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Blessed Albert Marvelli - model for everyday holiness (October 5)
October 4, 2017
EAO, 4 October 2017 -- Blessed Albert Marvelli was a young man in love with life, with people and with God, always in the midst of youngsters, the poor and those suffering. He experienced at first hand the difficult years of the war. He was proclaimed Blessed by Pope St. John Paul II in September 2004 and his liturgical memory is on October 5.
Indeed he lived a short life of 28 years, as young engineer who during and after the second world war, in the city of Rimini battered and destroyed by the bombing, had become well known for his personal integrity, his social and political activity and his commitment to the Gospel.
Born in Ferrara (Italy) on 21 March 1918, Albert obtained an engineering degree in 1941, and went to work at FIAT company in Turin where he came to know and then joined Catholic Action. Unselfish in the Oratory, persevering in his studies, active in sport, a battler in politics, his was a life spent in an untiring search for truth and for charity.
He was the son of a bank employee and a woman involved with the Sisters of Charity, the women’s section of Catholic Action and the salesian oratory which her son also attended. Added to the formative influence of his family therefore was that of the Oratory where he learned to pray and acquire a love for the Eucharist. When he was 21, after the sudden death of his father, he wrote in his diary: “Time is passing, in fact flying; we mustn’t fall behind in our spiritual life…Our daily life needs to be a constant determined uphill ascent. I must make progress, step by step, day by day, minute by minute; always aiming high to reach the summit, God himself. I have do it and I want to do it.
During the war he was particularly noted for his generosity. Having returned home he joined the Workers’ Party where he did a great deal to help the poor. But the following year on 5 October death took him when he was cycling to an election meeting and was run down by a military truck driven at breakneck speed.
There were times when Albert even gave away his shoes to the poor, and he rode around Rimini on his bike taking food and spiritual comfort to refugees. The Church is proposing him to the young of the Third Millennium as a model of everyday holiness. “Albert has shown how in changed times and circumstances lay Christians know how to devote themselves unstintingly to building God’s kingdom in the family, at work, in education, in politics, bringing the Gospel into the heart of society,” (St. John Paul II).
His shining example is a call to find the path of holiness in the family, in one’s profession, in politics; but it is also a recognition that Salesian education is capable of producing saints amidst the secular realities. Especially for the Don Bosco Past Pupils his role model is quite attractive point of inspiration also today! Blessed Albert Marvelli, pray for us!
From the Boscolink (link below) you can download the most recent Don Bosco Alumni World Confederation NEWSFLASH reporting many news from the EAO region (Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Timor Leste, Vietnam and Japan).
Liturgical prayer (October 5)
O God, source of life and holiness,
who gave to Blessed Albert Marvelli an ardent love for the poor
and enabled him to fulfil his social responsibilities with an evangelical spirit,
through his intercession, grant that,
while appreciating wisely the good things of this world,
we may cultivate with generosity the service of all our brothers and sisters.
Through Our Lord Jesus Christ your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God for ever and ever.
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