Letters

Letters

More promising than the basketball  championship
Dear friends: I want to tell you about the year that I spent in New York for my fourth year of high school, because it has really changed my life. When I left for the U.S., I had great expectations. Most of all, I was really looking forward to joining the high school basketball team. I had been playing for about ten years, and as far as basketball was concerned, I had always looked at the United States as the most perfect and desirable of all the possible places on earth. As soon as school began, I asked to join the team. When you practice a sport in the U.S. you are expected to devote all of your time and energy to it, and to make it the center of your life. Being selected to join the team wasn’t going to be easy, but I really wanted to give it a shot. When the tryouts came along, I played extremely well and I made it onto the team. I was overjoyed! I had become part of that world that I had always admired, and I felt an indescribable excitement. At that point, something happened. One night, around midnight, I was riding the bus home after the first game of the championship–an overwhelming victory–and I remember that I felt that something was “off.” Everything was going well, even beyond my expectations, and yet I felt something was missing. There, sitting on that bus, I realized for the first time that I was sad. But something exceptional happened, too: I met Chris, a teacher, who immediately struck me. I felt a deep attraction toward the way he did things, so I started hanging out with him (also because, being one of my high school teachers who lived nearby, he gave me rides to and from school). Spending time with him was very interesting and satisfying. Deep down, it felt as if it was what I had always desired. I don’t know how to put it into words, but I never felt loved like that in my whole life. Chris also impressed me because of the things he said; it seemed like he knew me better than I knew myself. With him, everything was great and true, and I felt he had something I lacked and needed. I started to attend GS meetings because he had invited me and when I was at those meetings the sadness that I had felt on the bus was no more. Since basketball was occupying all my free time, I was faced with a choice. Just one week after the championship kick-off, I went to the coach to let him know that I would not play anymore. I decided I wanted to spend my year in the U.S. with Chris and the GS kids, because the relationship with them was certainly more promising than any basketball game. I left basketball because staying with Chris filled my heart with joy, and what I had always awaited had somehow reached me through him. Chris never asked me to quit basketball for GS and for this I am extremely grateful, because it had to be my own decision.
Ignazio, Milan (Italy)

Do you have
any time for us?
Dear Fr. Carrón: Everything started last winter. Two of my parishioners, Cristina and Riccardo, asked me, “Do you have any time for us? We want to find God again, to find answers to our questions, and most of all to the drama that we have been living for the past three years. When he was six years old, our son Enrico was diagnosed with the most aggressive form of leukemia. This fact is changing our life. This pain is putting in front of us the problem of the meaning of life. We don’t know anything about Christianity.” We immediately started a journey: individual meetings and a first hospital visit for little Enrico. Shortly after, I found myself won over by Cristina’s exuberant humanity, by the way Riccardo faces religiosity and his own pain, and by their mutual desire to be united in the sacrament of matrimony. I soon understood that what they needed wasn’t to study the catechism, or to read some text, but to go deeper into all their questions, and to let Jesus work through that esteem and sympathy that bound us. I therefore decided to have them meet other friends of the community and to prepare them for the sacrament of matrimony. They joined other, much younger couples for the pre-Cana classes. We finally got to the wedding and the reception: a vast number of people were involved and their old friends looked in awe at the change that had taken place in Riccardo and Cristina’s lives, and at Enrico who, after the third transplant, was there to enjoy our songs and that strange reception. He distributed party favors with small rocks (which he loves) and viola seeds, along with the invitation to make a donation to a charity called the Cilla Association. Cristina and Riccardo knew that, according to the doctors, Enrico had but a few weeks to live. Their daily life became more intense and human, and time, even that time that is unknown to us, became a friend, because we decided to ask for everything, even a miracle. In every one of our houses people prayed, asking for the miracle of healing, through the intercession of Father Giussani. Everything started speeding up. Between transfusions and prayers, little Enrico kept on living, and living well. Everything revolved around certainty and hope. At School of Community, his parents little by little discovered the Mystery that up to that point had been totally unknown to them, and yet at work in their lives. They find themselves surrounded by a shared friendship; they are serene because they were certain that He who in His mysterious ways made this encounter happen would bring to completion that which He had promised: eternal life and the hundredfold. Our prayer intensified, and Enrico was eager to enjoy everything, up to June 30th, when his little heart stopped beating. His story, his sickness generated a series of miracles that don’t cease to astonish us: the miracle of a different humanity.
Fr. Primo, Turin (Italy)

