Become Who You Are
What’s the meaning and purpose of my life? What is my true identity? Why were we created male and female? How do I find happiness, joy and peace? How do I find love that lasts, forever? These are the timeless questions of the human heart. Join Jack Rigert and his guests for lively insights, reading the signs of our times through the lens of Catholic Teaching and the insights of Saint John Paul ll to guide us.
Saint Catherine of Siena said "Become who you are and you would set the world on fire".
Become Who You Are
#640 I Killed Maria Goretti: The Life and Repentance of Alessandro Serenelli
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The battle between love and lust rages in every human heart. In this powerful exploration of the Maria Goretti story, we uncover how what we consume shapes who we become – sometimes with devastating consequences.
Maria Goretti was just 11 years old when Alessandro Serenelli, a young man living and working with her family, attacked and murdered her after she refused his sexual advances. What drove this ordinary farm worker to such violence? The toxic media he consumed played a crucial role. Alessandro filled his mind with sensational novels about crime and lust, creating a dangerous inner landscape where "forbidden fruit no longer nourished him" and "self-abuse infuriated him."
Our guest Michael Lichens, author and editor with a passion for overlooked aspects of Christian history, walks us through this harrowing yet ultimately redemptive story.
As John Paul II observed, "The problem with pornography is not that it reveals too much, it reveals too little." It fails to reveal the person – the human heart that longs to be loved, not used. This insight resonates powerfully today as young people navigate a hypersexualized culture bombarding them with distorted messages about sexuality and human dignity.
The story takes an extraordinary turn when Alessandro experiences a vision of Maria while in prison.
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Welcome to the Become who you Are podcast, a production of the John Paul II Renewal Center, and a special shout out to the men of Claymore, miletus Christie, all the young people that have been joining us on this show. As you know, my heart goes out, just like John Paul II's went out for young people that have been joining us on this show. As you know, my heart goes out, just like John Paul II went out for young people You've grown up in a twisted, distorted, toxic culture, repeatedly lied to about the very basics concerning the meaning of life, human dignity, marriage, the family, authentic love, the true meaning of sex and sexuality. Especially disturbing is the normalization of pornography. John Paul II said that the problem with pornography is not that it reveals too much, it reveals too little.
Speaker 1:It doesn't reveal the person it doesn't reveal the human heart who wants and seeks to be loved, not to be used right. The opposite of love, then, is not hate. The opposite of love is lust using someone for your own ego, your own selfish desires. Of course, lust is nothing new. It's been destroying lives throughout human history. I just read an important book titled I Killed Maria Goretti. It's a true story of lust, murder and also the story of forgiveness, redemption, salvation. In a sense, it's a story of all of us Joining me today to discuss this crucial topic.
Speaker 1:In the book, all the way from the Rocky Mountains, is Michael Likens and it's Likens, right, michael Litchens like kitchens. Okay, litchens, like kitchens. I should have asked you before we came on, but my audience is very forgiving. Michael is an author, editor, researcher with a passion for the overlooked aspects of Christian history. He's a former editor of the Catholic Exchange and everybody on the show knows that I write quite often for the Catholic Exchange as well as the St Austin Review. He's also a frequent guest on radio and television shows on which he shares strange and delightful things about our faith and history. And shows on which he shares strange and delightful things about our faith and history With an MA from the University of Chicago Divinity School and a BA in philosophy.
Speaker 1:Michael especially loves reading anything about Augustine and GK Chesterton. You can't go wrong with those, michael. When he's not busy writing about bone churches, we'll have to ask him what that is. In local history, he can be found editing books for authors or leading tours of old buildings in the american west or in rome. Follow his writings and other adventures at m uh and I'm going to spell this out for people, but I'll put it in the show notes too m-l-i-c-h-e-n-s dot com. Well, I was just on the website. Michael describes himself as a faith haunted beer critic with a writing problem. Michael, I love that. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, Jack. It's a joy to be with you today.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So tell me a couple things here. What is a faith-haunted beer critic? And with that writing problem, give us a little description when you wrote that down Sure, and also the bone churches. I want to know what that is Sure.
Speaker 2:So I wrote a book called Weird Catholic Handbook.
