School Assembly
In April, our school council agreed to allow us to use the monthly assembly so that anyone could propose to the school their in-depth work on interesting topics. A variety of themes were suggested: euthanasia and the value of life, the DICO (the regulations on de facto couples proposed by the Italian government), the relationship between science and reason, Edward Hopper, Bob Dylan, sports, an exhibit on the Milky Way, and a few movies. The task of preparing these assemblies was a challenging one, but it surely was an experience of unexpected positivity; a great gift. For many kids, bored by the superficiality and the routine of everyday life, it was like a wake-up call, and they were in disbelief upon seeing that there are still some who are not suffocated by general dullness and who will take risks, to the point of proposing to everybody the topics they have at heart. They saw us as people who search reality for something trueæ in a painter, a singer, a starry sky, a debate on a current topicæthat corresponds to their experience and, as we saw, to everybody’s heart. For us, it was very surprising to see how some of our classmates were waiting precisely for this: for the encounter with people who don’t want to drag out an oppressive and fruitless ideological debate, but are interested only in a human gaze capable of re-awakening all of one’s questions, doubts, and true humanity, making one able to finally be oneself. At the assembly on euthanasia, for example, a kid spoke about the experience of his own family with his grandmother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s, and about what it is like living with such a disease. So, as happens every time you put on the table that which really counts in life, some relationships got deeper, and some new ones were born.
The GS group at Leonardo High School, Milan

A Fascinating Challenge
Dearest Father Carrón: I wanted to thank you for the Fraternity Exercises. I went to this retreat tired (of myself) and even a bit against my own will. I wasn’t in the mood for a lot of words, and I felt I was there just because I had to be (mainly not to lose my brothers’ esteem)–deep down, my hidden desire was to avoid judging my current inadequacy.
School with the kids, the problems within my Fraternity group, the distance from Christ alive and present, the fear of not being able to live everything as fully as I always wanted–all of this was me when I got to the Exercises. I followed the Saturday afternoon lesson, then the assembly–how unnerving! I didn’t have any questions for you, not because I didn’t need clarification, but because I felt the urge to give myself completely to Christ, and all the substantia of my being coincided with the infinite desire of “possessing” in my life, in my days, in the hours, in every instant–“Christ in His beauty draws me to Him.” At last there was the assembly on Sunday. I felt satisfied, happy to be there with you, with my brothers, with everybody, and, most of all, with my sometimes limping life. I got out of the meeting hall and I was so full of joy that I didn’t want to hear comments, words, opinions. I wanted to safeguard and not spoil the Beauty I had in my heart.
The challenge you presented to us is fascinating and amazing: “I” and “You,” “You” and “I,” always, in every instant, in every circumstance. I went back to work. The kids did not miraculously turn into “lambs,” or the colleagues to Pope supporters, but now I start my days saying Morning Prayer, and this reminds me of who I am, and who I am for.
I can’t but “live Christ.” He alone can bring my “I” to completion and fulfill every one of my desires. Having an infinite desire for Christ can’t depend on what I have accomplished, or on the path I have traveled. My desire for Him is my breath–without it, I would die.
Susanna

A New Gaze
Dear Father Carrón: I still recall the circumstances surrounding my encounter with the Movement, twenty years ago. Once I finished college, I enthusiastically decided to join the Fraternity. But there was something, like a woodworm, embedded in my heart: the fear that somehow Christ might want “too much” from me. I was torn between the things and people I loved (and that I was afraid of losing), and the many things to do. Even the commitments with the Movement ended up just being more things to do.
In time, the attractiveness and the familiarity with Christ that I felt in the companionship faded away. An abysmal distance separated my heart from those I cared for the most. I experienced an uneasiness in the most significant relationships, as if nothing more than the things to do united me to them. That same fear that took up residence in my heart, and that I had never wanted to face, somehow came to the surface again. But it wasn’t Christ who took away my loved ones from me, it was the distance from Him that made me lose them. I experienced once again His gaze on me, the gaze of precise people: Andrea, Mariella, Donato... At this point, it became clear that He was my only need. Thus, inside me a cry resounded clearly: “O Christ, make it so that not a minute in my day can pass without me needing You, so that I can find You wherever I am.” If I’m working, if I’m resting, if I’m taking care of my children, or if I’m doing “the things of the Movement,” I am paradoxically more tied to all these things and I do them with an enthusiasm I never experienced before. I get up in the morning, and it is clear to me that nobody will be able to take Christ away from me anymore. The only thing that matters is to beg for Him every day, with all my heart. Now I understand why you say that the “I” is the first companionship: it is up to me to beg for Him and, acknowledging my need, recognize Him.
Angela, Muggió

Asking for Sanctity
Dear Father Carrón: I’m writing to thank you for the Exercises, because they changed my perspective on a difficult situation that my family is going through.
Six months ago, our second daughter Giuditta was born, and after a few days she was diagnosed with congenital cardiomyopathy, which prompted the need for surgery. Initially, my wife and I began to pray, asking for the healing of our daughter. But I suddenly realized that this wasn’t enough for me. I felt the urgent need for my daughter’s whole life to be completely fulfilled; I realized that physical well-being wasn’t the only desired thing. We then started praying for her sanctity as well, but in time the same dissatisfaction came back and I wondered what was still missing. After all, I wasn’t doing anything wrong...When you told us at the Exercises that we could be doing everything and remain stuck at the level of our reactions, ultimately passive at the center of the “I,” I understood that that was exactly what I was missing. I did not feel the “trepidation” of my own dependence on the Mystery. I was asking for the healing and the fulfillment of my daughter, just as a reaction to circumstances which, instead, required me to recognize my own dependence on the Mystery, of which my disproportion and impotence in front of Giuditta’s situation was a sign. Offering this circumstance is not passive, but it is recognizing that Christ is the consistence of everything, even of the affection I have for my daughter and of her illness.
This is why it is reasonable to ask for the miracle of her healing.
Giorgio

