MOTTA Massimo (Father)
Monza, 2 July 1957 - Rome, 13 April 2021 (Italy)
“All through these days of mourning, the most frequently heard expression on social networks was: ‘Thank you Lord for having given us Fr Massimo’.
From the purely human point of view, we could be tempted to say ‘You were a bit harsh with him Lord!’
He had had polio which mean the walked with some difficulty, with callipers and crutches before eventually being forced to resort to a wheelchair. It was physically hard for him to keep pace with life and the others in the community.
However, experience tells us that You know how to turn every one of us into Your gift of Love to many other people. When we listen to You, to Your Word, You know how to endow each one of us with the gift of unexpected resources.
And so it was for Massimo. Frail yet robust at the same time, he never admitted defeat in the face of his physical handicap. While he might not have been able to climb mountains, he undertook to scale great heights nevertheless, his vision set on the Almighty, with the tenacity we came to expect of him.
Many of us here will remember his round face swimming into view behind the glass reception area of the Carate Brianza Hospital in Lombardy. With his wonderful wide smile of welcome, Massimo dispensed all the information and help we could possibly need. It was the face of youth, of a person who from that moment onwards, spared no effort to see into a person’s soul. Without doubt this was due to the fascination he had for the One who “sees deep into the hearts” of men and whom Massimo got to know better and better.
Massimo wrote the following words on his ordination prayer-card: “Lord, in the silence of Your presence, teach me to read the signs of the times and to ‘slip’ the seed You have placed in me into those who come to me, like Mary Your Mother who sowed it experiencing Your Son’s Cross”.
He was mature in age when he decided to follow more closely this Master whose ‘Presence in Silence’ he first encountered at St Peter’s Seminary in Seveso, then during his formation in the Sacred Heart Fathers of Betharram community in Sala-Baganza in Emilia-Romagna and lastly at Albavilla (Lombardy).
At the age of 43, at the dawn of the new millennium, on the day of his ordination to the priesthood, he also wrote these words: “Take, O Lord, the seed you have placed in me. Strengthen it by the gift of Your Spirit so that faith and courage grow in me. Scatter it where You will. Place it into the heart of the one who is suffering and who is far from Thee”.
And the Lord sowed in him the seed of His Word, allowing it to germinate and grow, to nourish and to fortify the hearts of the people in the parishes of Montemurlo in Tuscany, of Santa Rosa in Rome and, then for close on twenty years, in the hospice for Aids patients at Monte Porzio Catone in the hills to the south-west of Rome.
It was over the course of these years spent close to Rome that he encountered the “Cammino delle 10 parole” (Walk of the 10 Words) and that he participated in this original form of catechesis which has now spread across the whole of Italy: helping people to re-read the Ten Commandments not merely as rules by which to abide, but also as the message by which they may fully achieve their life potential.
Fr Massimo found therein the deep core of his life as a priest: to share with everyone the 10 Words which help make sense of life.
During this last terrible year marked by the pandemic, Fr Massimo was able to match the theme chosen by our Congregation (Go out and meet others, bring to them the joy of living) with commitment and urgency, recounting these Ten Commandments first handed down on Mt Sinai, then renewed and reinvigorated by Jesus.
To be an “outgoing church”, a theme dear to Pope Francis, could sound like an irony of fate for Massimo, stuck in his wheelchair, as well as for each of us conned at home. However he was always determined and enterprising, and this year was in fact the year in which he used all and every means available - Internet, telephone, WhatsApp, live-streaming of services and celebrations – to visit the homes of his friends, to announce the Word, to console, encourage and to give spiritual direction. This was his particular specific ministry.
The seed of the Word, deposited in his heart, continues today to germinate and produce fruit in the hearts of many who knew him.
Again on his ordination prayer-card, he quoted these lines from Psalm 83: “Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee; in whose heart are the ways of them. Who when passing through thevalley of thirst, fill it with springs and make it into a well”.
Thank You Lord, thank You for having given us Fr Massimo! In our valley of thirst, he was a spring of fresh crystal clear water.”
(From the homily for the funeral)
Fr. Piero Trameri scj
Regional Vicar
Document Actions