Witnesses

“For Me, the
Christian Fact Has Been an Adventure”
April 30, 1999, a few weeks before he died in a car accident, Enzo Piccinini held a conference on “The condition of the sick in the culture of efficiency–solidarity or marginalization?” in Pesaro, Italy, in the presence of the bishop at the time, now Cardinal Bagnasco, President of the Italian Bishops’ Conference. Here are some extracts from his witness

I am an atheist who by chance became Christian, because I come from a place where atheism was born, the Emilian lowlands. I grew up with the pragmatism typical of the people of that area–you have to be always active, always doing things. For them, metaphysics is the opinion of those with weak minds. I grew up in a climate like that, so the Christian fact has been really an adventure for me, because it’s not as if I had no other choices. If I am actually a Christian, it is because it carries a challenge. The challenge is that Christianity does not mean that a Christian is a bit less than the others because he has more moral obligations, but it means true humanity. So, as I see it, in facing up to pain and suffering, the Christian fact is the most human approach, where human is really human. It is a challenge, obviously, as it has been a challenge for my life, because I certainly never thought it was before. However, I realize that had I not discovered this, I would not have become a Christian, because I had other choices, as I have now; and every time I have to ask myself if it is worthwhile. Because, as I always say, Christ and Christianity are an ungainly ornament–after a while, it’s better not to have it, if it is not humanly, seriously, convincing. I want to try to give you the reasons for my position.
Pain and suffering are part of man, so you cannot tackle pain and suffering without tackling the one who bears it, the human experience that bears it, that lives this; without tackling the human problem, man. So I always keep in mind what man is for me, and what man is for the experience I belong to, and in which I believe, and that has made me a different person from before. This is the point, substantially… I’ll explain it with this example: A girl comes to me after a meeting and tells me she is uneasy, she doesn’t understand, that they are all nice things to discuss, but with her friends it’s not always quite so clear, they expect a lot, they talk and talk, but they are just the same as the others, etc.… I tell her, “Look, it’s not something mathematical; it’s a human question, it takes time and patience.” Another time, at another meeting perhaps in the same vicinity, I see the same girl coming to me at the end. “Again! What do I say to her this time?” But this time she comes up to me beaming, and says, “What you told me was fantastic. I understand the problem now. I am so glad; everything’s changed.” A doubt crosses my mind and I ask her, “Have you found a boyfriend?” “Yes.” This is not strange; it is truly a human experience. What has she found? Someone who told her, “You’re fine as you are. I want you. You are useful to me;” someone who finally made her feel she was someone. Now, falling in love is nothing but a distant echo of what happens when you discover the awareness of being a creature, that is, that there is someone who wants you instant by instant; someone who wants you so much that He made you unique and unrepeatable. Even after three hundred million years, there will be no one like you, and for thousands of years there has never been anyone like you; you are unique and unrepeatable; you are a tiny dot in the world, but there the consciousness of the world is concentrated.
In human experience, we discover something fantastic: that man is someone when he is for someone. Pardon me the play on words. A child is someone for his mother, and he feels he is someone with his mother, and the mother is someone with the child. But one can feel he is someone for another reason. For example, the chief consultant in a hospital is someone because they lay out a red carpet for him, because he has power to decide things, because he has people who must do as he says, because he is a manager. To be someone always means being in relationship–with someone or with something. That consultant is nobody if you take away the personnel. So the person, the key point in Christian experience (because Christ brought into the world the great revolution that is the event of the person), is someone in relationship. But be careful: he cannot be in relationship with something merely human, because the mother will grow old and the child grows up; the consultant gets old and loses what made him feel he was somebody; the relationships you love wear out in time. There is only one possibility: that there be a relationship that is a sign of eternity, a sign of the eternal you desire. Man is truly man and finally has dignity in his action, whatever it is, if what makes him consist is relationship with the Mystery that makes all things. In all the religions of the world, the Mystery that makes all things is called God. He is truly unique and unrepeatable. He is untouchable, from the beginning to the end; from when everything began in two famous cells, until he is old and decrepit and out of his mind, a human larva, as my father was, with my mother who nursed him… It’s incredible when I think about it: She took care of him for years–he had Alzheimer’s disease. For years! It is dignity, do you see? In the end, it is about dignity. And it doesn’t matter what you do. What a wonderful phrase the Bible has: “I have loved you with an everlasting love, so I drew you to me, having pity on your nothingness” (Jer 31:3). This tells us what the Christian experience is since its Old Testament origins, its attitude towards the person who exists in relationship to the Mystery. The dignity of life, therefore, is in belonging, responding to someone or something with what you are and what you do. It is a responsibility. I was nothing; I didn’t exist and I was made–so I have to respond. If I want to be myself, I have to respond. I am not making myself; in this moment, I am not modifying a single cell in my body, even if I wanted to. So, whether I like it or not, I depend. It is clear that I am free not to acknowledge it, but the evidence… Aristotle said that it is very odd to discuss something that appears evident.
