Looking on the Humanity
Within Us with Sympathy
Notes from the synthesis by Julián Carrón at the CL University Central Equipe and at the Responsibles Assembly, Milan, February 6 and 9, 2007

I suggest that we go back and read together the School of Community (Luigi Giussani, “Traces of the Christian Experience,” in The Journey To Truth Is An Experience, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal, 2006, pp. 51-84). This will enable us to test our way of doing School of Community, while keeping in mind what Fr. Giussani says about it. It “is the main instrument of the new life, of the new way of pursuing the aim of the new ‘I’” (“School and Method,” Traces, Vol. 9, No. 1 [January], 2007, p. 4), and the method that this School of Community imposes. As I was preparing for the Responsibles Assembly, I read again the relevant text of the School of Community, and this corrected me once more in my own way of doing it. I tell you this as the outcome of my own personal work. Doing this is an ongoing comparison that corrects us, because we have before us a presence that recounts a human experience. You can go on exposing yourself to a comparison with this presence that documents itself in the pages of the School of Community.
At the beginning of Chapter 2 (“Encounter with Christ”), Fr. Giussani says, “The historical encounter with this man constitutes an encounter with the resolving and clarifying point of view of human experience” (p. 59). Christ solves, i.e., He responds to the needs of the heart, to the needs of my humanity, and therefore clarifies. Christ solves and clarifies because He corresponds. Christ is “the only genius who grasped all the different human factors, brought them to light, and revealed their definitive meaning” (p. 59). With this viewpoint, with this point of departure (which appears in the second chapter, where the Christian event is dealt with), we go back to the beginning of the School of Community, where Fr. Giussani asks, why did those first people see Him as the resolving and clarifying point of human experience? Because they followed Him, and by following Him they grasped more clearly what they were and what He was; because “Christ was the only one in whose words they felt their whole human experience understood, and their needs taken seriously, clarified” (p. 53).
Their unconscious and confused needs become clear in the encounter. What becomes clear? Their humanity reveals itself to be “entirely wanting” (p. 54). This is what began to enlighten me. Here we can see whether or not we are doing School of Community–the problem is not whether or not you are able to repeat it all, but if, from the moment we began, you have ever found yourself feeling “entirely wanting.” The test is this; not to repeat all the words. I say this first of all for myself. On one occasion, in the course of a School of Community, I was answering a question, and I was trying to explain what Fr. Giussani says in “Page One” in the February issue of Traces (in “Familiarity with Christ”), on the difference between the two types of knowledge. I answered by giving a personal example. I knew, as many of you know, what we read in Chapter 10 of The Religious Sense: “I am you-who-make-me” (L. Giussani, The Religious Sense, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal, 1997, p. 105). How different “knowing” this is from saying “I” with the awareness contained in these words! If someone asks a question about this, we can repeat, “I am you-who-make-me” but go on saying “I” as before. I knew what was meant by “I am you-who-make-me”, but I wasn’t saying “I” with that awareness. What enabled me to begin to coincide with those words? The fact of having read that paragraph for years until it became mine, until I began to notice myself saying “I” with that awareness. Here we are; the knowledge Fr. Giussani speaks of in the February text is nothing other than this familiarity. The biblical concept of knowledge is not simply acquaintance, but a familiarity with a datum, on which it becomes mine, an expression of mine. We all know very well the difference between knowing the definition (“I am you-who-make-me”) and saying “I” while coinciding with those words.
We cannot say we know the School of Community without this familiarity with what we are speaking of shooting forth. I began re-reading the School of Community like this, asking myself, am I merely acquainted with it or do I actually “know” it? Because this is where the real work starts. It’s not enough for me to meet Christ, because in that case Fr. Giussani would have stopped short at that. But immediately after saying, “Christ was the only one in whose words they felt their whole human experience understood, and their needs taken seriously, clarified,” he goes on to affirm, “To meet Christ we must first formulate our human problem seriously” (p. 54). It is as if everything were to start off at this moment. Precisely because Christ took my human problem seriously, I can look it in the face–now, yes, because I am no longer afraid of it–and truly begin to formulate my human problem. It is not because I have become a philosopher, nor out of introspection that the human problem forces itself upon me, but because Christ is the point of view that resolves, because He brought out into the open that need that was confused. Now I can begin to formulate the human problem in a complete way. The question is not exhausted, the encounter does not close the human problem; on the contrary, it is precisely here that the adventure truly begins. Otherwise, if I live the encounter as unconnected with the human problem, then, after all, it is still an ideology, a knowledge that has nothing to do with human affairs, and so is of no use to me, and after a while Christ no longer interests me.
