Fr. Giuseppe Pellizzari, a Salesian who was the first provincial of Moscow in Russia, andwho came for the Spring 2013 semester to the ISS shares his reflections on his experience:
In retrospect, I must thank you all, Salesian confrere and guests, for my happy four-month stay at Don Bosco Hall.
All the ingredients for a pleasant experience have been there. First of all Berkeley, or the sunny side of the Bay, as it is rightly called: a unique place to unwind after years of exertion. We even had the cocktail before dinner sometimes as an extra, welcome help in relaxing.
I know, our good old Horace would wisely say, “sky, not spirit or soul, do they change, those who cross the sea’ (in the elegant original Latin: caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt). I agree, but still the new sky over me helped me discover new things in me and others. I discovered the beauty and the challenge of lifelong and third-age learning. I could read the same page several times at relatively short intervals and find it new and interesting each time! Jokes aside, I never got bored for a very important reason of course: I loved the subjects I was taking, so close were they to my concrete situation, i.e. that of a Salesian working in Russia. Both my identity and my mission were being taken care of. For a deepening and widening of my identity ample provision was made at the Institute of Salesian Studies. By the way I am proud to have been a pupil of Fr. Arthur Lenti. I had been diligently keeping on my desk and caressing with my eyes his first three volumes of “Don Bosco: History and Spirit”, which I had bought five years ago during the GC 26 and now I could actually spend hours discussing Salesian history and charism at their very source and beginning, in Don Bosco himself. Then there was the inspiring and thought-provoking course on John, so masterly held by Fr. Frank Moloney: so many new insights, so spiritually nourishing and rich reflections. Finally I had my weekly contact with the patristic spirituality and with the orthodox world, so complex and fascinating. This was also something I really needed for my present work in Russia.
The context at Berkeley was conducive to study and exchange. As for the first point I had access to three libraries, GTU, Berkeley University and Berkeley Public Library. In the community itself there was a good mix of people of different ages and interests and ethnic and cultural backgrounds. And Berkeley itself is unique. For me personally, having experienced the wind of change blowing from California at the end of the 60’s when I was a university student, there was a real, though naive, desire to recapture the vibrancy of those years, the years after the Council, when change was felt imminent and inevitable.
I don’t want to sound romantic and to be verbose, so I just ask you to check the essay which I sent to you in November 2012 and there you will find what my expectations were before coming to Berkeley. Everything has materialized beyond my expectations.
Here I’m back to work in our small community. Today I said mass in our Gatchina parish, while the other two confrere travelled 100 to 200 km. to supply mass in “nearby” parishes. Our project of new premises for our school is still unanswered.
That’s all for now.
I hope next year Don Bosco Hall will be working to full capacity or nearly.
Cari saluti.
don Giuseppe