The Gift of Marriage
Dearest Alberto: I’m writing to tell you of the great and mysterious experience that Rodolfo’s illness is calling me to live. Marriage is a task, and dealing with my husband’s illness is for me its highest fulfillment: the promise we once exchanged became flesh, and being able to live it in everyday life is a privilege. After two years of vigilant coma, and therefore of absolute silence, my husband started to talk, to repeat, to answer questions again; he has been able to do this for the last twenty months. We felt great joy, wonder, and an infinite gratefulness to Father Giussani, from whom we had asked for a grace! But the miracle doesn’t stop there: ten days ago, entering the room of our house that we have prepared for him, I found him immersed in his thoughts and I asked him, “Rodolfo, what are you thinking about?” I expected an answer like: “About my suffering, my lengthy infirmity” or something similar linked to his illness. Instead, he said, “I’m thinking, ‘My soul rejoices in God, my Savior.’” I thank You, God, for my husband’s great faith. I thank You for Your living presence among us, that is for all of us.
Anna, Milan

In One Embrace
Dear Friends: Seeing all of you gathered at St. Peter’s Square eagerly awaiting the Pope despite the cold and rain, shivering in your jackets but being kept warm inside by the joyous anticipation of a great celebration, is the vision that keeps me close to all of you despite the fact that I am here in Manila. I could not hear your voices, but I could see your faces and that is enough for me to know that the celebration of 25 years of the Fraternity has been kept even more alive by the friendship that spans the globe, covering all continents. In my room tonight, as I view on my computer the pictures from the CL audience with the Pope last March–having missed the telecast (I don’t have cable access here)–I can feel in my heart what all of you felt during those moments. I’m eagerly awaiting the May issue of Traces so I could read about the experience. Reading about it and seeing your photos, although some months after the event, will not diminish the camaraderie I feel in my heart. Truly, we are all together in one embrace, though we are thousands of miles away. I may be the only one here in Manila, but the warmth of your friendship continues to sustain and nourish me; I feel I am one with you, as if I was there that day, an umbrella in hand and a song in my heart.
Malou Samson,
Manila,Philippines

A Certain Hope
When I was in Africa, I thought that for one to become a Christian, and to live as such, was like swimming against a current. I moved to Australia three years ago. Living here these years, I continue to have similar thoughts–that is, for anyone to become a Christian and to live as a Christian in Australia is like a person swimming against a current. I have moved from where Islamic extremism and African traditional religions are very much in practice, into cultural relativism and the secular West. Without total dependence on God the Father, there is no real hope. Through the friends I have made as we meet for the School of Community, through prayers, through many other ways, God has sustained me in hard times and in good times. Since I encountered Christ, since I became His follower, first in Africa and now in Australia, in good times and in bad times, as a citizen in my home country and as a citizen of a country where I took refuge, I have always had moments of spiritual fulfillment and moments of spiritual desolation. As one lives in this society, or any society for that matter, what would one do in the presence of God but to say, in the Prophet Isaiah’s words, “Woe is me! For I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” Giovanni Reale wrote in Traces (Vol. 9, No. 3, 2007): “This divine activity now takes on dramatic form when, in Jesus Christ, it is God Himself who goes in search of the ‘stray sheep,’ a suffering and lost humanity.” Reale goes on to define two kinds of love, saying, “Eros is a force ascending from below, agape is a force descending from above.” Although I had read these concepts many times before, they were never defined in these beautiful terms. If man, in the brevity of his life, could encounter Christ, live in total dependence on Him, there would be, as people say in Australia, “No worries!” There would also be a taste in this world of Who really makes us human, namely, Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life. We are all aware that we are living in a crucial moment. According to Fr. Carrón, in his letter of January 30, 2007, we need “to go to the Holy Father with the certain hope that he will offer us a word that will lighten up our way in this crucial moment of our history, of that of the Church, and of that of the world.”
Thiik Giir,
Melbourne, Australia

In Light
of a Certainty
At the beginning of last year, I asked my university for permission to study abroad for six months in the U.S. I dreamt of California and big cities like New York; instead, I ended up in Boone, North Carolina, an isolated town below the Appalachian Mountains. When I wrote to Steve, the U.S. CLU responsible, to find out who from CL was attending my new university there, he answered, “You are the CLU there.” I was afraid and angry, going there thinking that I could, instead, have been a part of a network of blooming relationships elsewhere in these months. But, in time, I understood that in the fatigue of being alone, facing all the difficulties of the language and of my studies, God really wanted me there, where He had prepared something for me. I am glad for having been part of the shaping of a new community, the one in North Carolina that gathered with regularity and with whom I lived the most significant moments of the year, from the Advent Retreat to the broadcasting of the audience with the Pope. There were many new people living the gestures of the community with a real strength of life, wanting and thirsting to go to the heart of the beauty encountered. With creativity, they overcame the miles of distance among them to live a life close to each other. With the friends that I met on campus, including one of the professors, I couldn’t do anything but give my all. It is so beautiful to affirm that what has begun will be brought to completion; I did not suffer too much from the separation from them, in light of this certainty. It is not necessary to do anything else except to concretely give your all, because it is right there that Christ comes to you and makes you get up and move. In this way, the faces close to you become fraternal. I am certain that even if my circumstances change, I will never be satisfied by anything less than this. I want to maintain these relationships forever; I want to take them along with me to Milan, looking at everything starting from the gaze they had on me so I can live for the One who allowed all of this.
Annalisa, Milan