Education

University Life A Presence
Catalyzes Change
The effort of study, encounters at the start of the year, and then family, work, friends... What happens if we approach them by beginning with the Christian proposal? Here’s the answer from some who accepted the provocation

by Paolo Perego

Over five hundred people came together for the Equipe of CL college students at Tabiano Terme in the province of Parma in September. They came from all over Italy and even abroad, enrolled in different faculties and of different ages– in short, ordinary people. But they all shared the desire to respond to the provocations of Fr. Carrón, the challenges he has repeatedly thrown out in recent months: “Are you willing to check out who Christ is? Will you accept the challenge of seeing if there’s an explanation for the drama of living, of looking at what’s happening, what’s changing?” In the past few months, they have tried to verify it in their lives, in every aspect of day-to-day living. This is shown by the many and varied speeches made at the two assemblies on Saturday, which told of people who had changed, examples of a different way to approach reality. In The Journey to the Truth is an Experience,Fr. Giussani wrote: “The Christian looks at the whole of reality like the non-Christian, but reality tells him something different, and he responds to it in a different way.” This is because man is dependent on God, and recognizing this relationship, the religious sense, means we inevitably have to get involved with reality, where Christ is present. These were the major issues on which Fr. Carrón, at CL’s Fraternity Exercises, invited us to verify “the benefit to yourself,” the fulfillment of our own need.

Endless plans
Luca from Milan found himself making endless plans at the end of summer: there was the Meeting, the pilgrimage to Loreto, the welcoming commitee… They all crashed, because his mother was ill. “But my friends came out strongly; they helped me live that circumstance to the fullest.”
“Every circumstance is the way the Mystery calls on us,” Carrón answered. He added that only the recognition of this dependence gives us peace and brings us closer to our friends. And circumstances can be checkered. This is shown by the story of Giuditta, who wants to take a sick uncle into her home, or Angelo, the victim of a serious car accident who spent months convalescing in the hospital.
But life is not just made up of dramatic events, and Carrón’s challenge covers the whole range of experience, probing the recesses and evoking nuances of the days of each of us–as when he answers Daniele from Catholic University in Milan, who speaks of the burden of living at home, of study, and of relationships, in which, he says, he always feels he has to prove something. “You see? We’re talking about real things! Life at home, study, work, dependence on the judgment of others... Is all this connected with what Fr. Giussani says about the religious sense? What was your experience? This is the answer; I don’t need to go through the lesson again. Did you get real with this approach? Otherwise, it’s just a waste of words.”

True culture
The path suggested is personal verification, the response of the “I” to something that happens. It’s not moralism, a critical-constructive attitude. And it’s not a mechanical activity, as if it was an organization, as suggested by some contributions. Carrón lets no one get away like that: “You have to acquire your own conviction of this. Otherwise, you’re not interested in Christ in time. I just returned from Brazil, where I had dinner with Cleuza Zerbini. She was at the international assembly of CL office holders and now she’s back in Brazil. ‘The words you spoke at the Fraternity Retreat, that even the hairs of our head are counted, completely changed me!’ How many of 700 office holders present at La Thuile spoke with this same simplicity in getting a handle on reality? It’s called ‘culture,’ as Fr. Giussani says in Certain of a Few Great Things (Bur-Rizzoli). It is the cultural principle, namely, what makes the world worthwhile, what enables us to penetrate reality. And this is peculiar to poor people, to man in his relationship with everyday life. And it is not as if we haven’t received the same thing that she has; it’s that we’re not simple, we’re presumptuous. The question is whether we’re ready to go out on a limb.”
We can change. It happened to Fabio of Milan, who left for Czestochowa with the idea of organizing the logistics of the pilgrimage and was then forced to realize he hadn’t been assigned that role. “I was disappointed, but then I talked to a friend. I made the second part of the pilgrimage understanding that I was there to develop my relationship with Jesus, and that changed everything.” Carrón immediately pressed him: “The pilgrimage was no longer the same. Your attitude toward reality changed. Circumstances don’t have to change for me to be different. But something has to happen, so that, once this new thing has come about, it changes my attitude.” In no situation are we spared this drama, he added. “Not even am I spared the drama of freedom. It can’t be a problem of roles. I don’t want my ‘I’ to be spared this relation with the Mystery. I want to verify if Christ corresponds to myself, to my humanity.”

“Then stay with them!”
It’s a new cultural principle, one that is wide open to all aspects of reality, including life at the university, because one thing is clear: if there are people that act like this, with the gratuitousness and the creativity that stem from it, things around us will also change. The university will change. A group of guys from a university in Milan write: “We’re engaged in an initiative that brings out our hearts and sets them down before the whole of reality.” One way is to organize a “Freshmen Welcome” for the start of the year, perhaps by returning early from vacation and devoting your time to people you’ve never known before. The beauty, the immediate sense of closeness you arouse in those who respond to initiatives of this kind are the natural result of this way of confronting reality, which reaches out to others. “Just act like this,” said Carrón, “and everything will become beauty in the eyes of others.” This happened to the young people from Foggia during a pre-test. One of their teachers came up and said, “I admire your helpfulness, commitment, and the beauty of the gesture you make. I couldn’t do it the way you do.” This also happened in Pescara, where a teacher brought his nephew to the CL welcoming committee, preferring them to the institutional ones organized by the faculty.
Those who are met with behavior like this and are struck by it can only experience the beauty of reality in the same way in their turn–even though they may not be Christian, as happened with the CLU in Pavia. A Muslim guy they met at the university began to stay with them and talk to them about his family, who is in the Middle East. When his mother had misgivings about the CLU, he asked her how long it had been since she prayed. “Since I was sixteen.”
“See,” the boy answered. “Since I’ve been hanging out with them, I’ve started praying again.”
“Then stay with them!”