What is meant by formulating the human problem? First, “to look on the humanity within us with sympathy; to take seriously what we experience, everything we experience, to discover every aspect, to seek the complete meaning” (p. 54). Here Giussani stresses “wholeness” three times in two lines. I began to look at these affirmations as another test because I know that I am doing School of Community not if I read and repeat these things, but if I find myself looking sympathetically at the humanity that is in me. Let me ask you: since you began doing School of Community, have you found yourselves looking sympathetically at humanity? Not just repeating phrases, but looking sympathetically at the humanity that is in you? Fr. Giussani is so brilliant that he includes in his text some tests that we can use to find out if we are doing the work of School of Community, which cannot be reduced simply to a discourse. This is the test: have I begun to look sympathetically at my own humanity? This is what Christ makes possible. Otherwise, I don’t look at it, but censure it.
The encounter with Christ does not silence my humanity, then, but it is what makes me able to look at the darkness in my heart, to look sympathetically at everything in me that is human. Then from this I go on “to observe our experience clearly and to accept what it means to be human, with all the needs that this implies” (p. 54). And this puts me in an attitude of expectation. Have we found ourselves in this attitude? Which of you has begun to look sympathetically at his own humanity? Which of you has noticed something new in the way he looks at himself? We must begin to interpret the affirmations of the School of Community as signs rather than as parts of a discourse–signs that show us whether or not we are experiencing what we are talking about and whether ours is just a superficial knowledge or a true familiarity.
Let’s look at these signs very briefly.

First sign: powerlessness. “A sense of powerlessness accompanies every serious experience in our lives” (p. 55). If you begin to look sympathetically at your humanity and commit yourself seriously with it, then you discover this impotence; every serious experience of humanity brings it to the forefront. Have we sometimes experienced this impotence over these last two months? If the sign that we have a serious experience of humanity is that we feel this impotence, then, if we don’t feel it, it means that we are still scratching the surface. This means that we can busy ourselves with many things, have a lot of activities, but we are not “there.” If we really feel this impotence, then it can be seen in the fact that we are aware that our basic problem cannot find an answer in us or in others. How many times do we say, “Unity is strength; if we get together we can overcome our impotence!” If you have this conception of companionship then clearly you haven’t understood what we are talking about. So it’s quite understandable that you are disappointed by the companionship. Now, if this happens with the companionship, the same thing will happen in marriage, in relationships–as if there were someone able to solve the problem of our impotence! I begin to understand what impotence means if I discover that my need cannot find an answer in me or in others. “The sense of solitude is borne in the very heart of every serious commitment to our own humanity” (p. 55). I was told of a person who began to do School of Community some months ago and, after reading these pages, said at a meeting, “How hard it is to say these things, and even more so to say them to other people–they seem to be a limitation, a drawback, because you have to be up to it!” The he went on, “Now I feel I am no longer alone because I am faced with a proposal.” He knows very few people, so he can’t reduce the companionship to something sentimental. Precisely because the problem of loneliness is impotence, the answer to his impotence is the fact of being faced by a proposal. You see the difference in the way we normally conceive companionship and what is an answer to loneliness? Let’s not reduce companionship to a sentimental affair. If we do the School of Community properly, then, it corrects us–in the profound sense of the word–in many things, and spares us a lot of trouble. If we don’t grasp this, though, we go on busying ourselves, but, since we haven’t grasped it, we begin to follow the wrong road. Second sign: community. “One who truly discovers and lives the experience of powerlessness and solitude does not remain alone” (p. 55). Often, our attitude is quite the opposite. When we let off steam with someone, when our humanity comes up from our guts, we tend to say the exact opposite. “I’m alone with this problem and that.” But “one who truly discovers and lives the experience of powerlessness and solitude does not remain alone.” So something has to change in our “CL-er” universe. And what is the sign of the change? That I feel close to others without calculation and without imposition. How many times recently have you felt close to others without “calculation, or imposition, yet at the same time without ‘following the crowd’ passively” (p. 55)? “Without calculation” is the opposite of “couldn’t care less,” which, in other words, is the attitude of someone who, in order to avoid imposition or calculation, chooses not to care and becomes passive. No! Without calculation or passivity. Look at how many times Fr. Giussani uses the word “commitment.” First: “The sense of solitude is borne in the very heart of every serious commitment to our own humanity” (p. 55). Then: “You can claim to be seriously committed to your own human experience only when you sense this community with others” (p. 55); not when you do something in order to feel close to Tom, Dick or Harry, when you force yourself to feel close, but when you find yourself close to someone because you experience his humanity. “The more I am committed to my humanity…” does not mean that we have to “make” community. No! We have to live and commit ourselves to our humanity, because this is what makes us feel close to others without calculation or imposition, what makes us feel this “community” with people. Since we haven’t yet grasped this, we often stay together with arrogance and presumption. We don’t feel the need of others; we don’t feel them as part of ourselves, as part of our humanity, but as people who are “useful” for getting things done.

