Daniela Saetta is of Sicilian origin, although she has spent most of her life in Perugia, where she moved with her sister when their parents separated. Today she works as a pharmacist in a hospital, is married to Massimo and they have three children. In this conversation with Omnes, Daniela tells us how God unexpectedly burst into her life, through the Magnificat Community, when she was only 17 years old and far from God.
What does the word vocation mean to you?
-Encounter. An encounter that transformed my whole life. I was a girl with many problems behind me. First, during childhood, because of my parents' separation and divorce. Then, during adolescence, when all the wounds and misunderstandings that my sister and I had resurfaced and turned into a continuous rebellion against everything. Disappointment and rage against the whole world, against life, against religion and against God who, I said, certainly cannot exist! I have experienced what it means to feel old at the age of 17, not wanting to live anymore... it is something I have lived in my own skin. On the other hand, my family, a very tested family, was not practicing and was absolutely far from God. My sister and I were never taken to catechism classes, for example, and there were even anticlerical traits in certain subjects.
In adolescence, the period in which one seeks friendship, love, and makes one's first experiences, even mistaken ones, I felt, even more strongly, that inner emptiness of love and understanding that had not been given to me. And, although in the first years of high school a certain anti-Catholic radicalism had taken hold of me, in reality I was looking for something -I don't know exactly what. In a sense, I think I was looking for something spiritual, a transcendent sense, which always ended in disappointment.
I lived those years with the feeling that everything around me was false and bourgeois, where at times a façade Christianity, made of habits and little substance, predominated. Little by little, contacts with a Marxist high school teacher, together with the lack of coherence in the behavior of people who called themselves Catholics, led me to affirm that God did not exist. And so I went on, in a growing inner discomfort until everything suddenly collapsed when, in the midst of a crisis in which the idea of suicide kept recurring, I was invited to a prayer meeting of the Magnificat Community, which had just been born at that time. I was only 17 years old.
There I found something that really attracted me, something new, I found authenticity and, above all, I had a personal encounter with the Lord that today, after almost 45 years, I can say with certainty that it was a true encounter in which the Holy Spirit lit a fire in me that, despite the difficulties and changes that one has in life, has never been extinguished. Everything changed after that afternoon: it was a real turning point for me, a turning point.
A few years later I met Massimo in the Community, a guy who came from a difficult life and had gone through the experience of drugs. We fell in love and got married. Today our three children are grown up and we also have two wonderful grandchildren.
What does it mean to be part of the Magnificat Community in your daily life? For example, in your work?
-Mine is a normal life, that is, I live the charism of my community by doing what others do in ordinary life: I take care of my family, I go to work, I establish relationships with my colleagues, with my neighbors.
At work, the hospital environment is not easy, the kind of relationship with people is often cold and distant. I can't always talk so openly about God, but I don't hide it either; everyone knows that I am a Christian and that I am part of a community.
It happens that people open up to me and ask me for advice, and then it is easier to talk about God or to give testimony of how I live various situations. I usually tell everyone that God is like a "good father" and not a "strict and inflexible judge". In the work environment, people often criticize or speak ill of other colleagues and those moments become opportunities to say that it is not worth getting angry or holding a grudge.
Outside of work, from a more personal point of view, as each "allied" member of the community - because our community is a covenant community - I publicly renew once a year, together with the other allied members of the community, the "promises". There are four of them: the promise of poverty, of permanent forgiveness, of edifying love and of service.
Allied members of the community live these four promises according to their own state of life and particular circumstances: for example, our promise of poverty cannot be lived as a Franciscan who has nothing would live it. In a family, things are necessary to live and fulfill our mission of educating and accompanying our children. But this promise implies for us a choice of the lifestyle we intend to lead: a sober life, without excessive luxury, a life in which we keep the poor in mind. Moreover, even through the Tithe (of what is earned) that is donated to the community.
When I speak of the Magnificat Community, I realize that this commitment to "tithing" often arouses curiosity and even perplexity. But donating part of one's salary to the Community means not only supporting community life in its needs (from the missions to fraternal aid to the poor), but also trusting in God, because we all experience that the Lord never allows himself to be outdone in generosity and, therefore, never lets those who give him something lack what is necessary.
Another promise concerning allies is that of permanent forgiveness. This is reflected in all of life: for who does not suffer in relationships with others, in misunderstandings and disagreements?
