letters
Edited by Paola Bergamini.

the encounter in
investment funds
I work for an American bank, where I manage the estates of prominent families. I recently felt confused about my line of work, first because my bank is part of that system that puts short-term profit above all other considerations, and because in Traces I read about experiences that seemed to be more gratifying and edifying–like being a teacher or working for people in need at welcoming houses, etc… Over dinner, my wife and I expressed these thoughts to some friends of ours, who told us that, in the first century, there were Christians who were soldiers in the Roman army and bore witness to that which they had encountered. This example came to life in my own experience on a recent trip to South America, when an important client, of Jewish heritage, wanted to meet me and my boss, who is a Wall Street veteran. I thought the client wanted to complain about his revenues or about some of the products that I had proposed to him. Instead, he wanted to see me with my boss to tell him that in 20 years of dealing with banks and bankers, he had never met anybody who, in doing his job, was gratuitously interested in him as a person, and that he had been unable to define my attention and interest in him, since I clearly wasn’t motivated by monetary gain or flattery. At that point, I said that in my life I had the good fortune to meet people–starting with my parents–who, because of an encounter they had, were capable of a truer and deeper gaze on humanity, and that I strived to imitate them. From this simple episode, I understood that we are all called to make memory of that which we have encountered, in the circumstances and the jobs we find ourselves, and this changes reality, to the point of enabling a hardened speculator to perceive a possibility of goodness and love, and allowing me to be better at my job.
Pietro, Geneva (Switzerland)

Studying Together
in the Northwest
Dearest Fr. Carrón: Last weekend, we had our first CLU study weekend in the Northwest USA (Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver), and eight students gathered to study, sing, and stay together. Antonio and I organized the initiative. We asked people in Seattle if they would host some of us since, being a new community, we have a very limited budget. They helped us with finding places to eat and go to Mass, and by sending endless e-mails coordinating transportation plans. At a certain point, I was totally overwhelmed, trying to prepare a heavy academic load for finals and make preparations for the weekend as well, and my mother suggested that I ask our friends, a young couple in the School of Community, if they would come and cook for the weekend. With only a few days’ notice, they answered my plea for assistance with enthusiasm and generosity, and gave their weekend to travel to Seattle, sleep uncomfortably on the floor, and support us by having a beautiful dinner ready for us after our long day of studying. The event did not proceed smoothly or go as we planned it. Several people got sick or had projects at their universities and couldn’t attend. Jonathan, one of the students from the University of Oregon, called me around midnight the night before, reconsidering coming for the weekend. And so we talked for about half an hour, and reminded each other of the reasons we were doing this–that we needed this moment now precisely because we were swamped with studies and nervous about going into finals. It is precisely at this moment that we most strongly run the risk of being defined by our exams, by our final grades, and by our “success,” which can easily be entirely self-serving and without Christ. So Jonathan’s call, which had scared me initially, became a beautiful reaffirmation; his questioning of why we were doing this put what we stand for on the line. We see that academic success alone cannot satisfy us and so we want to go deeper within our studies to see how they affect us as people. How do they educate us to our Destiny? Last fall, my friend Chris told me that I should continue to beg for other students to accompany me, as I have been alone in Portland at the university. This event woke me up and reminded me that I do have these people, even if they are usually only available on the phone and I can only see them infrequently. Throughout the weekend, my friends’ faces were before me as I studied, and remained with me after we had gone home. This weekend was a fact in front of all of us: Christ continues to surprise us and surpass all our expectations.
Rose, Portland, Oregon (USA)

Going back to the
origin…  at the hospital
Dear Father Carrón: I’m writing to you to let you know that it took me 85 years (that’s my age) to discover that “it is truly possible to live this way.” In January, I was admitted to the hospital. I was sharing a room with a woman with a serious neurological disease. She was in a lot of pain and I initially prayed in silence.  At a certain point, since she was moaning, I got up and approached her bed, and started caressing her, fanning her, and wiping the sweat off her forehead. She looked at me and I smiled at her, and told her that I would keep her company. I thought, “Right now I am caressing Jesus in the flesh.” If you let His presence in, you learn to look, to stay, and to come to the judgment that reality is not against you, but is for your own good. The following day, I went for a coffee with my roommate’s husband. The booklet The Challenge of the Present was sticking out of my purse, and while we were waiting for the elevator he asked me whether I knew Father Giussani. I told him I belonged to CL and he told me he had been in CL once, but had left. I said, “When I am uncomfortable somewhere, I leave, and then I feel happier. What about you? Did you find happiness?” He answered, “No.” I said, “I had the same experience, and let me repeat to you what a saintly man once told me: ‘This is what we miss: to recognize that the Lord doesn’t linger on who’s good or who’s bad. He loves and embraces us this moment despite our betrayals.’” He hugged me. His wife was released from the hospital the following day, and they went back to Sardinia, where they live. I did not know their names. A week later, the husband got in touch with me at the hospital. He told me that he had been thinking about my words, and that he had understood that to be happy he needed to go back to the origin. I replied that if they have the opportunity to come to Milan, I would gladly host them.
Giuseppina, Milan (Italy)

