THE CLU COMMUNITY

“I realized that
I needed you”

by Juliet Joly and Luigi Crema

The University of Notre Dame’s campus is beautiful: the buildings, lawns, and maple trees delineate generous spaces, and from any place on campus one can see the high bell tower of the Cathedral and the golden dome of the administration building, crowned by the statue of Our Lady. As autumn matures, the trees, too, turn gold, and soon the fallen leaves are covered with a mantle of snow that in the winter months blankets everything. Asked why they have chosen this university, students give a variety of answers. Some were attracted by the feeling of unity here; there is a great spirit of belonging, and alumni encourage their children to attend “their” university, and continue to donate to scholarship endowments.
Others will tell you that they’re here because of the strong Christian life that has suffused the university’s life and thought since its foundation. Catholicism marks its associations, departments, and initiatives–you can wake up one morning to find hundreds of white crosses planted in a field for a pro-life manifestation. But these are not the only things that make Notre Dame special; many want to study here because of the institution’s prestige, with its demanding admissions standards and world-famous professors, such as the philosophers Alasdair MacIntyre and John Finnis. Notre Dame’s uniqueness lies  in its place as the only Catholic institution among the top 20-ranked national universities. It has never abandoned Catholic thought and tradition as a fundamental element in both teaching and campus life. In this climate, it was very exciting when, on November 1st, about thirty members of the Movement gathered for the academic year Beginning Day with Mass in a chapel and then the rest of the meetings in a university classroom. Paolo Carozza, who teaches in the Law School and guides the community, introduced the day and reviewed the reasons for getting together to begin another academic year. Emily and Juliet illustrated Van Gogh’s vibrant tension toward the absolute, showing some slides of his paintings and commenting on them with quotes from the correspondence of the two Van Gogh brothers, Vincent and Theo. Then Chris, a Malay freshman studying Economics, and Anna, an Italian who is practically American by now, testified to how their encounter with the Movement happened, and re-happened, respectively. For Chris, it was the encounter with School of Community and the simplicity of accepting what was happening to him. “The book still seems impossible to understand, but every time we get together I’m struck by what the others say.” For Anna, the Movement re-happened through friendship with Luca, who taught Italian at her college. She had been in the Movement as a high school student in Italy but had abandoned it; with Luca, she experienced it once again as a living relationship with a friend. The last presentation was by Giorgio Vittadini, the evening’s special guest, who focused on the strength of our companionship: the person of Jesus, physically with us, not as a fairy tale, but visible in the facts, signs, and people who, alongside us, bear witness to His presence. But this is only the latest of a series of facts at Notre Dame. Last year, for example, the campus meeting with Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete and the associated Italian dinner brought also the communities of Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan–and Luca and Francesco had to cook dinner for eighty. For “activities night” in early September, Anna, Andre, Juliet, Blair, and Greer manned a CL booth that attracted a great number of students, and in the handful of seconds allotted at the microphone, explained the nature of their association (and it’s not very easy to explain the Movement in less than a minute!). During activities night, when the various associations at the university meet all the students in the sports complex, the CLU was the only religious movement present. In 2006, in fact, the university officially recognized CLU, because instead of drawing students away from university life, it is an experience that helps them enter into it more passionately and truthfully.
However, not only these things happen at Notre Dame, not just the hoopla of the Beginning Day. There’s the Way of the Cross that CLU has been organizing for a number of years now, uniting members of the Movement and others, also from the nearby city of South Bend, every Good Friday around a lake on campus; there’s the daily life with Lauds in the morning and weekly School of Community with a solid core of friends who always come, and each time a new face arrives or someone already seen returns; there’s the urgency of sharing day-to-day life. In this way, here, too, at Notre Dame, the encounter with Giussani has begun to generate among Paolo and some students a community of friends desirous of living ever more deeply the encounter with Christ, experienced in dinners together, studies, and daily life, because even at Notre Dame, with its strong spirit of belonging–sometimes sincere, other times more superficial–there is still a longing for an authentic companionship toward our destiny. So, less dramatic but by no means less meaningful facts happen, such as when a person, having met some members of the Movement years ago, gave in to the seed planted then, looked for a book by Giussani in the library, and told a friend, “I’d like to understand what CL is. I’ve found the website with a talk by Ratzinger. You’re not fanatics. It talked about beauty; the things I was reading were interesting; I liked them,” and then began participating in the community. Or when a student accepted an invitation to the Beginning Day, thinking it was a Mass and not much else, and began to bond with some people. A few weeks later, she confided to a friend, “Just before your invitation, I’d gotten a call inviting me to a party. I was frustrated. I said I didn’t need friends anymore, that I already had enough, and I didn’t want to meet anyone. After the Beginning Day, I realized that, actually, I needed all of you.” At Notre Dame, winter is cold and, above all, long–people are already preparing for the first snowfall. But there’s no need to fear it because, after all, everyone knows that seeds need a bit of snow over their heads in order to grow well.