Charitable Work

Charity, the Law of 
Existence
The story of simple people who, through charitable gestures, rediscovered themselves. This story includes 3,000 individuals who, in bringing bags
of food to the poor, are learning to go to the heart of their own need, as told in the testimonies of those who were at the meeting last month in Milan

by Paola Bergamini

Saturday, November 1st. The stage of the Smeraldo Theatre of Milan was set up with just a table, two chairs, and a microphone. Slowly, the seats filled, but not with the usual public for concerts or musicals. These women and men of all ages from all over Italy, homemakers, clerks, entrepreneurs, teachers, retired people–some of whom had undertaken long trips to get here–had one thing in common: the simple gesture of delivering food packets to those in economic difficulty. They were here at the annual assembly of the association of Solidarity Food Banks to tell each other about their experiences. This gesture, begun ten years ago, today counts 120 associations throughout Italy–and, as of June, there is one in Madrid as well–and 3,000 volunteers, who have helped 25,000 people. But more surprising than the numbers, important as they are, is the richness of the stories, relationships, and experiences born “like a day of complete joyfulness” for those who bring the food.

Fulfilling ourselves
In his welcome to the two thousand participants, Andrea Franchi, co-hosting the event with Fr. Julián Carrón, said, “We are here because each of us, desiring happiness in life, at a certain point encountered the embrace of Christ through the embrace of a man. This man is first of all Fr. Giussani. We’re here today to testify to each other about how this gesture educates and changes our life.” Bringing the food donation is first of all a gesture for oneself, because in it we “accomplish the supreme–in fact, the only–duty in life, that of fulfilling ourselves” (The Meaning of Charitable Work, L. Giussani). As Paola of Salsomaggiore recounted, “In the beginning, I was doing it because I felt obliged to respond to a need,” but things didn’t add up because the requests of the families she went to help were full of contradictions. Everything changed when her friends helped her re-center her focus on the “I.” “I was told that I had to love myself as Christ loves me, because only in this way can I help and love others. Thinking back on it, it’s really incredible. The help I gave to complete strangers actually served to help me, more than them!” It was incredible because it miraculously changed her daily relationships with her husband, children, and students. Her false expectations were left behind.
The stories followed, one after the other. It was moving, in the sense that it moved our reason and our hearts, showing how such a simple gesture has an educative value for ourselves and those around us, as was the case for Delfio.

Miracles happen
Delfio, from Como, met the Food Bank through the drug addiction treatment center where he was staying. His problem was managing money. “If I earned a thousand, I spent three thousand. So I said to myself, well, I’ll try to get close to an association of this kind; maybe I’ll understand something. Not only have I understood something, but I’ve also succeeded in gaining a much, much more direct meaning for my life. I’ve come back much closer to the Lord. Every Wednesday, I went and loaded these big boxes for the volunteers who distributed them to the families. I felt useful and comfortable with myself. I felt good on a personal level, because I saw the esteem these people had for me. The friends of Como welcomed me and gave me the desire to find some meaning for my life, something I’d lost many, many years ago.”
This meaning for life was also revived in Fabio from Domodossola, who had been in the Movement for many years, until, at a certain point, tired of “the ‘same old, same old’ of life in CL,” he decided to leave.
He had already made up his mind when he accompanied his wife to the Meeting in Rimini and there he was struck by the testimonies of Vicky and others (see Traces, Vol. 10, No. 8, 2008). “I returned home with this question: ‘Why do miracles always happen to the others?’” “But when miracles happen for other people, aren’t they also for you?” interjected Carrón. “In fact, afterwards they also happened to me.” As Fabio hadn’t yet found a substitute for his work at the Food Bank, he resumed carrying packages. One day, he teamed up with a 14-year-old girl who’d just begun charitable work. In the car, she spoke a lot, saying how she felt she was a “natural” for charitable work. Fabio didn’t say anything. As they were leaving the family to whom they’d brought the groceries, the mother hugged Michela and said goodbye as if she were her own daughter.
A few days later, he heard that the girl had commented, “I’ve understood that the Food Bank isn’t just carrying a bag as I’d thought, but it’s a question of relationships.” That was the first touché for Fabio. Then, he tells of the second: “I’m a police detective, and one day a squad car intervened to save a person who wanted to commit suicide. A week later, this person returned to us, because she was afraid she would try again, and my colleagues, not knowing who to have her speak with, sent her to me. I found her in my office and I didn’t know what to say to her. I let her talk, and after a while the only thing I could think of was to tell her to go where I went. So I invited her to the Food Bank and to dinner with all the friends Saturday night. I told her, ‘You need someone who loves you and I can only invite you there.’” Fabio continues, “These two signals… are miracles for me that made me believe again.” “They opened you wide again, and made you believe again,” commented Carrón.
Giovanni, a construction worker, lives in Pellestrina, a small island near Chioggia. Thanks to a friend, he met the Communion and Liberation Movement, “this marvelous reality,” as he defines it. Then he accepted the proposal of helping with the Food Bank. “Once a month, we carry 13 to 14 packs. Some of them we set in front of the door and then leave; others we bring directly to the people in need. I do it once a month, and there–believe me, it’s hard for me to tell you–I feel an explosion inside, an immense joy. You feel new. Right after delivering my first packet, I ran to my parish priest to go to Confession. My wife, who isn’t in the Movement, said, ‘A bag of food is what it took to get you to go to Confession?!’” Carrón asked, “What made you think of going to Confession?” “Because in that moment I felt something new; I felt that before me there was an Other, as my friends said, as School of Community taught me. I wanted to explain this to my other friends who aren’t in the Movement. When I explain this, they themselves tell me, ‘It’s clear that you’ve changed; it’s really a miracle, compared to how you were before.’” Carrón explained further, “Here we see Fr. Giussani’s words in the first line of the booklet on charitable work take on flesh. ‘When there’s something beautiful in us, we feel the urge to communicate it to others. …We rightly call it a law of existence. …We go do “charitable work” to satisfy this need.’”  It’s awe-inspiring to see how the Mystery present enables us to embrace even our own sinfulness.

School of Community
Bringing the food is a way of responding to a need, but through that gesture there’s the desire to share, within a friendship, a greater need to which only Christ can respond, as explained in School of Community. “In the chapter on obedience, we are shown one of those unmistakable features of Jesus: His attitude, His behavior before a need. You can’t read it without being moved, because we’ve been looked at in this way.” There was a silence full of expectation when Carrón read Fr. Giussani’s text: “Having pity on people because they don’t know their destiny is the same thing as having pity on people because they’re hungry.”
 He continued, “With the gesture of donating the groceries, we educate ourselves to look at the need of the other in all its compass, and to become aware that only if we share with the others what we have freely received, as you said this morning, can we truly love an other. …This morning, we have touched His presence with our hands, because the things we’ve heard aren’t things we can generate ourselves; they happen, now as in the past, because He exists.” In the present grave economic emergency, when we run the risk of closing in upon ourselves, numbing and cramping around our own difficulties, the fact of starting not from a lack, but from a fullness seen and encountered opens a new horizon and shows a different origin, a different culture.
Carrón said, in conclusion, “We want to cry out to everyone what we have received, the gratitude we feel for having been looked at with this mercy.”
With the end of the assembly began a small avalanche of letters and e-mails sent to Andrea Franchi, a sign of the gathering’s forceful impact. One, signed by Rita, said: “My friend Monica told me at the end of the assembly, ‘I came just to hear a nice speech, but I leave having seen and touched, with my own hand, an experience, maybe of the most simple people. Here, I’ve seen people in action before a father.’”