Hajja Salesjana January-March 2021

23 H AJJA S ALESJANA of those adventures that change your life and that of others. It helps you to be stronger and to grow, above all, in faith.” Over the next six years, Farina would experience several brain operations and undergo chemotherapy and other treatments for the tumor. His love for Mary strengthened during this time and he consecrated himself to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. In between hospitalizations, he continued to live the ordinary life of a teenager: he attended school, hung out with his friends, formed a band and fell in love with a girl. He later called the chaste relationship he had with Serena during his last two years of life “the most beautiful gift" the Lord could give him. When he was 15, he reflected on friendship, saying “I would like to be able to integrate with my peers without being forced to imitate them in mistakes. I would like to feel more involved in the group, without having to renounce my Christian principles. It’s difficult. Difficult, but not impossible.” Eventually, the teenager’s condition worsened and after a third surgery he became paralyzed in his left arm and leg. He would often repeat that “we must live every day as if it were the last, but not in the sadness of death, but rather in the joy of being ready to meet the Lord!” Farina died surrounded by his friends and family on the 24th April 2009. Francesca Consolini, the postulator of Farina’s cause, wrote on a website dedicated to the young venerable that in him emerged “a deep inner commitment oriented towards purifying his heart from every sin” and he experienced this spirituality “not with heaviness, effort or pessimism; indeed, from his words there emerges constant trust in God, a tenacious, determined and serene gaze turned to the future...” Farina often thought about the faith and the “difficulty of going against the current.” Concerned about a lack of good faith education for young people, he undertook this task among his own peers. He once wrote in his journal: “When you feel that you can’t do it, when the world falls on you, when every choice is a critical decision, when every action is a failure ... and you would like to throw everything away, when intense work reduces you to the limit of strength ... take time to take care of your soul, love God with your whole being and reflect his love for others.”