letters

FIGHTING THE “CRISIS VIRUS”
Dear Father Carrón: We want to thank you for your contribution to the Companionship of Works National Assembly. We belong to the CL Movement, and we work together in a big company, which for the past 20 years has enjoyed tremendous growth, becoming the worldwide leader in its field. Nonetheless, the “crisis virus” affected us too. About three months ago, the head office asked our managing director to fire thirty temps–that is, those colleagues who, on top of belonging to same work place, come with us for a beer, or for a soccer game, or share with us their pain for a family member’s illness. Confronted with such a demand we couldn’t remain indifferent and go on tending our nice little gardens, as if nothing had happened. Little by little, we felt the growing need to answer the provocation: “What good is it to gain the whole world if you lose yourself?” So we asked ourselves, “What do we care for most: our career, the bonuses, the paid holidays, or our humanity?” So, after much consultation with our management, we proposed we would take a day off every week for the next four months to avoid the firing of those 30 temps. This caused a lot of controversy but, at the end, our proposal was accepted, thanks to the flexibility and sensitivity of the managing staff. It’s true what you say about this crisis being a test of the education we are receiving, that is to say, of how faith can actually be of help in facing life. Only when we take our humanity and the destiny it is made for seriously, can we become passionate about others, to the point of sharing the meaning of life. Therefore, in addition to the weekly School of Community the two of us have at work, we have had a few reading sessions during breaks of “Page One” (in the Traces December issue, Vol. 10, No. 11, 2008) with the colleagues of our shift. It all happened with impressive simplicity, both because we were all wearing our respective work clothes, and because in their gaze we could see the wonder in front of the exceptionality of what was happening among us, to the point that someone exclaimed, “This is really true!” And another pointed out, “With an attitude like this, one can work with less anger!”
Tonino, Antonio, and their
whole shift, Ascoli Piceno (Italy)

THE CIRCUMSTANCES THAT THE MYSTERY USES
Dear Father Carrón: Lately, I have talking with my colleagues about the unavoidable topic of what was going on with Eluana–particularly with Silvana, who has been living in a situation similar to that of Eluana’s father. Her youngest daughter, Valentina, nine years old, can’t walk, see, or talk.  Last Friday, during an involved conversation, she told me, “I know how hard it is to live such a situation. People can’t even imagine it. I can understand this father’s pain, but the smile of my daughter this morning is worth more than anything; it instantly takes away all the sorrows we have gone through in the past years.” When a well-known hospital in Turin asked her to give a witness about her experience, I told her, “Silvana, people need to know that you are happy, that your baby is a gift.” She replied, “I couldn’t make it, if not for people like you, who help me even just by smiling at me.” I answered, “Anyway, you would not be this human if Valentina weren’t here [she clearly admits it: her daughter has changed every aspect of her life]. You would not be like this, and neither would I. How great is God, who shows Himself and changes us through Vale!” The way I make myself useful in the relationship with her is by simply listening to her, staying close to her every day, and helping her as much as possible. This is not an effort or a struggle for me. On the contrary, everything is part of a great friendship, and ultimately my relationship with her is advantageous. When I first met Silvana, a year ago, her pain seemed almost too much, and every day her dramatic situation led me to ask God the reason for it, but most of all it troubled me because I didn’t have a clear answer. Today, in front of that same situation, I don’t feel fear, but tenderness and certainty, and it really looks like an opportunity for me, a circumstance that the Mystery uses in order to be seen and encountered in a more powerful way.
Elisabetta, Turin (Italy)

when youR lunch
money ends up in
the common fund
A few months ago, the economic crisis started bringing into question my faithfulness to the Common Fund, meaning that all certainty about having a job and a monthly paycheck was put to the test. Along with my co-workers, I lived the months of November and December in fear of receiving neither the paycheck nor the Christmas bonus, or even of being fired. At that point, I started saving as much as possible, cutting every unnecessary expense. In the middle of November, I received the reminder about the Common Fund due date. The amount I give is not unaffordable, but I suddenly realized it would be a problem. Therefore, for the first time, I questioned the reasonableness of my monthly commitment. The first thing that came to mind was to delay payment, or to suspend payments until better times come. I thought, “Who’s going to know, anyway? It is not a delinquent bill…” But this solution immediately looked like an easy way out; maybe, instead of stopping payments altogether, it would have been better to reduce the amount. This scenario didn’t leave me at peace either. I started asking myself how I could go on paying the same amount. For many years now, since I started working far from home, I have been having lunch at a bar or a diner near the office, at a much higher cost compared to that of the lunches that–I suddenly realized–I could pack from home. So, I immediately started bringing a lunch box, thus drastically cutting the cost of eating out, and saving enough money to keep giving the same Common Fund contribution. It was a small gesture, but the outcome, in terms of freedom, attachment to our history, and experience of correspondence, has been astonishing, and filled me with hope and courage regarding the future. In the meantime, I happened to find a new job, which saved me from the precarious situation I was about to fall into.
Piergiorgio, Rimini (Italy)

