LIETTI Giuseppe (Father) - Italy

(From the homily of the funeral of Fr Giuseppe)

“Let no one disregard you because you are young, but be an example to all the believers in the way you speak and behave, and in your love, your faith and your purity. Until I arrive, devote yourself to reading to the people, encouraging and teaching. You have in you a spiritual gift which was given to you when the prophets spoke and the body of elders laid their hands on you.” (1Tm 4,12-14)

Listening to the readings of this day, the relation between these few words and the life of Fr. Lietti comes immediately to my mind. The message that the Lord has sent us across his life – as he does with the life of each one of us – appears in all its clarity.

Devotion to the reading, loving and friendly encouragements and devotion to the teaching is constant in Fr. Lietti’s life. His many friends know this well: the only gift that Fr. Lietti could ask them was the last published edition of the books of his masters in faith.

The hundreds of fiancés he prepared for the marriage had hardly forgotten those meetings during which he flooded them with notes, mottos, aphorisms, phrases to remember. They also remember his willing use of modern language techniques to transmit the Gospel of love.

The faithful members of the Erba Film Club (Erba is his birth-place in Lombardy) still remember his skills and the professionalism he showed when he presented the films and then led the debate, starting from the content presented by the screening, to lead to the most diverse issues on culture and the modern world.

Those of our brothers who lived with him know the rough sea of files, newspaper clippings, images on which he navigated quite at ease, withdrawn in his room open to the whole world. He liked to repeat that a Christian must walk in life with the Gospel in one hand and the newspaper in the other. That is what he did and taught until his last day.

He also taught us, following St Paul, not to neglect the gifts that the Lord has placed in the heart of each one; he taught us to walk with confidence whatever the time, the season of life, the social and individual environment, remaining humbly attentive and indebted also to the many masters of our time, always enlightened by the Word coming from on high to us so that it may spread throughout the world, and illuminate the darkest recesses.

He taught us to look around us with unwavering confidence and with an almost childlike attitude: that of a child in the arms of a mother and of a God who is both Father and Mother. It was the confidence and youthful spirit with which he had supported and animated a camp of activities in Calabria, an experience marked by a milestone for some [...].

It is with this same confidence that in recent years he had penetrated, he said, into the woods, gradually detaching himself from everything, from material things, settling in silence, in search of the absolute and preparing himself for the meeting of the Lord, which took place suddenly this Wednesday morning.

An attitude that Fr. Lietti had learned in the Gospel, that he had made his own and taught in school, in meetings and in life, was the welcome of all, without exception.

Always considered a bit like a border line because of his political ideas, the choice of his masters of life, and the fact that he broke with the norm, he incarnated, made visible and concrete, the attitude of Jesus, who came to earth to save humanity, to proclaim the Mercy of the Father for the righteous as well as for sinners... Or rather, for sinners and the so-called righteous.

“Mercy is what I want, not sacrifices; not offerings but communion with me” (Mt 12:7): this had become the motto of his life. He loved to speak of the “Church of the Apron” of Don Tonino Bello, desired by Jesus, who washes the feet of his disciples and which is also of that sinful woman of the city, who perfumes the feet of Jesus and dries them with her hair.

I thank the Lord for having given us Fr. Lietti (Pinuccio for his friends) who transmitted to us the love for the Word of God and for all the words of the people of our time, who testified in every circumstance to the Father’s mercy and taught us to prepare ourselves serenely for the encounter with him.

May the Lord welcome him into his merciful arms. Amen.