To the greater glory of God, with heartfelt thanksgiving.
My God, I say to you with one of your servants: my God and Father! May these lines continue to repeat again to you my sighs which I commit to them, even when I shall not be able to do it! May they speak for me even when I shall be in the silence of the tomb and may they keep, for the time when I shall be no longer, the secret feelings of my heart and the expressions of my regrets to make up, somehow, for the short time still in my hands, and to declare to you all the bitterness and sincerity of my repentance. -- Leonard Murialdo
My dear sons and confreres in Jesus Christ and St. Joseph.
My final hour is drawing ever nearer.
Before dying, I want to leave you a souvenir, a remembrance of the great mercy that the good Lord has deigned to bestow on me, the most ungrateful sinner.
It is my hope that this might help to further God’s plans for our small Congregation, just as his plans for the universal Church were furthered by St. Paul's conversion. Indeed in his first letter to Timothy the apostle wrote: “On that very account I was dealt with mercifully, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display all his patience, as an example for those who would come to believe in him for everlasting life” (1 Tim 1:16).
I too "was dealt with mercifully", but I cannot add with St. Paul “because I did not know what I was doing in my unbelief” (1Tim 1:13). I don't have such an excuse.
The story of God’s mercy to me should therefore be much more effective in bringing about great confidence in such a good, patient and generous God.
I beg of you, my dear sons and confreres, I beg of you not to be scandalised in the least by the account of my miseries, but only to draw unshakeable trust from the recital of the mercies of God that were bestowed upon your poor spiritual Father and to learn from it not to be discouraged, no matter how deep the abyss of sin into which you may have fallen may be. And above all, do not forget me in your prayers.
“You came to meet me, Lord, with the sweetest blessings.” (Ps 20:4).
God overwhelmed me with his blessings from my very birth.
My family was held in respect and enjoyed a certain measure of wealth. My father was an honest stock-broker and a practising Catholic. My mother was a virtuous person, exemplary and very loving with her children and especially with me when I took up priestly formation.
I was by nature inclined to virtue and to piety; my intelligence was not above average, but good enough to attain success if I had not always been such a slave to some laziness and sloth that never left me.
My health was delicate in childhood and that was probably the reason why my mother reluctantly decided to send me to the "Scuole Pie" boarding school at Savona, a town in those days considered very far from Turin. It took no less than two days to get there.
In Savona I regained the health of my body, but alas, what a sad and terrible shipwreck for my soul! Into what a deep abyss I fell and in such a short time too!
Ever since then what do I see in my life? On the one hand an unbroken chain of the most special graces and gifts from God, and on the other hand a no less unbroken chain of sins, acts of ingratitude and negligence on my part.
What story, my God, a story of your mercies and of my ingratitude! I don't know of any other history or biography in which the incomprehensible generosity of God could shine forth better.
My God, you endowed me with so many natural and supernatural gifts at the beginning of my life’s journey, but I abandoned you so soon! I was not yet 14 years of age and I was already abandoning you and turning against you: “Unlike thousand others, I offended you since my boyhood while you have filled me with so many graces, unlike countless others”.
By the age of 14 or 15 I was already a sinner, a big sinner! Yes, I truly was, according to St. Augustine sentence, “such a little man, yet such a big sinner”. At 15 I was an awful, impious boy.
Should I go ahead and reveal my impiety running the risk of scandalizing my confreres and spiritual sons? Yes, my God, I will do it to your honour and glory! Where could you find a better trophy of your mercy? It is true that you have not won me yet and that I am still not the slave to your love that you want me to be, but that is what really brings out the greatness and the depths of your mercy!
I will tell my sin: “I will confess my sin against you” (Ps 31:5)
I began to abandon the good God, to offend the good Father because of cowardice. Human respect: that's the big beast which knocked me down!
In the beginning I was not a bad boy in school; in fact I was pointed out as a good example for some time. This was a gift of your kindness, o God, because you gave me a naturally Christian soul.
But because of this, some bad classmates started to avoid me and to look on me as a “teacher’s pet”, and maybe even as a sort of “spy” for the superiors. At first, however, I resisted for a little.
Once when I went to confession I accused myself of listening to bad conversations. The confessor, Fr. S., told me to tell the name of the boys to the superiors. I promised but did not have the courage to do it. When I went to confession again, the confessor felt that he could not exonerate me from that obligation, but I still lacked the courage to commit myself. The confessor was saddened by this, but he stood firm in the requirement. He finally asked me to tell him the names and to allow him to reveal them to the superiors. I did so.
Later on those bad classmates began to persecute me. That was when I had the weakness and cowardice to abandon God completely. And what an abandonment, dear Lord!
