Carlo Torriani

SWARGA DWAR

The conversion of a catholic missionary

presented by

Card. Simon Pimenta

PIME Publications, PIME Regional House, Eluru - 534 0-07, A.P., India

“ONLY ONE IS NECESSARY”

 Letter to my fellow citizens, April 1993

Dear friends from Sesto,

    You came to India. We met on your first evening in your hotel in Bombay. Your guide, Mrs. Silvia Corti, requested me to celebrate Mass for you. I prepared my sermon but there was no time. Then I want to speak to you with this letter.

    To celebrate the Eucharist means to give thank and to share. How can we give thank and share while we are in India?

    You came with many suitcases and you left four or five full of clothes and gifts also to me. You gave me also cash donation. Thank you.! But it is not only about this kind of sharing that I want to speak. Sharing is always a two way process. Who comes to India, also if he/she passes from one hotel to the other, can’t avoid sharing at least the sight of poverty and sometime also some kind of sickness pick up here. If it happened to you, be grateful to God who gave you a chance for sharing.

    That evening I wanted to tell you that every tour of India becomes always a kind of pilgrimage, that is a quest for the inner self and, if you want, a quest for the ultimate reality. Who come to India can’t avoid asking: “What is the essence of this life?” The answer that we get looking at the people in India seems to be that nothing is essential of what we have on this earth. Millions of people in this country seem to live with nothing. We are reminded of the words of Jesus: “Only one is necessary”.

    I read on a tourist guide that for those who come to India there is no middle way: either you love it cordially or you hate it passionately. What happened to you? May be one moment one way, another moment the other way? Was it a mixture of hate and love? Whether you want to come back or not, we must recognised that India has left its sign in everyone of us.

    In the film “A Passage to India” there is one sentence: “ India has the power to put everyone in front of himself ”. If that happened, then we will rediscover India inside ourselves: from nothing to infinite. May be it will come back in your dreams, in your moments of meditation or prayer.

    The Gospel that I wanted to read with you was the story of the Samaritan woman. She asked Jesus: “Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, while you say that Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship” Others thing that is Benares, others Mecca, others Rome or other places. Jesus gave his answer: “Believe me woman, the hour is coming, in fact it is already here, when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.” I pray that your journey in India may give you this power to be able to detach yourselves from places and  circumstances of this world and search the solutions in yourselves in spirit and truth.”

    I thank you all and greet every one of you cordially.