fr. giussani AND I / CHRIS VATH
“I FOUND WHAT I WAS LOOKING FOR”
A successful musician, Chris met CL in 1984, and Giussani when he came to America a few years later…

by Maddalena Vicini

“After twenty years in the Movement, I still need the same correction. The temptation to act only following my thought is really stubborn, but luckily the method I have learned knocks it down every time. And I, loved and therefore corrected, can accept something greater than an idea of mine. It’s the only way not to miss the best!” This is what Chris Vath, pianist, choir conductor, and arranger, had to tell us.
He came to New York from New Orleans to attend the Juilliard conservatory. He was working in the residence where he lived when he got to know Luigi Tanzi, who was in America for his job and living in the same residence. In 1984, the Pope had invited the Movement to go on mission, and many Italians began to arrive in the USA. In the meantime, Luigi invited Chris a number of times to the School of Community with a small group of friends. For Chris, it was a “strange” invitation, and he kept refusing, but he often went with the group for dinner or to the movies. After nine months, he gave in. He decided to go to the Movement vacation. “I found everything I had been looking for. I was a practicing Catholic, but I was alone and thought that nothing but my own effort was necessary in order to reach Christ. Instead, I discovered that it is precisely through those people that I can meet the Lord.” Some years later, Fr. Giussani came to the USA. Chris met him; a brief handshake was enough: “Luigi and the others had spoken of it for years. In that moment, in him, I saw a person who was open and interested in everything. I saw the method and the origin of their relationship.”
Then, after some time, came the second invitation to go to Italy to study music. “I had not even considered the first invitation of four years earlier, thinking it was a useless journey. But this time, a friend overcame my lack of resolve: ‘You cannot know beforehand what might happen if you accept. You don’t know what God has in store for you.’” That was it. Chris went. In Italy, he discovered his vocation in the Memores Domini. He began playing piano again, as the beauty of music had always moved him. To demonstrate this beauty was the aim of his playing. But things began to change in his relationship with the piano. Back in America, he was asked to play and explain some classical music  to a group of GS high school students in the Northeast.  “Then I understood that in order to explain what a composer wants to communicate, you have to grasp the sense of his human experience. I learned this in the Movement, where I found a meaning to rediscover every time. In this way, my whole life has become interesting.”