It was an evening in 1842 or 1843. I was saying my prayer at the foot of my bed. Fearing persecution, I decided to do what others were doing. My Guardian Angel inspired me with the thought: “What if you were to die during the time away from God?” “Well,” was the thought from the Devil, “If I am to die during my stay at boarding school, never mind, that’ s too bad, I’ll just go to hell. If I live and get out of here, then I will repent”.
Thus it was that I formally accepted hell. Was that possible?
But God accepted the condition that I set and did not condemn me. He kept me alive even though my life in the boarding school was marked only by innumerable sins of all kinds.
On the contrary, he gave me the time to get out from the college and, what is still more surprising, at that time he found me in such a state that I did not want to have anything more to do with him.
I was running away from him, yes, I was actually running away from God but he was running after me, saying, ”Why should you die, o house of Israel?” (Ez. 18:11).
He stopped me at the brink of the abyss and forced me to return to him.
Ah, I must say with greater reason than St Augustine, ”I went to the very gates of hell and you prevented me from going in. When I was disobeying your commandments the devil was ready to draw me into hell, but you stopped him from doing it. I was offending you and you were defending me”.
Since then, how many times have I had occasion to repeat: “You saved me from hell many times over, even though I did not know it!”
Yes, how many times! From then on, for a year and half, my life was just a chain of sins, sins of every kind. There is no commandment (except perhaps the seventh and the last two) that I did not seriously break.
The same goes for the capital sins, except for greed. I may not have seriously sinned against some of them, but I was certainly in the frame of mind of doing so.
Even before that wretched period of my life, how many serious sins did I commit? I remember once, while I was playing a game with walnuts, I had a disappointment in the game and blurted out this blasphemy: “May be damned who created me!” And the good Lord did not strike me down on the spot! When I mentioned it in confession, I was shocked to find out from the confessor that if instead of saying “damned” I had referred to God as “false”, he would not have been able to absolve me, being it a reserved sin; that is, if instead of uttering a curse I had said an heretical blasphemy.
It was such a wretched life that I led during that miserable 1843! I used to go to mass with the others everyday, but during the celebration I would read a book that was written with the good intention of keeping people from the sin of impurity and making them aware of the evil consequences of this sin. But I was reading it to learn all I could about impurity and know all about it just like the others.
Thus how many acts of profanation in church! How many Feast-days I must have profaned!
It was natural that in abandoning the good Lord I should throw myself into the hands of the devil of impurity. How many bad conversations and bad actions! I even tried to get one of my classmates to believe that I had done something bad that I had not actually done; if I did not succeed in convincing him I certainly had the will to do so.
What a wretched time that was when I gave myself to sin and even boasted of my shame as if proud of my misery!
And you always put up with me, waited for me, called me to you! Even now you look upon me with compassion, forgive me with mercy, help me with love! O prodigal Father of such a prodigal son, heal this poor leper: “If you will, you can do so” (Mt 8:2); bring back to life this dead: “If you will, you can do it”.
It was certainly your protection, my good and sweet Mother of Consolation, that saved me.
My mother entrusted my brother and me to your protection before we left for the school at Savona. I am grateful now for your protection because I never committed bad things with others. I have never scandalized younger ones with my talk. May you be blessed a thousand times over, o my dear Mother, and may I come to heaven some day to thank you, ”I will sing forever the mercies of Mary” (see Ps 88:2).
How many times did I profane the sacrament of penance!
During that wretched time I was going to confession every month with the others, but what did I do? I did not want to lie formally in confession because I still had a little bit of conscience left, but nevertheless I was riding roughshod over the most adorable Blood of my Saviour by purposely avoiding the examination of conscience, thus I would confess only those sins that came at the moment.
And the good Lord did not punish me! He was always there waiting for me, calling me, but to no avail: My decision had been made: “I will not repent as long as I am here in this school!”
Did I reach the depths of wickedness? Did I make a sacrilegious communion? I hope not, even though I have some doubts on the matter.
I recall that for my Easter Communion I tried to fulfil at least the necessary conditions to avoid a sacrilege. However, judging from the fruits of the two sacraments, I still have doubts and fear that I did reach the depths of my spiritual misery with the most horrible of the sacrileges, yes, with the sacrilegious communion.
Here I am, then, an apostate from God! A blasphemer of God! A desecrater of feasts, sacraments and of the Blood of God!
And what about my neighbor? There was one boy among those who were persecuting me (not too much, really) who tried to tempt me even in church, but I did not pay attention to him, I even hated him. One day we were at the seaside. He climbed a very high rock with a sheer drop on one side. When I saw him up there, I wanted him to fall into the sea and I do believe that I agreed to it so much to become guilty of murder by desire.
