01-12-2006 - Traces, n.11 AVSI Charity Will Always Prove Necessary, even in the Most Just Society Notes from a talk by Julián Carrón to the assembly of those in charge of the AVSI “Christmas Tents” 2006/2007 fundraiser and the AVSI Point, Milan, November 18, 2006 The title of the this year’s Christmas “Tents” initiative to support five AVSI (Association of Volunteers in International Service) projects can bring us truly to understand the meaning of this gesture. Love–caritas–will always prove necessary, even in the most just society. There is no ordering of the State so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love. Whoever wants to eliminate love is preparing to eliminate man as such (Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, no. 28). When you come across a person who is in need of love, affection, a hug, you understand that the service of this love, of this affection, will never be enough, never superfluous, and that we cannot build a civilization where this will never be needed, because a person might not need money, but will always need this hug. To understand this, we have what Fr. Giussani wrote in Il senso della caritativa [The Meaning of Charitable Work]. There, we have all the synthetic hints we need for understanding the reasons for a gesture like the AVSI Tents, and not only the reasons for the gesture, because in order to understand the reasons for a gesture we are forced to understand ourselves and reality as a whole, because a gesture involves all the factors, from the “I” to the whole, to the sense and meaning of everything. Charity is a need, a need we ourselves have, which makes us get others involved–“When there is something beautiful in us, we feel pressed to communicate it to others” (Il senso della caritativa, p. 5). When we see a need, we feel pushed to answer, and this so corresponds to our nature that we feel pushed, not because someone tells us, but out of desire to communicate. Fr. Giussani adds that the more we live this need, the more we become ourselves. This is the first reason for a gesture like the Tents, and for which we go for “charitable work.” So it is not something outside us, like a duty, but something that coincides with ourselves–we are made this way, we have this structure, this way of being, and the more we live in accordance with the way we are made, the better “we realize ourselves,” Fr. Giussani says. This self-giving, this self-communication, this interest for others, is part of our nature as we discover it in experience; we do not fish it out from somewhere, like a concept from an encyclopedia, but we discover it–when we need to communicate something beautiful or when we respond to a need–in our experience, if we pay attention. What is the law for this? That we be more ourselves. This self-communication is a law of our “I” before being an answer to a need. “The supreme law of our being is to share others’ being, to share oneself” (Il senso…, p. 7). We want to do this through a gesture that enables us to learn to do it in all the other spheres of life, because in this way we are ourselves. This is the law of Being, and it was revealed, says Fr. Giussani, quite clearly in the way Being was given to us–the Son of God, in becoming man, Christ, becoming flesh, did not give us something, but “shared in our nothingness,” as Fr. Giussani put it so well. (Il senso…, p. 7) The first thing He did was to become man, become flesh, and thus He revealed to us the very nature of Being, which we perceive, we discover in ourselves, and which we see realized clearly in Christ, without ambiguity, in an absolutely evident way if we stop to think of this surprising and absolute Mystery–that the Word was made flesh–if for an instant we do not take it for granted as something we already know. What does His sharing mean? I have already told what happened to me during a trip to Latin America. It was a feast of Our Lady and the first reading of the Mass was from the Letter to the Galatians. It said that Jesus, the Mystery, became flesh through Our Lady. I had accepted this at once, and said, “It’s true!” with all my desire. But then I realized how reductive this can be, how far short of being the whole story, from the jolt I felt as I listened to the Gospel of that same Mass (that of the Visitation). Our Lady reaches Zechariah’s home and the Gospel says that as soon as the child (John the Baptist) heard Mary’s greeting, he leaped for joy in his mother’s womb. I said to myself, “This is Christianity!” It is not a theoretical affirmation. So what is it? This child’s leaping for joy in its mother’s womb. Here we can see clearly what the greatest sharing was. It is not something that Christ does–here we can see it in its essentials–but only His presence that shares in our nothingness. Our Lady had gone only to visit her cousin; it seems almost nothing, but in this gesture of bringing Christ’s presence, she made that child leap for joy. So we see that true charity is this Son of God’s entering into and sharing in our nothingness. When we realize this, it makes us leap for joy. So where is the root of this passion, where can we draw this passion for sharing? Only from that which we receive from an Other, in that which overflows from the heart of what we receive, of that tenderness of the Mystery for us. It is extremely important to grasp this, so that what we do does not become activism, because we often take this for granted, we think we know already, and get right down to work. Once during an assembly on the chapter on charity in Si può vivere così? [Can You Live Like This? (the course for the novices of the Memores Domini Association)], I told