MIRACLES ON THE
SHRINK’s COUCH
Dear Father Julián: The other day, I received a letter from a CLU [CL university] girl, relating the following fact. Her psychiatrist, who has been seeing her for the past few months, told her, “Listen, I have been on this job for many years, and I have never seen anything like this. You have a lot of friends who care for you and did not abandon you. The vast majority of the cases that I treat have to do with people who, because of their pathology, either isolate themselves or become isolated. On the contrary, you always talk about your friends and the help they give you. This is a miracle!” She told me, in awe, “I’m going to a shrink to be treated, and it becomes a witness! Where does something like this happen?” Her remark made me understand better what Father Giussani says in the wonderful “Page One” of the Traces January issue: “The source of the method is the ‘impact’ with an unforeseeable and great presence, which reason recognizes as, literally, ‘superhuman’”(Traces, Vol. 11, No. 1, 2009, p. 4). Her doctor couldn’t avoid calling the gratuitousness she is constantly receiving a “miracle.” The friendship he sees around her is certainly not the expression of some particular ability. It is the experience and the desire of faith of normal kids–who are at times as troubled as she is–but who are willing to follow the path of the Movement. An experience of fulfillment always generates a gratuitous donation of self.
Pietro, Parma (Italy)

“He’s Alive in Our School”
A lot of the GS kids at my school have first period free together. It is so beautiful, because they started meeting to do School of Community or to read or study together every morning. Well, two weeks ago, a teacher approached me (keep in mind that we have a very “rules-oriented” school, which scares many teachers into silence) and asked me if she could buy the two books of Fr. Giussani. I was so shocked! She went on to explain that she saw the way they stayed together in the morning, and she wanted to be able to stay with them. The next day, a different teacher came up to me and said, “I heard you were talking about hope this morning; let’s discuss it.” Slowly, all these teachers have been moved by these students!! For the first time, it has nothing to do with me, and I am so, so happy! I didn’t plan it, or organize it, or prepare it. I didn’t try and “make Christ happen;“ He’s just alive in our school! Yesterday was our Mass for Fr. Giussani, and five of our teachers came (our Physics teacher brought his whole family). There were more than 100 of us, and many of the GS kids brought their parents. James’ parents fight with James about GS all the time. They came last night, and they went home in awe. They finally told James that they understand why he goes, and James was so moved by the questions they began to ask him. Adam’s parents don’t like GS either, and they too completely changed their minds. They even told Adam’s little sister that she must go to GS when she reaches high school. Gianna’s father, who is Christian but was never fond of the Catholic church, was amazed by how many people were there, was so struck by their sincerity and warmth, fell in love with the song “Romaria”, and was so happy that Gianna was coming here. Jasmine’s little brother went home raving about GS, saying that he can’t wait to reach high school so he can come, and has already rounded up a friend to come with him. Lastly, my friend Michael has started coming to GS. He is a “cool” kid in our school. Last night, he missed going out with his friends to come to the Mass with his mom. His mom loved the Mass so much that she went home and did research on Fr. Giussani. She and her husband are now planning to go to the CL meeting downtown.  
Gaby, Toronto (Canada)