Speaker 2:Yes, I saw that it includes a couple of things, including what are called auxiliaries, which are churches that are made out of bones, and the historical reason for that was because pure and simple cemeteries within city walls in the Middle Ages would run out of room on occasion. So what do you do with all the bones? In a couple of places, such as in Rome, the monks actually said we'll take our bones and make it part of the church, and so there's a beautiful Capuchin crypt in Rome that has about 5,000 monks who are all decorated.
Speaker 2:Their bones decorate the altars, the chandeliers, everything so that they are a part of the church, and it's also what I like to call a spiritual gut punch of memento mori.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, yes, michael, you know, when you dig deep into our faith, you can't make this stuff up, can?
Speaker 2:you? No, you cannot, no, it has to be true because it's an adventure.
Speaker 1:It's an adventure. And what is a beer critic? What kind of beer do you like?
Speaker 2:I love. I've been to the Czech lands, I've been to Prague and all over, so I especially love Czech lager. If we have any Czech listeners. I love your beer and I love you, so carry on.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, yes, yes. Well, thank you for that. You know, michael, young people today are taught that their behavior like watching porn, other trash on social media, anything they're consuming themselves with materialism, consumerism. They don't realize until now. You know, the guys that we're meeting realize something's wrong, michael, and when you fill your mind and your heart with this toxic stew that these poor young people and really my heart goes out to them, and I know John Paul's too it really affects you, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:Absolutely does. I think we're now starting to understand, especially with social media, having a little device in our pocket that can stream information to us, or non-information to us, 24 hours a day. It takes an effect on people. It leads to more unhappiness, more anxiety and, as we see in this book I Killed Maria Goretti it can lead to some really dark places quickly.
Speaker 1:Why don't you describe a little bit, just to back up a little bit on this book itself? Give us just a little bit. You know, I mean St Maria Goretti, I mean just this beautiful. You know, let's just say that she took a different path than Alessandro here. But I'm going to back up and let you just give us just a little overview for our audience that may not know them.
Speaker 2:Sure. So Maria Goretti was, I believe, the youngest canonized saint in modern times. She was 11 years old when she died. A very faithful young girl, loving family, worked hard, peasant farmers and loved the Eucharist, loved Jesus. And one day one of the families that lived with her, the Serenellis, the youngest boy, alessandro, attempted to seduce her and then take advantage of her. She fought him off, told him if you do this, you will go to hell. God does not want this. In response, alessandro stabbed her 14 times with a brush hook and then went to bed and Maria had to endure emergency surgery. This is in 1902, so anesthesia and medical practice is nowhere near. It is today.
Speaker 2:And yet, on her deathbed, among her last words were that she forgave Alessandro, but more than that, she wanted to see him in heaven and she died. The church declared her a martyr because she died for all the great virtues you can imagine, and she was canonized by 1947. But more miraculously than that, alessandro had a vision of her while he was serving his prison sentence and it melted his hardened heart. He became a model prisoner, then a model citizen. When he was released from prison, begged forgiveness from Maria's mother and family. They accepted him as one of their own in a show of forgiveness. That is unbelievable. And he died, always having to bear the guilt and the consequences of what he did.
Speaker 1:But he died a good man. He died a good man. You know, this is the opposite sides of the pole right.
Speaker 2:This young guy. There was a moment in the book, michael.
Speaker 1:Early in the book, where Alessandro asked himself why he could not be like the simple-minded peasants who treated sexes casually as rutting beasts, temptations were starting to come into his mind. You know, these families were peasant farmers, right, living basically together, and Maria Goretti's father had died right by then. It was died early, and I think Alessandro's mother had died early. Yes, she did so these families came together to work the farm, basically to work the farm, and so these temptations started to go to him. He knew, though, at that moment this is why, when we talk to these young men, this is the Claymore sword behind me, michael, that's the Claymore sword, miletus Christi.