reality is bigger
than our thoughts
When my daughter was around 14 or 15 years old, I imagined she would join GS, see kids we knew, stay clear of dance clubs, etc…On the contrary, my daughter did not join GS, does not hang around my friends’ kids, likes to dance and party, and is not so concerned about “Catholic rules.” This scenario filled me with dismay. I used to get angry with her and accuse her, thus reducing her humanity and her possibility to encounter Christ to the correspondence, or lack thereof, to the forms I had envisioned in my mind. I experienced my utter impotence and inability to be satisfied by my efforts. I questioned reality and I looked at it superficially. I told myself that something was wrong. How could I start over?Living with this question, I started to notice something: at night, maybe after staying up late to wait for my daughter, I would be exhausted and would say to myself, “I can’t make it.” The following day, I would get up to go to work, and I was always “lifted up” by something happening in reality, outside of me. For example, during a particularly hard day, a patient of mine (a University of Pisa graduate) surprised me by telling me how, during his first year of college, noticing his schoolmates totally taken by their role as intellectuals, he had reacted: “Guys, we were born to be happy!” I discovered unexpected manifestations of humanity in my colleagues and in my daughter: sometimes, during one of my bouts of introversion, she would say to me, “Mom, give me a smile!” All these simple things were calling me to lift my gaze up. This was a true revolution–help was coming from outside; reality was not against me. The fascinating humanity I saw in Carrón was starting to become experience. I felt myself shifting from an obstinate reliance on my own strength to the openness to the forms that reality was presenting to me. I started sharing daily life with my daughter: having a cappuccino in the morning while reading the paper together; discussing the content of some school subjects and authors she liked, as well as others she didn’t; talking about her difficulties and the dejection she sometimes felt…I found myself standing beside her through choices I did not agree with–not by subscribing to them, but still being present.  She couldn’t miss the signs of this change in me, and she somehow understood its connection to the Christian experience I live in the Movement. At my father’s funeral, she told me, “I would like to have friends like these.” One day, she recounted this anecdote: one morning, the Italian and Latin teacher entered the class, gave an enthusiastic speech about classical authors, and proceeded to tell the students that, since they did not have that kind of knowledge, they would be a somewhat drifting generation. She reacted: “Professor, there has to be some hope, after all!” He answered, “My speech wasn’t devoid of hope, but I am not talking about the hope you see on billboards!” She said, “Professor, I know what people with hope are like. I see them.” Going from my efforts and principles to the awe in front of One who “came here in silence–softly–and sat on a chair over there”  is very liberating, and it is the only possibility not to curse reality.
Laura, Ancona (Italy)

Jobless: a time of Grace
Dearest Father Carrón: I recently lost my job. What has become more evident these past days is how precariousness regarding one’s job, and therefore one’s wallet, affects every aspect of everyday life. It is like a sharp spur that stays with you from dawn to dusk. At times, I came to the appalling discovery of where my heart really was, where I put all my hope, and, at the end, how abstract Christ was for me. This situation forced me toward an ultimate loyalty to myself. What I can say is that, as absurd as this may seem, this is a dramatically beautiful and intense time; it is a time of Grace. Everything becomes an occasion to tell myself again, to ask myself again what I really need, to the point of saying, “It is You I need, I need you Christ; come!” Getting to the point of saying “You” is liberating, and what would otherwise be a font of desperation becomes the experience here and now of that which gives me hope for the future, because once you have found the “everything,” your only hope is for it to re-happen in the future.  One of the facts that strikes me most is that, for the first time after almost eight years of marriage, my wife and I have the Grace to experience familiarity with Christ. We recognize and affirm that He is present and alive in the little but great everyday things. The gladness that comes from this and that we experience is really something otherworldly, in this world. There are days when we tell each other, “Let’s hope that when things begin to look up again we will not forget what we are living now.” I am also impressed by the number of people, of friends, who are taking action to help me find a job. I frequently stop to look at them and I say to myself, “This is not to be taken for granted.” Yet, if I stopped at this wonder, I would miss the best part. Just a few days ago, I was telling some of my friends that what I expect from them is not so much for them to find me a job (if it happens, so much the better!), but for them to ultimately help me stay at this level of life, on the level of the search for meaning, whatever circumstance I might be in. I call this level faith, from which an otherwise impossible hope is born.
Damiano, Macerata (Italy) 

