“It was as if something was missing from my life”
On World Day of Consecrated Life, Deacon Giuseppe Angelucci, of Greccio (Rieti), shares his testimony
(by Giuseppe Angelucci)
Consecration to the Immaculate Virgin was for me a point of arrival and a point of departure.
A point of arrival because it was a long journey to understand that God was calling me. I remember, in the early 1990s, staying at the Franciscan Shrine of La Verna. I had been following my daughters who were on pilgrimage with the parish and I felt like a thud in my heart. I felt like something was missing in my life.
From that moment, I began to search, but I could not give myself an answer.
After a few years of darkness, I found a Conventual Franciscan friar who tried to give perspective to my search and oriented me to Franciscan Marian Spirituality in the footsteps of St. Maximilian Kolbe.
From that moment, my conversion to the true Christian faith began and I began to change my way of thinking and my character; I did not realize it, but most people I knew began to marvel at my change. The more I read the writings of St. Maximilian, the more passionately I fell in love with the Immaculate Virgin, Mother of the Lord and our Mother.
After a few years, in 2001, on May 24 (memory of Our Lady Help of Christians), in the beautiful setting of the Franciscan Shrine of Greccio within a Eucharistic celebration, I consecrated myself together with my wife Rita to the Immaculate Virgin, giving her all that I am, body and soul, and my whole life.
From that moment, my life became missionary in my parish and beyond: both in families and in nursing homes. Basically, I started to care about everyone and not just about myself and my family anymore.
My life changed while remaining myself with my family, with friends. I didn’t give up anything from the life I had spent up to that point; only the love I felt for them and for all those the Lord put beside me had changed.
Joseph Angelucci, deacon