Joshua and Jordan priests of the Lord

Magnificat Community celebrates with the whole Church in Perugia the priestly ordination of Joshua and Jordan

Two young men with sunny smiles and open dispositions: they are the newly ordained priests of Perugia, Giosuè Busti, 31, and Giordano Commodi, 39, who were ordained by Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti on Saturday, June 29, at St. Lawrence Cathedral.

Joshua we have seen growing up, he is one of Gabriella’s 3 sons -whom God called to the Magnificat Community among those of the first hour- and Rolando -called “Rambo” because of his being “yes-yes and no-no,” outspoken and not fond of compromises- who with Gabriella is part of the Bethany Fraternity in Perugia.

He, Joshua, is an Allied member of the Elce-Perugia Fraternity.

Lively and joyful, profound yet simple, his presence at community meetings makes a difference.

In an interview he recounts, “I discovered my vocation while in college, through the Magnificat Community in Elce and service in the Diocesan Youth Ministry, working, as a young person among young people, alongside the priests in charge.”

He naturally speaks of a call that made its way into his heart causing him to feel the “desire to give my whole life to Him, in a special way, to freely give back all that I had freely received.”

Thus, after graduating with a degree in political science, he entered the seminary. “The seminary years served me to mature a more conscious choice and helped me in my journey of human growth, as well as in my ever-deepening knowledge of the beauty and difficulties of priestly life.”

After his six years of formation at the Pontifical Regional Seminary of Umbria, he was ordained a deacon in September 2018 and was received at the Capranica College in Rome to continue his studies with a licentiate course in Canon Law at the Pontifical Gregorian University.

Jordan-a vocation that traces the experience of the first apostles who, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, abandoned their nets to follow the Master. “I was just a few exams away from graduating with a degree in Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Technology and had already been working for five years in a pharmacy,” he recounts, “when, after the 10 Commandments walk that had brought me back to God, I entered the life of the parish of Castel del Piano and subsequently left everything for Jesus. Indeed, in active participation in parish moments including pilgrimages, catechesis and services, “the desire to give myself, to spend my life totally for others, grew in me, and I realized that the more I gave myself the more I received.”

Beautiful words that touch us deeply also because Giordano is close to the Magnificat Community since he serves in the parish of S Barnaba in Perugia where our Fraternity lives.

During the homily of the Liturgical Celebration of Ordination, the Cardinal recommended that the priestly vocation always be guarded in the love of Christ: “In a few moments I will ask the candidates, ‘Do you want to be united ever more closely to Christ the High Priest, who, as a pure victim offered himself to the Father, consecrating, even yourselves to God for the salvation of men?’ and you will answer, ‘yes with God’s help I do!’ In a word you commit yourselves to surrender to Christ! And what does such a surrender entail? Certainly the commitment to love him! To love Him as the all for your life. Loving him as Father, as brother, as spouse, as friend….. The life of a priest, in words and silences, in action or in prayer, must continually weave the web of this love. And it is not a love of “skin,” tumultuous and inconstant, like that of a teenager; it is a love that is calm and strong, serene and capable of moving life, capable of satiating life. It is this very personal love for Jesus Christ that sustains and motivates our ministry, makes us “convinced” priests, priests who “really believe,” as people say.

Love for Christ, beloved, will make you pick up the Bible, make you pause, like Mary in Bethany, sitting at Christ’s feet while He speaks to you and looks at you.

Love for Jesus will make you take up the Liturgy of the Hours with daily fidelity, to speak to the bridegroom with the voice of the bride, to bring before God the praise, the groaning, the waiting, the confession of faith of our people.

Love for Christ will make you pick up books on theology, spirituality, liturgy, in order to know better the one we love and to make him better known to those to whom we turn. You will have to, out of love for Christ, make use of all the means of communication to get to know the face of the generation of this age, whom we are sent to watch and serve with the eyes of God.

It is the intensity of love for Christ that will dispossess you of space and time, and make you joyfully and courageously approach the path of children, young people, adults, and the elderly of every generation to make you brothers, to make you “all things to all people” for the purpose of “gaining someone to the cause of the Gospel.”

It is still the tenderness of Jesus’ love that will lead you to cross every human geography, and to be citizens of the regions of joy, as well as those of weeping, “to weep with those who weep” and “to laugh with those who laugh”; not to conceal your face under masks of occasion, but to be towards every creature, the visibility of the Father’s face. This is what it means to give yourself back to Christ, to allow him to fill your mind, heart, body, works, words, so that you can tell him with simple and disarming truth, “Lord, your love is worth more than life.”

The two young priests entered the Presbyteral Order with hearts full of gratitude, and their thanks at the end of the Celebration were anything but formal: to God first, to the Church, and to their families.

To the Seminary Formators, to the pastors who helped in the service who showed concretely how the priest expends energies with love for the entrusted flock.

To dear friend Giampiero Morettini, the young seminarian “inhabited by Christ,” who “did not give you the impression of someone who left something behind, but of someone who found Someone.” Giampiero, who died surrendering himself to the Lord in August 2014 after surgery, did indeed leave a living imprint on all his fellow seminarians.

To this thanksgiving we also want to join us of the Magnificat Community, once again honored to be able to give the Church young people who choose Christ as their first Love, who dedicate themselves to the Gospel, who put themselves at the service of the Church. We too together with Joshua and Jordan say: let us joyfully give back to God what he has given us.

Daniela Lightning

(*) words of Cardinal Bassetti on a day celebrated to remember Giampiero Morettini on June 1, 2016.