New Understanding 
Dearest Father Carrón: I am the lucky daughter of practicing Catholic parents. I remember that when I was little, every Sunday after Mass in St. Peter’s (I’m from Rome), my parents used to take me to the “Societa’ cattolica romana” (“Roman Catholic Society”), for a theater show and a benefit party. Later on, my father was made a “papal guard” and he was on duty on Sundays. I was very proud of him. Even at that young age, I asked myself many questions, like why was I a Catholic, and why did I have so many doubts? Sometimes, during my vacations, I was bothered by having to go to church with my aunt in the evening to say the rosary. Now I’m 84, a lot of time has gone by, and my daughter–a CL member through and through, married to a likewise fervent CL man–gave me a subscription to Traces. I have to confess that many of my doubts have been dispelled since, and I have understood many things thanks to Father Giussani’s thought and what was generated by it. Most of all, I now understand that man cannot live without God and the Immaculate Conception.
Anna, Erba (Italy)

The caress of  the
Nazarene at  the hospital
Dear Father Julián: I’m an M.D. studying towards a specialty in Geriatrics. During the time the Eluana (“mercy killing”) case came to public attention, everybody in my hospital division agreed with her father’s decision to withdraw nutrition, and nobody wanted to listen to my opinion. Even the doctor I was closest to, whom I consider a teacher, said that if it were her daughter, she would have done the same. I tried to help her understand that, according to that criterion, we should have stopped treatment for half of our patients. She did not want to hear it. I then resolved to simply keep moving according to what interested me, staying with my patients always mindful of that “caress of the Nazarene.” Last week, the mother of this doctor friend of mine suffered a head trauma and was transferred to our department. On the day her mother was admitted, my doctor friend wasn’t at the hospital, so she called me and asked me to personally take care of her mother. I pointed out that I was the new kid on the block, the least suitable candidate, but she didn’t budge. I attended to her mother and followed what I thought was the right course of action. She arrived in the afternoon and told me that everything I had done was fine. As I was leaving, she asked me, “Do you know why I asked you to take care of my mother?” I answered, “No.” She said, “You are the only person around here who works loving the patients, taking care of them for what they are, and you have a gaze like nobody else’s. The only reason why I come to work happy, in these past few months before retiring, is because I can work with you.”
Benedetta, Monza (Italy)

Providence and the Crisis of the Economy
In this moment of economic crisis, my family is going against the prevailing trend in experiencing the most financially safe period ever. To tell the truth, for me the crisis started at birth, in the sixties, when my family was forced to emigrate. I remember one night at bedtime, as my mother was helping us say our prayers, I told her that I was hungry. I only had a light soup for supper, and my mother started crying. On another occasion, a beggar knocked on our door and my parents let him in to join us at our dinner table. These events in my childhood left a mark in my life and determined my relationship with money. For example, when I entered GS, I started putting aside part of my snack money to be able to contribute to the common fund. When I got married, I had to face a lot of financial difficulties as well: just a few months after the wedding, I was fired, and my husband’s paycheck wasn’t enough to cover our expenses. At the time, an old priest told us, “Remember that nobody dies of hunger within the Church!” He was right. We always received some little extra help whenever we were most in need. Shortly after that, my husband changed jobs and I found a profitable occupation as well. We had everything we needed, and even when, later on, my husband lost his job, and we had a child, Providence sent us people who joyfully helped us and never humiliated us. My husband finally qualified for a job he was studying for. Despite our meager income, we never skipped a common fund contribution, because we were certain that Providence would never abandon us. Providence responded by always helping us find money whenever we needed it. We were persuaded that we would receive the hundredfold of everything we were giving for Him. We can bear witness to the fact that it has always been that way, and it is even more so now. We want to tell everybody not to be discouraged; we want our story to be a sign of hope for all. Whatever you give for the Lord comes back to you with interest when you need it. We always trusted in Him because He is faithful.
Paola (Italy)