A MAN OF GOOD FRIDAY

 

In this year of HOPE, one man lived this virtue to the fullest, even though his entire life was Lenten- physically and spiritually. Yet he never gave in to despair.

SERVANT of GOD NINO BAGLIERI was born in Modica, Sicily in 1951. After attending primary school he went to work as a bricklayer. At age 16, he fell from scaffolding from a height of 55 feet, leaving him completely paralyzed. Faced with this dramatic situation his mother Giuseppina, a woman of strong faith, vowed to personally look after him for the rest of her life.

Nino went from one hospital to another but without any improvement. Back in his native town in 1970, after the early days of visits from his friends, ten long years of darkness began for Nino, without leaving the house, alone, in desperation and suffering. Nino Baglieri was drowning in self-pity, cursing his lot , with no hope. However, his courageous mother never lost hope for her son’s conversion.  

On 24 March 1978, Good Friday, a group of people who were part of the Renewal of the Spirit Movement prayed over him. Nino felt himself transformed as he himself recounts: “It was Good Friday 1978; I will never be able to forget that date. It was four in the afternoon; the priest came with a small group of people who began to pray over me, laid hands on my head and called on the Holy Spirit. It was at that precise moment when they were invoking the Holy Spirit, that I felt a great warmth invade my body, a tingling as if there was new strength coming into me and something old was leaving me. 

At that instant I accepted the Cross, said my ‘yes’ to the Lord, accepted Christ into my life and was reborn to new life. At that moment I was looking for physical healing but instead the Lord had worked something greater - healing of the spirit. I was reborn to new life, a new man with a new heart. While still suffering my heart was filled with a new joy, a joy I had never known.”

From that moment Nino began reading the Gospels and the Bible, rediscovering the wonders of faith. It was at that time, while helping some of the neighboring youngsters to do their homework that he learned how to write with his mouth. And this is how he spent his days. He wrote his memoirs and wrote letters to people of all kinds all around the world, and personalized little cards that he gave to people who visited him. 

Thanks to a crossbar he was able to write down telephone numbers and be in direct contact with other people who were sick, his calm and convincing words comforting them. He began a constant flow of relationships with people, which not only brought him out of his own isolation, but left him to witness to the Gospel of joy and hope with courage and without fear. In Loreto, speaking to a large group of young people who were looking at him with a degree of pity, he had the courage to tell them: “If any of you are in mortal sin then you are in a worse state than I am!”

 Yearly Nino celebrated the anniversary of his Cross, and in 1982 he became part of the Salesian Family as a Salesian Cooperator. On 31 August 2004 he made his perpetual profession among the Volunteers. Cardinal Angelo Comastri, who knew Nino said: “When you met him you had the sensation that the Holy Spirit dwelt within him ... He celebrated the anniversary of his call to the cross like others celebrate the anniversary of their marriage or ordination ..."

On 2 March 2007, after a long period of suffering and trial, he died. After his death he was dressed in tracksuit and gym shoes because, as he had said: “On my final trip to God I want to run to meet him.” 

Nino Baglieri was, a magnet of goodness which attracted so many young people to the love of God finding his strength in the Holy Eucharist!

 "Lord, in the Holy Eucharist let Yourself be absorbed in order to transform us into You, to be like You, to love and serve like You. Transform my life, O Lord, change it in Your way, so that I too may be a host for my brothers and sisters, that I may give myself to others with the same love as You give Yourself to me, so that I too may give myself to everyone.’”