LETTERS

LETTERS

A Provocation
for One’s Life
Dearest Julián: Unlike the many occasions when the Event is reduced to a script to be staged (a script that is so analytical and precise that it eliminates the drama of freedom), during these days at the International Assembly in August, the Event happened in front of my eyes, and it penetrated my poverty and my complicated nature through your witness, as well as through the witness of all those who welcome it with the freshness and the totality of their humanity. I was surprised to find myself looking at the mystery of what was taking place. I was moved because my “I” was set in motion and miraculously freed from the many problems that usually torment it, so as to be able to assume the right attitude with which to start facing those problems, the attitude which is that religiosity that you are educating us to, which is not a premise to reality but the modality to engage in it. I thank you for this, because you have been relentless; you did not give up for a minute and you have always been that “provocation to one’s life, that one must follow,” which, thirty years ago in Viterbo, Father Giussani indicated as the first step of our education. I also thank all those who sat at the dinner table with me, those with whom I went for a coffee or a chat, those who told me about their lives… They increased in me the certainty of His Presence, that Presence that took hold of me, exceeding my capacity to grab onto it or understand it. This is the beauty of it: it happens because it is, not because I know what it is!
Gianni, Abbiategrasso, Italy

The Gift of Baptism
Dear Carrón: I am Albanian and I live in Greece. This year, a great event took place in my life: the Baptism of my children. I did not dare to hope for it to happen, since my husband is a Muslim. But it did happen, thanks to the encounter with the friendship of Christ, through the face of a person of your Movement, which is now my Movement as well. By nature, I’ve always had a positive outlook on reality, but at a certain point this positivity faltered because of the way I was struggling through life. Yet I kept searching. One day, I was at Mass and I was very sad. I asked the Lord to show me the way, to give me a sign of His Presence. At the end of the celebration, a woman approached me.  She asked me my name and where I was from. I was struck by her gaze, by the way she looked at me and talked to me–her gaze was completely new and different from the ones I had met before. From that moment on, we got to know each other and started to share our daily lives. This fact generated a great change in my life, and my husband took notice, because even the way I looked at him changed, as well as the way I went about taking care of the usual chores. So he started being part of this friendship, and one day he told me, “I know that you would like to have our children baptized, and that you are waiting for my consent. Well, pick a date for the Baptism.” I was flabbergasted at first, then I asked him, “Why are you agreeing to this?” My husband said, “The path that we are following now brings light into our home, and this is something I have wanted for a long time!” Today, I am certain that when you recognize Christ in your life, your heart feels free in facing the many problems of existence. Because of everything that happened in my life, I ask you, who are the father of this family, if I may be allowed to belong to it forever through the Fraternity.
Mimosa, Greece

“Being” the Meeting
It’s Sunday night; my days at the Meeting came to a close yesterday afternoon. Today, I decided to pop in the DVD of Claudio Chieffo’s concert. I re-lived the Meeting by watching and listening to Claudio’s poems, moved by his simplicity and by the living experience recounted in his songs. But what did the Meeting mean to me? This question had  been lingering in my mind the whole day, and came up again as I watched the DVD. My friend Marco–who was in charge of all the cashiers at the Meeting–at the start of our week of work in Rimini had told me that the Meeting happens through the keys that we punch as we work at the cash registers. But was that my experience?  Yes, the Meeting for me had been punching the keys of the cash register, but it had also been learning about Beethoven, getting to know more about the Cometa charity group, and smiling at an angry man who wanted his money back because the drink he had paid for was no longer available. My Meeting had been strolling around the booths with my friends, going to the talks, giving in to exhaustion and looking for a corner to take a nap, going to the volunteers’ Mass every morning, staying up late to wait for a friend to go get a beer together, saying the Angelus at the start of our days, and learning to live by just looking at a friend who, with simplicity and in the midst of difficulties, faces life as it is (while I tend to try and change it to make it more agreeable to me). My Meeting experience was so intense that I could go on for hours. The words of a friend of mine come to mind, when he said that, in as much as he was a protagonist of the Meeting, he was the Meeting. I don’t know if that’s right, but it is what I experienced during this past week because, quoting Chieffo, I am lucky not because I own this companionship, but because I belong to it.
Alex, Milan, Italy