Speaker 1:We know this is the battle of the heart. John Paul would say it's the battle of the heart, between love and lust, in essence, and it always starts in the human heart, in the individual human heart and essence, and always starts in the human heart, in the individual human heart. And so the reason I bring this up, michael, is because there's that moment where he said that I wish I could be like the simple-minded peasants who treated sex as casually as rutting beasts. See, something, when he looked at Maria, he still had a conscience, you know, he had that, something more, that these young people that are coming in with us, michael, are sensing there's got to be something more, something better there. But at that moment this is this temptation At that moment you have to do battle, don't you? And you can go one of two ways and get led down some wild paths. We've all been on those paths, brother. I can speak from experience.
Speaker 2:No, as a young man, not to the extent that Alessandro did, but I got into some really egotistical philosophies that said, you know, man is the measure of all things. We're beyond good and evil, we're the arbiters of morality, and that's especially as a young man. That's a very tempting philosophy to want to engage in. It's ultimately fruitless and, as we see with Alessandro, it can lead to some very dark ideas quickly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when those temptations come in. We're all standing, in a sense, between that tree of the knowledge of good and evil and we have to make that decision. Our sexual desires are powerful. This is a life force, an energy, life force within us. It's put there by God because your passions and desires.
Speaker 1:The problem is not with our passions and desires, of course. The problem is with our misdirected passions and desires. This can either shoot you to our destiny, to heaven itself and find what we're looking for and be a self-giving person, or we twist it around and that rocket goes down deep into a very dark, anxious place. We deal, michael, with a lot of young people that are anxious, nervous, depressed, even talk about suicide, and so this is a big deal. This is a big deal. And so you're standing there, and he's standing there at that time and this was a crucial moment, I think when temptation really again earlier on in the book, where he says no, I'm going to be like the beasts, you know, I'm going to be like those animals and give in to this, you know, and it took him a while.
Speaker 2:It took him a long while and I would say nothing, but the grace of God could have overcome his hardened heart. One of the beautiful things about this book is the author, pietro di Donato, spent some time with Alessandro Serenelli and really got to know his mind. So the book kind of talks about his inner life, the inner struggles he had, especially the struggles he had growing up, but also how his mind led to the erotic literature, to the horrible philosophies he consumed and this idea that he had that he was above reproach and could just give into his passions willy-nilly. And it led to the death of an 11 year old girl and a horrific accident like even in our time we would. If that happened in our neighborhood, it would traumatize us and these things happen all the time.
Speaker 2:Yes, they happen all the time actually, yes, they happen all the time.
Speaker 1:I mean, these things are dark. You know, it's very interesting what you just said, that you know this is a time before the Internet.
Speaker 2:This is the time before these.
Speaker 1:You know, we carried these phones, like you said, around in our pockets all the time. Yet he was reading, at this time, sensational novels, articles about crime, lust, passions. He even read an article about someone who murdered a young girl and she was stabbed to death by this mad lover, and so he actually carried this out. This again gets back and we know this when we fill our minds and our hearts. You know, john Paul would call it self-determination, and he didn't make this up, right, I mean, he brings us to the tradition of the church, but we co-create ourselves with God, don't we, michael? I mean, it's our actions, it's what we fill ourselves with, and we participate in this story. We didn't create ourselves, but we co-create who we become, don't?
Speaker 2:we we do. We were given free will as a gift. We are not automatons just simply going about our day. So, even though we have driving passions, things like rage or lust can really they can control the mind in many ways, but ultimately, we still have the power over ourselves to make a determination what do I want to be?
Speaker 1:And, in addition to free will, we were given reason and intellect.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And? But you know, we see this, michael, what's your opinion? Just to get off this just a little bit. You know, not far from that. Isn't this what's going on in our culture today? That, you know, when we reject what's true, good and beautiful, when we become people of, you know, basically living out this moral, relativistic life where there is no truth, only my truth or your truth, it's very chaotic. You know, we become irrational people when we no longer seek the truth. We become irrational. And so often Michael and Bishop Sheen would talk about this a lot he said, when you become irrational over time it turns to violence. And Alessandro said that in the book. He said this one time and I'll throw this back to you. He said at some point. So the line was crossed here, right, this is the real life. He said, the stories of forbidden fruit no longer nourish them, and it might've been the author that said this, and self-abuse infuriated him. So this forbidden fruit, it no longer nourished him. I needed more like an addict, right?
