The Spiritual Testament of Giuseppe Lazzati

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Dearest Brothers, When you read these lines I shall have passed to the other side. I therefore entrust to them the thoughts that, thinking of my last hour, which I most readily accept at such time and manner as it may please the Lord, I should like to pass on to all of you.

The first is a feeling of profound, sincere and heartfelt gratitude to God for all the gifts he has lavished on me, not least the one of having called me to the Institute and granting me to live so many years in it, and to give it a part of my miserable forces. I ask you to thank him with me and for me. Of course, the thought of the great goodness used to me by the Lord makes me immediately see, by contrast as it were, the full measure of my smallness and the shabby manner in which I have responded to Love.
I trust in His merciful forgiveness and of all of you, to the extent to which my lack of response to Love may have scandalized you or caused you harm, I ask your pardon and also that, praying, you may help me to purify myself of all the things that may keep me from the vision of the Father in the embrace of Christ and the full flowering of the Holy Spirit.

But after God, I also owe great gratitude to you and for many reasons: for the examples of virtue that you have given me, for the trust that over many years you placed in me, for the patience with which you have borne my shortcomings and my temperament.

The second feeling is one of certainty that the Institute occupies a Place of special value and responsibility in the Church on account of the ideal it seeks to incarnate, an ideal that is so in line with the spirit and the needs of the times, which is the same as saying the needs of the Church and the world, of the relationship that binds them to each other. I want this certainty to take root also within you and to sustain you at all times, especially in the hours of difficulty and darkness, hours that never lack in the life of people and in the works of God, hours that God permits in order to assay our faith and our fidelity. It is a certainty founded on the word of the Church as expressed through the mouth of our Bishops and the Popes, from Pius XII to Paul VI, to whom we are grateful and must always remain grateful; it is also founded in our own experience, through which we have both felt and evaluated the great service that the Institute can render. So that this certainty, together with the fidelity that it implies, rather than weakening you may endure and grow within you, permit me to tell you what are the fundamental conditions for this.

Love Jesus Christ, the Sovereign to whom we have consecrated our life and who first loved us and gave himself for our sake: love Him passionately, in deeds and not in words, become His followers in true Poverty, in lovable chastity, in fruitfu1 obedience; giving yourselves for His sake, for the spreading of His Kingdom, that is to say, without any limit other than that suggested by the supernatural virtue of prudence and in the manner that your love for him may suggest to you, right through to the extreme consequences, as Pope Paul VI put it.

Love the Church. mystery of sa1vation of the world, in whom our vocation assumes both meaning and value as a singular manifestation of that mystery. Love her like your Mother, with a love made up of respect and dedication, tenderness and industry. May it never happen to you to feel her as a stranger or yourselves as estranged from her; may it be sweet for you to work for her and, if necessary, suffer for her. And if in her you should suffer because of her, remember that she is Mother to you: may you succeed, in shedding tears for her in silence.

Love the Institute as the one in whom our life assumes its full flavour and safeguard and keep alive the charism with which the spirit has brought it forth within the Church, the charism that constitutes its raison d’être. This charism is the secular form of our consecration: secularity! Let not love of novelty lead you to lose it; rather, may your love for it make you capable of updating the forms of the charism whenever the needs of special situations make this necessary, but without ever altering its substance.

Love each other with a sincere heart and help one another, each bearing the burdens of the others, to rea1ize our vocation, so that your light may shine forth, though a1ways through the filter of humility, and bear witness in the world to the presence and the force of Love, become servants of all, and this all the more as the responsibilities to which you are called become greater.

So that all this may be and come to pass, take good care of those whom the Lord calls and donates to you, do not fight shy of any sacrifices to turn them into servants of Christ the King, strong, faithful, and daring.
I entrust these last desires of mine to Our Lady, Queen of the Institute, so that her help, which I shall not fail to supplicate, may make it easier for you to put them into practice and that by the grace of her protection it may be given to us, following the battle sustained and the service rendered to Christ, the Church and the world, to find ourselves all together and in her company "in the end without end", in the Kingdom of her Son and our King.

Christe Rex, adveniat Regnum tuum, per Mariam!

Giuseppe Lazzati
Feast of the Assumption 15 August 1968

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