There was the miracle of friendship when we were together here or in Bose or in Saint Jacques di Champoluc, to look with smiles into each other’s eyes. That friendship made us speak of the Church sometimes with joy, especially in the Council’s decades; later we often spoke of it with suffering, because our love for the Church was and is great, essential, decisive. We knew and know that “the real Church is not the one we are ready to denounce,” as don Luigi used to say.

Don Luigi spoke to us, but he still speaks; he prayed for us, but now he prays for us still more; he rejoiced with us, but now he rejoices still more, in a communion that he feels more truly and more profoundly than we can feel. At this eucharistic table, the same on earth and on heaven’s altar, he is still at table with us and says to us: “Communicantes in unum”.

I want to conclude with a prayer that don Luigi wrote at the end of his L’abito rosso:

Lord, look, we are here.
       At this point of the journey that you know.
       Do not leave us alone, abandoned to ourselves.
       Do not leave us lost. 
       "Now let your servant go in peace",
       because the hour has come.

ENZO BIANCHI