Speaker 2:This is no more.
Speaker 1:And the self-abuse. You know I'm assuming this was the pain in his own heart. It infuriated him, right. He couldn't fulfill these desires he had. And finally you give in to your passions. You know when you're seeking the infinite and you're trying to fill it out with an infinite with it, with you know, in a finite space, trying to fill the infinite desires of our heart in a finite space.
Speaker 2:It's infuriating to people, right, because they can't do it no, I think it's very infuriating, especially in the modern age that we at alessandro lived in, where we were promised that the enlightenment. You know we're now a rational, we're a rational universe and anything we want or desire to can be manufactured for us and mailed to our door by Amazon and this will bring us ultimate fulfillment. And it doesn't. We see this in the statistics suicide and depression are at all high highs, especially around young men, and we know that people, whether they're my age, in their mid 40s or they're younger, it's not satisfying, it doesn't fill that hole in our heart the way that it was promised, and what does it lead to but anger and resentment?
Speaker 1:I think you're seeing this. When we have these protests and I'm generalizing here, right, I'm not knocking every protest. You know, I grew up in the—I was born in the late 50s, but I grew up in the 60s and the 70s we had plenty of protests and some of them were violent, you know, but they didn't start out that way. They didn't start with violence. We had a theme, we had an idea that, you know, against the war or whatever, that was Right, but the sexual revolution was alive and well.
Speaker 1:And the same time we're protesting against war, we're creating war within our own hearts, you know we got it twisted. You know St Maria Goretti and Alessandro. They were well before us. But I tell you what you know the sexual revolution unleashed this again. When we don't understand what the beauty of our sexuality, the beauty of love, man, we can get thrown around, can't we. And I see this breaking out all over the culture.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's hard for it not to break out in the culture because you know I'm forgetting who coined the phrase sex sells, but you know it was a truism of it sells everything from shampoo to beer in our commercials. You can't watch a football game without having your lust triggered in some ways. It's very much almost to a point where and it's strange because it almost devalues sex to a purely base, animalistic way- To the point, Michael, where we're not even going out looking for girls anymore.
Speaker 1:These guys are in the basement with porn. I think this is where that I got to try to remember that phrase, you know. And the self-abuse infuriated him. It's something stuck with me when I read that and I go yes, you know again, these poor young guys, you know, they become apathetic to life, life becomes very dark. What's the point of all this? And man, the faith, becomes important. You know, you see this even in these peasants. You know that have nothing around them and still are filled with joy of the family, of cooking Just the. You know they don't take for granted just a roof over their heads. And it's really something when you see this twisted and distorted culture we work with, again, with a lot of young people, and when they hear this story for the first time, you know theology of the body and the beauty of our sexuality. I think it's so important, michael, not to push down these desires and tell young men and young women that these are bad, because these desires themselves have been given to us again by God. When you open those desires to be purified, it's like a river. I think you know Tucker Carlson had Bishop Barron on not too long ago and Bishop Barron described it.
Speaker 1:You know something like that he said. You know, this is a river with banks and within those banks it's moving, it's beautiful, it's moving fast, but what happens when those banks break down, you know? And everything just gets, you know, putrid and apathetic, and we lose the meaning, and we lose the beauty and the power of this right and we become inverted. And I think this is all these things are going through Alessandro. He's living in this marsh area, he's bored, you know, you don't have air conditioning, you don't have television, you know and he's reading this, you know this, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I can't really call it garbage, but he described it, as you know, fairly crime-ridden. You know kind of got him into these lustful states. What do we do, michael, in that state? And what happened ultimately with Alessandro?
Speaker 2:Well, initially, alessandro was completely unrepentant of his crime. He murdered an 11-year-old girl, went to bed and then Maria. After she died, he was, of course, arrested. The Carabinieri, which were the National Police of Italy, dragged him to court and he, even at the insistence of his lawyer he would not show remorse. He didn't even want to appeal his sentence. For him it was a fait. To complete, it was done. So what's the point of arguing about it? And said something that churned my stomach, but just basically, like she wouldn't have died if she just gave in. That was his attitude, but and that's what the way he really felt I, I get a sense of that in the book, right.