those present, “Take a piece of paper and write down in one sentence what strikes you most.” In one minute, I had photographed the situation: “What did you write?” “I wrote this…”. “How many of you wrote this?” … “What did you write?” It was a test that took a minute. Most of them had forgotten the question and had missed the point, because we often get muddled about what we have to do. Who had grasped the real point of what Fr. Giussani says, which can be summarized in the words of Jeremiah: “I have loved you with an everlasting love and have taken pity on your nothingness”? This is charity, as St. John says; the point is not that we have loved God, but that “God has loved us first” (Deus Caritas Est, no. 1). The Pope said this in a spectacular way in his encyclical–our passion draws from this and if it doesn’t draw from this, we gradually get tired, because charity is not a kind of generosity; generosity starts off from what we are lacking, which we want to fill with something, and sooner or later we get tired. Gratuitousness instead starts off from what leaps in our heart, from that which fills us, from that which overflows from what we in our turn receive, from what we have, all we have, at the start, from what fills us. So, in this self-giving we become ourselves; our person is realized. Otherwise, if this is not the case, all kinds of pretensions arise. This is why it is most important to grasp the origin of this gesture, which makes us different from any other non-governmental organization (NGO). All our voluntarism is not enough to make us and the other happy, because everything is too little, too trivial for the capacity of the soul, even when we are able to solve the problems and the difficulties. This is why it is true that charity will always be needed even in the most just society. Why is it so hard to grasp this today? Because of what Fr. Giussani says in the following pages of Il senso della caritativa. We reduce the other person’s need. He asks, “What does the other person need?” (Il senso…, p.8). What I think? What I have decided? “I don’t know what they really need; I can’t measure it; I don’t have it. It is beyond my measure. It is a measure that lies in God. So law and justice can crush people if they forget or presume to substitute something else for the only ‘concrete’ thing there is–the person and love for the person” (Il senso…, p. 9). The terrible thing is that we often reduce the need. If we do not broaden our reason to be ready to grasp, to discover the other’s need, to let it emerge (this is what happens to many politicians who at times tell us what we need instead of listening to us), it seems that there must be someone to tell us what we must be or what our real need is. There have been societies whose leaders thought they knew clearly what their countries needed, and we’ve seen what happened. If we are not really prepared to listen, to grasp the real need, how can we avoid imposing our own measure? Only by sharing can we come to see that “we are not the ones to make them happy,” as Fr. Giussani said, and that not even the most perfect society, the most legally stable and shrewd organization, with the greatest wealth, the finest health, the purest beauty, the most educated civilization, can satisfy them (Il senso…, p. 10). This is why there will always be need for charity, because what we really need is happiness. The only true, complete justice is that which corresponds to our need for fullness. Any other idea of justice is a reduction of this. So, getting to the bottom of this is like getting a better understanding of ourselves, reality, and the need we have, and the others have, for the only answer, for what corresponds to me, so that through this sharing, by seeing the impotence of my effort, I understand that what they need is what I need, too–Christ. If we lose sight of this, we set up an NGO like the others. Perhaps we can respond to some needs, but with that reduction we lose our capacity to respond to the true need. Not that we don’t need to respond, but through responding to the concrete need, we have to bring what everyone–like ourselves, who have the same heart–is really waiting for. How can we bring it? Only if we have it ourselves. It is at this level that we draw what we can bring–we can bring it if we first receive it, if we welcome it in ourselves. We can look at them with Christ’s eyes only if we let ourselves be penetrated by His look. Otherwise, all our answers will be insufficient. It strikes me to think that Jesus did not heal all the sick of His time. He could have done it, He would have been able to do it, but He didn’t. When we feel our impotence to respond to everyone, we should not be discouraged, because not even He did so, though He could have. This goes for us, too. When we respond, what we can do is a sign through which we bring everything. What we often fail to do is to see the whole in the particular concrete gesture. To respond to a need, Jesus at times worked miracles; it was as if he were saying through those signs, “Look, I am here. Look, reality is greater than what you have in mind, and you are not alone in your nothingness–I am here.” This was a far greater answer to the real need, because by answering a real need, it made present His presence, which was the complete answer. As the Gospel says of the resurrection of Lazarus, they asked Him, “Why didn’t You come earlier?” He answered, “So I could reveal more clearly the glory of God, the truth of God that I am, because it is revealed more clearly if I raise him now than if I had merely healed him.” What shone out from that fact? Who Jesus was, because Lazarus had to die