society

In-Presa: What’s New

In the heart of Brianza, Italy, there is a new headquarters for Emilia Vergani Cesana’s association, offering support to so-called “youth at risk.” Two years after the death of its founder, the (ripe) fruits are being gathered, as a reality more real than reality makes its way forward…

BY EMILIANO RONZONI

And now here we are, inaugurating the walls of the new headquarters of Emilia’s “In-presa.” Nice rooms, good light, large spaces. A high price, too, but–let’s make this clear–the best accounting, more than counting petty cash or expenditures, is counting friends and benefactors: Valentino, Gianluca, the So-and-so Foundation, the So-and-So Consortium, Pino, Antonio, Roberto, and many, many others. What’s new, two years after that last terrible goodbye? There’s us, there’s her husband and her family; there’s also a young president for the association.

There is Jan with the usual enthusiasm and Stefano who thinks and plans; there are Evelina and Tony who work with Jan. And then, there are the In-Presa kids, more and more of them—almost forty now. There are our young GS friends who have become their friends. So many, many things.

And then, you come upon it by chance, almost without realizing it, in the ordinary course of everyday speech: “Oh, that turned out well for you? I’ll bet Emilia had something to do with it.” Or, “Who knows how this will go? It would be a good idea to say a prayer to Emilia.”

Thus, here we see something making its way, even only hinted at, a reality more real than reality. Because if He (yes, He, that One) is there, He comes in. And if He comes in, He sets to work.

His Excellency Angelo Scola had already told us at her funeral: “I am sure that those who loved her and love her still will soon begin to perceive this her new way of being present, this her capacity for dedication.”

Thus it is that the community is nicer, people are more content, those who were in pain have been able to be comforted, those who had open issues have been able to put them on the table, those who felt their hard core of badness melting have been accompanied by this new tenderness inside them, and if still a very large part of ourselves has not yet been consigned (how much need, how much hidden pain, how much secret joy, how much trembling awakening to hope, how much reserve in the fragrant birth of freedom, and how much heaviness for what in us still resists), we know that there is a destiny, and that there is time for everything to fall into place.

What else is new? There was the surprise at having the new Archbishop of Milan here among us at the inauguration. He grabbed a scrap of his time, and was here. How grateful we were to see him here bringing God’s blessing to what we hold most dear, Emilia’s work. We hold it most dear because it speaks to us of what we hold most dear, the Movement, which we hold most dear because it speaks to us of what we hold most dear, Christ.

What else is new? The anthem is new, just composed by the kids of In-presa, so new that it speaks to us of something ancient.

“You’ll see, if you go to In-Presa/there’s the boys’ band, so come/with us to In-presa./You’ll find, if you go to In-Presa/that new loves spring forth, you’ll see./You’ll have fun. You’ll have fun/finding out about life at In-Presa./If you go to In-Presa/you won’t be left all alone. If it’s help you seek/you’ll find somebody, you’ll see./You’ll have fun with the boys’ band./You’ll fall in love with the boys’ ban/and the music, and you’ll sing./So come, so come on to In-Presa.”

Now you tell me if these blessed kids are not speaking of us and that ancient, eternal promise. That’s what’s new.