From a dissolute youth to the priesthood via Medjugorje

“It seems impossible that the Lord looked at me, thought of me,” he told reporter Mariella Gugole of the Italian daily ‘A. The 44-year-old priest, ordained last October 8 in the Passionist family of Caravate (Varese, northern Italy), had a 10-year-long journey.

His youth was dissolute and devoted to vices: alcoholism, frequent unemployment, late-night partying, and turbulent relationships. He experienced much loneliness and suffering, years of emptiness and meaninglessness, feeling dead inside. Like so many young people, he was lost and beer became his best friend.

“I started working when I was 14 and having been thrown into the adult world, I went down the only road I knew: beer, discos, nightclubs ... and everything else that made me die inside,” he told Gugole. “I didn’t understand that I’d lost the meaning of my life, that I was throwing my entire existence to the wind,” he told Italian weekly Verona Fedele.

There is one person – David's mother – and one date – February 7, 2012 – that marked the beginning of his rebirth.

“It had been 20 years since I had gone to church, and my mom was very sick. I could not and should not lose her. She was the only one left who loved me. Only she shed tears for me,” he told the reporter.

He had hit rock bottom, and was persuaded by his sister Barbara to go on a pilgrimage to Medjugorje. At first he only thought of having fun. “I was skeptical, hesitant; I didn’t even understand the reason for this trip,” he told Fedele. But then something happened.

At first he went around drinking cheap beer, but then he felt the urge to go to confession, and it changed everything.

“In that confession for the first time I felt loved, I did not feel judged, but discovered that there is a Father who loves me for who I am, with my limitations and weaknesses. Tears flowed from my eyes like rivers, a new life began that day, a new David was born.”

Truly, as Pope Francis says, "it is precisely tears that prepare us to see Jesus."

That confession in Medjugorje marked the beginning of his new life.

David did not consider himself worthy of God's loving gaze; he had done too many things, living a dissolute life without a purpose. But he experienced through the sacrament of reconciliation that God is a Father who is waiting for us with open arms even before we apologize to Him. His existence after his encounter with Christ was full once again of flavor, light, and hope – the same characteristics he exudes today as he tells reporter Gugole.

Fr. David is happy to be a priest because he has put his life in God's hands to serve the Church. He will soon leave on a missionary assignment at the Passionist house in Tanzania. He told ‘A:

He feels the Lord is calling him to help young people who are enslaved to addictions, as he had been.

Fr. David has deep gratitude to all those who have supported and formed him. First and foremost, though, is his family and especially his mother, who left this world the very year her son began his turnaround. He told Gugole:

And the story of this man who once was lost and today is Fr. Davide Costalunga is the most authentic proof of this. He says, “I was a wolf and I became a shepherd of the sheep.”