LORETO

The March of the 40,000

On June 9th, a large crowd took part in the pilgrimage in Italy on foot from Macerata to the Holy House of Mary in Loreto. The pilgrimage was marked by testimony, singing, and recitation of the Rosary. An interview with Fr Giancarlo Vecerrica, a driving force and tireless leader for 23 years

BY GIORGIO PAOLUCCI

Fr Giussani’s greeting to the participants in the pilgrimage
A woman whom God called “Mama”! The humanity of this voice echoes through the entire history of the world. All the world is made up of little men, incapable of living and being themselves in the truth if they do not have this mother. Only such a faith can make a man feel that his steps are accompanied. If walking together is not an aid to the certainty of destiny, it would not be a truly human companionship.
The throng of this pilgrimage makes all of us become one thing. Devotion to the Mother of God testifies to the wonderful reality that has occurred in the world. Your pilgrimage makes the force of faith lively and evident: religion is not “a gentle oblivion of life’s toil” or “a pensive yearning for peace” as a by now unknown poet could say, but is a peace which finds in sacrifice its maternal womb and its reason for the fervor of human activity.
Let’s ask Mary that our life may have the truth that it seems impossible to find in others. And may this memory which impacts all of life render us certain in love for Her Divine Son and make our actions construct the glory of Christ in this world.
My wish for you is that devotion to Mary, as is testified by the Pope, may become visible also in each of us and that the Trinitarian mystery may penetrate all of our humanity, both personal and collective.
Fr Luigi Giussani
June 9, 2001

“The night is no less marvelous than the day, nor is it less divine. At night the stars shine bright and things are revealed that the day does not know. The night is closer to the first things and the elements of nature than is the day.” The words of the Russian poet Berdjaev are very apt for the 40,000 who walked from Macerata to the Holy House of Loreto. The first things and the elements of nature… Nature bore the face of the moon which in some stretches was the only light source brightening the path, of the stars that pierced through the veil of clouds in the sky, of the fireflies emitting their gleams from the splendid countryside of the Marches.
The sweat pouring down the sides of the face, the leg muscles getting stiffer and stiffer, sleep knocking at the door of the brain, the fatigue of never stopping for around 17 and half miles, gave even greater flesh to the entreaties that each one there had brought with him. Each one was repeating these entreaties in his heart, entrusting them to the beads of the Rosary being counted off in his hands and to the notes of the songs resounding through the air. Each one heard the entreaties in the testimonies given all during the night, that were amplified by the loudspeakers accompanying the miles-long human stream moving along. Leda, a young Albanian confined to a wheelchair after having been raped and beaten by pimps because she refused to become a prostitute, was taken under the wing of Fr Benzi while still in the hospital and has found some real friends in a family-house of the John XXIII Association, where she helps other women to get out of that circle of death. Maria, an alcoholic mother of two, has finished her course of recovery offered by the Pars Association at the center in Corridonia (Macerata) and is now starting over at the age of fifty: “Alcohol is an artificial answer to the questions I carry inside me. In the community that welcomed me, I have encountered what everyone needs. I want to tell you that God’s companionship with men is the only resource for not falling into the ditch like me, or for climbing out if you have fallen in.”
The same thing that happened to Leda and Maria happens to each of us, even if in less dramatic circumstances: limitations are no longer obstacles, but become the terrain for a truer entreaty. Human frailty has felt the breath of grace, and it makes us all become greater. It is not by scruples that man becomes great, writes Camus, greatness comes, if God wills, like a sunny day. A sunny day, begun with the dawn that around four in the morning sent up its first glow from the hills before Loreto and a little later offered a glimpse of the outline of the basilica (seemingly so near and yet so far, also because the final miles were all up and down hills, something to wear out the legs of even the boldest). It would have been better to save our breath, and instead everyone was urged to sing those elementary words that have become the hymn of the pilgrimage: “You know that there is a great house in the world, it is the house of Our Lord.” And then, with arms lifted to the sky, as though to acknowledge the source of that energy you didn’t know you had, “Full of strength, of grace and glory.”
After nine hours of walking, behold, the great basilica enclosing the Holy House of Nazareth, memory of that announcement which upset a 16-year-old Jewish girl and continues to upset the world: God made Himself one of us. Standing in front of the church to welcome the 40,000 pilgrims was Cardinal Puljic, Archbishop of Sarajevo, who had presided over the Eucharistic celebration the evening before at the stadium in Macerata and had urged his listeners not to be dazzled by the culture of the ephemeral, which teaches that to be happy, it is necessary to get rid of the cross. “Listen to the Pope, dear young people,” the Cardinal went on, “this is not the road that makes you live, but the path that plunges to death. Do not be afraid to walk along the road that the Lord has traveled before us.” With Cardinal Puljic were the Bishop of Nazareth, Marcuzzo; of Loreto, Comastri; of Macerata, Conti; and of San Benedetto del Tronto, Gestori. The messages sent by the Pope, by the Italian Episcopal Conference, by Cardinals Stafford and Sepe, and by Sister Lucia, the only surviving witness of Our Lady’s apparition at Fatima, testify to the benevolent gaze of the Church on this gesture. The Church has the physical features of a people that has let itself be guided toward its destiny. She has 40,000 faces which looked at each other for a night. She has the sweaty, glad face of someone like Gianfranco, who at the age of 60 has begun to understand that “through the gaze of friends who have walked with me passes the truest answer to the questions I carry inside me; being a small part of this people is like experiencing the physical companionship of Jesus.”

1978: The Beginning
They started with 300 people in 1978, to thank Our Lady for the school year that had just ended and to put their lives into Her hands. High school students, a few university students, and Fr Giancarlo Vecerrica, at the time a young religion teacher in Macerata, the founder and promoter of a gesture that continues to grow and astonish

edited by g.p.

From 300 to 40,000, mainly young people… Is this the result of an intelligent operation of religious marketing or is there something else?
Marketing is not up my alley, but I believe I know young people pretty well. They are the ones who feel most acutely the questions about existence, and they realize how limited and little are the answers that are circulating now. The reality of youth cannot be sustained by Saturday night fever or by more or less moralistic advice, such as: you have to be honest, you have to pass with high marks, you have to keep up with the others, you have to respect the environment… Youth does not ask for advice, but for the meaning of pain and joy. They need to adhere to a proposal that is fascinating for their lives and to meet someone who has made it his own. They realize immediately when the so-called values are only empty words on the lips of a parent or educator and to what degree they actually represent the life passion of adults. This year, too, a lot of people came who do not move in Catholic circles but who wanted to see, understand, and breathe this atmosphere.

This is a gesture that is promoted by CL, but that each year brings together presences from every sphere: movements, Catholic Action, Scouts, parishes. Is this a sign of hope for the Church?
At the root is the perception that man alone cannot stand up to comparison with Mystery, and that if he entrusts himself to the companionship of other persons he can walk toward the destiny for which his life was made. The beauty of a pilgrimage is that within this people walking along, each one feels at home. It is an experience of people in which each one finds his place without giving up what he holds most dear, but prizing it. And it is the moving confirmation of the truth of the charism of ecumenism which we have learned from Fr Giussani: faith is an experience of human truth which can be proposed to all because it responds to the deepest expectations of everyone’s heart.