Priestly Work Begins
Sermon at Lavriano
John Brina
In that year, 1841, my parish priest was looking for a curate. I helped him out for five months. I found the work a great pleasure. I preached every Sunday. I visited the sick and administered the holy sacraments to them, except penance, since I had not yet taken the exam. I buried the dead, kept the parish records, wrote out certificates of poverty, and so on. My delight was to make contact with the children and teach them catechism. They used to come from Murialdo to see me, and on my visits home they crowded round me. Whenever I left the presbytery there was a group of boys, and everywhere I went my little friends gave me a warm welcome.
As I had a certain facility in expounding the word of God, I was much in demand as a preacher, to give homilies, on feast days, in the nearby villages. At the end of October that year I was invited to preach on St Benignus at Lavriano. I was happy to accept because that was the birthplace of my friend Fr John Grassino, now parish priest in Scalenghe. I was anxious to do justice to the occasion and so prepared and wrote out my address carefully, trying to make it popular and at the same time polished. I studied it well, determined to win glory from it.
But God wanted to teach a terrible lesson to my pride. It was a feast day, and I had to say Mass for the people before setting off. To get there in time for the sermon I had to go on horseback. Sometimes trotting, sometimes galloping, I was about halfway along and had reached the valley of Casalborgone between Cinzano and Bersano. As I passed a millet field, a flock of sparrows took sudden flight. The noise of their flight frightened the horse, and he bolted down the road and across the fields and meadows. Somehow I managed to stay in the saddle, but then I realised that it was slipping under the horse’s belly. I tried an equestrian manoeuvre, but the saddle was out of place and forced me upwards, and I fell head first onto a heap of broken stones.
From a hill close by, a man could see this regrettable accident; he ran to my assistance with one of his workers and, finding me unconscious, carried me to his house and laid me on his best bed. They gave me the most loving care, and after an hour I came to and realised that I was in a strange house.
Don’t let that worry you, my host said, and don’t be upset that you’re in a strange house. Here you’ll want for nothing. I’ve sent for the doctor, and someone has gone to catch your horse. I’m a farmer, but I have everything I need. Do you feel any pain?
God reward you for your charity, my good friend, I said. I don’t think I’ve done much damage. A broken collar bone, maybe. I can’t move it. Where am I?
You’re on Bersano Hill in the house of John Calosso, better known as Brina. I’m at your service. I, too, have got round a bit and know what it is to need help. Many a spill I’ve had going to fairs and markets!
While we’re waiting for the doctor, tell me some of your stories.
I have lots of things I could tell you. Like this one. One autumn a few years ago, I was going to Asti on my donkey to collect winter provisions. On my way home, when I got to the valley of Murialdo, my poor beast, quite overloaded, fell in a mud hole and lay there in the middle of the road unable to move. Every effort to get her up again proved useless. It was midnight, dark and wet. Not knowing what else to do, I shouted for help. In a few minutes someone answered from a little house nearby. They came, a seminarian and his brother, and two other men with a lamp to light their way. They got her out of the muck, having first unloaded her. They took me and all my baggage to their house. I was half-dead and covered with mud. They cleaned me up and put new life into me with a magnificent supper. Then they gave me a nice, soft bed. In the morning, before I left, I wanted to pay them for all they had done for me, but the seminarian turned everything down flat, saying, ‘Who knows? Someday we may need your help.’
I was moved to tears by his words. When he saw my reaction, he asked me if I were ill.
No, I replied, your story gives me great pleasure, and that’s what moves me.
How happy I would be, he went on, if I knew what I could do for that good family! What fine people!
What was their name?
Bosco, he said, popularly known as Boschetti.
But why are you so moved?
You know them, maybe?
How is that seminarian?
That seminarian, my good friend, is this priest whom you have repaid a thousand times for what he did for you. The very one whom you’ve carried to your home and put into this bed. Divine Providence wants to teach us through this incident that one good turn deserves another.
You can imagine the wonder, the pleasure, that good Christian and I both felt, that in my hour of need God had let me fall into the hands of such a friend. His wife, his sister, his other relatives, and his friends were delighted to know that the one who had so many times featured in their conversation was actually in their house.
The doctor arrived a short time later. He found no bones broken. After a few days I could head home on the recaptured horse. John Brina came the whole way home with me. For as long as he lived we remained fast friends.
After this warning, I firmly resolved that in the future I would prepare my sermons for the greater glory of God, and not to appear learned and erudite.