“Do you know what love is?”
The secret of Mario, who needed everything

by Paolo Perego

Mario has been “going up” from Latina to Rome by train every day for a couple of months now, to his job as a waiter. He is 35, and has been married to Valeria since 2003. When he begins to talk about why he is on the train, a world opens up for us. “Well, I have to start out by telling you of an encounter with a priest, Fr. Giuseppe. I met him when I arrived in Latina, during the hardest period of my life, in 2005.” The problems began in his first year of marriage. “We loved each other, and said we’d ‘take it easy’ in having children,” but they certainly desired a family. “I received the diagnosis that it would be almost impossible for me to be a father.” He began invasive and painful treatments. “On the outside, I pretended that nothing was wrong, but inside, it was killing me. I hated everyone. I wanted to leave Valeria…”. One Saturday afternoon, he went to help out a friend with the kids at the parish center. “I went, but faith had nothing more to say to me.” There, he met Fr. Giuseppe. “I’m here by chance,” Mario told him. But they continued to meet, for a lunch, or a beer after dinner. “I began talking with him, man to man. He looked me in the eyes, and never tried to console me.”

One evening, in the midst of the cigarette smoke, Mario got angry. “I was talking about Valeria. He asked me if I could stop loving, and I said, ‘Yes.’ But he said, ‘Do you know what love is?’ I blathered something about attraction, feelings, emotions. ‘No. Love is total dedication, until death. Look at Jesus with His disciples.’” What did he know, a priest? “In those days I continued thinking about it, until I saw it.” Mario had his suitcase packed, and yet his wife continued to dedicate herself to him, kissing him before he left in the morning. Those words were flesh. “The priest was right. I said to myself, ‘He has to reveal the secret of life to me.’ I began spending as much time as possible with him, at dinners, during holidays. I accompanied him whenever I could.” And Mario began to be reborn. He had touched the bottom, and a question opened up inside his heart. He saw an answer, and was reborn, even when reality hit hard again. “I lost my job—it was the first of a series of firings.” He was a bookkeeper, and worked in sales. “I was worried, but not desperate. I got busy right away and found another job, and the priest was always by my side.” Mario even accompanied him to the Rimini Meeting in 2007, where he was struck by the volunteers. “Nobody had ever invited me to School of Community, but I asked to go. I wanted for myself whatever it was that made him and those people special.” Even Valeria, who had never been a woman of faith, began to follow him. “Our relationship was reborn. We began to breathe freely again.” They started doing charitable work with middle school youth on Saturdays, praying an Angelus together and helping them with their studies. “A bond of affection grew with some of them, and often they came to our house. Maybe this was the way we could be parents.”

A year passed, and the painful treatments continued. “It was June 2, 2009, in Lanciano, during a weekend with friends in Abruzzo.” This was the site of a miracle in which a host was transformed into flesh in the hands of a priest who doubted the Eucharist. “Jesus happened to him, right in his hands. And I prayed, ‘If You can do everything, then I’ll ask You for everything!’ I wasn’t thinking about children….” Nine months later, Sofia was born. “I asked for everything that day, and we have been spared nothing.” Both of them lost their jobs at the end of 2010, when she was pregnant with their second child, Raffaele, and Mario had a lot of debts and work he had yet to be paid for. “We barely managed to pay for groceries. I was not afraid to ask.” They asked friends and their parents for help.  Clothes and diapers came, even a job for Valeria after the delivery. “She took a job cleaning, with amazing dignity.”
“I sent my resume all over Italy and, in the meantime, in March, started working as a waiter. I was forced to do it because we needed the money, but it has turned out to be a good thing for me, because working as a waiter means serving whoever shows up. You don’t decide, like things in life. Whoever enters, enters.” Mario and Valeria were even interviewed for a television news story on the economic crisis. “The journalist asked us how we managed, what the secret was.” Mario showed them a sentence on a poster hung up in the kitchen, “It said, ‘Our life belongs to an Other.’ I asked everything of this Other, and I have received everything.”

Postscript. The next day, Mario went for a third interview with the head of a company for a job as sales director. At the end, the man said, “You’re the fellow from the news story!” “I burst out laughing. He said, ‘I already know your wife and children. Now I just have to bet on you.’ Now do you see? I asked for everything, and I already have everything.”