Letters
Edited by Paola Bergamini. E-mail: pberga@tracce.it

The Catholic Culture
and the Kitchen Floor
“If there is one place I don’t want to visit, it’s New York City!” That was my conviction before meeting Communion and Liberation. Coming from a small town with one stop sign on Main Street, NYC was intimidating. How is it that, when attending the New York Encounter, I was not afraid but rather at home and, most importantly, loved? This seems ridiculous to write but it was like the city was “mine.” How is this possible? As I looked at the Manhattan skyline, I knew that my people were there. The NYE was not just something I went to; it was a lived experience of the gaze of Christ. When I first met Monsignor Albacete years ago, I asked him what the faithful can do to build Catholic culture. His startling answer went something like this: “It’s not something you do; Catholic culture has to be born.” I had no idea what he was talking about at the time, but now I’m even a part of this initiative that is being born, not as a project, but through a people who experience His gaze which overflows into everything, from literature to music, politics, and film. Everything can be looked at and judged. At the event, “The Passion of Joan of Arc,” I realized that I had attempted to watch this same silent film a few years ago on my own but after 15 minutes I shut the dvd off–it was too difficult, too painful for me to endure. Yet at the NYE, I watched and listened with rapt attention through the entire performance. Through this, I realized that what is best in the arts is also a “work” to partake in. Being accompanied helped me stay in front of the wound that art has the ability to open. Now, back in Crosby, the skyscrapers and glitz of the big city are gone. I sweep my kitchen floor and it is back to “ordinary time,” but a smile fills my heart. Small town, big city… this is not what matters for this same Event I experienced in New York City–this same life is happening right where I live; Catholic culture is being born.
Marcie Stokman, Crosby (USA)

NO evidence is to be
taken for granted
Dear Father Carrón: A month ago, my husband and I lost a baby, our fourth, in the fifth month of pregnancy. I had not welcomed the baby as I would have wanted, and I was caught in the grip of fatigue and the preoccupations of our financial situation. I thought that it wasn't the right moment to have a baby, and I felt my husband had never loved me less; in the delirium of the situation, I even accused him of not taking care of me. I resolved to organize and manage the present and future scenario by planning every tiny detail in the attempt to make ends meet. This went on until the day, a month ago, when they told us that the baby had died. “Come on!”–I thought–“now that I have managed to overcome the hurdle of organizing everything, and I have faced the whole world to whom I have to justify a fourth child... Now that we have gotten accustomed to the news and we are ready to savor the beauty of it all!?” I thought, “Lord, what do You want of me? What is the meaning of all this?” Still in disbelief and confused, I went to the hospital with my husband, where I was told that they needed to induce labor. That night, I delivered little Matteo. An angel disguised as a midwife, in the silence of the night, quietly talked to me and gracefully wrapped that tiny body, so that it could be taken to the cemetery. Matteo’s father was outside the room, and when they wheeled me out for the last round of tests, he caressed my hand with the tenderness of the Mystery that has his face. In tears, I said to myself, “How stupid I have been! God didn't want me to manage, organize, and plan everything. He just wanted my yes, independent of the end result, even for just a month, a day, an instant! It is the same thing He asks of me when I take care of my children or clean the house; when I listen to the grandparents or when I go to work.” While I was waiting for the test to be performed, I felt deeply sad and glad at the same time, because I still was a mother. I was a mother even more now, because of the gratuitousness of it all. I had given birth to three children already without ever realizing all this. When I was discharged, even in the midst of suffering, I felt the urge to tell my dearest friends: “Do not be afraid.” They called me to console me and I found myself consoling them. Friends, colleagues, and family members tried to understand the reasons for what had happened and were worried about my physical and psychological reaction. Their final word was a timid, “It is best this way.” But that was not enough for me anymore, because I had understood that that was not the point. I remember that night not with desperation but with mysterious tenderness, because what had happened was the instrument of something Other. I now find myself encouraging people around me to not be afraid in front of the Mystery at work. They look at me, intrigued and moved at the same time, as I take care of my daily chores with a heightened and more human attention. I experienced that living with the certainty that School of Community talks about doesn't mean that you have to give up your projects or stop taking care of circumstances; it means that you live those same circumstances with joy and freedom, because you are aware that reality is the instrument and the sign of an Other.
Cinzia and Giuseppe (Italy)

tHE MOST imposing
PREFERENCE OF MY LIFE
Dear Father Carrón: I want to tell you how my life has changed since October 4th, when my father died of a heart attack in front of my eyes. In that very moment, I was forced to let go and abandon myself to what was happening in front of me. There was nothing I could do to save him. Yet, in that instant, He who had filled my father's life with meaning, and who fills mine now, manifested Himself in all His power and drama. Out of all my siblings and friends, He chose me to witness that moment. I only had to say “yes.” It has been the most imposing preference of my life. With unprecedented love toward me, Christ asks everything of me, even to stay in front of my dying father. At last, what I have always desired the most–that is, that He can take hold of my whole life–happened. The fulfillment I experienced during those days has been a miracle. The miracle took place in me in a most mysterious and difficult to explain or understand way, but those who saw me and my family saw certainty in our faces. Death is not the last word on life. This is possible only because 2,000 years ago Jesus died and rose again–and He did it in front of me. I ask my friends, “What are you afraid of, death?” I have seen death, and my father's face now belongs to Christ. Since that day, I can say “Christ” without fear. Going back to classes at the university has not been easy. In the week following my father’s death, during one of the first classes I was attending, I started crying. After discovering the meaning of my life in my father's death, how can He not be in my classes and my studying as well? He is. Christ is in that class; He is the professor, He is the notebook. Everything is becoming more interesting, because now I expect to find the answer to my father's death and to all my questions in everything, and since I have seen and recognized Him once, I can't stop short and ask for less than everything. I don't always live with this level of awareness–because of the suffering that always tries to choke me–but everything has an immediate impact on me. Nothing is enough anymore. The answer is in reality. Months have gone by, and it is surprising how I am asked to say “yes” again, to entrust myself to Him in all, in my apparently arid everyday life, just like on that day. I have everything, including the grace of belonging to a companionship that made me walk and led me to that moment ready to recognize Him, to give Him a name. That same companionship, through School of Community and charitable work, keeps showing me that that is always possible, in any circumstance. It is a fact that I could not reduce to mere image even if I wanted to. My father is concrete. Christ lives in everything. I have no other certainty than this; not even life itself is certain. He alone sustains me.
Anna, Gorla Minore (Italy)

