THE RAPPER OF GOD

Hands in pockets, loose trousers, hood over his head and a microphone. From the speakers, the drum and bass rythum reverberates in the background to the rapper’s rhymes. The words spill out one after the other, the talk is smooth, like the one used by young people today, the attitude of rebellion, typical of hip pop, but the message in the songs is anything but hostile. Mixed by Dj, the texts have no room for complaint but preset an alternate version: the Bible, the prayer, invocation of the Holy Spirit are the hot topics of his songs, the protest here comes as a slap in the face to those who throw away their lives deceived by the proposals of a society increasingly ontologically dead.

“My childhood – tells Dj Luca Maffi to Interris-has not been one of the happiest, my parents separated when I was 6, so I went to live with my grandparents. No one has ever made me lack anything, but today, basically I think I miss a true family. My life went on quite peacefully, like every child up to the age of 11, when I suffered a sexual assault by a consecrated layman; from then onwards, I started moving away from everything that had to do with the church, with God. Then came hell, I closed myself in and I came to think that everything that happened was because of my fault. ” This i show he begins to tell his story, without filters, with the awareness of someone who was healed and allowed his wounds to be transformed ito signs of hope. At the age of 14, he decides to reset his life, looking for something to do, to make him feel free and along his journey he met up with the world of music-rap. This style allows him to express the anger and hatred borne inside of him. He then begins to team-up with many artists, learning how to be a Dj and producing songs. Slowly he began his ascent to stardom, “Finally-he says-I am someone”.

Luca became famous, friends the acclaim, the nightclubs became his place of worship: “I’d climb onto the console and there I felt like a god. Deciding on the timing, taking people to the point that they became rhythm, a frantic pace that I could control. People swarmed onto the dance-floors, the guys cheered me and I had full control of the situation and myself. “With a pair of headphones in his ears, Luke switched off from the world and from the problems that continued to hurt him, he put on a mask and the suffering found temporary relief. “I remember one girl said to me, ‘Lucky I have fun here, but when I go home, I’m sad, here instead some smoke, a beer and with your sound and I’m free ‘. If I think about it now, I shudder! Though to me that was life. I cheated on myself I was feeling good. ”

Then suddenly, an encounter changed his life. Per chance he entered a small church in the centre of Brescia, where a prayer group was reciting the adoration: “there I cried out all my anger to God and right there begins my story of conversion”. It was the beginning of a true relationship with the Lord, out of the canons of the Roman Catholic religion, certain plastered righteousness of religious rites. From that moment onwards, Luca has experienced Christ to be a living person. Shortly afterwards the Dj of Cremona accepts the invitation of a girl to spend an alternative new year’s day, he was the king of discos, was to celebrate New Year’s Eve at the spiritual home of Paul VI between prayer and fraternity.

It is here that the rapper launches a final affront to that God whom he had begun to get to know. With a provocative gesture, Luke approaches the Tabernacle inside resting his nose on the consecrated host he says: “I’ll give you one month’s time, I want to know what you want out of my life”. Thirty days later, he meets who was o become his wife. It was a first sign, and since that time, he has stopped “challenging” Jesus.

“From the encounter with Christ, my God and my Lord, the new Luke is born, and the ‘RapGesùCristico’ project. I want to give a message to the young people whom I’ll meet: fall in love with Christ! Rediscover God’s love for each of you! We must not be afraid of a good Father. It is the challenge of our times. We must abandon all those false truths: drugs, an idea and a perverse practice of sex, fashion, Tv, the pursuit of success, extreme politics which drags us into the mud, and, like quicksand, it sucks us into the bowels of perversion, of evil, and leads us to Satan. The only true way is Jesus, have the courage to meet Him, allow Him to cuddle and court you and make you fall in love with Him and pronounce your ‘Yes’! I am sure that He would not delay a second longer, filling us with love, healing our wounds, and will never part from us. ” A breath of fresh air in the Church.

Translation provided by Marina Stronati