Speaker 1:Oh, it was absolutely. It was absolutely the way he felt she owes this to me. I'm showing her attention, I'm giving her my attention. Why wouldn't she do this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and that entitlement towards another person's body is something that we almost promote in this culture, so it's something you know, everyone's owed. A pretty woman to have sex with is kind of the message you can get from our society, and here it was. He took that to its fullest extreme, but to show God's grace and how powerful it is, a few years into his sentence, after he was serving solitary confinement, an earthquake happened in Sicily, where he was imprisoned, and a few days later he had a dream of Maria coming to him, handing him 14 lilies, each representing the stab wounds he gave her, and they burst into flames when he took them. And not only that. She promised, as she said on her deathbed I forgive you and I want you in heaven with me.
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Speaker 1:A couple, a couple things to share with people love ed. Love ed is just such a important um apostolate, so it's in within our apostolate, the john paul to renewal center. This helps parents give the talk to their children. Uh, we're trying to push back on all these gender ideologies and the porn culture and give children the truth and do it through their parents, and we help them do that. The other one is really taken off too. It's Claymore Miletus Christi, soldiers for Christ. That's where you see the sword behind me. That's the big sword. That's our logo for Claymore. That's a Claymore sword. And this is for young people, especially young men, gen Z, high school, all the way through, let's call it, till they're 30 years old or so. They're starting to really understand that something nefarious, very toxic, is going on in the culture, and so they're stepping into the church and we're discipling them. So we want to help get the word out about those things and, lastly, consider financially supporting us. Everything's in the show notes. Hey, god bless you. Thanks again.
Speaker 2:And this was almost. It was a Paul on the road to Damascus moment. He was changed instantly. Within moments he became a model prisoner. He wrote to the bishop. He said he wanted to do right, he wanted to ask forgiveness from the family and he knew he would have to live with this guilt for the rest of his life.
Speaker 1:Close to the people that listen to us, michael, and again my heart goes out to them, but it just shows you when you start to read good literature, right?
Speaker 1:You start to read scripture, you start to pray, you start to open up, and I think this is so poignant. This is page 107 in the book. It was ironic that the compelling reading habit that fanned the fire toward crime in the farmhouse where he was living now was a wall of solace and his intimate and richly rewarding friend. He realized the fact that the printed word could be a potent influence for the activation of either good or evil. And here's the point again. I should say that again right, the fact that the printed word could be a potent influence for the activation of either good or evil. It was like a substance taken into one's being, where putrid air and food made for illness and even death, or the opposite, or the compassion for life. And so this is how we kind of started this whole thing. You know, when you fill yourself, you become. You know, john Paul would say, when you fill yourself with the good, you go out and do good you become good, I am good or we start to fill ourselves with evil, with sin.
Speaker 1:We go out and do sin and even in your heart, right, jesus said, you know, matthew 5, 27, 28, even if you look at a woman with lust in your heart, you've already committed adultery and you always think, wow, that seems kind of harsh, right. But the point is here, the point is right there. That's where the sword comes in. Right at that point of temptation I don't want to stuff it down, pretend like it doesn't exist. The starvation diet, right when.
Speaker 1:Alessandro exploded and he indulged. And these poor guys that we meet, addicted to pornography, so many of them go from suppressing to indulging, suppressing to indulging. And what we're talking about here is a third way to open those desires to God and allow him to come into our heart as becomes an invitation to prayer. And it's so beautiful when that happens. I know in my own life, every morning I'm tempted with something you know sloth, or I don't want to get up, or I don't want to do, or I'm fearful because I got some new presentation that I haven't done before. And I go, oh my gosh, you know I haven't prepared well for this. I got to, you know, so I, you get down on your knees and you open up all those temptations, whatever they are, and uh, and it's just such a beautiful way and let God's grace come in and fill you.
Speaker 2:You ever have that happen, Michael. Yes, I have, and I've also. I've been. I'm not the only one. No, you're far from the only one. My friend, trust me.