The promise to build love is the commitment we make to be builders of the Kingdom of God and the love He represents, so it also reinforces the previous promises by helping us not only not to remain angry with others, but also to take the first step towards reconciliation. It is the premise for fraternal life!
Finally, service to the community and the Church. In my case, for example, I participate in activities that have to do with music and singing, besides proclaiming the word and serving in evangelization. Sometimes I help in missions; last year I was in Uganda, where one of our fraternities is being established.
In addition, our Community has a characteristic feature, which is the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. We are called "Magnificat Community" because the name refers to Mary, our mother, who wanted to unite contemplation and action.
All our action (the proclamation of the Word, evangelization, missions, helping the poor...) comes from prayer, it is born of the Eucharist, our source and our strength.
The Eucharist is precisely one of our strengths: Tarcisio, initiator of the Magnificat Community together with his sister Agnes, prophetically saw an altar with a consecrated host when he heard from God the words "with Jesus, build on Jesus". It was necessary for the Magnificat Community to be built on the Eucharist. Therefore, in community, in addition to the daily celebration of the Eucharist, once a week we all dedicate ourselves to Eucharistic adoration.
It may seem like a lot, and all the commitments and promises can be frightening, but in the community there is an atmosphere of freedom and flexibility. Each one discerns together with a brother of the community who acts as support and also as spiritual accompaniment with personal responsibility according to his personal and family situation. Those who are mothers with small children, for example, find understanding in the way they live their community commitments. The community, of course, strongly encourages us to go forward, but looks at each brother with prudent wisdom to see how far he can go.
This way of life is not very fashionable. You dedicate a lot of time to community activities and to God. To people who don't understand this way of life, how do you explain it to them?
-Most of us are lay people, we speak the same language of the world; many times the problems that surround people are also our problems. We live the same reality as others. So we can understand perfectly well what others feel in their lives, the inner resistance or the desires of their hearts.
What can we do? We live in a world of poor people, poor also from the spiritual point of view, but not only because they lack God in their lives, but also because they lack values.
The Pope continually speaks of the consumerism in which we are immersed and also of the culture of waste, and of a society that lives a sexuality deprived of its true meaning, because it has not been taught the beauty of the body.
On the other hand, in the world of work, I see how often people feel the burden of unemployment or worry about moving up the ladder, but in all of them there is a great loneliness. Today people have an incredible thirst for love.
The brothers of the Community try to give everyone a message of authentic love by example. One could say that the Community is the answer to what so many are looking for: people are impressed to see a community of brothers made up of many young people and families, who really love each other (because the affection among us is sincere!). This is what the Bible says about the Church being "the city on the top of the mountain" or the lamp on the lampstand and "not under the bushel basket", "that it may give light to all in the house".
In the seminars on new life in the Holy Spirit that we organize, we speak of God's love. This is a response to the inner desires of our brothers and sisters. In these seminars there are all kinds of people: young and old, people far from God and people who are already on a journey of faith. I cannot say why, but evidently this proposal attracts. And it is not thanks to us, but I think it has to do with the hunger for love and God that people have in their hearts.
I cannot conclude without saying that little by little the Lord has brought light to the history of the whole family: the father died after approaching God, the mother, who was far from the Lord, embraced the faith with all her heart to the point of making Him the reason for her life and the rock of her existence. My 3 children had the grace of a strong encounter with God, my eldest daughter is a nun; my sister, a doctor and consecrated member of the community, and almost all the members of the family have joined the community... To the glory of God!
The Magnificat Community
The Magnificat Community was born on December 8, 1978, in the parish of San Donato all'Elce in Perugia. It is a Covenant Community developed in the current of grace of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal.
It is a response to a specific call from God to live the new life in the Spirit in a stable commitment and is made up of faithful from all states of life, but predominantly lay people and families. Born in Italy, it has gradually developed in various parts of the world: Romania, Argentina, Turkey, Uganda and Pakistan.
On January 19, 2024, at the Palazzo San Callisto in Rome, in the Dicastery for the Laity, the Family and LifeThe ceremony of consignment of the Decree of recognition of the Magnificat Community "as a private international association of the faithful" was held and its Statute was approved for a period of one year.d experimentum of 5 years.