Within
the Circumstances
My husband Simon got involved in an AVSI [Association for Volunteers in International Service] project in Jordan.  In July 2006, the possibility came along for me to take part in his experience by moving with him to Amman. This would involve our children and my job. We planned our life following what looked like a good intuition, “positively adhering to a very delicate possibility.” In January 2007, through a routine test, I was diagnosed with carcinoma, so I had to interrupt my stay there, the relationships I had embarked on, and the Arabic classes. I found myself living an experience of impotence and loneliness. I faced the circumstance seriously, asking God what it was that He wanted of me and, in the end, I accepted and offered the pain of the first surgery for the fragile friendship that was born with some people in Jordan, for Simon’s job, and for the Church. God gave me the strength and the joy to participate in the great event in Rome, along with my whole family and the Middle Eastern community. In May 2007, I had to face a second and more radical surgery, a fact I didn’t want to accept. Why, God, are you asking this of me?  Finally, the big picture became clearer: “Go and tell the news to all the peoples.” I thought about my inadequacy in confronting the Arabic society, which is 95% Muslim. My husband and I were by ourselves, but we were not alone, because in addition to a few meaningful relationships, we had the tools of the Movement, and the way we were educated to live every detail of our lives in a Christian way. This is how, during my stay in Jordan, I tried to live a commitment to my family and to the study of the language, I tried to cultivate certain relationships, and I adhered to the invitation to charitable work with the Missionaries of Charity, taking care of a group of old women, who settled for my shaky Arabic and who, together with the nuns, are now praying for my health. Out of this commitment was born a beautiful reciprocal acknowledgment with some people of the local Church, but most of all a deep dialogue with my sister-in-law, who started coming to charitable work with me, and continues with enthusiasm even now, in addition to doing School of Community with Simon.
Alessandra, Jordan

A Personal Gain
Everything started at the Teachers Training College “study vacation” in Labante. One night, we heard a witness given by an elementary school teacher named Gherri. At the end, he said something that I have always heard CL people say, but that had never quite convinced me: that he dedicates himself to the children first and foremost for a personal gain. The people I am thankful for, because they helped me see an alternative to the suicide that I had chosen for myself, tell me that they did not help me for me, but for themselves. Up to yesterday, I thought that took some nobility away from their gratuitous gesture toward me. I once read the whole Gospel.  Comparing the way Jesus would act with what I heard, I thought that He did not do things for His own advantage. He went as far as dying  and, in His words, He did not do it for Himself, but for us. I started asking my friends if what we were talking about was selfishness, human fragility, or if it was just that I didn’t get the meaning of those words. They talked to me for a good half-hour, and still I did not understand. Yesterday, immediately after coming back from the vacation, I stopped to consider that, since I only got as far as my third year of high school, I did not have to spend those five days studying. In fact, I had spent my time in the kitchen, helping Clammy’s mom with the cooking. I learned to cook, whereas before I couldn’t even manage to spread Nutella on a slice of bread! Every day, I spent twelve hours straight at the stove. I have to say, by the way, that the “would-be teachers” did not study nonstop for twelve hours daily. They would spend a good chunk of their time playing foosball and chatting. Nonetheless, cooking wasn’t a burden. On the contrary, it made me happy. I believe I experienced a greater satisfaction  by being a cook’s assistant than they did by playing. So there I experienced what I have always heard people talk about. I was doing something for somebody else, but I was the one getting the most out of it. Something similar happened when I received the issue of Traces with the transcript of the 2006 CLU Exercises. My underprivileged friends, seeing the change in me as I came back from Rimini, were eager to know what had happened to me. Since I did not have enough cash to buy forty issues of Traces, and I couldn’t go out to make photocopies because I was sick, in three days I typed out the whole booklet, and I sent it around to everybody (either via e-mail or hard copy). By doing that, even if I was indeed doing it for them, I gained something for myself, because I was happy and, on top of that, I now know by heart everything that Carrón said.
Ricky, Cento, Italy

Following Christ
We publish here the letter that our friends from Brazil wrote to Pope Benedict XVI after his visit to South America in May 2007
Dear Holy Father: Writing to you is a group of fifty youngsters from Belo Horizonte, Brumadinho, Esmeralda, and Lagoa Santa (Brazil), who cannot hold back the happiness for what happened to them by looking at you and listening to you speak in San Paolo on May 10th and 11th of 2007. We want to thank you, because our small and often shaky faith has become more certain: we want to follow Christ, and we can do it by following you and those who help us love you. We are all students, between thirteen and nineteen years of age, and our companionship is an inventory of all of Brazil’s contradictions: some of us attend high school, others the trade school courses of the “Virgilio Resi” Center; some of us live in “good” neighborhoods, others (the majority) in the favelas; some of us live with our parents, but others were not lucky enough to know their own fathers. Some of us are “cradle Catholics,” while others recently converted, but we are friends because we were all fascinated by Father Giussani’s humanity, which points us toward Christ. The encounter with you has become the content of our conversations, and we want to share some of our words with you: “I am told that I need to become a skilled professional, but following Christ to become a saint is far more than that. The Pope bet on me, and I want him to win” (Gerusa, 17 years old). “We were all there to see the Pope, driven only by our love for him. It was such a strong companionship that marked my life, and set it in motion. To see such a large crowd gathered there, each person with his own personal question, was a wonderful thing” (Sabrina, 16). “I discovered that my heart doesn’t ask for material things only. It wants more, it asks to be happy–it cries out for Christ, to be with Him. And that’s possible. Look at the Pope: he faces everything while remaining in Christ’s embrace” (Lucian, 19). “When I saw the Pope, I asked myself: what is his mom like? Does he have cousins? These are the questions that come to mind in front of a relative. Where does this familiarity with the Pope come from?” (Luana, 13) “I went to San Paolo asking to be able to perceive more and more that everything is worth my while, and that life has an answer. When the Pope encouraged us to become saints, I realized that Christ is the way and the answer to what I desire. When he said that he loves us because Christ loves us, all sentimentality faded away and was replaced by concrete affection” (Paula, 17). “My brother Douglas cried in front of the Pope. Shortly after that, I asked him something, and he looked at me and answered me as he had never done before” (Daniel, 14). “I am certain that the Pope looked at me and forgave me. I don’t follow any religion, and you teach me the Catechism?” (Kennedy, 18, who has been living in a Salesian home since the day he saw his mother kill his father) “I was moved when the Pope told us that we are called to be saints. I made that task my own and it gave meaning to our trip. I am ready to travel anywhere to hear those words spoken to me again” (Elisa, 13). “I hope to meet you again” (Felipe Otavio, 14). Thank you, Holy Father
Belo Horizonte