Speaker 1:It's common and I think we need to talk to that, to young people, about that, you know, because they don't know, they're coming back in and saying, oh my gosh, do I just do battle with, with all these lusts, because they have these images, right, and this putrid, you know, and they're getting the shove down. We call it. I did a presentation last night and we title it stolen innocence and we do it all over the all over the state, and it's, it's what they're doing. They're robbing the innocence of children, they're obliterating their moral imaginations.
Speaker 1:And these are young kids that, like, like it, reminds me of a little Maria Goretti. She was 11 years old, and that's what they're doing this even before they're 11. Of a little Maria Goretti. She was 11 years old and that's what they're doing this even before they're 11. And when you twist and distort a young person's heart like that, this is evil, this is really evil. They're doing it in the Illinois schools, here, they're trying to do it in Colorado and they're succeeding too. You know, pushing these national what they call national sex ed standards and stuff down to these kids, these gender ideologies, it's something. Are you feeling that out there?
Speaker 2:I'm not as familiar with the education program. I'm not surprised, to say the least, because our whole culture is basically the way I like to describe. It is because we're such a consumerist culture where we think we're allowed anything and everything on demand. We do that to our sexuality, to our pleasures, and then we wonder why everyone's messed up when they become adults.
Speaker 1:And because you're getting into relationships, then you know you're getting you know whether you're married or not, but let's call it. Let's say you are, let's say you get married. Well, you know, we think that this brokenness is just going to go away. You know, everybody's looking for the right person, but nobody wants to become the right person. So when you find the right person, they either reject you because you're not what they're looking for, or the two broken people which we're all broken, right.
Speaker 2:We're all sinners.
Speaker 1:Two broken people get married and they aren't aiming at Christ on the cross. They're not aiming at him first so I can be filled with divine life and love and then become that life and love in the world. And when you don't do that, you know I kind of like the evil, I don't like evil Michael, but I kind of like that.
Speaker 1:It's standing up, it's open. You know the weeds and the wheat, that parable right, and I kind of like this you can see it and that's what these young people are seeing. You know, what they did is and I don't know if you're a political animal or not but they voted for Donald Trump, so many of them and they just felt like something had to change. And he gave them some hope that maybe somebody was there backing them up, you know, but they didn't know why. They don't know exactly what's going on. So this is a great time to evangelize, michael. So speak to these young people from your own heart, right from your own experience. You're a reader, you've got a philosophical background. I can't wait to read some more of your stuff, but you just seem like you're full of joy and, look, you're a beer critic. I drink a little more wine than beer, but I love these craft beers and the IPAs and stuff that are coming out.
Speaker 1:So Christianity is not a Puritanism. It's not stuffing these things down. Look, I didn't warn you about talking about that kind of stuff, but let's talk about that a little bit, because this is not about not being joyful and taking pleasures and et cetera, is it?
Speaker 2:No, and like you said a couple of times, God created these for us. They are good for us. Thank you, you know, without you know, we are given sexual passion. Part of it is to bring about children, one of the greatest joys in the human race. This is a good thing God has given us. The problem is, as Augustine would point out, is that we can deface the goodness or we put lower goods above the highest goods, so suddenly sex becomes more important than self-improvement, our salvation and our relationships and things like that, and then it's still disordered in how we approach it. So in all of this, what we're looking for is joy. I like to use Chesterton's analogy that God built us a playground, but he put a fence around the playground to protect us. So we're not there, we're not imprisoned, we're there to be protected. So we're not imprisoned, we're there to be protected. God gave us this vast area to play in, to have fun, to enjoy life, but we're not to go beyond those walls because there is danger no-transcript.
Speaker 1:And when you start to talk about St Augustine, here's a man that was a worldly man.
Speaker 1:He had all these passions and desires right he never did marry the woman that he lived with for, I think, 15 years. His only child was a son born out of wedlock, and so he went through some of the same things right Again. We get back to our premise in the beginning that these temptations are going to whack all of us. It's what we do with them. And he's searching, searching. He wants to build up his own reputation and then he hears this crazy who became and I don't know if he was at that time Bishop Ambrose, and he just hears that gospel and it touches something. It says ooh, ooh, what was that, what was that? And it touches something.
