A tale of three lives

Bishop Scott Bullock
The 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
November 16, 2025

In the Gospel, Jesus looks at the church of his day, adorned with costly jewels and votive offerings, and declares that such things will not last.  Instead, he prompts his listeners to adorn the church by “by giving testimony.” The word in the Bible used for giving “testimony” is the same word that we use for “martyrdom.” So, how we adorn the church is to make a sacrifice out of love which means, above all, a sacrifice of our lives and the time given us. We are clearly required, following the example of Jesus, to lay down our lives in sacrificial love for others — for our families, for our family of faith, and for the needy. It will give them life, but it also gives us life. 

So, in reflection, let’s consider the tale of three lives and how much life is in each of them. First, Pietri Bandinelli, from the 16th century in Italy. When Leonardo da Vinci was painting his masterpiece, The Last Supper, he selected as the person to sit in the character of Christ a young man, Pietri Bandinelli, who was connected with the Milan cloister of the Cathedral. Years passed before the great picture was completed, and when one character was left, that of Judas Iscariot, the great painter noticed a man in the streets of Rome whom he selected as his model. With shoulders far bent beyond the ground, having an expression of cold, hardened, evil, saturnine, the man seemed to afford the opportunities of a model terribly true to the artist’s conception of Judas. When in the studio, the profligate began to look around, as if recalling incidents of years gone by. Finally, he turned and with a half look of sadness, one which told how hard it was to realize the change which had taken place, he said, “Maestro, I was in this studio twenty-five years ago. I, then, sat for Christ.” 

Across the course of his life and our life, if we are not careful, we can slowly move from a generous life of sacrificial love into one far from the example of Christ. The image of Christ can slowly fade from us as was shown by this model. 

The second figure, Alessandro Serenelli, from the 20th Century in Italy. Serenelli, at the age of 20, attempted to assault and violate a young girl in his town, Maria Goretti. When she resisted him, he stabbed her 14 times, killing her. After 27 years in prison, he was released and completed a life of penance in a monastery with Capuchin Monks and grew in holiness. Near the end of his life, he wrote: “I’m nearly 80 years old. I’m about to depart. Looking back at my past, I can see that in my early youth, I chose a bad path which led me to ruin myself. … There were a lot of generous and devoted people who surrounded me, but I paid no attention to them because a violent force blinded me and pushed me toward a wrong way of life. When I was 20 years-old, I committed a crime of passion. Now, that memory represents something horrible for me. Maria Goretti, now a saint, was my good angel, sent to me through providence to guide and save me. I still have impressed upon my heart her words of rebuke and of pardon. She prayed for me. She interceded for her murderer. Thirty years of prison followed. … Little Maria was really my light, my protectress; with her help, I behaved well during the 27 years of prison and tried to live honestly when I was accepted again among the members of society. The Brothers of St. Francis, the Capuchins, welcomed me with angelic charity into their monastery as a brother, not a servant. I’ve been living with their community for 24 years, and now I am serenely waiting to witness the vision of God, to be hugged by my loved ones again, and to be next to my Guardian Angel and her dear mother, Assunta.”

Alessandro Serenelli wrote this on May 5, 1961. Unlike DaVinci’s model, Serenelli shows us that, beginning today, we can begin with God’s help to slowly transform our lives into the image of Christ. So, two contrasting examples of what we do with the precious gift of time given to us.  

The third example, well, that’s you and me. Will you dedicate it to striving to be better and holier and attain peace and joy, or will you squander it and, more and more, become joyless and lifeless?  Imperceptible are these life processes, shown by Bandenelli, DaVinci’s model, and Serenelli, Maria Goretti’s redeemed assailant, and so for us.  And so, we each consider a third person, ourselves.  

The author Erwin Raphael McManus wrote, “The tragedy of a life that is never fully lived is not simply the loss of one’s own life. The tragedy is the endless number of lives that would have been forever changed if we had chosen to live differently.”  

Let’s not settle for this tragedy, and, God help us, not to settle for even one more day of not living in such a way than “giving testimony” by witnessing of investing the time we’ve been given according to the law of Christ, loving and serving others and, in doing so, let’s discover the abundance of life. That’s the single way our Church — the Body of Christ — will be adorned with radiant “jewels” of lives lived with radiant holiness!