all the same later. Have you ever seen Him? Through that action, Jesus wanted to make Lazarus understand that he was not alone in his nothingness, that there was hope not only for this life, but for eternity, because He who had been able to raise him in that moment was able to make him rise at the end, too. In answering the need, Jesus brought out clearly the truth of the world; in other words, He forced people to broaden their reason. We often have an anachronistic conception of reality. Just as there are no true world maps that don’t show America, it is as if we had not updated the map of our knowledge of reality. For a world map that does not include the Resurrection of Christ, this Mystery that has shared in our nothingness, is not a true world map. A reality without Christ does not exist; it is only a reduction of ours. It does not exist. So by means of the Tents, through this gesture of sharing, we introduce people to reality as a whole. The Pope says in his encyclical, “The entire activity of the Church is an expression of a love that seeks [note this well!] the integral good of man”(Deus Caritas Est, no. 19)–man’s need as a whole, and therefore, “Contact with the visible manifestations of God’s love can awaken within us a feeling of joy born of the experience of being loved” (Deus Caritas Est, no. 17), of not being alone with one’s impotence. The Pope adds, “For the Church, charity is not a kind of welfare activity which could equally well be left to others [this is very important–it is not something we can leave to others], but is a part of her nature, an indispensable expression of her very being” (Deus Caritas Est, no. 25). One could give only social assistance like any other NGO, but this is not the Church. If we, in what we do, do not bring that look with which we have been looked at, then we are no different from all the rest. As Fr. Giussani’s stupendous expression goes, “A look that gives form to your look.” This is Christianity! It is not the mechanical repetition of some attitudes, of some things interpreted moralistically, but the fact that a man has been generated by a look, a look that generated him so profoundly that it gave form to his look, in such a way that anyone, like us, can meet Christ, because this look is the witness that Christ is present now. This is why the Church can never leave charity to others–neither to the state nor to an NGO–because we do not offer only social assistance, just like Christ through His miracles did not offer only social assistance (“Don’t you see? The works that I do testify to Me”), because Jesus knows the need we have and has not reduced it. He knows that He is what we need, He who is the hope of time and of eternity. We do not have only material needs, but the need for affection, the need to feel loved. “Man does not live on bread alone.” So this gesture is really an opportunity for all of us, and we have to help each other because, as the Pope says, “Love needs to be organized if it is to be an ordered service to the community” (Deus…, no. 20). Organization is needed; we have to organize events, but this will never be the charitable activity of the Church, or of a Christian–never! The organization is presupposed, but it is not the aim. Since the risk of becoming cogs in the machine is always waiting in ambush, all of us who take part in this gesture must help each other, because it can become the tomb of our faith instead of strengthening it, and make us more skeptical. This summer, as I was talking to a group of youngsters, I was struck by the fact that involvement in organizing certain initiatives can be something that does not awaken our “I,” giving us a breath of fresh air, but something that gets us so bogged down in organization, in problems and discussions, that it becomes our tomb. It’s so sad to think that things for which we sacrifice so much time, so much effort and energy, can be things that don’t make us grow. This is why, in all that we do, we have to get our whole selves involved. We can do this only if we are taken up by that presence and the love of Christ. Because what we have to bring is what we have encountered, which is summarized in the phrase of St. Augustine quoted by the Pope: “If you see charity, you see the Trinity” (Deus…, no. 19). In every gesture, every person we meet must have the chance to see, through charity, the Trinity, because it is only this that answers the real human need, which is none other than desire for the Infinite–for God, and not an abstract God, but the one God–the Trinity. In Brazil, recently, I was sitting around a table with a group of friends and with Cleuza Zerbini, who belongs to the very large movement of the “Landless.” We were talking about how we could give each other a hand, and all of a sudden she asked, “What do you mean, I have been chosen?” “Yes, yes.” “Tell me what you mean.” I tried to explain what we have always learned from Fr. Giussani–that election is the method God uses; that God chooses a few to reach everyone through that few. To help her grasp this I took the example of Caravaggio’s painting of the call of Matthew that I am very fond of. Matthew seems to be saying, “Are you actually calling me?” I noticed that she had begun to cry, she was so moved to know she had been given this gift. For me, it was like seeing in the present what I had said about the Visitation–you feel moved to the quick because the Mystery has shared in your nothingness. With this gesture of the Tents that is so concrete, and at times tiresome, in answering the concrete needs we see, we want to bring something of this love, of this emotion, of this gratitude for what has been given us.