Third sign: authority. Authority is not a group of people who have a role, but people who actually “live our experience more intensely and with a greater commitment” (p. 56). For the third time, we find the word “commitment.” The man who wrote these pages was this kind of man: the encounter with Christ had not emptied him or numbed him, but had brought out more clearly in him all the factors of his humanity, with such a great intensity of commitment. Many of you never met him, but the man who wrote these pages was a man like this–he would never have been able to write them if he had not had the experience. We can see in these pages the witness of a more intense humanity, one that comes out of the encounter. Not that since he had met Christ it was all over! No! Fr. Giussani was a man who had committed himself with his humanity thanks to the encounter with Christ, and this is why he was able to look sympathetically at humanity. Christ was not an alibi for doing nothing. It’s like someone saying, “I have met my sweetheart and I am not committed.” I reply that it’s not true that you have met her; don’t tell lies. What is clear is not that you’re not a good boy, but that you haven’t met her. If you have met your sweetheart, then you commit yourself! If you don’t “go out and get her,” then either you have not met her or you are a miserable wretch. There are no two ways about it: either you have not met her or you are immoral, you resist, because an encounter does not leave you indifferent.
“Thus authority is born as a wealth of experience that imposes itself on others. It generates freshness” and “wonder” (p. 57). What authority have you recognized recently? The more you live your humanity, the more you discover authority. For an authority is someone who is more committed to his own human problem, and without this there is no authority. How have you exercised your responsibility? Trying to get involved with your own humanity, trying to live your human experience personally in all its potency, or by replacing your lack of humanity with authoritarianism of a role, putting all your authority into “commanding”? It’s easier, but totally useless. All this judges us. But I don’t care about mistakes; it’s not a question of moralism. What bothers me is that if we don’t live like this, after a while Christ will not interest us any more and we will be totally alone.
An authority is not someone who spares us something, but someone who lives a greater commitment with his own human experience, who knows what it means to live like a man and not give in to the temptation to spare me this. We are here because of an encounter we have had, because someone reawakened the drama of our life. The greatest authority is someone who arouses the question more, arouses our heart more, because he witnesses to us what it means to be a man. An authority is not someone who flattens everything out so that it fits into the scheme. If we conceive of the Movement as a “scheme,” after a while no one will bother with it, not even we ourselves, because the “I,” just as it is, is need for totality, and so it needs to find something that answers to and reawakens this need for totality, otherwise it will not be interested or attracted. The heart is so objective that, if it doesn’t find what corresponds to it, nothing draws us and attracts us enough. Moralism is not enough.

