LETTERS

The Only Alternative
Dear Father Carrón: A few days before the Spiritual Exercises, I turned fifty. Thirty-six of those years were spent as a CL “militant,” as we used to say. Recently, my life has been very hard: financial disasters, goals that I never achieved, bitterness. All in all, I had the feeling of not having accomplished anything really good in a life that, slowly but surely, is beginning its decline. You can imagine my state of mind, as I climbed into my car to come to Rimini. But when, on the first evening, you told us that “Christ cares for us as much as and even more than we care for ourselves,” and “a new beginning is always possible, no matter what your current situation,” and when you re-stated with astounding clarity that “our Destiny lies in a great affection, an unexpected yet real correspondence,” I understood that trusting Him is reasonable, as well as letting myself be led by Him through the circumstances that now appear to be against me. I felt within me the strength to pick up my poor bits and pieces and try to re-build a path of belonging to the Movement. There is no other destiny for me, and I say this with conviction, not with resignation. There is no alternative that is worth living (and dying) for as a man. There is no other hope I can count on, and on account of which I can hold on and beg for the strength to put one foot in front of the other. I went back home, I hugged my wife and kids, and, after so many years, I felt that the correspondence, the hundredfold that fascinated me as a kid, was not just a word or an abstract concept. I don’t know whether I will be able to keep walking, but my path is laid out before me.
Stefano, Milan, Italy

The Embrace
of the “You”
Dear Father Julián: When I got to the retreat, my eyes and my heart were filled with the infinite sorrow of a friend and colleague of mine and his wife, who recently lost their eight-year-old only child. During his son’s agony, in the silence that I offered along with my presence and prayers, my friend, who is far from any kind of faith experience and leads a reckless life, told me: “I envy your faith.” He did not add anything else, and I was unable to reply. Yet, I couldn’t help remembering what we said about faith at School of Community, when we all recognized the encounter with an indelible exceptionality. What did my friend envy? The answer to this question was becoming crucial to me. I needed to re-discover that answer, otherwise I would crumble, just like my friend was crumbling from the pain of his dying son. I came to the Exercises with this question. I heard you talk about self-persuasion, which is not enough. I heard you speak of a “You,” who challenges and supports life. So what was that faith that my friend envied? It was, then and now, staying in front of you as you were telling me those things not to convince me, but for love of me. And this faith was staying with my friend during those last seconds of his son’s life, with all my poverty, miraculously showing him that “You” through my embrace–that “You” who was hanging on the wall of my life’s room, while I was that “You” in my friend’s painful room. That envy was the birth in him of a desire for fulfillment. Thank you for your obstinate witness and love for our “I.”
Mauro, Chioggia, Italy

Hope Does Not
Disappoint
In May 2005, my husband and I attended the Exercises for the first time. My father–an old-time, through-and-through CL member–invited us every year. We had been married for five years, and had a great desire to raise children, but since our desire was still unfulfilled and medicine seemed unable to provide an explanation, we had decided to begin the adoption process. Then Fr. Baroncini shook us up with a great provocation: “To the couples that come to me saying that they can’t have children and are trying to adopt, I ask: Did you ask for the miracle?” What do you mean, “the miracle?” We always prayed to the Virgin to intercede for us with Her Son, but we had never thought to ask for a miracle... On top of that, adoption for us had never been a makeshift solution, but an open door to the world. We accepted the challenge and really asked for a miracle. At the same time, we went ahead with the long road of adoption: interviews with a psychologist and a social worker, meetings with the agencies, disappointments, but also new friendships... then, finally, last year we welcomed Beatrice from Vietnam, a very beautiful and very good little girl, who turned one in February, just as I delivered her sister Benedetta! We can truly say that hope does not disappoint.
Cristina, Pavia, Italy

