Vocations often arrive after a long internal struggle: a whirlwind descent into hell, the rejection of oneself and the surrounding reality, the desire to self-destruct. It is the story of Gianluca Spalice, 34 years old, a Camillian religious ordained deacon in Messina, where he spent the last years of his vocational journey, which will soon be crowned with the priesthood. His is a story common to many of his peers: born in Naples, in the Fuorigrotta district, Gianluca is the last of three children: his coming into the world after three miscarriages was the greatest challenge that his parents chose to face; the pregnancy would have endangered the life of the mother who nevertheless chose to “give herself”, embodying that fourth vow of the Camillian charism.
Growing up, Gianluca often heard his father speak of God as “a concrete presence not far from everyday life” and this had fueled in him the desire to meet him. But the inability to “see him present” fueled a restlessness in the boy that at 23 years old pushed him to “hit rock bottom”, abandoning himself to “a dissolute life, surrounded by interior solitude, where there was only room for alcohol and fleeting sexual affairs; a slavery that I recognized – he says – but from which I could not free myself. The full awareness came when, faced with yet another relationship, that girl declared her love and I rejected saying that I didn’t understand what this feeling was.”
November 6, 2015, is the day that Gianluca indicates as “his Easter”: a video of the Crucifix of Cordoba shakes him to the point of provoking the crisis that would finally give way to the rebirth: the following Sunday, returning home after mass, Gianluca abandoned himself with his mother to a liberating cry: “The pain in my chest was such that I tore my shirt; I didn’t understand why the God that I had hurt was giving himself for me”, he explains.
From there he began his vocational journey and thanks to the meeting with Father Antonio Paladino, he came to know the Camillian charism. The accompaniment of the sick, typical of the teachings of Saint Camillus De Lellis, is a ministry that made him grow as a person first and foremost: “the suffering of those next to you forces you to ask questions, makes you look at life with different eyes; a shared prayer, an exchange of glances or simply the silent presence at that bedside makes you perceive the essence of the path that every Christian should take”, he said.
The diaconal ordination rite took place in the church of San Camillo and was officiated by the auxiliary bishop Cesare Di Pietro: rejoicing with him were the parish priest Father Hubert and all the religious of the order, the family members, the parish community which in recent years has learned to appreciate this young man who was close not only to the sick, but also to children and adolescents. Gianluca Spalice will now leave Messina and return to his native Naples, to serve at the Monaldi hospital; and who knows that one day his path will not lead to the shores of the Strait again.