Brazil  “The Mission of the Church”

A Gift that
Sets You
in Motion
Coverage of Fr. Carrón’s seven intense days in Brazil, including the Memores Spiritual Exercises, a public assembly, and the priests’ retreat

by Isabella Alberto

“Man is the direct relationship with the Mystery. We’re not a piece of the mechanism of circumstances.” This was the central touchstone to which Julián Carrón continually referred in all the gatherings he led during his brief stay in Brazil, September 6-12. The image impressed on those who saw him was that of a “sure rock,” in the words of Jefferson, invited to the assembly with Carrón by a colleague. Carrón’s first commitment was the Spiritual Exercises for the Memores Domini, drawing participants from seven Latin American nations, from Ecuador to Argentina. In a hotel near Saõ Paolo, 174 members gathered for four days of an intense journey together. At the beginning, he reviewed the work done at this year’s Fraternity Exercises: “Christ, in His Beauty, Draws Me to Him.” The event continued with testimonies and questions on what had happened during the past months, with a judgment on the facts that have left the greatest mark. People spoke of discovering the importance of one’s own humanity in glimpsing within everyday life, within day-to-day banality, the birth of the question: “Who are You?” They talked of the newness of a different gusto in reality and of an intensity of life in any condition. Speaking in Spanish, with simultaneous translation in Brazilian, Carrón imparted a fatherly gaze and a certainty: “Even the hairs of your heads are numbered.…He loved us before every other thing.” During the Exercises, Carrón also presented the theme of “The Mission of the Church,” together with the central proposal that he expounded up to the very end, that of being open to this challenge, one to which it is impossible to stay indifferent.

Questions and answers
On Sunday, September 9th, Carrón moved to the auditorium of a university in Saõ Paolo, where the local community was gathered for a public assembly on School of Community, examining the chapters “The Gift of the Spirit” and “The Christian Existence” from Giussani’s The Journey to Truth is an Experience. The beautiful day marked the end of a long weekend holiday for Brazil’s Independence Day, but the over 500 people who decided to attend the gathering had no regrets. At the end, their smiles testified to their gratefulness for what had happened in those two hours. The questions were asked quickly, not to waste time, but the answers were long and profound. Carrón first emphasized the difference between gift and commitment: “We often find it hard to understand what’s a gift and what’s a commitment. They seem two separate things to us. But if we look at reality, the experience we have, we understand that we’ve received a gift, because we get to work, because it moves our freedom. Just think of the experience of falling in love. It’s true that nobody falls in love because he tries hard at it. It’s a gift. But we know that it has happened, because it gets us going. We want to see her again; we get in the car and go to her; we want to know her history, her desires. The one thing we don’t do is stand still.”

Flawed human beings
Afterwards, responding to some questions on the flaws and betrayals of human beings, Carrón, with great affection, as if embracing the mother who asked the question, said, “The Mystery chose this method to reach us. There is only one kind of human being: one with flaws and limitations. Imagine you have a gravely ill daughter. You would like the doctor caring for her to be very kind, to devote time to explain everything, to be an understanding person. But you discover that those with these characteristics don’t have a clue about your daughter’s illness, and after a great deal of effort you find that the only doctor who understands is a nasty, hateful person. Would you want him to be her doctor or not? Yes or no? All his vile faults don’t eliminate the fact that he can cure your daughter’s illness. And you would be grateful to him for doing so, and at Christmas you’d even give him a present. If you should lose your mind for a moment and let his flaws outweigh his value, we’d all think you didn’t love your daughter. …We’re not idiots. We certainly aren’t blind to the flaws and limits of the Christian community, but we know well that the Christian community carries a treasure in vessels of clay, and that this good is greater than any flaw, because otherwise there would be no place for me. This is the sign of Christ’s tenderness, embracing everyone, even us sinners. This is the only place in the world where we are embraced for who we are, because when we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Carrón closed the gathering saying that there is always the risk of freedom: “Our companionship can do everything for us, but if the ‘I’ doesn’t respond, it’s as if Christ, who is begging for our hearts, had to stop at the threshold.”

Old friends and new faces
The public that followed him in silence included many young people, from GS kids to young workers. There were also many families, as well as new faces, friends of friends, there for the first time. There were twenty people from Pantokrator, a new community of the Church that began in Campinas, who had met some friends from CL a few months before and, from that time on, wanted to draw closer to Fr. Giussani’s charism. Other friends came from far away. Celso, from the Manaus community over 2,400 miles away, planned to visit his daughter here at this time so he could attend the assembly, with the desire to draw the energy necessary to care for his family and guide the Agriculture School, a work that follows over 250 young people in his city. All the small CL communities in the region of Saõ Paolo and those from southern Brazil were present because, having met Carrón at the National Assembly last November in Rio de Janeiro, they were still struck by what he had said to them, the sign of a new beginning.
The challenge Carrón set before everyone was a decisive call. “We can stay in the Movement for years and, like everyone else, suffocate in reality. …A Christ who has nothing to do with life, who has nothing to do with the relationships and difficulties of life, sooner or later will no longer interest us. But we can become true men and women. This is the promise, and this is why I am in love with Christ, because the more I let Him in, the more my life becomes interesting. And I’m enthused about that!”

Faced with a challenge
Before returning home, Carrón also guided another moment of work: the retreat for priests of Latin America. Many of the 43 priests who came from Brazil and eight other countries are Italian missionaries, some who’ve been here for thirty years, others who’ve just arrived, people who give their lives for building the Church and who often find themselves immersed in situations of poverty, political struggle, and violence. The encounter with Carrón was an occasion for each to renew his vocation, starting afresh from one point, that the “I” be dominated by Christ, and for this reason free from any circumstance.
Carrón’s certainty, testified to so evidently during these days of retreats and assembly, enabled people to return to their domestic affairs, their job in a bank or their engagement in a social work, their school or parish life, with a new presence in their eyes. They all were faced with the same challenge, recognizing Christ within daily circumstances, to the point of arriving at You, to the point of perceiving the human advantage of this sequela.
Let’s get to work!