letters

letters

More than a Family
Dennis is 22 years old, and is orphan of both father and mother. He came across the Meeting Point in Kampala (a non-governmental organization that cares and supports HIV infected people and their families), and the meeting with Rose changed his whole life. He now attends the university
When my father died, I was hopeless, until I met Rose. I was only a child, and did not expect to be able to go ahead with school, but she looked at me and said, “Dennis, do you know you have a value? You can do whatever you want!” Not even my father ever spoke to me like that; he never told me  that my life had a meaning. Every time I was promoted to a higher class in secondary school, I went to her and said I wanted to go on studying, because it would make me happy. She would ask me, “Is it true?” I did not understand the reason for that question, but I went on studying. Then I told her I wanted to go to the university. Rose gave me everything I wanted, and I asked myself: who is she?  She was not interested in my results, but in me as a person–in me. I was admitted to the university. She asked me if I really believed that my happiness lay there. I asked her what she meant by this question. She answered that our desires are infinite. That really opened my eyes! She reminded me that at every successive level of school, I had told her that I would be happy. Now, though, I am at the university and despite this I am not truly happy. I keep wanting something more. Now I belong to a fine family, I am happy to have met these people and am not looking for more, because I have seen here, in this family, Christ at work, concretely.  When I met Rose, I realized that Christ is in people, because to meet someone who is always waiting for you, with whom you can speak of everything in full freedom–and who does not tell you that this is wrong that that’s not right–you are free to do what you want–then she tells you what she would do. When Rose invited me to the School of Community, I understood nothing at first, but I didn’t tell her. Then I told her the truth and asked her to help me. She asked me why I had taken so long to say I didn’t understand: “I told you I am always ready to help you; feel free, don’t be afraid…” I said in my heart, “This is really too much! She gives me time, and even smiles at me.” Many of us who now go to Meeting Point had a self-esteem that was at rock-bottom, with no hope; we thought we could not make it. But she looked at us, and told us we have a value. One day, Rose told me to be myself, to live my life and not put on masks, to be free. I had no need for her to tell me to be free; I am already free. Then she asked me, “Do you know who you are?” I thought I knew who I was but, actually, who am I? I know my name, I know I go to school but… at that point, she reminded me again to go to the root of things, to look deeply into myself: “And when you have discovered yourself, come back to me.” But she never left me alone, she took me by the hand. The is another thing that strikes me in the friendship with Aunty Rose: She doesn’t care which tribe you are from. In Uganda, we are tribalistic, and everyone does things for economic gain. My relatives rejected me. My father was Acholi and my mother Runyankole, and since I do not resemble the Acholi many of them don’t like me. All this is of no interest to Rose; she doesn’t even want to know which tribe you are from. She says that culture is the heart, and has nothing to do with tribal belonging. One day, I got to class late and the teacher had already started. He interrupted the lesson and said, “Hey, handsome, show us who your girlfriend is, introduce her now!” All the students were looking at me. I answered, “I have no girlfriend here.” “Look at all these beautiful girls. Is it possible that none of them can make you happier?” “If we are talking of happiness, I don’t think any of these girls could ever make me happy.” “So let’s hear from him what makes him happy.” “Only Christ can make me happy!” Then he said to me, “You are young, you have not yet seen the world! Maybe you are a priest? You speak like a priest!” “No. I don’t need to be a priest, but I know who I am, I know the meaning of my life. You teach in the university, but do you know who you are?” He looked at me and said that a youngster like me cannot ask certain things. “It’s very easy to say I am young, but do you know who you really are? You are here, earning a lot of money…” Then I saw a ring on his hand. “I presume you are married, but are you happy? Now that you are married, are you happy? I imagine you must be really happy, you have a wife, a good job…” At that point, he went on with the lesson, asking me to see him later in his office. I though he wanted to throw me out of the university. Instead, he asked me to sit down and asked me how old I was and if I was living with my parents. He thought it was all an invention and asked me who was paying my tuition fees. I told him I had lost both of my parents. He asked me if I was happy and I told him yes, because I had discovered something great–the Presence of Christ. He looked down and asked me when I had discovered it. He understood at once that this discovery had to do with my friends, and he asked me again about the tuition fees. I told him it was Auntie Rose. “Who is she?” “Someone who loves me and loves other people.”  “What does it mean to love people? I love my students.” I answered that that he has to understand the real meaning of the word love, and what it means really to be loved, and that in Rose I truly see Christ. He told me, “Dennis, Christ is not here, He’s in heaven. Haven’t you read the Bible? He is sitting at the right hand of the Father. Don’t let them deceive you.” I answered that no one is deceiving me, I know who I am and I asked him if he knows who he is: “I don’t mean you name or your titles, but your deepest self.” I told him to look into his heart, because we are not in the world by mistake or by chance. We are here for an aim. He told me, “Young man, this is alright for you.” “No, this is true for everyone. We all have to know who we are, because it has nothing to do with money or jobs.” In the end, he let me go, asking me to let him have one of Fr. Giussani’s books… We spoke for an hour and I realized that I had said nothing that came from my knowledge; all that I said came from Fr. Giussani. “With our hands, but with His strength”–I had read this phrase somewhere in our library, and I spoke of it to Rose. She told me to “love, love the people, learn to love them. This is the foundation of life. If you have not begun to love someone, you have not yet begun to live. Once you begin to love, you have begun to live a true life. Begin to love someone, and you will know what it is to live.”
Dennis Oryem,
Kampala (Uganda)

