Fr. Giussani

“We Feel Communion with His Presence”
Over 250 Masses were celebrated by cardinals and bishops worldwide in memory of the founder of CL on the third anniversary of his death. Here we publish excerpts from the homilies, with the gratitude of children for the fathers who spoke them

H. E. Cardinal
Dionigi Tettamanzi,
Archbishop of Milan
Dearly beloved, many thanks for the invitation you gave me to be present with all of you in our Cathedral, on the third anniversary of the death of Monsignor Luigi Giussani. As Bishop, I accepted it readily in order to express the gratitude of the whole Ambrosian Church to this, its priest, and at the same time to again express the gratitude for all that you of Communion and Liberation do and all that you are in the Church of Milan. The Eucharistic celebration of this evening is the most significant and highly communitarian expression of something that is part of our daily experience. We feel the communion with Fr. Giussani; his presence–invisible, yes, but true and deep–to us and our presence to him cross intimately and bind themselves in unity. It is a communion that contains a sense of gratitude for the gifts of grace that God gave Fr. Giussani and which were given to us through him–his teaching, his testimony, his being a priest: gifts that continue to be offered to us, to our Church, to the whole Church. And it is a communion that also contains a sense of responsibility, because the gifts given to Monsignor Giussani–his “educational charism,” in short–need to be cherished and lived among us today. The second reading is taken from the Wisdom books. I would like to reread, precisely to address your concrete ecclesial experience, the first verse of the passage quoted: “Observe, my son, your father’s bidding, and reject not your mother’s teaching.” This reminds us of the great significance of “tradition,” the demanding task of the transmission of values, and, more concretely, the teaching and the educational work that marked the passion and the action of Fr. Giussani, in continuity and in depth, all through his life. Then the expression of “your father’s bidding” and “your mother’s teaching” leads us to reflect on the singular richness of Fr. Giussani’s fatherhood and motherhood, in particular in the exercise of his ministry and in the simplest and most extraordinary gestures of his life. Many of you had the grace of a personal knowledge of him; others did not, and naturally this will be true of many more with the passing of time. But those of us who had this grace have a debt toward the newcomers: to make known the meaning of the life and mission of Fr. Giussani, his heart, his projects, his dreams, his love of Christ, of the Church, of Mary, of mankind, of the young, and of freedom, truth, and beauty.

H. E. Cardinal Camillo Ruini, Vicar-General of His Holiness
for the Diocese of Rome
Time passes swiftly, but the memory does not weaken or fade the force of a presence that is, more than ever, a living person. Monsignor Giussani, in the mystery of the love of God, is in fact with us and in the midst of us. He is with us with that passion for Christ that magnetized, animated, and guided his whole life. The passion for Christ in Fr. Giussani was always, unfailingly, a passion for the Church, an embrace of the Church, life in the Church and for the Church. To him, the encounter with Christ was always a very concrete matter: the encounter with and membership in the steadfast company of the disciples of the Lord, in which Christ Himself, the Risen Christ, the Lord of life and history, is present, acts, and lives. The desire that kindled his life was, simply, not to keep this faith for himself alone but to share it with everyone, so that in it they could all find the meaning of their lives and destinies. Fr. Giussani was, above all, an extraordinary educator; a priest and educator. Fr. Giussani’s extraordinarily open and penetrating intelligence was in fact an intimately realistic intelligence directed at understanding and shaping concrete reality. This intelligence was capable of grasping immediately–in fact, anticipating–the signs of the times, the true signs, and this enabled him to intervene promptly and effectively to make  the Christian witness present even in the newest and most difficult situations.
This is a quality that the great spiritual family born of the charism of this priest has so far succeeded in preserving and that it is called on to preserve also in the future, in order to render to Christ, mankind, and the Church that service which is its specific vocation.

H. E. Cardinal Angelo
Bagnasco, Archbishop of Genoa, President of the Italian
Episcopal Conference
Because heaven is our home, we can look at the earth and embrace it with great passion and love; we can devote ourselves to the responsibilities of time while gazing at heaven–that heaven which Fr. Giussani has now reached; it is he whom we remember and for whom we pray, knowing we are requited by him before the throne of God with love, prayer, assistance, and guidance even greater than before, in that reality of profound communion and reciprocal love around and from Christ, which is the soul of the Church. We pray for him and we pray with him in a particularly rich and beautiful moment in our history, which we approach with sympathy and great passion and intelligence of faith. Rich, beautiful, and challenging, because, despite the contradictions, despite the inconsistencies, the challenges that we all understand, this time contains certain possibilities, certain promises, certain seeds, certain impulses, certain demands that are extraordinary for the Gospel, for the Church. I will point out two in particular. The first: Around us we see a capacity and a desire to think, to become aware of events, of history, of faith, of the challenges, of the urgencies, of our identity, of our place in time, in the world, in the Church, which may well be wholly new. There is an awakening of conscience, that conscience which a certain way of thinking, of working, seeks to deaden. There is a second large demand that I am also certain you see and that Fr. Giussani saw in a context relatively distant at that time, lying in the years ahead: it is the educational emergency. There is a great educational demand that we, as believers, with humility but also with the intelligence of faith, wish to decipher, to translate, because we know full well that every shadow, above all among young people, all darkness, even the most fierce and most violent and the most deplorable, all darkness is also always a cry for help, above all for education, which means for someone to help them discover; for someone, authoritatively and truthfully, to show them the meaning of things, to help them distinguish what is substantial from what is only apparent. If this is the fundamental challenge, as well as the demand that comes from innumerable sides, it knocks at the heart of the Church and at our hearts, while on the other side we encounter the One who Alone in history has revealed to us the true and complete face of man–Ecce homo–Jesus.

