Carlo Acutis in Castelluccio – Acutis family
God is simple. Indeed, God is very simple. You meet the saints and you realize just that. You don’t need culture, you don’t need theology, you don’t need any particular preparation. God is there waiting for you and you must desire nothing more than to welcome him into your heart. Carlo Acutis said that “the saint lives simplicity”, our society, on the other hand, fills us with useless superstructures that prevent us from being simple, often, indeed, make us proud. So proud as to believe, more or less consciously, that simple rhymes with naïve and humble goes hand in hand with naive. “My son Carlo was very simple”points out Antonia Salzano, the mother of Carlo Acutis. An immediate simplicity that was translated as it is in his relationship with God: «He said that Jesus is within everyone’s reach, he meets in the essentiality and the closeness of Charles with Jesus was immediate and strong at the same time. The simpler we are, the more we become capable of seeing it, but also of showing it ». «And if you ask me about the face of God, I can say that I met him through Carlo, who showed me a merciful, welcoming Jesus. A Jesus with a big heart as in the apparitions of Margherita Maria Alacoque. She saw God in the sick, in the poor. Whoever he met was his Face of him ».
When Antonia Salzano Acutis begins to talk about her son, she knows no narrative or verbal obstacles. Words flow precisely and effectively to the rhythm of thought and frequent associations of ideas. In some way it is the impression one gets when reading the book written by herself with Paolo Rodari “My son’s secret” (Piemme, pages 299, € 17.90). The difference is that in person you immediately realize that that secret (if there can be a secret in the life of a saint) is destined to vanish at the first bars, in the engaging smile of this mother, which is really difficult not to cross with the serene one. and piercing photos of her son. Especially if you have the good fortune to meet her in the garden of the nascent “Centro Carlo Acutis”, on the road that climbs from the walls of Assisi to the Eremo delle Carceri. A place for welcoming and accompanying the encounter with God, wanted by the Acutis family so that it can become a sort of extension of the spirituality of Charles who was in love with the city of St. Francis. Opposite, as far as the eye can see, is the plain that stretches below Assisi with the places where the Franciscan adventure began, from Santa Maria degli Angeli with the Porziuncola to the hovels of Rivotorto. Enthusiasm and concreteness. Exactly like the way in which the mother tells of her son: «For him nothing happened by chance, he believed in Providence. He said that “conversion is not a process of adding, but of subtracting: minus me to leave room for God “.” Not me but God “.” Not self-love, but the glory of God “. In this he was demanding:” What good is it to win a thousand battles – he said – if I don’t am I capable of overcoming myself? “».
First he mentioned the simplicity of Carlo …
He placed his life in God and he understood very soon that the simpler one is, the better one is able to see and show his Face. His way of having faith was simple, humble. When she was a few years old, if she saw a church, she pulled me in and didn’t want to go out: “Let’s stay a little longer, mom.” She received communion at the age of 7 and on her computer she wrote: “To be united with Jesus, this is my life program”. And then she went to mass every day, she did Eucharistic adoration and the prayer of the rosary. She said: «The Eucharist is my highway to heaven. In front of the sun one gets tanned, but in front of Jesus the Eucharist one becomes saints ».
Antonia Salzano with little Carlo – Acutis family
Was the Eucharist your reference?
He said that with the Eucharist the Lord becomes part of our body, that every time we take communion we are no longer the same people. He said that like Moses coming down from Mount Sinai after meeting God he was luminous so it happens to us too after having done adoration: we don’t realize it, but the Lord transforms us, divinizes us.
Face to face with God …
He used to say just like this: “The Eucharist brings us face to face. We are like a dark room: each with its darkness and the Eucharist is a beam of light that enters and makes us see the dust that we normally do not see “and calls us to improve. “If people – he stressed – were aware of the importance of the Eucharist, there would be more people in the Church than at big concerts than at football matches”. And with the exhibition on Eucharistic miracles, which still travels the world, he wanted to lead people to God, accompany them to see his Face, to visit a tabernacle with the same devotion with which one makes a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He said that we are much more fortunate than those who lived in Palestine at the time of Jesus because we do not need to make our way through the crowd to see him, but we just need to enter a church and we are sure that He is there, in the tabernacle. He wanted everyone to love the Eucharist and he strongly believed in the need for reparative prayer for the offenses against Jesus in the Eucharist, as indicated by the angel to the Little Shepherds of Fatima.
Loving Love as a Life Choice?
For Carlo it was the strategic choice. Everything for him revolved around this. If I am in a desert under the scorching sun, he said, and I have not drunk for a day, I see an oasis and I run towards the water, if I have a small glass I take that for myself, if I have a large container I can also take it from give to others. The difference is in the capacity to love, to contain the love to be given, because it is the love received and given that makes us, makes us into image and likeness.
We are always there: simple faith, love, humility …
Simple, straightforward: «The Father has a throne in heaven, the Son has the throne of the Lamb, but the Holy Spirit has the throne in our hearts. And we should feel like living tabernacles ». This was his logic. And he added that Christ is seen in humility, He who passed from the condition of the infinite to a condition of the finite. He became incarnate in Mary who, humble too, became the first living tabernacle. To meet the humble is to see God. In her weakness we see her Face. We went three times to see the Shroud and he was always very moved, struck by the royalty of that suffering face: «It exudes divinity», he said. He knew the face of Manoppello and wanted to go and see the shroud of Oviedo.
Did he feel like a living tabernacle?
He was committed to bringing out the face of God that was in him in a constant work of asceticism. All that was good he referred to God, all that he found evil in himself he referred to himself. Every night was his self-examination of him … and he was taking his grades. Time considered him as a creature of God and explained that Jesus, the eternal, had assumed time and had divinized it, showing us how to live it in the key of eternity. This is why time should not be wasted on doing things that do not serve to bring us closer to God.
Make every moment, every encounter a step on the path of faith?
He called it crossing faith with daily life. Today we almost always separate faith from life as if they were separate things. But as Carlo suggested, we must begin to cross faith and life starting from the little things, then God takes care of the big things. And then feed on love through the Eucharist, because my capacity to love increases to the extent that He helps me. “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him”: this Charles took it literally, remembering that we must become a living Gospel if we want the Face of God to show itself in us; that in each one there is a project of originality that we can only implement by staying with God, who is close to us, who desires to be with us. If I lose that closeness, I also lose my chance to be original and end up, as he said, by becoming a photocopy. But every day, at any moment, I can always start from scratch.
With what tools?
He blindly believed in the Mercy of God and for this reason he invited us not to despise the instruments of salvation that have been made available to us through the Church: first of all the Sacraments, in particular Confession, the Eucharist, the Anointing of the sick, which Carlo took every year because, he said, the Anointing heals our wounds. Then the sacramentals such as blessed water, but also indulgences, the water that flows in the places of the Marian apparitions … The prayer of the rosary that Our Lady has repeatedly indicated as a source of grace …
What did it mean to live with such a child?
It changed me right away. I came from a life that, like so many of us, is far from true faith. In following him I was amazed every day. She was running forward in time, not wasting a moment. At three months he said the first word, at 4 she read and wrote. She had bright eyes. He was of extraordinary purity. Every vulgarity, every blasphemy bothered him, but he was not a bigot, on the contrary he was nice and this allowed him to approach and help everyone. When my father died in ’95 I felt empty. Carlo also helped me in this. At 5 he told me he saw him in Purgatory. Behold, he showed me a merciful Jesus, welcoming, simple, essential, close, within everyone’s reach. A simplicity, a closeness that should also be re-evaluated in the Church.
Interview with the mother of the blessed. Carlo Acutis: God is simple. Indeed very simple