Healing from
the Heart Outward
Iam a physical therapist and a wife and mother of five children. Well over a year ago, my eldest son Michael required complicated back surgery to correct and remove spinal deformities that he was born with and which had worsened over his 12 years. The decision to operate was not a simple one. Unfortunately, the risk associated with the ground-breaking procedure we chose to undertake in Boston was full paralysis but, if all went well, Michael would have the best chance for growth and mobility.  After 7 hours of surgery, 24 hours in the ICU, and 7 more days in the hospital, Michael was walking. We returned to Boston for his first post-operative appointment three months later and on a whim I asked the surgeon to examine my 9-year-old daughter whose pelvis began to look displaced to me.  Meagan was diagnosed with the same spinal deformity as my son but this time it was larger and at the base of her spine and would require an even more complicated surgery.  Even though paralysis was no longer a risk, the potential for peripheral nerve damage increased dramatically.  It was almost one year since Michael’s surgery and we returned to Boston for Meg’s. We would spend the morning at the hospital in appointments but wanted to join the Boston CL Community in the afternoon–it was Good Friday.  The CL responsible’s  wife e-mailed back saying that her husband, Anujeet, was currently busy and would get in touch with me as soon as he could regarding the details but she went on to say, “But Laura, your needs must be much greater than this; please let me help with your children or consider staying with us...”  My husband and I could only wonder at theses strangers who welcomed us this way!  So, on Good Friday, we walked The Way of the Cross which for us began at Boston Children’s Hospital. It was the consolation of consolations to walk this memory of Christ’s Via Dolorosa with Anujeet and the Boston Community, in union with the whole Church. Meg had surgery three days later and the risk for complications became reality.  Her right leg became weak and very painful.  She would use words like “unbearable,” and “too much,” as I sat helplessly by, thinking, “Why can’t they fix this? Why did I do this?”  I became overwhelmed and distraught and called my friend Fr. Roberto, who asked me if I had asked Meagan to offer her suffering.  This idea was “too much” for me because I thought it was my job to protect her from suffering.  Fr. Roberto helped me to understand that Christ was calling Meg to a relationship to Himself and I was to help her see this–not stand in her way. Another friend from my Fraternity, Regina,  had e-mailed me that day asking if Meg would offer her suffering for her friend’s daughter who was very sick in the ICU at Johns Hopkins. So, at the next opportunity, when Meg was inconsolable with pain, I asked her if she could offer it for Shannon’s daughter.  Immediately, my daughter’s face relaxed and a unity was born between Meg and Liesel, between Meg’s suffering and Liesel’s need, between Christ’s suffering and my need.  I experienced a real conversion in my position in front of my daughter as her mother as well as in front of Christ’s love for me.  Meg came home four weeks later in a wheelchair after a subsequent hospitalization. She is almost completely healed, almost.... The journey continues and my circumstances will be what they are. What I realize is that Christ is calling me to a relationship with Him through my circumstances, not in spite of them.  He has placed me in the company of His people to show me His face and I am certain He is here saving me now.
Laura Collins, Maryland (USA)

KNOWLEDGE AND
THE THIRST FOR BEING
A fter eight months of very intense studying (I was required to read 100 books and to write an article), in September I finally took the test for my doctorate, and I am now officially an “abd” (all but dissertation). Not that I’m much closer to getting my PhD, it’s just that I am now a little freer to conduct my research the way I want. Given the massive work I needed to do to prepare for the test, the summer was pretty challenging and eventful, both for me and my wife Jen, whose job search has not been easy due to the crisis. To be honest, it has been a struggle that has put to the test my patience and faith, but actually God was always there to precede me: in Morning Prayer (where my sleepy thoughts were replaced by the words that, through the Psalms, He was telling me), and in Jen’s presence, when I opened my eyes in the morning to find her beside me (like a bouquet of flowers left there for me). In the face of the many mornings when I tried to come up with a convincing argument to force myself out of bed to read yet another 500 pages, I truly realized that the only reason to wake up is Christ present, mysteriously knocking at my door. Within this personal relationship with the Lord, even the sacrifice of not being able to spend a lot of time in Italy or on vacation was redeemed: I often thought that Father Giussani himself, between his ordination and the Berchet steps (nine years!), didn’t do anything exceptional; he just studied. This was a comforting thought when I felt the urge of having to “do” something else besides sticking to my chair all day long. The summer readings, through which I collected a whirlwind of opinions and thoughts about the world, intensified my desire to understand better and to delve more deeply into the mystery of reality, precisely because I realized this thirst is not quenched even by the best philosophical theory or artistic representation. During a conversation with a colleague of mine (who was preparing for the test as well), we talked about Leopardi and she told me that she had that same internal thirst for Being. Confronted with the subsequent furious upsurge of questions, she had gone to have a talk with another friend, but she had received only this disappointing comment: “There are no answers for those questions; that’s all. Isn’t it freeing?” “Not at all,” she later told me. Right, not at all: without Being, even knowledge is not freeing, unlike what the “wise” of this world want us to believe. This became even clearer the night of the test, during a dinner with my friend David, who converted from Judaism and was baptized at the Easter Vigil. He told me about his life and the way that he, a Jew, had been pierced by St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa. I was struck by the insistence with which, describing his first encounter with the New Testament and the Mass, he said that they were “so Jewish.” When I asked him why, he answered that for somebody who grew up waiting for the Messiah, these are the specific places where the promises that God made to His people find their fulfillment. After a year of married life, I watch in awe as that thirst and that promise become the daily relationship with a real Presence in which the most basic everyday reality is fulfilled, and in which everything (from cleaning the house to washing the dishes) becomes sacred.
Luca, Cambridge, MA (USA) 

