{"id":327808,"date":"2015-12-05T03:00:15","date_gmt":"2015-12-05T02:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/living-the-gospel-god-first-of-all\/"},"modified":"2024-05-16T15:02:14","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T13:02:14","slug":"living-the-gospel-god-first-of-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/living-the-gospel-god-first-of-all\/","title":{"rendered":"Living the Gospel: God, first of all"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright  wp-image-132137\" src=\"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/20151205DioPrima.jpg\" alt=\"20151205DioPrima\" width=\"390\" height=\"185\" \/>What pushed you to become a priest? A 13-year-old girl asked Don Marco, during an informal interview on the many \u201canecdotes\u201d that have dotted his life and priesthood.  <strong>\u00abI was not counting on becoming a priest.<\/strong> I had only asked some advice from the people who were older and had more worldly experience than me, so as to see what humanity needs most today. I could have become a teacher or an engineer. I also liked architecture, or travelling. I liked so many things, and was doing well in school. Those were the years of the economic boom and I had all the possibilities. I was uncertain since I had received a university scholarship, but I wanted to be useful.  <strong>So I booked an appointment with the Bishop.<\/strong> I wanted to ask him what he thought, about what humanity needs most. He was so busy that he did not have time to talk to me, and I was alone for hours, so much so that I thought: \u201csurely humanity doesn\u2019t need me, but perhaps not even the church needs me, and whoever said that you are so important? Perhaps I am not worth anything\u2026 but I love Jesus and will love him always, even if I turned out to be useless.\u201d  Finally, when the Bishop found time to speak with me, and asked me what I wanted, I didn\u2019t want anything anymore! And so I told him that I could probably collaborate\u2026 He was surprised, undecided, but in the end he said: \u00a0\u00a0\u201cYesterday I laid the cornerstone of a church. When this church, will be finished six years from now, it will have no priest. Would you like to be the parish priest of that church?\u201d  <strong>But my first experience had been a choice of God, first of all, <\/strong>and not that of becoming a priest, but to follow God and love Jesus, even if I was useless, since Jesus in the end, will make you do something. \u00bb  (Fr. Marco &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/focolare-worldwide\/europa\/italia\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Italy<\/a>)  &nbsp;  &nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Word of Life of the month invites us to remove the barriers that hinder our encounter with Jesus. A priest narrates of the decisive moment in which he opened the door to God. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[893],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-327808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-focolare-worldwide-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327808\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}