What was Studium Christi?
When he spoke of the birth of Studium Christi in the seminary during his high school years, Fr. Giussani’s language took on a particular emotion. In the spark of that friendship among young men lies the seed of a story that over time would spread in scores of countries throughout the world and change the lives of thousands.1
I have found two testimonies about this experience, which Massimo Camisasca presents as fundamental in the formation and later mission of Fr. Luigi Giussani. The first is in the conduct report of Guido DePonti, one of Giussani’s great friends, compiled by Rector Colombo at the end of his second year of high school (1939-1940): “He dreams of great things, vast new forms of apostolate; in his class dormitory he has founded a ‘Christus’ club for the study and imitation of the person of the Redeemer.”
The second testimony about Studium Christi is found in a much ampler document, a letter that had a torturous story. On March 15, 1943, seminarians of Theology II, Enrico Ruben Manfredini and Luigi Giussani, wrote to a classmate, Michele Elli. Manfredini and Giussani were both in Venegono, the former in the community of theology, the latter, as we know, in the high school community as a prefect. Elli was also a prefect, but in Anzano al Parco where the Villoresi College of Monza had been transferred because of the bombings....
First of all, here are the words written by Manfredini.
“The Kingdom!–Dear Michele, if you’ve been thinking badly of me, it’s Gius’s fault, rest assured. That boy’s custom-made to delay things. Put him outside the normal grind just once, and he becomes extraordinarily worrisome. First of all, be sure to choose your words, because the last letter, which we found on the window of Theology with all the other mail, was a bit too clear for the public. But maybe Gius will tell you better about this. That day (the letter was out of the ordinary), he seemed to me to be truly worrisome, and to be on the safe side he ran to Fr. Galbiati to find out what he should do, looking for instructions in the eventuality that someone should request an explanation. On the 25th of this month, there’s that issue, first for us, in the morning, and then for those over there. I’d like to know what in the world you carried to Saint Peter’s from Conti, because Fr. Galbiati told me Fr. Corbetta’s concerns–but it’s of little account. We’ll write to Conti, explain the notebook, etc., as soon as possible. It seems that Archimede is moving toward our side: it’d be a great advantage for us both because he seems to me to be a type given to ideas, and then also because CSG (of his dorm), who, without a pastor usque adhuc is a bit held back by the ice of the prefects, would find a solution for their uncertain situation. What would you say if maybe, when he is through with high school, he joined the troops? Not bad, huh? After all, remember the initial ideas about the Kingdom we discussed with him in high school. We’ll also talk about it with Conti; I believe your response will be positive. For the moment, however, there’s absolutely nothing; we’ll wait and see; it seems like he’s moving toward our side… I have to admit, to my chagrin, that I’ve read very few articles. There’s Ecclesia in the reading room, and I’ll get to work on it, and I’ll look a bit at the university student newspapers. If Archimede helps, things would be sorted out better. It seems to me that Elli G. stutters, babbles for a certain issue of Osservatore and Azione Fucina that you carried away domino invito (stole?).... I’d like to ask you the favor of some prayers: the Kingdom is the Kingdom of Heaven, and with all our efforts, by ourselves, we’re not even worthy of touching the threshold. Gius has become a bit more human and tractable; it seems to me that we are reaching some agreement there; we make progress, it’s logical. I’ll bid you farewell, and leave the pen to him.
Manfredini, March 15, 1943
Give my regards to Fr. Cervini, the Father, etc., and the guys too, whom, notwithstanding everything, I followed during that poor month with a lot of goodwill.”
And here, word for word, is what flowed from Giussani’s pen:
“Maranatha! Michele, I was very happy as I read it; for a month I’ve been reminding myself to read it because of spiritual communion. In any case, forgive me if it’s my fault that you’ve had to wait so long–probably it won’t be the last time I wrong you. But I assure you that here I’m in work up to my eyeballs: in 4 days (the Most Holy Forty Hours), I’ve read only a few pages of moral theology. But everything I read is during time I’ve stolen (minute by minute) from conversations with my ‘men.’ ‘Now you’re in life, not in studies,’ Fr. Enrico told me. Fides has marvelous articles. I’ve bought Gonella; I’ll try to do it for something else too. And Möhler? What a man, huh? About the letter: apparently the relatives of Viganò delivered it outside the bag, to the postman, so it passed through Monsignor’s hands. Fr. Galbiati reassured me he’s already spoken with Monsignor about it. So, I got away without being summoned to the Palace. In any case, it’s better next time to have it put in the bag, to be delivered to me, naturally. Then I’ll show it to the Rector or Vice-Rector. However, this is just to speed it up. If it’s impossible for you, don’t worry; I believe that deep down Monsignor will be happy. Have you heard about De Ponti? We’ll wait and see (after much searching, like for Studium Christi). You see that...we’re destined this way. Long live us, brother, for Him! Please say a few Hail Marys for us on the 25th of this month and also for my Knights (Fr. Ronchi will be elected Assistant Ward).
With great brotherly affection. Long live the King. Most affectionately, Acolyte Luigi Giussani.” ...