Speaker 2:It says ooh, ooh, what was that? Huh, what was that? No, it was exactly like so many of those conversion moments, we're always looking to be fulfilled. We're looking for something that will fill that gap in our heart that we have, especially after the fall. And so much of the world I even read will sometimes read a biography of a millionaire or a billionaire and they'll talk about their nice houses, all their lavish wealth, and they're still depressed and it's like well, if this can't give me fulfillment, what can?
Speaker 1:What can you know? I love the same thing when I speak to engaged couples, which I'll be doing this Saturday for our diocese and we unpack theology.
Speaker 1:I love to give examples of people that have it, that had it all right All the money, all the fame, all the girls, all the talents that they have. And again, I don't like evil, I don't like bad things to happen to people, but they're not happy, they're on drugs. Some of them have killed themselves. You know, when I was a kid and I don't know, do you remember Elvis Presley? Yeah, oh, yes, yeah. And so it's amazing, when I'm speaking to young people they still know Elvis somehow. But anyway. So you know, we used to look forward to his new movie coming out, etc. Etc. He had everything and we always said, oh man, he's got the girls, he's got the guitar, he's got the looks. You know he's, he's doing these movies at the beach. By the time he was in his late thirties he was addicted to junk food, he was on opioids, basically already he died at 42 years old and, uh, and you know, had everything. To your point, uh, it, it. It doesn't bring us what we're looking for. You know, it doesn't bring us.
Speaker 2:No, there's Christ promised that the only thing that would fulfill us, that would fill us is him. And to contract someone like Elvis with, say, any of the saints like Ignatius or Augustine. Even when they had nothing, even when everything was going wrong in their life, they still found joy, and that, to me, is the real marker that they found something, that pearl of great price, Because even when the world is falling apart around them, they still find a way to sing Hallelujah.
Speaker 1:Yes, they do. Well, I'm going to—near the very end of the book. I want to read just something very interesting. It kind of ties this all together, and I am going to break down and put my glasses on here, michael. And so the author is Pietro. What's his last name?
Speaker 2:Di.
Speaker 1:Donato. Okay, so he's the author. He wrote this book quite a while ago. Sophia Institute Press has updated, I think, right and brought it back to the fore, which they did. A marvelous job with this, I'll make sure.
Speaker 1:I have this book in the. I'll take a picture of it, make sure I put this up and of course, we'll have it in the show notes. But toward the end it's like an editor's note, I believe he said, and this was from oh yeah, here it is author's note from 1962 edition, so from an earlier edition. So he's going out at the end and he is interviewing people for this story that he wrote and as he's interviewing priests and different people that knew Alessandro, and then he gets to meet Alessandro, but he's speaking to peasants and all kinds of people and he said this no one spoke. Now, this is many years after this happened. Right, he's out of prison. He was in prison for 27 years. He gets out. This is many years after this happened. Right, he's out of prison. He was in prison for 27 years. He gets out.
Speaker 2:This is many years later he's been living with the Capuchins, right? How do we say that again? Like cappuccino without the O.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I'm struggling today with these big words like Capuchin, right. So, anyways, this is many, many years later and the author is going to interview these people that know the story very well. But they're looking back and they say this this is on page 159, if anybody wants to reference this. When I asked people, no one spoke ill of Alessandro. They felt sorry for him and said that a moment of madness could come over anyone, for him, and said that a moment of madness could come over anyone.
Speaker 1:Blind passion happens to everybody and that there are times variable like the weather in life, when it is not humanly possible to resist the devil. And so all these people that he's interviewing now look at this. It's not an emotional issue anymore. That was my earlier point of saying this is many, many years later. So we all look back at this and we all realize whoo. Any of us maybe couldn't have committed murder like this. But we all those people understood, didn't they, that this is a human condition, this battle that we're in, and we're in a temporal space where you know this, militant Christi, soldiers for Christ, we're called the church militant for a reason. And again, the primary battle Schultz and Nielsen said it so well, it's fought on the individual human heart.
