Italian
“O my Lord and my God, remove from me all that distances me from You; O my Lord and my God, grant me all that brings me closer to You; O my Lord and my God, free me from myself and grant me to possess only You.”
Thus prays the man whom the world could have ignored and whom Providence has instead raised as an invisible pillar in the history of mankind, for there are existences that make no noise and yet bear the weight of centuries, hidden lives that, precisely because they are consumed in secrecy, become sources of light for entire nations.
In the harsh simplicity of Obvaldo, among severe mountains and fields worked with effort, is born the one who will be called Bruder Klaus, a farmer without letters, lacking the culture that the world deems necessary to speak of God, yet destined to become a master of souls and advisor to the powerful, for there is a wisdom that is not learned from books but is carved into the heart through fidelity, sacrifice, and silence.
He grows as a man among men, taking part in the wars of the Swiss Confederation against the Habsburgs, experiencing the harshness of arms, the discipline of command, the weight of responsibility. And yet, while the world calls him to its battles, another deeper voice digs within him, a voice that does not shout but insists, that does not force but attracts, which he himself will describe as “the file that purifies and the goad that stimulates,” almost an incessant work of grace that smooths the soul until it becomes docile to the divine will.
Returned to domestic life, he marries Dorotea, has ten children, builds a family that is both a hearth and a cross, and it seems that his destiny is now fulfilled in the ordinary measure of life; but God is not satisfied with appearances and, when He calls, He calls the whole man, without residues, without compromises, without returns.
After years of inner struggle, Nicola asks for three graces, which are not light requests but vertiginous: the consent of his loved ones, the strength not to look back, the possibility of living sustained only by God. And when these graces are granted to him, he does what appears incomprehensible and almost scandalous in the eyes of the world: he leaves everything. He leaves the house, he leaves the children, he leaves security, and he ventures into a desert that is not far in space but radical in the soul, because the true hermitage is not that of the mountains but that of the heart that strips itself of everything to be filled only by God.
Thus he arrives at Ranft, a harsh and solitary place, where he builds a very poor cell, made of wood and silence, which will become his home and his altar: there he lives for twenty years. Twenty years in which time seems suspended, in which the world passes and he remains, in which his existence is reduced to the essential: prayer, contemplation, the Eucharist; and tradition, astonished and almost incredulous, passes down that he fed only on the Body of Christ, as if grace had taken the place of matter, as if God himself had become his only sustenance.
But silence does not isolate him; it makes him fruitful, because men, thirsty for truth, begin to seek him, climb up to his cell, knock on his poverty, question his silence, and find a man who does not speak as a scholar but as a witness, who does not argue but enlightens, who does not impose but guides; and in his simple words, born from a heart inhabited by God, they recognize a wisdom higher than any doctrine.
“In all things mercy is worth more than justice,” he says, and in this phrase, so brief and so profound, an entire theology is contained, because justice measures, but mercy saves; justice weighs, but mercy redeems; justice divides, but mercy restores.
And so, the one who has left the world is called back by the world itself, not to possess it but to serve it. When Switzerland is on the brink of a fratricidal war, when the cantons are ready to tear themselves apart, when unity seems to dissolve under the weight of interests and rivalries, it is precisely that hidden man who becomes the decisive voice, light in the darkness, instrument of peace. At the Diet of Stans, his advice, arriving like a whisper but received like a command, avoids confrontation and saves the nation.
Here is the paradox of holiness: those who flee the world end up supporting it, those who remain silent become heard, those who strip themselves of everything become wealth for all.
Nicola then returns to his hermitage, for his mission is not to govern visibly but to support invisibly, not to dominate but to intercede, not to appear but to be, and there he spends his last years like a lamp lit before God, until, on the day of his seventieth birthday, in 1487, his soul, now completely purified, returns to the One he had sought above all else.
And the Church, recognizing in that hidden life an extraordinary work of grace, will elevate him to the altars by the hand of Pius XII, proclaiming to the world that holiness is not a privilege of the great, but the destiny of anyone who has the courage to lose everything to find the One necessary.
For, in truth, man is not saved by adding, but by subtracting; not by accumulating, but by offering; not by holding on, but by surrendering. And only when the soul, freed from itself, can truthfully say: “I have nothing left,” then God responds: “Now I have all of you.”