THE Magnificat Resounds in LA
Wednesday night, we had the first “LAHH Open House.” It was a simple way to communicate to all the people we have met during the past months the reason for the change that is taking place in us and in our coworkers because of the work we do at the Los Angeles Habilitation House, which employs people with disabilities. It was a simple occasion, as simple as the communication of something you love. We spent one hour together, snacking on cheese, salami, grapes, pizza, and soft drinks in front of an exhibit displaying pictures of us at work, and the text Work and Love by Father Giussani.  Two people who, during these years, have accompanied some of our young men and women through the psychological difficulties of their illnesses, gave short witnesses about the change that they saw happening in them when they began to work with our people. One of them said, “They are starting to discover themselves.” The father of one of the young people we employ looked at me with tears in his eyes and whispered, “What you are doing is heroic; it is what I can’t give my son.” I suddenly remembered the words of the Magnificat: “He has looked with mercy on His lowly servant.” What is it that I have to give? What am I giving? Is it a discourse on man and his needs? Is it a theory or a job to make life easier? Nothing of the sort.  What I am giving is my life, moved by His presence. The beauty of this evening, shared by 40 people as different as they come (Jews and Christians, CEOs, business men, mothers and fathers, unemployed people, teachers, psychologists, and lawyers) touched a humanity more wretched than ever, but ever more in love with Him–Him, who is the reason and the driving force behind those pictures, behind the way we tied the strings that held the panels in place, the way we cut the fruit and the salami, and the way we communicated our work experience, we talked to, welcomed, and embraced the 40 guests. That evening, I went back home, driving down the same highway, crossing the same roads as always, but with a stronger and greater certainty that “my soul magnifies the Lord,” and that I live a life, not a discourse about life, precisely because Christ started to leap in a woman’s womb.
Guido, Los Angeles (USA)

AMONG THE WHALES ON THE PACIFIC OCEAN
Giacomo, currently in Reading (UK) for a doctorate in Meteorology, came to the USA for a series of lectures. The following is a letter he wrote to his parents.
Dearest Mom and Dad: I can’t express how happy I am for this beginning. Today I spent the day as a tourist along with Emma, a British girl who is getting a PhD in Reading. It was exhausting; she speaks very fast and in a soft voice; I am deaf and I have trouble understanding when I am outdoors, so I had to continuously ask her to repeat what she had said. Nonetheless, something incredible happened. Tonight, after a few attempts, we managed to have a deep conversation. I went to Mass. I am in the middle of nowhere (everything looks like the Wild West here), and I spent one hour in a magnificent church in front of the crucified Christ with 200 strangers. I went whale watching with Emma and I actually saw two whales! I was on the Pacific Ocean, and calling the waves “huge” would be an understatement. During the day, I caught myself thinking several times about how lucky I am. One cannot imagine how beautiful the world is, how every single piece of it is unique and unrepeatable. I struggled. Even exchanging a few words with Emma was an effort, not to mention the anxiety that every detail brought along: from traveling alone and approaching my first lecture without the support of my professor, to moving to Boston to give a speech in the most famous university in the world (trying not to be “killed” from the didactic point of view!). A lot of people would have a much easier time, but this is the way God wanted me to be. I am learning to accept myself the way I am, without getting angry for the struggle I have to face. It is indeed through this very struggle, in measuring every single step, that I taste the prize that has been promised me. Regardless of how they do it, those who are able to live up to their human nature have the possibility to enjoy life. Try to imagine: I am here in this piece of the world to marvel at all its wonders and to do what I have always liked–studying the atmosphere in order to understand its details. I hope you too are able to savor what you do in your daily life (from relationships to work). Every single moment of life truly contains an all-encompassing promise.
Giacomo, Reading (UK)