Speaker 2:It's fought on the individual human heart. Amen to that. It's always a struggle, and I think the ultimate message of Alessandro's life is no matter how far gone you've gone, no matter how bad you've done, there's still forgiveness, there's still grace to be had. If you're like me and you don't get to confession as frequently as you should go, because God wants to forgive you. Pope Francis put it well that God never tires of forgiving us. It's we who get tired of asking, and so just keep asking and keep going, going, because God does want to forgive you and wants to redeem you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you look up at the cross, you know at the end, if you really understand the cross, that's an act of love, self-giving love. John Paul would say when you look at love and you'll see mercy. Right, this is mercy that you're explaining being poured on us. He said the second word for love is mercy, and this is what God does. This is my body given for you. If we could all take that in and see the world that way.
Speaker 1:And when we see a beautiful woman, not to pretend like we don't see the woman, but to say this is my body given for you, I want to offer when I see it. Look, it just happened to me the other day at Costco, you know, and I'm not a spring chicken anymore and I see this beautiful woman walking toward me. You know, in the old days I would have said, oh please, you know, I don't want to look at that, I don't want to. You know, whatever, but not anymore. I don't struggle with it anymore. I actually see the beauty and I look at her momentarily.
Speaker 1:I I say thank you, god, for the beauty of that woman and I offer her up in my prayer and I offer a prayer for her and I lift us up, you know, and it's so beautiful when that happens and you think that, well, how many times a day do I got to do this? Well, sometimes it's 100 in the beginning, and then it's 50, and then it's 10, and then it's a couple times a day. But now, when it happens, I thank God for that, because he reminds me of where we're going, the beauty of that, of that, that, that beauty of Jesus hanging on the cross. This is just a little taste of how much he loves us. To your point, god, who loves us, wants to shelter, wants to just pour his mercy on us. This is just that. When you see this, when you feel this, this is a tiny taste of God's love for us. It's amazing, isn't it?
Speaker 2:It is amazing. It's something I think I know. I get too used to it sometimes that it just becomes part of the background noise. But when you stop and hear stories like this and you really look at it, you go. There's no other reaction but gratitude. That's the only reaction, that's appropriate is thank you, god, for all these things. Thank you for Alessandro and that he was able to share this story with us, because the world is a better place with him in it.
Speaker 1:It is, and let's go out this way. Can you just talk about the relationship that he had with Maria Goretti's mother? That he had with Maria Goretti's mother? How how already you know. Talk about that a little bit, because if we can all get to this point in our lives with you, know, well, I'm going to, I'm going to give it to you, oh sure.
Speaker 2:You know this is I wrote. I've written articles about levitating saints at by location, and that's easier for me to believe than this sort of forgiveness. It's just beyond belief, but it happened. Alessandro, after he gets out of prison I believe in 19, I'm trying to remember the exact year 1932. So he's out of prison. He gets an invite to the from a priest to come to the parish where the garettis are. He knocks on the Goretti's door, falls at the feet of Assunta and begs her forgiveness in tears, and Assunta touches his face, calls him her son and promises that she does forgive him, even says Maria forgave you, I have to forgive you. And not only that. That would be unbelievable enough. They go to communion together. They frequently have Alessandro over for dinner. When Assunta died they called Alessandro and he came to the funeral.
Speaker 1:They stood together.
Speaker 2:I could almost tear up on that. I am getting tears. It's just they were able to—they formed a relationship not only with Maria's mother, Assunta, but with all of Maria's siblings. They became very close to each other and again, no one would fault them if they held vengeance but they forgave and it showed a better path and a better way to be human.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, yes. What a beautiful way to kind of close this up. Michael, thank you so much for coming on. Thanks so much for coming on. Thanks everybody for joining us. We really appreciate it. Go get the book. I have it in the show notes. And again, when you look at books like this, it'll speak to your heart, because this is a timeless story. And for young people coming just into the church, say, and the people that love them, the parents, the grandparents, the brothers, the sisters that are excited for them to come into the church, we have to tell them that these are timeless battles. But we also have to show them the beauty of the other side, the beauty, as Michael said so well, of forgiveness, the beauty of God's mercy and forgiveness, and it's just such a better way to live. This. Is that, something more that you're looking for in your hearts right.
Speaker 1:Hey, thank you everyone. Thanks for joining us. Talk to you again soon. Bye-bye.