CHRIST ALWAYS
FULFILLS OUR DESIRES
I met CL in 2002 in Rio de Janeiro, where I lived. I had gone to confession to Father Gilson and he told me, “Come and meet my friends.”  At the time, I was finishing high school and I met Father Paulo and Inês. I didn’t have anything in common with that group of teenagers, because, on top of being a student, I had a job. At one of our meetings, I met Maria-Helena (Lena), a nursing school professor at the public university. After that, I never saw her again. I moved to another neighborhood, and when I happened to be in the vicinity of Copacabana, I would attend Mass at Father Paolo’s parish. I enrolled in a private university, and after a year and a half I was able to be transferred to a public one. In 2004, during a class, a familiar face stepped into the classroom. I tried to remember where I had seen that person, and then I got it: it was Lena. On my second day of classes, I sat in the first row. All of a sudden, the professor stopped and said, “I know you. Where are you from?” A little clumsily I answered, “From the Movement.” She was very happy to see me again and from that moment on we became friends and I re-encountered the Movement. We started having School of Community at the university, saying the Angelus, and having lunch together. In 2006, I graduated and moved to Brasilia. Everything was difficult there; I wanted to see those faces I had left in Rio, and I had to travel 40 miles to go to School of Community. I stopped attending the meetings, but I missed them. Life could be good or bad, but I was missing that “something.” Lena told me, “Stay close to Sêmea.” In March, I started following Lena’s suggestion and many miracles started happening. Cinzia and Anna Maria came to my house for dinner and talked about their experience in the Movement to six couples of my community. At the end, Anna Maria said, “Christ always fulfills our desires,” and I knew she was right, because for the past three years I had wished for a moment like that to happen and it finally did. She also said to me, “Be faithful, even if it’s just you and your husband.” We decided to start a School of Community group, and the first meeting we had only one couple, who had not attended the meeting with Cinzia and Anna Maria. We have now met five times: my husband and I, Marinete and Nazin. At our last School of Community, I was sad because once again nobody new had joined the group. Nazin and Marinete told me, “To us, it is as if this room was crowded. We did not come just to make you happy; we came because this is for us.” It’s incredible how Christ responds to our reality and how He is present in everything.
Andréia, Planaltina (Brazil)

WHAT ONE EXPECTS
FROM A TEACHER
Dearest Father Carrón:
Here is the letter that one of my students wrote to me after two years spent in my class.
Hello! In the past two years, you were able to pass on to me your passion, dedication, and the will to go to the depth of reality. What you did could be compared to a flower that, thanks to favorable weather conditions, is able to bloom. I think all men want to discover more about reality; what is essential is to make reality blossom, and since that process had already begun in you, you were able to communicate it. The difference between looking and observing is among the most precious things you taught me. One of the most beautiful experiences I had is that few are the facts and events that can escape one who observes reality. An example is when we read The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni. A reader who really observes the story is able to reconstruct what the narrator wanted to affirm. Since that was the way you approached the book, you were able to communicate the beauty of observing, and allowed us to love The Betrothed. You were the one struck by that beauty in the first place, so you were able to pass on your passion to us. You also helped me through difficulties, and I could count on you when I was in need. Furthermore, I discovered the experience of God. Before,  I was one of those Catholics who went to Mass and pray out of coercion. But by following the priest’s homilies and by listening to you speak, I understood that God is present in my life. Becoming a man, God revealed Himself to us: “The Mystery became flesh and dwells among us.” In the past two years, I really encountered God, and you are one of the people I have to thank for it. I think that growing academically thanks to a professor is quite normal. What is exceptional is growing as a human being. I have become more of a man thanks to what I have learned from you. One does not expect this from a teacher, but you were more than a teacher to me. You were a mentor. –Martino
Elisabetta, Lissone (Italy)