Fr. Danilo
Fr. Danilo Muzzin died on May 4th. For many years, he had been a Fidei Donum missionary in Latin America. During the funeral homily, Fr. Savino Gaudio told us, “We are in mourning because we will not see his smile anymore, but we can’t be sad because what we met through Fr. Danilo will never abandon us, and thanks to him this has become a deep and sweet certainty that filled all of us, as well as those in Paraguay and Argentina.” Among the many letters that we received, we decided to publish the following, sent directly to Fr. Danilo.
I’ll always remember the afternoon of our son Fabrizio’s Baptism. I saved a picture, which permanently resides on a shelf in our office, where we work every day–we keep all the pictures that give us strength and help us not to forget. Sharing the short time that Destiny chose for you to accompany us, here in Paraguay, continually re-awakened in me this question: “What is this man doing here with us? Why does such an interesting person come from afar to share his time with a fool such as myself?” In front of this question, we can always try to come up with a theoretical explanation, a beautiful discourse, something almost automatic. Yet, in our hearts, all that would not answer to the unknown that goes beyond logic and theory. You are present and totally committed in the relationship with the Mystery, and in front of the Mystery there is no possible explanation, nothing. One can only observe, look, hear the Mystery, and believe. Every discourse is silenced. You are a presence among us, and the sign of an Other; this is worth more than all the words, all the theories and the discourses. It is a real and palpable encounter with the unfathomable Mystery.
Violeta, San Lorenzo, Paraguay  
 
Normal Exceptionality
Dear Father Julián: Thanks to the correction of a friend, who told me that we cannot live off the past, I started reading School of Community every morning. At the beginning, I wasn’t aware of it, but now, after three months, I realize that it has become the daily appointment marking the moment when I wake up, the first encounter of the morning, before I delve into the thousand things that make up my day. It is that which is changing me, which helps me become aware again every morning, and re-creates me every day. Maybe thirty minutes later I will have already forgotten about it, when I start getting impatient with my children, or when I feel like things are suffocating me and robbing me of my heart. But School of Community is always there, ready to pop up in my consciousness because it has become its foundation, and when I leave an opening, it immediately imposes itself as a point of comparison, as the fulcrum of reason. I can’t explain how this happens, but I know that I enter my classroom and I am more free–free to love those kids as they are, to show them that life with Christ is tastier, and to show them that learning is beautiful and that even the effort of studying is congenial, if it helps us to better understand our human experience and the reality that surrounds us. I am free to meet my friends and tell them what I see happening in front of my eyes, free to have School of Community with the GS kids and ask for something interesting to happen (first and foremost for myself), and free to be exhausted at the end of the day, maybe even angry, still being able to say with certainty, “Something exceptional happened today, too.” As Eliot says, “... bestial as always before... always struggling... yet following no other way.”
Antonella, Italy
 
The True Change
Dear Fr. Julián: On my way back from Rimini, I kept thinking, “Starting tomorrow, my life will change completely.” Maybe saying “starting tomorrow” and not “now” should have given me a hint that I didn’t understand a thing, as if I were a wind-up toy and the Spiritual Exercises constituted a good winding to keep me going until the next one. Come Monday morning, as soon as I heard the alarm go off, I turned it off and I went back to sleep, as sometimes happens. Later on, as I got up, I thought with that devastating skepticism that very often plagues me: “Nothing has changed; everything is exactly as it was before.” In short, it was as if everything I had lived at the Exercises had been immediately erased. But there was something I couldn’t account for; I wasn’t convinced I could say that really nothing had happened. On my way to the office, I recalled all the things you told us during those days, and I went through my notes. I realized that the newness that struck me so much as I listened to you talk–and that I can’t deny I sometimes experienced–does not lie in suddenly becoming good and perfect, but in becoming aware that we are the recipients of an infinite love and attention, and that we can start our relationship with Christ in every moment. Right now, I am not worrying about planning how to make this last in time and not fade away. Instead, I am enthusiastic about the possibility to go deeper into and continually verify this relationship, and to see those unmistakable features of Christ that you told us about. Thank you for being of such pivotal importance in my life, even if I don’t know you personally.
Lorenzo, Milan, Italy

