PART ONE

MAN OF GOD AND FOR GOD

"A man all God's and all for God": this is how Bishop Scalabrini was described.  His life was "theological," consecrated to God and the cause of God.  The thoughts and texts we have gathered show the essentially Christological dimension of his life of faith.

Christ is God-in-us: Love itself made flesh in humanity and diffused into our hearts by the Spirit.

Christ is God-with-us: Love itself come to pitch his tent among us in the Eucharist.

Christ is God-for-us: Love itself enduring unto the end, Love dead and resurrected to make us sharers in his life, death, and resurrection.

Christians are justified and sanctified by faith in Christ.  Faith is the gift by which God gives himself completely to us.  We respond to him by the total gift of self, constantly directing our minds and hearts to God in prayer and receiving from the Spirit the light that unveils the mystery of man and of history as they move forward toward the realization of the Kingdom of heaven.

Bishop Scalabrini's ideal of holiness is that of offering his own person to Christ so that in his person Christ will prolong his Incarnation, that is to say, will continue, through the person of Scalabrini, to love, see, speak and work in a visible and tangible way as He did during his earthly life: "I live, no longer I, but Christ Jesus lives in me" (Gal 2:20).

Christ, present in the Paschal mystery that is prolonged in our everyday life, walks along with us.  He becomes our neighbor in the person of our fellow travelers, especially in those in whom he has more vividly engraved his image: Our Lady, the saints and the poor.