Selling Traces
I’m 43, I have four kids, and I’m a lawyer, known by everybody in a small village like mine, and I’m still stuck with the usual “pain in the neck” Traces selling.  I still have to humiliate myself and ask for 3 Euros from people to whom, for the past twenty years, I have been trying to sell Traces. It’s hot, it’s just me and my wife... These thoughts whirled around my mind during Mass last Sunday, when, at a certain point, I said to myself that I couldn’t go on doing the gesture that way. I wanted to be free. I suddenly remembered a passage from the Bible: God loathes the lukewarm. So I decided to take a risk. At the end of the celebration, I went up to the sanctuary and I “gently” forced the pastor to let me make a public announcement at the microphone. I started talking about Traces, about Father Giussani’s DVD, and about our history. I did not care about how many copies we would sell; I was free. We sold every single copy. A woman gave us a substantial contribution for just one issue. I had to hurry back home to pick up the very last copy I had, which I had promised to a man who was sorry because I had run out. My wife was happy. The hundredfold is only for those who ask for it. I thank you for giving me the possibility to stay young, after so many years, and to grow in my humanity through the selling of our extraordinary magazine.
Romeo

Blessed History
Dear Father Carrón: I just finished reading Father Giussani’s piece,  “Being certain of a few great things,” in Traces, and I am moved and grateful for the gift that I have received. In his words, I recognized the journey I took during these 35 years of belonging to the Movement:  my resistance, my presumption, my tendency to see everything as a problem, my censorship, but also the joy and the gladness of belonging to this blessed history, of being supported and corrected both by my wonderful “CL family,” and by my splendid School of Community group, composed of six older women (seven, during the summer, when Olga joins us during her vacation), ranging in age from 71 to 90! We have been on a long journey together, sharing joys and helping each other through difficult days, which we all have had plenty of. It is important at our age to have a place where we are invited to raise our gaze, to avoid complaining and claims, not to turn inward. We can truly say that our friendship is God’s embrace of our lives, is His real Presence among us. If Christ really becomes a Presence among us, what is left to do, except totally entrust oneself to Him? Getting old cannot be one’s alibi to avoid the task that the Lord gives each of us, which is to bear witness, in every circumstance, to the beauty and the reasonableness of the Christian faith.
Enrica, Chiavari, Italy

A German
Experience
Dear Fr. Carrón: I recently discovered the Movement and I would firstly like to say how glad I am for it! I am a university student from New Zealand and I studied in Southern Germany this year. I went there alone and knew no one at first. In a prayer to God, I asked for some good friends of the faith. A few days later, at the end of March, my prayer was answered in an unusual way. I received an e-mail from a friend in New Zealand with the subject line saying: “This news may interest you.” She had sent an article about the Movement’s recent audience with the Pope in Rome. At first, I was a little puzzled as to why this news may interest me, as the Movement is not in New Zealand and neither of us had ever heard of it. However, God’s work in this would soon be revealed. The next day, I went for the first time to a Catholic prayer evening and university students’ dinner. During dinner, I sat at a table with an Italian girl sitting some distance away. At some point during the evening, she uttered the words, “Communion and Liberation.” My ears pricked up! And I remembered the e-mail. After, I spoke with both Maria and Nicola and I was invited the next day to the School of Community in Zurich and later to visit them in Milan. For the time we were together in Constance, they were great friends and I thank them for having introduced me to the Movement and Fr. Guissani.
Roger Gilbride,
New Zealand