And how many sins of pride, gluttony, scandal, disobedience and sloth!
I even think I was guilty of slander. It is well known how hated those are who report to the superiors on their classmates in boarding school and are called spies. Well, in talking with some of my classmates about other boys that I hated, I spread the rumor that they were playing the spy for the superiors even though I was not sure about it.
Still, the sin that I committed most often was against the sixth commandment.
Repeated sins become a habit and soon they cause a blindness of spirit and a hardness of heart. And how soon one reaches this state when one sins with malice! How soon I lost all remorse and the spirit of piety!
I said that I had left the good Lord because of human respect and that I had planned to return to him after leaving school. But how mistaken I was!
Repeated sinning killed any love of God within me. The devil took over me and made me into an impious person. I never thought I would get so low, even reaching the point, in the last months of boarding school, of trying to completely forget the Psalms that I knew by heart, trying to erase them from my memory, doing everything I could to run away ever more from God.
When I left the school I took with me no religious book, only some novels and dramas by Romani, so I did totally abandon the good Lord who never, never abandoned me!
And so we have here yet a second formal and explicit abandonment of God made by me!
Sin in itself always contains an implicit abandonment of God, an “estrangement from God.”
This however is not usually a formal, declared and well reasoned abandonment. There are not too many sinners who absolutely abandon God in this way.
I was one of them. I apostatized from God twice; I renounced him and did not want to have anything to do with him. And he, the good Lord, how behaved with me? He used with me all the means of mercy so well described in Preparation for death (chapter about the Mercy of God) by St Alphonsus Liguori and in The soul lifted to God by Abbot Bartholomew Baudran, 12th reading, about God’s mercy towards sinners.
I had declared to the Lord that I would not belong to him until I had left the school; but in reality I not only forgot about the things of God, but I was even trying to forget them entirely, at that period.
Nevertheless God, who from all eternity had planned to save me and to sanctify me in spite of my rejection of him, did not abandon or punish me.
What am I saying? He even was coming to look for me, to draw me to him and to force me to return on the way of salvation.
This is how it was: for over a year now I had sunk deep in the mire of sin and was sinking even further. What would have happened to me if I had stayed yet another year in that sad state, multiplying my sins?
But in order to complete my secondary studies I had still to take the second year of rhetoric. I had a special reason for not missing it because I was hoping for and almost sure of being declared one of the Princes of the Academy, not the first, but the second.
They were awarded with a portrait made in natural size that was then exhibited in the school gallery for all guests to admire. This reward created great competition among the students, especially among those from Genoa and Turin who strove with one another to excel.
But it was God who won.
On the one hand I was growing tired of boarding school life, especially since I was not in good terms with the most influential classmates (who were also the worst). On the other hand I thought that I still had a little bit of remorse left for my wicked life.
So I begged my mother to withdraw me from the school. I think I did then a very small sacrifice of my personal pride - unless it had not been a cowardly and guilty indifference -, and the Lord made it work for my good.
My brother and I left the school and returned home.
Two months later we started the philosophy course, I having found a way to skip the second year of rhetoric. I always regretted this a lot, because now I understand that would have been a year of good and true progress in Italian literature and composition. I have always felt the lack of these studies.
The good Lord kept that angel, my mother, alive for me. She soon directed me to Abbot Pullini, a holy priest, who had already been my confessor before I went to Savona. I made a confession of my entire life to him.
As he used in the past, he was still hearing confessions in the third confessional on the right in the Church of St. Dalmazzo. There “mercy and truth met, justice and peace kissed” (Ps 84:1).
What a miracle of mercy! Who could ever have any doubts about the kindness and mercy of God?
I believe that there are not many sinners in the world who not only loaded their conscience with numberless sins, but also formally accepted hell and reached the point of trying to forget what they still remembered, almost unwillingly, about God, that is the knowledge of the Psalms and hymns of praise to God.
But look: the good Lord was willing to make his kindness and generosity shine again in an absolutely singular way. Not only he did accept me back into his friendship, but he also called me to a privileged vocation: he called me to the priesthood. And he did so within just a few months of my return to him.
I have explained elsewhere the providential way through which God led me to the priestly life.
On the 6th November, 1845, on the feast day of St Leonard, I had the joy and honour of being vested with the cassock blessed by Abbot Pullini in the church of St. Claire which is part of the convent of the religious Sisters of the Visitation where Abbot Pullini was the spiritual director.