The dignity of life is in responding daily to the Mystery that makes us, and this makes us free, free before what everyone thinks and free before the circumstances. Think of St. Francis, who said, “Praised be You, my Lord, for our sister, bodily death,” or when he praised fire. And to think he had eye-pain, and they would place a red-hot blade on his eyes to heal his wounds–what terrible pain he must have felt! He added the praise of fire precisely because of the experience he had had. Who has a freedom like that? Where does it come from? How is it possible? It is possible only if life has a responsibility, that is, if it responds to someone or something that makes it. Otherwise, there is only daily measure and routine; what you manage to understand or manage to feel. But everyone knows that this has a very short horizon, and doesn’t last.
The first aspect therefore is the person–someone–but in relationship with someone else.
Let’s move on to the second aspect. I’ll try to describe it with an example: When they were restructuring the house in Oxford, one of the great scholars of the Middle Ages, Cyril Martindale, found in the walls of the chapel manuscripts with the lives of the saints, written for popular consumption. There was a fantastic one–that of Herman the Cripple. Some short historical notes: Herman was the son of Svevian nobles. At birth, they discovered he had a terrible illness that wasted his muscles and nerves, so he was always crippled. They say they had made him a special chair which they had to keep on altering because he got more and more bent and they didn’t know what to do. Everyone around, including his family (you can imagine a family of the nobility), said, “We have to do away with him in the most painless way possible, because no one can guarantee a life to someone like this.” So they took him to a Benedictine monastery, because they could not bear to end his life. In the monastery, those men brought him up, made him live. They made him a special chair, took care of him, and fed him. According to tradition, Herman the Cripple is the one who composed the Salve Regina and the Alma Redemptoris Mater. He wrote a treatise on astrolabes, wrote a chronicon of the history of Christ up to his own time, he wrote music… He, the one who was to be painlessly eliminated because he was a cripple! From where does this greatness come, this singular greatness? A personality grows in history, but the strength of history, which guarantees growth, is called patience. It’s called patience, only that patience is not sitting down, doing nothing, an ultimate passivity. Patience comes from patio, which means “carrying on your shoulders.” What makes patience possible? Clarity about the aim (we have to be clear about why we exist, where we come from, and where we are going) and then what we call tenacity. Tenacity, as St. Ambrose says: “Rerum, Deus, tenax vigor,” God, the tenacious consistency of things. Carrying the weight of all human components, of all human encounters, is a potential that only a context of faith and patience in time can make possible. But pay attention! Faith is a positive view of reality. I remember those heated discussions, open to those on the other side–those with whom I am still friends, since I came from there. “You have faith–you are lucky,” they used to tell me. I would answer, “No, you have faith, too.” “What do you mean, I have faith, too? You always say that, just like the priest.” “The priest has nothing to do with it! Faith is a method of cognition. Faith strengthens reason. Have you never realized it? I have never seen Australia, but I am convinced that it is there.” Faith means to know a reality by means of a witness. Now, if I understand that there is the Mystery that makes all things, my problem is where I come from and where I am going, that is, my relationship with the Mystery. I cannot imagine the Mystery and I don’t know where it is, but if someone comes from there and says, “It’s like this,” and I see that he is credible, am I wrong to believe it? The others are wrong. My whole life, I have been looking for the Mystery that makes life. And, from one point of view, I am still looking for the face of that Mystery. I am still looking for it in the signs He gives me. I believe Australia is there, and yet I haven’t seen it. Faith strengthens life, strengthens reason; it is a method of cognition. It means to know by means of a witness. This is our life. So faith and patience in time can activate this potential that is in every one of us, in every person, even if only for a moment, even if only in the moment before death. Without faith, it is impossible to be patient, and without patience, you cannot really bear yourself. Otherwise, we just keep distracting ourselves as much as possible, because we are unable to face up to the problem. Otherwise, we have to distract ourselves, perhaps by taking a trip, as is the fashion nowadays: “I’m off on a trip to distract myself a little.” Think of it! And they come back worse than before.