H. E. Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte, Archbishop
of Montreal
in the message of condolence composed on the occasion of the funeral of Fr. Giussani, John Paul II wrote:  “All his apostolic action could be summarized in the frank and determined invitation that he addressed to all those who approached him, to a personal encounter with Christ, full and definitive answer to the most profound hopes of the human heart.” A personal encounter with Christ... This is what the Apostles lived through, and they were transformed by it. It is this that lays at the origin of the vocation of the Apostle Paul, who was later able to write, “To me, life is Christ.”  It is on this that the lives of all those men and women who have become saints rests. Before being a doctrine, Christianity is a journey of encounter with Christ. Before being an institution that devoutly preserves the faith received from the Apostles and that keeps watch on its transmission until the end of time, the Church must to be a welcoming home in which it is possible to meet Christ.

H.E. Bishop Robert
J. Baker of Birmingham,
Alabama
thank you for this special opportunity to celebrate Holy Mass with you today. I am familiar with this great movement of the Church that is the fruit of the spirituality and holiness of Fr. Luigi Giussani, the founder of your wonderful community. In this holy season of Lent, the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation and the entire community of the Church enter more deeply in meditation of the event of the Passion and Death of Our Savior Jesus Christ, and we are reminded of the importance of the events in the life of Jesus and how deeply they impact us. Our Christian faith, as Fr. Giussani has emphasized with his followers, is the encounter with the historical events surrounding Christ’s time in this world and their impact on our time and all of time. Fr. Giussani has said that “Christianity  is not born as the fruit of our culture or as the discovery of our intelligence… It reveals itself in facts, events, which constitute a new reality in the world, a living reality; in movement. Christian reality is God’s mystery that has entered the world as a human history.”

H. E. Archbishop
Roberto González Nieves
of San Juan
cL is a charism that calls us all to live in this world without belonging to this world; it calls us in a particular way to live, to know, to dialogue, to struggle to change this earth into a piece of God’s Kingdom. I thank God for the presence of this charism in this particular Church; in order that the Church be the light and the salt of the earth, people like you are needed, who live in this world without belonging to this world. Jeremiah speaks of the heart, of the desires of the heart, and this is one richness of Fr. Giussani’s charism: the capacity of knowing the depth of the desires of the heart. He speaks of the tree planted on the bank of a river, which grows full of leaves. Our heart must be planted like this near the heart of Him who redeemed us, so that with Jesus we can know the true desires of our hearts, of His humanity that makes us grow in the joy of living. When we begin to know our true desires and our true needs, this enables us to truly be men.

Rev. Fr. John Finlayson,
Vicar General of
Johannesburg, South Africa
yes, we hear what you are saying, Father Giussani, we hear it, we understand what you are saying, where you’re going, and what you want to do in the Church and in the world, and we like it. We thank God for this man; we thank God for raising up men like him–men and women like him–who continue to take seriously the Gospel and trying new ways of bringing the Gospel into the lives of people so that in response to the words of Jesus, their understanding of their faith–their faith, hope, and love–is not just something that they wear on the outside. It’s not just something we wear on the outside for the sake of appearances, but it actually permeates us. It permeates us and all of our energy.

H.E. Archbishop Celestino Migliore, Apostolic Nuncio,
Permanent Observer
of the Holy See
to the United Nations
He was a priest who received a particular gift of light, of wisdom, and of commitment, in order that he would put it at the service of the Church. The readings given to us for this Wednesday of the Second Week of Lent cause us to reflect on our belonging to the Church and on fidelity to charisms. The proclamation that frees us from the fear of death, that resuscitates the dead, that reconciles enemies, that liberates prisoners, also generates jealousy, hatred, malfeasance, and injustice. “The love of most will grow cold” (Mt 24:12). Why should we think of these dire and frightening words this evening when we gather to celebrate with affection the memory of Fr. Giussani? Because Communion and Liberation is part of the Church. These words of Jesus were meant to prepare the Church to live well the time after Our Lord. This fate has touched and continues to touch the Church today; it also touches Communion and Liberation. The anniversary of Fr. Giussani calls you to revive his charism in your communities and in the Church in our world. The dire and frightening words of a love that grows cool is superseded tonight by the sweet and comforting word that the Gospel of Jesus and the testimony of Fr. Giussani will strengthen us in the face of this trial. In this Mass, let us thank the Lord for having given us Fr. Giussani and for the charism that was entrusted to him and through him to all of us. Let us ask for determination, strength, and serenity to conquer the trial of a love that grows cold. Let us ask for light and joy so that the charism of Fr.Giussani may bear fruit.

Rev. Fr. Brian O’Loughlin, Vicar General of Perth,
Australia
today, we are spiritually united with fellow members of Communion and Liberation throughout the world who gather to pray for God’s continued blessing on the charism of  Fr. Giussani which animates us. We also have this time to reflect on the charism of Fr. Giussani, especially the beauty of God, of fellow members of the Movement, and beauty in so much that surrounds us. The Movement of Communion and Liberation reminds us, through our work in School of Community and through the magazine Traces, that Christ is the beauty of God made manifest, so that we can see that beauty in each member and then in others.