A YOUNG MOTHER’S DECISION
Last summer, at our Fraternity vacation, I was struck by the video of Rose, when she said that what counts is to be moved. During the assembly, Bino told me that co-workers offer a great occasion to experience and verify this way to treat reality. From that day on, I was constantly accompanied by this provocation. A few weeks ago, I heard about a girl who had gotten pregnant and was thinking about having an abortion. I couldn’t remain indifferent, but I surely wasn’t one of her closer friends and I wondered how valuable my opinion could be. Time was running out and there were heavy motivations: her parents being against the pregnancy, her fragility, her being alone, her future… From her point of view, it looked like there was no other way to proceed. Nonetheless, sometimes she seemed to find the strength to carry on. She already loved the baby, but at the end she found herself with nothing and no one she could lean on. Those were 15 very intense days. What was good for her was evident to me, but incomprehensible to her. In the School of Community, Father Giussani says that we should be moved by the fact that faith has been given to us and not to others. At the beginning, I really couldn’t understand it. Everything would have been so much easier if she had faith! Yet this did not deny that faith was given to me, that to me the companionship of Christ becomes a daily event through my friends’ faces. The companionship and the memory of their faces, of the way they love me, made me understand that this relationship could represent the same possibility for her, too. The evening before the abortion, talking to a friend, it became more evident how this ordeal might be a good opportunity for her, because it had already led us to love everything in our days more. It was clear that the way we kept her company had not been the result of an ability of ours; it was because of an obedience to reality filled with the question about what the Mystery was asking us in that moment. With this premise, at the end the miracle we had so fervently asked for happened: she decided not to go ahead with the abortion and she came to tell us the news filled with incredible gladness. A few days later, in a text-message, she asked me how I managed to enter so deeply into her life. She said that she was happy, because I was giving her a support and a peace she had never received before, and that she was grateful for it.
Name withheld

A LIFE THAT IS WORTH LIVING
Antonia received this letter from the husband of a teacher who belongs to her School of Community group. Because of an injury sustained while playing professional soccer for the Iesolo (Venezia) team, he has been bedridden for two years, able to move only his eyes.
Eluana died. We talked about it at length in our home, and we tried to think about all the people we met at Montecatone who were in circumstances similar to Eluana’s. There was Christian, who was paralyzed from his waist down because of a biking accident when he was three: he was always fighting bedsores, but as soon as he felt better he would speed along the hallways in his wheelchair, stopping just inches from the doctors’ feet.  There was Alessandro, who, because of an accident, was a quadriplegic and could not move even a finger; then there were people with ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis), and Enrico, who was 15 and could breathe only through a tracheostomy. I myself needed to be bathed, spoon-fed, moved, and diapered, but I was surrounded by great love. My two-year-old daughter used to lie down on my bed and tell me, “Daddy, I’ll stay here with you to keep you company,” and when, with a sort of crank, they lifted me up and put me on the wheelchair, she always wanted to push it. She has been my strength and, because of her, I couldn’t give up.  There were times when I asked myself, “What if I were like Christian or Alessandro? Would life still be worth living?” Lately, there has been a lot of talk about the dignity of life but, at the end, who can establish life’s dignity? For Alessandro’s and Enrico’s mothers, their sons were full of dignity, and I was still Fabrizio in my wife’s and my daughter’s eyes. “I would be better off dead” are words you can sometime say because of anger, because it is difficult to understand why this happened to you, and why you now need to be completely dependent on somebody else. When my wife left the room, I needed to be sure to have the water bottle and straw nearby, the buzzer in my hand, the pillows properly positioned underneath my legs, the telephone’s earpiece in place… it was a Calvary. But what would have happened if she had said, “This life has no dignity; he is a soccer player, he can’t be reduced to this,” and if, in a moment of dejection, I had told her, “It’s true. It is better if I die; this is no life”? I have been terrified lately, thinking about the yearning for life and the hope that united us in Montecatone. It wasn’t always like that, but we encouraged each other–occasionally someone would crumble, so we would all gather in his room to cheer him up. These days, somebody decided that Eluana’s life had no dignity: I can’t judge a family’s drama, but somebody made a decision on her behalf and she died.
Fabrizio, Italy

The Infinite in a Box
On February14th, while volunteering for the Pharmaceutical Bank , we asked people to buy medications that would be donated to those in financial distress. Some bought multiple boxes. Many drugs cost 2, 7, or even 10 Euros and had the infinite and irreplaceable value of gratuitousness, which moves you and fills your heart when it materializes in a gesture.  We don’t know who will be at the receiving end of those medications; we just know we are part of this gesture of gratuitousness. Every time we do it, we are moved at the thought of the person who will use the medication and who–a true beggar–maybe will feel that which Pär Lagerkvist talks about: “My friend is a stranger, someone I do not know”.
Clara, Fiorella, Chiara and other friends, Milan (Italy)

Nothing Falls out of Sight
The last time we got together, the secretary of my School of Community group asked for volunteers for the Pharmaceutical Bank, and I responded by saying I was available Saturday from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. A few days later, she delivered a baby girl. Friday at 10 p.m. she sent me a text message: “Hi, we are going back home and are very happy. Do you remember that tomorrow you have to volunteer for the Bank?” I found myself filled with gratitude for this companionship where nothing falls out of sight, and a woman who just delivered a baby–and who therefore could have a thousand reasons to let it slide–has this degree of commitment.
Roberta, Italy