Gratitude for the Seminary
The gratitude for the seminary and the priests of the seminary, so clearly expressed while he was a seminarian, remained a permanent dimension in Fr. Luigi Giussani. In this regard, there are many testimonies he left, and which resound in the pages written by Camisasca. I’d like to focus on the solidity of this sentiment. It wasn’t even tarnished by the reciprocal misunderstandings and conflicts Giussani had, between the end of the 1960s and the early 1970s with the Archbishop (previously his high school rector), Cardinal Giovanni Colombo, and his superiors at the seminary. I found a letter from this period in a copy of the volume containing a revised form of his graduation thesis. In this letter, addressed to his old teacher, he alludes to the tensions of those years: “Most Reverend Monsignor, I’ve taken the liberty of leaving you a copy of the volume that the goodness of my Superiors has allowed to be published. I wish to thank you very much for the benevolence that you once again showed me the other day. Have no doubt that my memory remains faithful as it was almost thirty years ago. If it weren’t so, in my conditions, who knows what would have happened! Thanks to the Lord.”
Returning to the two letters written by the seminarian Giussani, there are two other excerpts to read. First of all, there is the central part of the first: “I feel that it [the seminary] is almost closer to me than my own dear family–in the seminary, in fact, after my family, the most holy people of God and of the Church themselves are concretized for me; they’ve made themselves present and tangible for me with their love and their educative work.” If we compare these words with those pronounced by Cardinal Ratzinger at the homily during Giussani’s funeral, one is struck by the limpid affinity between them: “He understood in this way that Christianity is not an intellectual system, a packet of dogmas, a moralism, but that Christianity is an encounter, a story of love, an event.” More than 60 years separate the words of the letter and those of the homily and yet, during all these years, the way–learned in the seminary and, even before and in continuity, in his family–of understanding and living the relationship with God and the Church, that is, Christianity, remained substantially unchanged in Fr. Giussani. Thus, we have identified a second permanent dimension in him.
Having read and understood the central excerpt of the first letter, we can conduct the same exercise for the second part of the letter of July 7, 1944, written to Monsignor Petazzi on the occasion of his subdiaconate: “The memory of the Act–eagerly awaited and blessed–that made me forever Unum, juridically as well, with my Lord Jesus, will never be separate from the thought of your figure of venerated Father, and from the powerful stimulus of some of your words, spoken to me many weeks ago, but that have remained clear and vigorous in my soul and that I have set as the seal on the intentions of my Holy Exercises: ‘Remember: no half measures!’ It is the grace I ask for every day, and I will ask Jesus in the Sacraments and Our Lady. May they become for me an eternal program.”
“No half measures”–“No half measures!” This is the most accurate expression to describe the style of the personality, the educative proposal, words, and choices of Fr. Giussani. He remained faithful to the resolution made when he was twenty-two years old, almost at the end of his formation period in the seminary....

(The full text is published
in la Scuola Cattolica
[the theological journal
of the Archepiscopal Seminary in Milan], no. 1–year CXXXIV, Jan.–Mar. 2006, pp. 45-71.)

1 M. Camisasca, Comunione e Liberazione. Le origini, Cinisello Balsamo: San Paolo (2001), p. 68.

From Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s Introduction to the book by Massimo Camisasca, Comunione e Liberazione. Le origini (1954-1968)
[Communion and Liberation. The Origins (1954-1968)], Milan: San Paolo (2001)

The chapters on Fr. Giussani’s theological training are fascinating. Already in high school, and even more in the theology school of the seminary at Venegono, he encountered great teachers and developed his gift for friendship. When he turned fourteen, a passion sprang up in him for the poems of Giacomo Leopardi. In the poem To His Lady, he was moved by the desire for infinite happiness. The blade of beauty, so to speak, pierced him, leaving a metaphysical wound. In a culture explicitly anti-metaphysical, he felt a yearning for the infinite; there Christ appeared, concealed, with more emotion, with more realism, than in theological treatises or books of piety. Beauty like the splendor of truth made its way in the young man’s thought and sensibility, to the point where they became the central factors on his path to faith. And here, who can help thinking of his father, for whom “music was more important than bread”? In the poem To His Lady, unexpectedly, the figure of Christ was made visible to him. Besides, Christ had immediately cast His concealed hook–the hook of a longing for infinite happiness–into the heart of the young reader. And here we reach the true center of Giussani’s inner life: his encounter with the person of Christ. Once again, it was a profound existential upheaval that went back to the junior high school years: in that period, Giussani, Manfredini, and Carlo de Ponti, a classmate who died young, had formed a circle of friends calling themselves Studium Christi. So intense was the determination with which these boys devoted themselves to the mystery of Christ, going so far as to desire to speak of nothing else–speaking of anything else was intolerable–that in the end Monsignor Giovanni Colombo, then Archbishop of Milan, was compelled to dissolve the group. “What you are doing is wonderful, but it divides the class and you cannot do it any more.”
What here, in the first enthusiasm of adolescent discovery, had passed every measure found a foundation and an appropriate form during their studies of theology at Venegono, under the great professors then teaching there (C. Figini, C. Colombo, G. Corti, F. Petazzi). The school of Venegono had moved beyond the scholastic theology of abstract systematic formulations, structured substantially as a commentary on axioms, which make Christian faith appear a system of thought. Now, it was the categories of event and meeting that came to constitute the basis of reflection. Christian faith has its origin not in theoretical evidence, but in an event: the history of Jesus Christ; this event becomes an encounter and in the encounter the truth is disclosed. So, on the one hand, here the central factor is the category of history and with it the idea of the person, while on the other stands rationality, understood in a totally different sense from rationalism, becoming in a new way one of the essential determinations of faith. Rationality, in its turn, is illuminated through the experience of beauty, which is a mode of the manifestation of the highest truth with respect to pure thought. Christ, however, is not seen in historical terms, but experienced as present in his Church, in which He prolongs Himself through the ages.