Soon after I had received the cassock, I went to the seminary where the school year was starting and where I had the good fortune of taking advantage of new courses begun that year in the major seminary: Theological Institutions headed by Canon Savio (later Bishop of Asti) and Biblical Institutions with professor Banaudi.
I chose as my tutors the theologian Berta, later Canon of St. Lawrence Church, and the theologian Baricco. I took the courses of Theology at the University of Turin and received my degree on the 12th May, 1850.
The following September, I was ordained Sub-deacon; on Easter 1851, Deacon (I did not wish to hurry), and on the 21st September, 1851, feast of St. Matthew, I had the glory and joy of celebrating my First Mass in the church of St. Dalmazzo.
I was assisted by Abbot Pullini, and I believe, Canon Renaldi. Ah! How happy I was!
Unfortunately my mother was not among the relatives around me. She had gone to heaven on the 9th July, 1849.
Since that time I have always had a special devotion to St. Matthew. I liked to think that he too had been a sinner and was converted by Jesus Christ himself, who deigned to call me too to ministry. But what a contrast! As soon as our Lord said to Matthew the publican: “Come and follow me" he got up and "followed him" (Mt 9:9). Afterward he lived only for Christ and died for Christ.
On the contrary, what a shame for me! How much resistance to the graces of God! What a deafness to his voice calling me, shouting back to me: “You called, you shouted” (St Augustine). What a contempt for the inspirations, enlightenments and remorse that he continued to send to my heart!
And when finally I decided to accept to turn away from hell, what has been my life?
Have I shown my gratitude to the Lord with my love and my fervor?
Alas! Selfishness has always been my idol, and God has never stopped calling me and still does so today in a loud, clear voice: “you called, you shouted!” When will the time come, o Lord, that I can say: “You have broken down my deafness?” (St. Augustine).
I made my general confession with Fr. Durando, a Lazarist Father.
When I accused myself of abandoning God when I was in boarding school he asked me how long I had been such a perverse person. This term impressed me very much.
And who is this wretched (or rather I should say “fortunate”) son, if not I myself?
This son left his lovable and good father while he was still young, very young indeed; and I abandoned you, o my good Father, when I was only fourteen!
He went far away from you; and how far did I go? As far as to forget you? Much farther than that: as far as to impiety, as far as trying to forget your divine praises and psalms that I knew by heart, and refusing all books of prayer and devotion.
He gave himself to shameful pleasures. Alas! So did I too, even though my good mother Mary preserved me from any scandalous actions with others; instead I gave scandal with my conversations.
He returned to his father for gain: “I am starving here” (Lk. 15:17): and I took my first steps toward the Father’s house only for fear of hell!
But above all I resemble the fortunate son for the truly fatherly welcome that I received from God.
How many gifts! How many caresses! What a banquet of feast!
I do not mean only the consolations and spiritual delights that God gave me for a while upon my return in order to bind me to him, but mainly the ineffable benefits and the extraordinary privileges that he bestowed on the most ungrateful of his sons, calling me and choosing me among thousands of others - “chosen among thousands” (Sg 5:10) - to the priestly and religious life.
What a multitude of gifts in each one of these benefits! “How shall I make a return to the Lord for all the good he has done for me?” (Ps 115:12).
As for the banquet of joy, what a banquet! and how many times has this banquet been repeated since my return to him? More than 16,000 times!
The great task of my salvation and sanctification is an ongoing endeavour that God is doing for 63 years now
I must say, with St. Augustine: “Your mercy was surrounding me”, and with David: “Your mercy was following me” (Ps 22:6).
The Lord can justly complain about me: “For sixty years I was close to this ingrate, and I said: he is always escaping me”. I only pray that he will not add for me: “Therefore in my anger I swore: he will not enter into my place of rest ” (Ps 94:10-11).
The good Lord, truly good with me, has practically forced me to follow the two most sublime vocations that are in the world: the priestly and religious vocations, not to speak of the most necessary one, the Christian vocation.
The priestly vocation
As far as the priesthood goes, I had never even thought of it.
As a little boy I would dream of being a military officer. In school I thought of studying law, because some of the Fathers, not so much careful, enticed me, saying that I would have become a minister of State.
During my philosophy course I thought of studying mathematics, seeing that the time of good opportunities for engineers was drawing near.
In my family it looked like my elder brother Ernest would be the one to become a priest: he was even called “canon”. He would certainly have deserved it a lot more than me, for he was much wiser and more pious than I. He would have served the good Lord in the ministry so much better than me! He who, though lay and married, was a man of zeal, piety, charity and self-denial!
Yet God “chose Jacob instead of Esau“ (Mal 1:2-3). And he chose me! He called me, he practically dragged me into the honour, the glory and the ineffable joy of being his minister, of being “another Christ”, of being “after God someone like an earthly God”.
