cl life

2,000 Shillings for the One Thing Necessary
Last April, the first Spiritual Exercises for university students (CLU) were held in Kampala, Uganda. Amidst
traditional dances and Italian songs was the discovery of a new way of looking at things and at how to truly live.

by Paola Ronconi

Two thousand shillings. This is how much the African students paid to enroll in the first Spiritual Exercises held in Kampala, April 4–5. Sixty or so students between the ages of 16 and 25 (almost all of them from Kampala, with six from Kenya and two from Nigeria) listened to Fr. Ambrogio Pisoni at the Foyer de la Charité community center, following the outline of Fr. Carrón’s lessons to the university students in Rimini this past December.
These 2,000 shillings are more or less equivalent to one Euro or two dollars. You can say it’s nothing, but in these parts, you can live for a day on that much. Let’s see why it was worth it.
Those from Kampala are students who live in the slums and who receive aid from AVSI for their tuition fees and, in addition to studying, also have jobs. Many are children of the women who, for 40 US cents a day, break an average of 20 kg or 40 lbs of rocks, in Kireka, a zone of Kampala  (see Traces, Volume 7, Number 11 [December] 2005, p. 31). Through their mothers, some of these students got to know Rose Busingye (who works with AIDS sufferers at the Meeting Point), who spoke to them about Jesus and Fr. Giussani. Some of them met Fr. Carrón when he was in Africa two years ago, and were won over by a new way of living. They asked Whom Fr. Carrón had met so as to be like that, and they felt they were loved.
It was Rose who proposed these spiritual exercises, after which the word went around in class, invitations to classmates who perhaps didn’t understand what it was all about, but who sensed it might be interesting.

changing direction. Mattia and Andrea, of the CLU [Communion and Liberation university students]  in Milan, went along with Fr. Ambrogio on this trip. Andrea tells us, “I set off with a perfect scheme in my head. I am going to Africa, I know the lessons by heart (I heard them in Rimini and I studied them afterwards), I will speak about my life as a witness, and then I’ll come back. In a word, a bit of charity to be done.” What happened instead? “Soon after we arrived, we changed direction. We had before us students like ourselves, some just happy people, and others with dramatic lives behind them (conditions of extreme poverty, or a past as a child soldier, violence…). Luigi, for example, a university student, responsible for the Ugandan students. Some years ago, he lost his family in a road accident. He went to live with his uncle, but soon was left alone in the world. If you are someone like this, you either meet another who saves you or you just wait to end it all.” But Luigi met Rose and now attends the university.
The exercises began on Friday evening with the projection of the film The Passion. On Saturday morning, during the course of the lesson, Fr. Ambrogio repeated a phrase of Fr. Carrón, which seems to describe the experience of these students: “It is a question of the one thing necessary–in other words, what we acknowledge as the meaning of ourselves and of all that we do.” And when he meets the one thing necessary, whoever has nothing to defend clings to it with all his might and never leaves the one who made it possible–and he is able to be happy.
The program went on with the songs of the students’ choir. Mattia comments, “Imagine the dialect in the song Sul Pajon on the red African soil instead of in the Dolomites. You could think: ‘This is crazy,’ or you feel moved by people who give all they’ve got to know all the aspects of what has filled their troubled lives.” In honor of the Italian visitors, traditional dances were organized after supper. “The students come from different tribes,” Mattia tells us, “and rivalries are common, but they were dancing each others’ dances in perfect unity.” In the end, even Andrea and Mattia were dragged into the fray. So Andrea tore up the paper on which his notes were written. “I will tell them two things about my life and my encounter with Christ, but only so as to repeat them to myself (more than to them), of that promise of happiness I met and which, as I look at these African students, is flourishing once more under crusts of unimportant problems.”

on the journey. On Sunday, there is the assembly. “How can I look at reality if I commit sins?” The questions are simple, perhaps banal, but they speak of those who have a great truth in their hands and want to put it into practice in everyday life. There follows a video of the CLU Exercises in Rimini, a part of the lesson, and all the CLU choir songs. After the final lunch together, there are more songs, and the Italians correct some imprecision in Povera Voce. Then there is the final Mass and everyone goes home after some photographs to remember the faces of what can be called a small African miracle.
For the Ugandan, Nigerian and Kenyan students, those days were the confirmation of a journey they are making. For the two Italians, what keeps such an experience alive?
“Making memory of it every day, even though I am 3,000 miles away,” Andrea says. “As soon as I got back, I told my friends what we had seen and asked them for a meaningful friendship, like the one I had seen.” Mattia said, “Fr. Pino told us, ‘Throw yourselves into what you have to live,’ like those students do; for them it was well worth the effort of saving up the 2,000 shillings.”

From encounter to encounter

In April 2008, Rose (from Uganda) wrote a letter about a group of young men who, after meeting Father Carrón, asked to receive Baptism. Rose initially thought it was a joke, or that it was due to a momentary enthusiasm. Much to her surprise, on Easter Vigil, 23 of those boys were baptized. She wrote: “What did these kids see in Father Carrón? I too want to stay in front of the Mystery like these kids do, and I too want to see the Beauty of the Mystery attracting me to Him through a witness.” A year has passed and those same young men have become witnesses to the newness they met. On Easter 2009, another 39 kids received Baptism, having had those 23 as their catechists.
This year, those same 23 kids taught catechism to their classmates; in Kampala, they set up the exhibit about the Benedictines that was previously presented at the Rimini Meeting; they held the CL University Spiritual Exercises. Furthermore, on Easter Vigil, 39 kids were baptized. Starting with one single boy, Luigi, we got to 23 last year, and 39 this year. We all ask ourselves: what did they see in Fr. Carrón? What did they hear and see that I failed to hear and see? I viewed the fact as ordinary; I wasn’t in awe. I thought, “They will get over it. I know Africans!” On the contrary, time went by and they did not get over it; they are as excited as they have never been before. Those who meet them are attracted by the way they behave together, by their gaze, and by the way they explain things. When they presented the Benedictine exhibit, it was as if they had delved into it and made it part of them. And they sing Italian songs from the Alpine army (“Alpini”) better than the people who composed them…. I see in them a new way to look at things and to truly live. As I look at them, I am attracted too, and I ask myself: “Do I need to still think about it?” God calls whomever He wants. I have seen that He is here through a man who said, “Yes.” The important thing is that I recognize Him and say, “Yes, I have seen You.” I can say, with Father Giussani, “I have nothing but this ‘yes’”–everything else is God’s doing. I am certain of my belonging to Him through my vocation in Memores Domini. This is my mission’s theme: that God the Father has favored something that was nothing and has saved it.
Rose, Kampala