Something
that Changes
Dear Fr. Carrón: Thanks to the work at the Exercises and in School of Community, lately I have realized that something in my life has changed. I am 32 years old, and after getting my college degree, I got married and had three children and now I am a housewife. Up until recently, I thought that something must happen (an interesting job offer, somebody exceptional coming to lead the community, etc.) to fill the void that I felt, to fulfill that desire that had been awakened by the “promise” made to me when I was in CLU. For this reason, nothing was ever enough; everything left me dissatisfied: my work, my husband, my children, my friends. On the contrary, after what you told us at the Exercises and at La Thuile, I realized that promise, that fullness, that beauty are already in everything I do, in the faces of my children, of my husband, and of my old and new friends. Christ is in everything; He was already there but I couldn’t see Him; I didn’t want to see Him. Instead, it is so beautiful to realize that even making pizza with the kids can be a joyful moment and an encounter with Him, and that every mother waiting for her children outside of school (as I do) is actually waiting for me to walk up to them to tell them that everything they do is beautiful if Jesus is there. I can’t but tremble and hope for everybody I meet to have this same experience. Then, every moment–even the simplest or apparently banal–can be or become a prayer to ask for His presence. He answers without fail, by creating unexpected friendships and increasingly intense relationships. I can’t wait to learn this method more and more.
Silvia, Geneva, Switzerland

Change of Plans
Dear Father Julián: After attending the Fraternity Exercises in Rimini, I had the chance to accompany a colleague of mine, Marta, to the Young Workers Exercises. She was supposed to leave on a pilgrimage to Medjugorje on Wednesday night but, because of a misunderstanding, she didn’t make it to the departure, and Thursday morning she came to the office very sad. She thought that the Virgin did not want her there (it had happened once before that she had paid for the trip but had not been able to leave). I told her: “Maybe the Virgin wants you to come with me to the CL Spiritual Exercises,” since a few weeks before I had indeed made the proposal to go to Rimini, but she had already booked the pilgrimage. She immediately agreed. Already the first night, the impact with the reality that was in front of her was surprising: the awe for the form of the gesture, the silence, the order with which we would go in and out of the pavilions–everything was a source of asking. Furthermore, when Marta listened to the second song, “Marta, Marta, you get hot and bothered for a thousand things, but there is only one that matters,” she became certain that she had ended up in that place because of the Virgin. On Saturday, she followed Fr. Eugenio’s lesson very attentively, and she asked me whether there was a book where she could find what he was telling us, which she felt to be true for her life. I proposed Is It Possible to Live This Way? She bought the book, along with the song book and the Book of Hours, because she wanted to be able to follow the retreat properly. That evening, Cleuza and Marcos’s witness was literally the coup de grâce. Once back at the hotel, she told me, “It is as if I have never had chocolate mousse for thirty seven years and today I finally tasted it. I could never have imagined that something so good for me existed. Where have I been all these years?” She asked me to let her know the date of the next School of Community and she expressed the desire to come to that vacation with Carrón she had heard someone talk about. She got a subscription to Tracce and, most of all, following Cleuza’s example, she marked down the day and time of these Exercises.
Luisa, Milan, Italy
 
