Mother Elvira - The Embrace of God’s Mercy: Mother Elvira and the Story of Community Cenacolo

Mother Elvira Petrozzi

The EMBRACE of
GODS MERCY

Mother Elvira and the Story
of Community Cenacolo

As told to Michele Casella

Translated by Charlotte J. Fasi
and Community Cenacolo

SOPHIA INSTITUTE PRESS
Manchester, New Hampshire

Copyright 2013 by Edition San Paolo s.r.l.
Piazza Soncino, 5 20092 Cininssello Balsamo (Milan)
www.edizionisanpaolo.it

English translation Copyright 2019 by Sophia Institute Press

The Embrace of Gods Mercy is a translation of Labbraccio: Storia della Comunit Cenacolo (Milan: Edizioni San Paolo, 2013).

Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved.

Cover by David Ferris Design.

Cover photo courtesy of Comunit Cenacolo.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Sophia Institute Press
Box 5284, Manchester, NH 03108
1-800-888-9344

www.SophiaInstitute.com

Sophia Institute Press is a registered trademark of Sophia Institute.

eBook ISBN 978-1-622828-333

Contents

, by Most Rev. Robert J. Baker, S.T.D.

Appendices

Foreword

This English edition of the story of the Cenacolo Community in Mother Elvira Petrozzis own words is long overdue. The Italian version LAbbraccio came out in 2013, and Sophia Institute Press is to be commended for making this unique story available to the English-speaking world. I am confident that it will become, before long, a spiritual classic, seen by many as one of the great spiritual commentaries of our times.

The title The Embrace of Gods Mercy chosen by Mother Elvira, fittingly sums up this amazing story. People who have known her have experienced, on meeting her, a warm embrace and a wide, endearing smile. They knew, without a doubt, that they were very special to her. Everybody she meets is special to her. The story of the forgiving father welcoming back his prodigal son in Lukes Gospel (chapter 15) is an apt picture of the kind of welcome Mother Elvira gives, especially to the members of her Cenacolo family.

I met Mother Elvira more than twenty-five years ago in Rome, Italy, while in search of help for a community that was launched in St. Augustine, Florida, in the early 1990s by our local St. Vincent de Paul Society, me, and a couple of former students from the University of Florida. I had earlier pastored that university parish in Gainesville, Florida.

At St. Vincent de Paul Farm, we formed Our Lady of Hope Community for the homeless who were coming to our St. Augustine Cathedral parish, where I was then assigned as pastor, to help get them off the street. We were in a little over our heads and struggled to handle the situations of the people coming to us. It was then that I heard that the Church in Italy had success stories in this kind of endeavor.

While on a sabbatical in Rome, I met a kind priest who was an official of the Council on the Family, Monsignor Anthony LaFemina. He had been researching programs around the world for a document he would help draft on Drug Addiction and Family Life. There were a fair number of effective efforts by Catholics in Italy at the time to address the drug problem. In Italy, heroin addiction was taking the lives of many. In the United States, crack cocaine had emerged as a popular drug of choice. Monsignor LaFemina became well acquainted with people leading the charge on the drug crisis in Italy and throughout the world.

Early on, a book in Italian, Le Droghe, Come Uscirne? (on how to get out of the world of drugs), described some of the Italian Church leaders who assisted people struggling with drugs. Among the people cited in that book was the foundress of the Cenacolo Community, Mother Elvira.

The word Cenacolo is Italian for the Cenacle, the Upper Room where the Last Supper took place. While the word can be translated as Cenacle, most American friends of the Community refer to it as Cenacolo , with the initial c pronounced ch, as in Italy.

Mother Elviras story describes the founding of her community in an old, abandoned building owned by the town of Saluzzo in Northern Italy, near Turin. The only positive element of the ramshackle building at the time was a terra-cotta image of the Blessed Mother over the entrance. That was enough for Mother Elvira to be hopeful for the future. The building itself and its reconstruction were symbolic of the resurrection of the lives, shattered by hopelessness and despair, that would occur through the efforts of the Cenacolo Community. Initially Mother Elvira had no plans other than working out of that one building. But the hand of God would direct her otherwise. Today, there are more than seventy communities worldwide.

While in Rome, my faltering attempt at Italian was enough for me to develop what has become a lifelong friendship with Mother Elvira and a deep respect for her holiness of life, a life rooted in devotion to the Lord of the Eucharist and our Blessed Mother. I regard her as one of the spiritual giants of our times, who, through her teachings and writings, is helping young people, and the old as well, to develop a profound encounter with God helping people truly encounter the One who is the source of their happiness, and helping them to face honestly the hurdles thrown into their everyday lives, rather than try to escape from them.

Her proposal is not an easy one.

Where in the world today do you find young men and women praying the Mysteries of the Rosary three times a day? Where in the world today do you find laypeople reflecting on their lives in community regularly, in what they refer to as Revisione della Vita (A review of life)? Where do you find anywhere a work ethic that regards doing a job well from start to finish, in a disciplined fashion, using ones God-given talents?

Well, maybe under Coach Nick Sabin at the University of Alabama, who reminds his football team that there are two kinds of pain in the world: one caused by discipline and the other caused by disappointment. If you choose the pain of discipline, he says, you wont have to face the pain of disappointment. Mother Elvira shares that same kind of perspective. That is why she has so many success stories. As she once told me, Habiamo risulti, Padre (We have results, Father).

I would often drive west from downtown St. Augustine on Route 16 to the Cenacolo Community on a hot summer day and see no one working in the fields along the way not until I got to Our Lady of Hope Cenacolo Community. For the members of that Community, work was not an enemy, but a friend. They may have led undisciplined lives before, but Mother Elvira helped them find motivation for their work in their faith, in the Lord of the Eucharist. People who were looking for well-trained workers knew they would find them among the disciples of Mother Elvira. Former community members would have no trouble finding a job after exiting the community.

Over twenty-five years ago, Mother Elvira accepted my invitation to send community members to the United States. But it took a while for her community to get established initially. It did not appear that American young people could handle the high bar Mother Elvira had set for her communities in prayer, in discipline, in community life, in lifestyle, in work. The Italian-born community leader Albino Aragno and I felt it just wasnt going to work in the United States. He mentioned our opinion to Mother Elvira. Saintly woman that she was, she gave us her message and mandate: if there is one American in that house in the United States, you Italians are staying!