BEING A GODFATHER BEHIND BARS
Ivan is a prison inmate, who converted through the encounter with Daniela and the friends of Encounter and Presence (an association of volunteers working with prison inmates). He stopped cursing God. When he was asked to pray for the baby daughter of a volunteer who had been diagnosed in utero with Down’s Syndrome, he accepted. On May 26th, a healthy baby was born and her father asked Ivan to be her godfather. He could not leave prison to attend the baptism. This is the letter that he wrote to the baby girl.
Hello Agnese, little witness to the existence of God. One day you will realize and be proud of the amount of love, joy, sorrow, witness, change, and faith people experienced with you and for you, since the moment of your conception. I am honored and proud to have been chosen by your father as your godfather! This is again a sign of Christ, as well as all that you and I, with your parents and friends, have experienced together. I am sorry I can’t be there physically; know that my spirit will be close to you much more than you can imagine. As far apart and as different as we are, there is something we will always share: the name that was given us in Baptism, Maria, the Virgin’s name. Agnese Maria Benedetta, my gratitude for you is immense! Christ helped me understand that in order to change, I have to believe, to trust! You have been my belief, my trust. I love you, little divine creature.
Ivan Maria (Italy) 

Setting Aside All Fears
Dear Father Carrón: It all started when Zaga asked me, “Will you come to the vacation?” Going on vacation with the Movement wasn’t in my plans, but after his simple invitation, the most correspondent course of action was to say, “Yes.” My friends of the Fraternity were a little skeptical, but seeing how sure I was they said, “If you go, we’ll come too.” On day one–coming down the mountain on a gondola–it started raining and the gondola began to swing. I was afraid. At a certain point, I noticed my three-year-old niece, who was laughing, sitting on her dad’s knees. I asked her, “Aren’t you afraid?” She answered, “No. My dad is here.” Then and there I wanted to be just like her: sitting on Jesus’ knees. In the following days, I faced the wound that my niece had opened, which allowed me to start a work. I decided not to stop at my fears, or at thinking, “I already know,” and I opened up to the possibility that things might be different from what I thought. The moment I went from stopping at my fears to trusting Jesus, a whole new world opened up in front of me. Half way through the week, my daughter became ill. Sitting in the room with her, I fell into the usual thoughts: “Why is it always us?” As I was counting my misfortunes, she asked me to read the translation of a few Spanish songs for her. At a certain point, I read the lyrics of a song talking about the relationship between a father and a son. I was struck by the description of the two of them, on a pilgrimage, carrying on their shoulders the weight of the statue of the Virgin, “two men alike, two friends of the same flesh.” I understood then that I didn’t want to be anywhere else.
Filippo, Urbino (Italy)

Who are you, who thus
embrace my sorrow?
Pietro Paolo, a sixteen-year-old boy, passed away on August 11th. He left behind his sister Eleonora and his parents, Tiziana and Rolando. Upon returning from the Meeting in Rimini in late August,  Rolando, who had left the Movement a long time since, wrote the following letter to his friends.

Dearest friends: In the past few days, I have lived the most horrible moments of my life. Everything appeared meaningless, without a reason: pure pain. Pietro’s death destroyed me completely. I looked around and my life felt like a nightmare. Then, Sunday, I accepted Rossella’s invitation to go to the Meeting. To be honest, I did it mostly for Eleonora, to provide her with a change of scenery. I don’t know why, but everything seemed absurd: Mass, the exhibits, even having our meals in the midst of that huge crowd. Then, little by little, I started to observe you: Giacomo and Franca, Roberto, Lorella, Rossella, Andrea, Franco and Anna Rita, and the “little” and yet great Adriana. All those faces–faces of friends, of people whom I met many years ago, in my youth, my best years–as well as my friendship with Nicola and Angela, Monica and Roberto, and so many other friends… everything seemed meaningless. Then, all of a sudden, I started feeling loved with all my limitations and my shortcomings.
I don’t know why, but for sure there is something beyond my own measure that imposes Itself in a clear, evident, and total way. There is an embrace greater than my limit; a Love greater than my pain. This is a devastating, astonishing realization: who are You, who thus embrace my sorrow? How are You able to take me by the hand and make me feel my son’s hand? Friends, I love you with all my heart.
Rolando