In 1982, at the first Spiritual Exercises of the Fraternity of CL (see Page One, “Familiarity with Christ,” Traces, Vol. 9, No. 2 [February], 2007), Fr. Giussani was struck when he saw some of his earliest students, and he quoted a phrase of Pope John Paul II: “There will be no faithfulness… if in man’s heart there is not found a question… for which only God is the answer.” The problem is all here. He doesn’t say, “There will be no faithfulness, if you are not well-behaved, if you are not consistent.” No! “There will be no faithfulness… if in man’s heart there is not found a question… for which only God is the answer.” Faithfulness is linked to a question to which only Christ is the answer–not to the ethical question, but to the anthropological question, the question of the heart. This is why either we get to grips with the real question of living, or sooner or later we too will no longer be faithful. We can place no hope in a faithfulness that is based only on our ability to be consistent.

Fourth sign: prayer. If we take our experiences seriously, they inexorably demand something more, i.e., they have an authentically religious dimension–not an “attachment,” but something that arises from experience itself. This is why Fr. Giussani said, “The man who prays is the most realistic, the one who takes his human experience most seriously.” Do you want to know whether or not you take your experience seriously? Ask yourself if you have prayed and how you have been praying, if you have needed to cry, to entreat. How? Not as part of some CL program, but as something that arises from the guts of your need. How often has our prayer sprung from our needy humanity, taken seriously, and how often, instead, has it come from habit or a ritual (and when there is no ritual you don’t pray; for example, when you’ve got exams or when it’s time for vacation, as there is no ritual, you don’t pray–our humanity is on standby)?

Now that we have started the new chapter (“Encounter with Christ”), we need to read again the introduction to the 2001 Italian edition of At the Origin of the Christian Claim (All’origine della pretesa cristiana Rizzoli, Milano, 2001). It’s not that once we have discovered our humanity, we reach Christ and turn over a new page; we have already overtaken the premise and begin to speak of Christ. No! Fr. Giussani doesn’t speak of humanity because he “must” (first you have to speak of the human problem and then you have to speak of Christ), but because in order to grasp who Christ is you have to take your humanity seriously. Christ presents Himself precisely as an answer to our humanity. If you want to go ahead in researching what Christ is, you cannot leave aside the human problem and begin to “speak” of Christ, because Christ comes to answer precisely your human problem. The more a person feels and is committed to his own humanity, the more he will be able to welcome Christ, who comes to meet you now. “It would be impossible to realize fully what Christ means if we don’t first grasp the nature of the dynamic that makes man man. Christ presents himself as the answer to what ‘I’ am, and only an attentive, tender and passionate awareness of myself can open me up, dispose me to acknowledge, to admire, to thank, to live Christ. Without this awareness, even the name of Christ himself becomes merely a name” (p. 3).
So we set off on this new part of the School of Community without leaving aside what we have already done. It is another crucial question. Often we see The Religious Sense like a premise, so much so that many say, “If we are already Christians why do we go back to the religious sense?” But it is precisely Christ who reawakens humanity–He doesn’t flatten it out, He doesn’t anesthetize it; He reawakens it in order to go on answering it. Only someone who takes his humanity seriously can go ahead with the great adventure of recognizing Christ. Otherwise, we think we already know, while we actually know nothing. It’s precisely because you go on wanting to see the person you love that you are surprised when you see her again. This is not “the end of the affair;” rather, you want it never to end. The day it ends is the tomb of the relationship, just as it is the tomb for faith. You can go on observing a ritual, but it is no longer of interest for life. This is the problem of faith–Christ will go on being of interest if there is still a question. “There will be faithfulness if there is still a question for which Christ is the only answer.”
As we tackle the new chapter, we begin reading the Gospel passages quoted there, to read all that happened, to recognize what is happening amongst us now–this is the only way to go on in this adventure of getting to know Christ. At the same time, we need to recuperate the two methodological points Fr. Giussani indicates in At the Origin of the Christian Claim–for the disciples, that encounter became a journey of certitude, because living with Jesus in time and with attention to the signs enabled them to formulate more and more the question that living with Him triggered: “Who is he?” and drove them to look for an answer. This is the adventure needed if we want to continue that journey of certitude that we glimpsed at the CL University Spiritual Exercises (cf., “What good does it do a man to gain the whole world, if he then loses himself?”–booklet insert in Traces, Vol. 9, No. 2 [February], 2007). In making this journey, let’s not forget the Spiritual Exercises. Let’s work on the School of Community, keeping in mind what we said at the Exercises and with all the wealth of what we are living now.