The work of the Movement

The “Life-Jacket Confraternity”
At the contagious insistence of Fr. Giussani, a group of friends continued getting together after graduating from college, thus beginning the first Confraternity, at the dawn of the Fraternity. A witness of the first days, tells of those meetings in Milan

edited by Alberto Savorana

Toward the end of the 1970s, Giancarlo Cesana was about thirty years old, a young doctor in occupational medicine and an equally young father. He and some friends became involved in an adventure whose outcome was unforeseeable at the time, and that today reveals the characteristics of a journey guided toward something new, something that in a few years would come to light. Today he recounts, “I was immersed in the context of the friendship that started at the university with Fr. Giussani, one that certainly couldn’t end with the conclusion of our studies. In fact, this friendship did continue beyond the university, becoming a stable group. We met every fortnight at Via Mosè Bianchi, at the headquarters of the PIME Missionaries, who hosted CL at the time.” Thus began our conversation for this Traces issue dedicated to the twenty-five years of the Fraternity.
In those years, Fr. Giussani imagined the birth of “structures… not dependent on the center of the Movement, on the organization of the Movement, but dependent totally and absolutely on the responsibility of adults, of those who acknowledge their togetherness” (The Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, Milan: Società Cooperativa Editoriale Nuovo Mondo (2005), p. 47). This was 1979. And again, “It is a totally free bond, which exists not in that it is called for by the structure of the Movement, but in that it is created by adults who feel the desire to engage themselves objectively, also before others, as friends, on a journey of personal holiness” (p. 57). This was 1981.

Giancarlo, what happened at those gatherings at the PIME headquarters?
In the context of the friends who had grown with him at the university, Fr. Giussani began talking about a “Confraternity,” intending with this term a Christian friendship among adults, not tied in advance to the organization of the Movement or other ecclesiastical structures, like, for example, those in parishes. Not that this Confraternity had to be born in opposition to something; on the contrary, later Fr. Giussani specified that the work of the Fraternity was the Movement, and he certainly encouraged an active and meaningful presence wherever it might be requested or its need might be seen within the ecclesial reality. But his emphasis was on our freedom, which recognized that the friendship begun in the university had a definitive value for our whole life. I remember that once he said curtly to one of us who came to the meetings of our nascent Fraternity, from Pesaro, where he’d returned upon completing his studies in Milan, “There you are! You come up here for nothing!” He meant to say that Marco was coming only for a gratuitous exchange of friendship, without any goal of an organizational or operational nature, above all.

What was your reaction to Fr. Giussani’s invitation?
At the beginning we, or at least I, reacted to this proposal questioningly, without understanding why he insisted so much on the necessity of our gathering together. After the first meetings, then, he became even more insistent, so much so that at a certain point he told us, “You’d better come here, because if you don’t, you’ll all be lost, one by one.” It was then that we began to call those periodic gatherings the “Life-Jacket Confraternity.”
But since Fr. Giussani was contagious, even though we didn’t fully understanding his concern, we became increasingly involved in a responsible activism that he explicitly requested. So we not only continued our little group, but we also went around to promote others. Fr. Giussani invited me to the meeting at Montecassino with Abbott Matronola for the foundation of what was called the “Fraternity of Communion and Liberation.” This was 1980. There were about a dozen of us.

From your periodic meetings in Milan, how did the future idea of the Fraternity take shape?
The image of the Fraternity developed bit by bit as we got together. First of all, Fr. Giussani underlined the value of friendship and freedom. And, right after that, the need for a concrete point of reference–Luciano Riboldi, who was not to be a leader, but an intelligent secretary, was indicated as the promoter of our freedom; his was the task of taking and ordering notes from each gathering, which constituted the introduction to the following get together.
The second point that we focused on was the rule, which consisted, if I remember correctly, of the daily recitation of the Angelus and confession twice a month.
The third point–the one that intrigued us the most for a certain time–was the work: each group should have a work, in function of the Movement, but a specific work. These were the years immediately after Fr. Giussani’s famous words at the 1976 Equipe in Riccione, and so we were hearing the wind of “reform” of the Movement and society, which for us were the same thing, because change for us meant change for everything. So we were teeming with activities, above all political, cultural, and social ones. This was the period when Antonio Simone and Antonio Intiglietta entered politics, with the spectacular elections in the Lombardy Region and the municipality of Milan, as well as the time of the spread of cultural centers and, then, the birth of the Company of Works.
However, Fr. Giussani, even though he didn’t object at all to this type of engagement, and, rather, felt it was a necessary and inevitable consequence of a true experience of the Movement, always put the accent on gratuitousness and on the fact that, even though one shouldn’t be indifferent to the outcome of our action, one couldn’t depend on that. And thus he always treated our activism with an irony that was never detached, but was always poised to correct.

What words most impressed and stayed with you?
Through the journey of the Fraternity, we understood above all the meaning for Christian life of the terms that Fr. Giussani introduced precisely in that 1976 Equipe [From Utopia to Presence in Traces, vol. 4 (2002), n. 11]), which were (like in a table of contents): presence, as unity and communion, with the ascesis that this entails; judgment as affection; and authority as fact.

From the several hundred present in 1982 at the first Fraternity Spiritual Exercises (see “Page One” in this issue of Traces for the notes from Fr. Giussani’s first lesson), today, membership exceeds fifty thousand throughout the world. What remains of the “life-jacket,” and what does that earliest experience suggest to you, thinking about today’s dimensions?
This bond of ours never was lost; it continues even though circumstances have led us to live in different places and with different people. The “Life-Jacket Confraternity” is always “looming on us,” as an example that I find paradigmatic, because it is the beginning. In fact, in my opinion, the fundamental need of all these thousands of Fraternity groups that have come to light throughout the world is to be the experience of a beginning, that is, of a foundational event. In other words, not to be reduced to the somewhat stale routine that might seem to characterize certain Catholic confraternities, as if a little rule or a little commitment during your free time were enough to save your life. However, we actually ought to re-evaluate the meaning of the little rules and little commitments, because maybe they don’t have sensational effects, but they keep the little flame alive in the person, and from this, sooner or later, a blaze can break out again.
In this sense, I’ve always been impressed by the succinctness with which Fr. Giussani spoke of the Fraternity, proposing that membership be a personal fact, not mediated by the groups, and underlining that a signature on an application form was enough to become a member. Together with the application, the only gesture he indicated that should be required of everyone is the common fund, in the form and amount that each person establishes, as long as it’s faithful.

In order to attain all the goals indicated, wasn’t CL enough?
A fact that has always been clear for me–and that Fr. Giussani abundantly emphasized–is that the life of the Fraternity is in function of the broader Movement it expresses, and that it is a passion for the Movement’s growth. In those who live the Fraternity there is no room for Catholic elitism or aristocracy.