The Beauty
of Christianity
I am a psychologist, and in September I moved to Rome from Brazil, to complete my doctorate at the Università Lateranense on the topic “The meaning of religiosity for cancer patients and for health professionals.” My main interest has always been to serve the fragility of people who have cancer. Moving to Italy, “by chance” I ended up finding hospitality with a couple. The husband, Giulio, 57, had liver cancer. He was an atheist. He had been raised in a Christian orphanage, and for some time he had lived with an adoptive family, though he had never fully become part of it. He never knew his parents. At the orphanage, he started to oppose God, priests, and the Church. I found him to be a good person, able to help others even when he was sick. My being Catholic wasn’t a problem, and we started a very beautiful friendship. During the months that I spent with his family, he asked me many questions about faith and the Church, and he told me many things about it, some of which were critical. To respond to his attitude, I tried to share my experiences. Looking at me, at the beauty of my journey, I believe that little by little he saw the human openness that Christianity brings. I am convinced that by approaching him gratuitously, as I learned to do in the Movement, I somehow touched his heart. At a certain point, he discovered he had cancer, and a very aggressive one at that. I was lucky enough to assist him when he was in the hospital, on his long Way of the Cross. On his last days, he was exhausted, tired, and depressed, because he had been in and out of the hospital for so long. At the hospital, we had our last touching encounter: “I am in a lot of pain. I have been suffering like this for a long time...You see this, right?” “Yes, I see this. I brought you a medal of Saint Edith Stein. She suffered very much too.” Giulio smiled at me. “Thank you! Put it on my chest... She will protect me. Since we had our numerous conversations on God and faith, I pray that He may give me the strength to overcome this pain. But is God with me? Will I be saved?” I was extremely struck by his question, because it came from his need to be happy–that is, to be saved! I answered him, “Sure! God is present here and now, and you have already started to live in heaven.” “Who will we meet in heaven?” I very simply tried to tell him that heaven is the place where we will meet God and all of our friends who have already died. He smiled at this thought. I asked him whether the chaplain had stopped by, and he said that the priest of the orphanage where he had lived had paid him a visit. I said, “How beautiful! Now you even talk to priests!” He answered, “God gave me peace.” I had a very beautiful experience by sharing his last minutes, deeply and in truth. I saw this person who followed his question, looking for the answer to his need for happiness, beauty, and truth. I realized that School of Community is not a theory, but the description of the human heart. From our depths, God awaits and spurs us on this “quest.” Christ exists for this.
Joelma Ana

Seeing Christ
Once, Bob Sampson, who leads us in our School of Community, said that Christ puts you in certain situations, certain places, or in front of certain people for a reason, and that this situation/place/person is just for you. We are there for a reason, and it’s up to us to see the beauty in all of it. Since my Mom died last November, my father and youngest brother Marc have had to fend for themselves. My father is okay with the laundry and cleaning, but neither he nor my brother Marc know how to cook. We’ve all passed on some meals, but this has dwindled down and they were doing take-out meals for awhile. My Dad mentioned a couple of times that he doesn’t cook and my brother said he wouldn’t mind learning how to cook, if someone would teach him. My sisters and I just looked at each other, but nothing was really said. After thinking about it for awhile, I e-mailed Marc and said, “Okay, I’ll come over on Tuesdays and start giving you cooking lessons.”  I had to come up with some quick-preparation recipes, because he gets home from work around 5:30 pm and my Dad is usually sitting at the kitchen table practically with a knife and fork in his hand, ready to eat. As it turns out, Marc was very excited to learn and picked things up quickly. Now, of course, because I’ve been coming over for a few weeks, my Dad is fully expecting me to come every Tuesday. I hadn’t really planned on doing this; I just wanted to get them started so they could manage on their own. I remember coming home complaining to my husband, Terry, that I didn’t want to go over every week to do this, but all he said was that he didn’t have any problem with me going. Still feeling a bit disgruntled, I had every intention of going the following Tuesday and announcing that it would be the last time. Marc was fully capable of cooking on his own. But I started to look at it all differently. I noticed how happy my Dad was when I walked through the door. My brother Marc came in awhile later and said that he had to cancel an appointment for the evening. When I asked him why, he said, “I didn’t want to miss cooking class!” I didn’t know he enjoyed it that much. I also noticed that for two such quiet men, they seemed happy and chatty. I continued the classes, and have started coming a little bit early. This gives me some personal time with my Dad. Sometimes we talk and other times we watch the news together and wait for Marc to come home. 
 You know, I would never have seen the beauty in all of this if I hadn’t met the Movement over three years ago and continued to follow Bob Sampson! I have to travel an hour each way to get to our CL meetings, and with gas prices being so high it is very expensive.  But I wouldn’t miss it for anything!
Liz Hart, Boston