Holy Ghosts by Gary Jansen

Author:Gary Jansen
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Autobiography, Religious life
ISBN: 9781101443378
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2010-08-03T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

On April 2, 1839, a young Catholic seminarian named John Bosco sat in a pew in a church and mourned the death of his dear friend Louis Comollo. Six years earlier, the two had met during Bosco’s last year in secondary school in Piedmont, a mostly mountainous province in northern Italy. They attended the seminary together in Chieri, an important textile town about eleven kilometers from Turin that had once been under the thumb of Napoleon Bonaparte in the late eighteenth century. They had an enduring friendship and the two complemented each other’s dispositions. Comollo had always been quiet, frail, and devout; Bosco, on the other hand, while a sensitive and serious young man in his own right, was also funny, loving, and sociable. Bosco grew up in poverty, but from the age of nine believed he was on a mission from God. He had his first prophetic dream at that age when a vision, possibly of Jesus, told him that it was with charity and gentleness that he must bring people together. The dreams would continue for the rest of his life.

Though devoted to God, he was not without his doubts, and the death of his friend was a painful blow to the young student, whose father had died when he was two years old. While they were attending school together, both Bosco and Comollo were captivated by the lives of the saints and one day they made a pact. After reading about the exploits of the likes of Saint John the prophet, Saint Francis the servant, and Saint Anthony the desert hermit tormented by demons, they agreed that whoever was the first to die would bring back word of life on the other side to the surviving friend. Certainly, at the time they thought they had years before either of them would die, or did they?

That agreement resounded in Bosco’s ears like the church bells that rang through the town that morning. He sat in the church and looked around for a sign from his friend—a light, a vision, a sudden movement, anything. He listened intently to the words of the funeral rite and to the sounds around him. Nothing. But Bosco was patient and vowed to keep vigil of the agreement. The words of an old dream surely passed through his mind: “What seems so impossible you must achieve by being obedient.” He would be obedient and patient. He would wait as long as he had to for a sign.

Bosco didn’t have to wait long. The next night, he was in his dormitory, a large open room that housed twenty other seminarians, preparing to go to sleep. It had been a long couple of days and the death of Louis Comollo was still burning inside of him. He lay in his bed and as his other room-mates drifted off to sleep, Bosco prayed. He was praying to hear from his friend, to have word from heaven, to confirm for him that he was on the right path and that his dreams weren’t deceptions of the mind, but direct messages from the Almighty.

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