly rude to call a 90
year-old a 'relic', in this case, SHE is the best relic of her parents
that could ever be offered; one that cannot be preserved, of
course. But the priceless moment of its offering can long be
savoured, for those who had the privilege.
________________________
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