And where was I when you were seeking me, o my Lord? I was at the bottom of the abyss! I was there and there God came looking for me; there he made me hear his voice, the voice that shakes the cedars of Lebanon (Ps 28:5). And through what providential ways he brought me back to himself!
The religious vocation
As to the religious vocation, it was even more a gift, not only gratuitous, but practically forced on me with lovable violence.
I would never have thought and even dreamed of one day becoming religious. In my fondness for personal freedom I felt a certain dislike for the religious life. And yet, the good Lord did it!
With the fear of damnation he pushed me into the priesthood.
Later he called me to head the Artigianelli Orphanage.
Here the idea of founding a congregation was not mine. Theo. Berizzi planted the seed and Fr. Reffo picked it up and sought my advice. I was not for it. Still, I consulted my confessor, Theo. Blengio. At first he was not any more enthusiastic about it than I. Fr. Reffo continued to insist. My confessor told me again to delay the decision, and I didn't dislike it. Since it was only a matter of yearly vows, he finally agreed.
I decided then to consult my old confessor at the St. Sulpice Seminary, Fr. Icard.
I went to Paris; he was away, since it was holidays time, at Pertuis, near Marseilles, where he was born. He advised me to follow the directions of the Providence. In the seminary I had already asked him about becoming a Sulpician and he had advised against it.
The approval given by Bishop Riccardi, Bishop Gastaldi and Bishop Galletti gave me the final spur. And here I am, thanks to God, thanks to the good Lord, a religious, bound to him thrice!
I remember that I objected to Fr. Icard: “In this case I would become the founder of a congregation; but God always chooses saints to this aim”. He responded to me: “So there you have a good reason for becoming one”.
But is it really true that all founders of religious orders have become saints? It seems to me that they have, but while some of them were not always saints, like St Ignatius, St Augustine, St Jerome Emiliani, St. Camillus of Lellis, the same St. Francis of Assisi and St. John of God, founder of the Hospitalian Friars, then they all died as saints.
John Baptist Saint-Jure, in his volume The book of the chosen ones, writes that Jesus Christ was covered with confusion and infamy because of the sins of humanity "when he saw himself overwhelmed by all the ugly impurities, by the countless acts of profanation, sacrileges and blasphemies against the divine Majesty, by an infinity of wicked actions that make human nature blush and hell itself be taken aback! “Shame covered my face” (Ps 68:8)".
Are these not the sins that I committed? Was I not therefore guilty of this internal martyrdom of Jesus Christ, in comparison of which his external martyrdom was nothing?
“You called. You shouted. You overcame my deafness” (St. Augustine)
“You called My Father and my God! “Like a lost sheep I had gone astray” (Ps 118:176), and you came to seek “what was lost” (Mt 18:11).
But how? When you sought Adam, the father of sinners, in Eden he was hiding from your eyes. Yet like an afflicted parent you sought him and called him: “Adam, Adam, where are you?” (Gn 3:9). This is the voice of a father seeking his lost son
You called me by name also: “Leonard, Leonard, where are you?
And I was fleeing from your presence as from the face of a persecutor, because I did not want to have anything to do with you. Yes, Great God, I did not want to have anything to do with you! I did not want to have anything to do with you!
And you? Like a scorned lover you went after me, still searching for me, raising your voice more and more with your invitations, your inspirations, your numerous graces. And I? I turned a deaf ear!
“You shouted, Ah! Yes, o Lord, you could truly say, as for me: "I am weary with calling, my throat is parched” (Ps 68:4).
You sent to me new inspirations, new graces and new feelings of remorse! But I was deaf: what I'm saying? I was turning a deaf ear to your calls. You could well have said: “Your destruction, o Israel, comes from you” (Os 13:9).
"You overcame my deafness
But no, you made the final efforts to save me without violating my freedom. You appealed to fear and dread. You opened hell to my eyes and you terrified me.
I stopped at the very edge of hell because of fear of hell, not because of love for you.
You finally overcame my deafness with the cracking of the infernal flames.
“I ran down to the gates of hell and you, o Lord, held me back from going in”.
What shall I do now?
“I will bless you while I live (Ps 62:5).
“I will sing forever the Lord’s mercies” (Ps 88:2).
“I will remember my years in the sadness of my soul” (Is 38:15).
“You have loosed my bonds, O Lord. To you will I offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving” (Ps 115:16-17).
“I will never forget all you did for me” (Ps 118:93).
“In you, o Lord, I put my hope, I will never be put to shame” (Ps 30:2).