PEGOGNAGA – Pegognaga from a former agricultural town to a land of spiritual light?
The dedication to the Holy Spirit of the new parish church would seem to indicate the surprising implication.
Last Saturday in the Matildic parish church of San Lorenzo the vigil of the long-awaited dedication was held. Already at the entrance with the delivery of the booklet of prayers, songs and readings, all centered on the invocation of the Holy Spirit, the orientation of the dedication was evident, whose choice was strictly the responsibility of the bishop of Mantua.
After the reading by the deacon Franco of the passage from the Gospel of John “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God”, the bishop said in his homily. At 9.41 pm the confirmation was precise: the bishop Marco Busca, flanked by the parish priest don Flavio Savasi, he said ” At Pegognaga you made an innovative choice “, thereby revealing that he based himself on a suggestion made earlier evenings by the synodal assembly of parishioners. «In our diocese – he continued – there is a church of Santo Spirito. This will be the other church dedicated to the Third Person of the Holy Trinity. There are many churches dedicated to Christ. Many to the Virgin Mother and other Saints. Few those to the Holy Spirit. Because? Because for all the centuries the Holy Spirit has been like a stranger ». The people, explained Msgr. Busca, is more inclined to pray to Jesus who converses with sinners, but above all to Christ who heals the sick. Less is the Risen Jesus. «Least of all – he continued – Jesus risen to the right of the Father». In short, the believer prays for daily problems, much less for spiritual ones. “This choice – he continued – has therefore proved to be very innovative because it recovers the Trinitarian vision of our God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit “. She then made two references «In a beautiful film by Andrei Tarkovskij, a child with cancer asks her aunt,” What is God like? ” The aunt doesn’t say a word, but she makes a solemn gesture, approaches the child and hugs her. This is God! One of the greatest Fathers of the Church, Irenaeus of Lyons, said that the Father has two arms, the Son and the Spirit. With these two arms he has shaped the world and supports it. Here is the choice to focus attention on the Holy Spirit: bring the divine Breath. Jesus says on the eve of his death “The world did not know me”. We can also say it of the Holy Spirit. And it is nice that in our diocese there is a new church dedicated precisely to this Unknown, which we want instead to be manifested, which is the Holy Spirit “.
The bishop surprised again «I hope that the children of your community will be able to receive a vital teaching of the Spirit in this church; because, maybe, become a place of pilgrimage, even for confirmands from neighboring territories. And, why not ?, of the whole diocese “. Again «The Spirit is what takes all the dispersions, divisions, contrasts, lacerations that we have inside, and reconstructs harmony. The Holy Spirit is the harmony of God. And he re-creates the harmony within our profound being, which is often torn apart ». He concluded «You have seen in a beautiful photograph of the new Church that at a certain point there is this reflection of the light. The light has been very well taken care of. The church is filled with light. When we enter the church we enter our profound interiority and find the new way of the light of the Spirit: the profound order within. But then we become luminous and give light to the outside ». Hence, perhaps, the idea-hope that the new parish church of Pegognaga will become a destination for pilgrimages. The bishop then went to the entrance of the church and opened the door and he blessed the whole town, and ended up blessing the faithful present, bench by bench. The deputy mayor represented the municipal administration Antonio Lui.
Riccardo Lonardi
Bishop Busca while announcing the dedication of the new parish church