of Mother Anna Maria Cánopi osb

Nothing in our life happens by chance. For each of us there is a plan of God which he himself brings to completion by arranging the means and favorable circumstances, requiring on our part docility, free adherence - by faith - to his will.
This explains the fact that my parents - despite the economic difficulties - made me continue my studies, while my brothers and sisters, no less intellectually gifted than me, were soon sent to work. Perhaps there was also the reason for my frail physical constitution. For all the family members, however, it was fine and, without a shadow of jealousy, they were pleased with what I learned for them too.
The years of my studies were experienced by me as a continuous and confident exodus.

For junior high school I had to travel for three years, partly on foot and partly by bus, to reach the larger town where the school was. For high school it was necessary to go to the city and stay there from Monday to Saturday; the same goes for the university.
I have never felt the city at my size. Having been shaped by my native environment and my childhood - the green hills, the immense spaces of the blue sky during the day and teeming with stars at night - I never knew how to get used to the tall buildings, the crowded streets, the traffic and the noises of the city ​​environment. Spontaneously, therefore, I sought refuge in the silence of the churches; I could feel at home there. This is why when my classmates tried to involve me in some of their leisure initiatives, despite being sociable and open to friendship, I preferred not to participate and to spend my free time reading and praying.
Furthermore, already having the desire for consecrated life in my heart, I avoided opportunities to be sought out by young people, saying I was already busy. And everyone wondered, amazed, who the mysterious favorite "Prince Charming" was! One day one of these, a little annoyed, wrote to me in large letters: Cave fumum, pete arrostum! The allusion was clear, but he didn't know that my “Prince” was anything but smoke!
Since I also loved reading and writing poetry, silence and solitude were congenial to me. It was my literature and philosophy teachers who discovered and gave importance to this gift of mine. They also proposed that I participate in two literary competitions: one for poetry and one for children's fiction. The first booklet – Tears in the Sun – collected poems from his adolescence and received praise “for the musicality of the verse and the richness of feeling”. The second booklet – We Killed a Swallow – was noted among the first for the freshness of the story, completely pervaded by the religious sense of life. I think these awards were given more for encouragement than anything else, considering my young age. However, that was the occasion of my first impact with the world of culture and art, from which, however, I immediately withdrew, having encountered aspects of ambiguity, first of all the risk of writing literature to establish myself among men rather than to be of service of God, in all humility.
In order not to burden my family, in the last years of my studies I also taught a bit in a private middle school and - having obtained a social worker diploma before enrolling in university - I also dedicated myself to a child protection centre.
It is obvious that due to the particular situation in which I found myself, I could not feel just like a student, but already responsible for educational and welfare services.
Yet, thinking about it now, I am amazed at how I was able - naive and inexperienced as I was - to approach the world of moral misery, almost always associated with material poverty, without suffering any harmful consequences.
It wasn't the "deviant" kids I saw that worried me, but the bad habits of the adults they usually had behind them. One day a boy released from the San Vittore Reformatory in Milan for his good behavior, crying, begged me to let him go back to prison, because outside of himself he didn't know where to go... his mother was a prostitute and his father an alcoholic.
Sometimes there were those who took advantage of my naive trust; therefore, while I deprived myself of what was necessary to provide food for those who said they were hungry, I later learned that she had spent that money to satisfy his vices. However, all those people made me feel immense compassion and since I realized that above all they needed salvation, I felt more and more driven not so much to do something materially for them, but rather to give myself by pouring myself out in prayer and joining in the redemptive sacrifice. of Jesus who alone can renew people internally.
Eager not to delay the decision for cloistered life any longer, I hastened the discussion of my degree thesis: Poetics and in particular the symbol of light in Severino Boethius's De consolatione philosophiæ. This Christian philosopher (127th-29th century), victim of political power, left a message of sublime wisdom to men of all time from the darkness of the prison where he suffered death. I loved visiting his urn in the crypt of San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro in Pavia, and reading the moving verses dedicated to him by Dante in the Divine Comedy: «The body from which she [soul] was cast out lies / down in Cieldauro; and from martyrdom / and from exile she came to this peace" (Par X, XNUMX-XNUMX). I felt a fervor of faith and charity hovering around me that instilled courage for increasingly generous choices.
I remember that, on the occasion of graduation, at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan they took the anti-modernist oath and the profession of faith. I felt a profound emotion in pronouncing the formula with my hand on the Gospel. It was very different from the fascist oath that was taken at school during the Second World War! Now it was a question of professing absolute fidelity to the Lord Jesus Christ to spread an authentically Christian culture, above all by embodying it in life.
And it was now clear to me that for me to embody the culture of the Gospel in life meant leaving everything, even myself, to hand myself over to the Lord and be, in imitation of the Virgin Mary, solely at his service for his mysterious and adorable plans.