– Alessandro Nottegar
Every Monday morning, he would wake up happy and say to his wife: “I feel that this is the good week! Yes, this time I will really convert”.
Luisa joked good-naturedly: “But you’ve said that for 15 years!” And he: “No, dear woman, this time I feel it... It is the decisive week!”.
And the same scene would occur every Monday because Alessandro never considered himself ‘there’, ‘just right’ in front of the Lord and others.
He volunteered to work with the poor and lepers for the four years of mission in Brazil. He took this page from the Gospel literally: “Go, sell what you have and come and follow me”.
Yet Alessandro never considered himself as a special person, but only a ‘humble servant’, so fortunate as to have been chosen by the Lord.
In fact, he used to say fully convinced: “Lord, what do I have that I have not received from you? Of mine, truly mine, I have only my sin”.
Awareness of his own sins, however, did not discourage him because “it is not important how many times you fall, God looks for goodwill”. He prayed: “Lord, give me the courage to try again, to start from the beginning”.
He firmly believed that “when the Lord calls us, we are not judged by results, but if He finds us loving towards Him”.
And it is just so, with this offering of love, that Friday 19 September 1986 the Lord found his servant who, once again, had decided to ‘start again’.
“We often saw him heading for the chapel. He went of his own free will, no one obliged him. You understood that he wanted these moments to meet with God in prayer. We would find him in the chapel, seated on the rear pews, absorbed in prayer. I remember Sandro as a man in search of God, in prayer before the Most Holy”.
– father João Pilotti
“Alessandro was a most serene, humble, accommodating person who never gave himself any importance. He passed by unobserved. He had an attitude that reminded you of the presence of the Lord”.
– sister Celsa Zanusso
“He was aware of his qualities, however, he was very humble even when he introduced himself and his capabilities. He knew how to value the good in others. Even the fact of putting himself second, valuing the other”.
– father Pietro Cunegatti
“Alessandro was intuitive and sensitive. At times you didn’t realize he was there, but he was always aware of the needs of others. He was a highly intelligent, quick witted man. Alessandro lived his service to others as a mission to which he felt called. At the base of everything there was the relationship with the Lord: it wasn’t he who chose to go, but he went because he was sent by the Lord”.
– Mario Granuzzo