Each morning we
start from that plaque
Dearest friends:A few days ago, the plaque of the “Don Luigi Giussani School” was vandalized. I was deeply shaken by this, as if I had been wounded. I asked myself why something like that would happen during a very quiet time, far from the limelight. It immediately became clear that it had been a reaction to the newness the school had generated in the humanity of parents and teachers alike. There was only one response to it all: let’s start again. The plaque was taken down and one of the parents took it home and restored it to its original splendor; we then notified the police and the Mayor. The following day, three daily papers published a highly visible article about the Don Luigi Giussani School, including a press release on behalf of the City Administration expressing indignation for what had happened, and solidarity toward the school. The plaque is now back where it belongs, on the school gate that I have to pass through every day. I look at it and it illumines me. My need for newness starts from that gate, and I am always waiting for an encounter. My work in its entirety is an encounter, even the paperwork I have to deal with. Even those papers, filled with words, make me vibrate with the desire to do well. Even administrative procedures can be the daily circumstance through which an office builds honest human relationships. That atmosphere is the expression of a gratuitousness that the person, according to his/her original nature, is able to express. Even that act of vandalism marks our history, made of joys and wounds.
Ivana Sandrin,
Director of the Don Luigi Giussani School, Ascoli Piceno (Italy)

Here I Have
Found my Home
Dear Fr. Carrón: I would like to thank you for your visit to Uganda, because it opened my eyes and my ears to see and to hear the Mystery more and more. When you told us that there are no circumstances which can prevent the Mystery from coming into our lives, I understood that even a man of culture can believe in the divinity of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. This became true in my life particularly in the way I am with my friends here in Uganda. I realized that I only have one culture, that is the culture of Communion and Liberation (Jesus Christ) and through this I have found my home. It is where I belong, the only place that I recognize Christ present in my life through the faces of my friends, who act as reference points for me, most especially Aunt Rose, in whose face I have truly encountered Christ.
Fredy, Uganda

Like a Beautiful Day
It may happen, on your birthday, that you enter the room of  the toughest class you teach–the one where you feel like a complete failure and where you just dispensed a series of low grades–and find on the blackboard: “Happy birthday corporal!” (That’s what they call me because of my military rank), and hear the entire class intone “Happy birthday” and follow it with applause and “hip hip hurray!” You then ask yourself, like the Italian poet  Cesare Pavese on the day he had obtained the Premio Strega, the most highly prized Italian literary award: “Nothing is due to us: Whom should we thank?” Thinking back to the sweat that went into just keeping discipline, I feel like saying, with  Albert Camus, “It is not by means of scruples that man will become great; greatness comes, through the grace of God, like a beautiful day.”
Ermanno, Samarate (Italy)

SCHOOL OF COMMUNTY HAS BECOME A LIVING THING
Dearest Father Julián: Right from the start, you told us that following your School of Community via videoconference was going to be an ironic attempt, and that the challenge was whether or not our “I” would grow. I immediately felt the desire to verify that. First of all, I want to tell you that I don’t go there just to warm the chair. The questions and issues proposed by those who intervene become mine on the spot, and I instantly ask myself: “What would I say?” It is the same when you speak or answer–I ask myself, “Why does he say so?” Then I take everything home with me, and the things that I heard and that struck me become a judgment on the way I live. I often realize that what I hear at School of Community enters into the way I treat what is in front of me and changes it. Often, the gladness and certainty that I see in you or in those who speak lead me to say, “This is what I need” or “I too want to live like this.” This is how I recognize that He is present and alive now. When the notes become available, I work on them, thus going deeper into what I heard and what struck me. This way, when I pick up the book again, everything seems new. I understand better what the text says; the words gain significance and depth and become flesh. School of Community has become a living thing. Even more, it has become His presence accompanying me.
Laura, Imola (Italy)

What the HEART CRIES FOR
It was late last year when Fr.Carrón organized and came to Africa to meet the all African CL “responsibles”–the first meeting of its kind. As one of the responsibles of our Movement in Africa, I waited for this occasion impatiently. I come from Rwanda, a country that is very near to Kenya, where the meeting was taking place, thus I was sure of being able to attend because it was only a short, two-day bus ride. On the eve of the first day of the  meeting, there was a plane crash at Kigali International Airport. The aircraft, leased from Kenya’s Jetlink to Rwandair, rammed into a building at the airport. Myself and three others were ready to travel, but the trip from  Rwanda to Kenya was cancelled on the grounds that Rwandair, the airline whose plane crashed, was refused by the Civil Aviation Authority (CIA) to carry on other scheduled flights. I was moved by the way Fr. Carrón introduced the meeting in Nairobi on November 12, 2009: After identifying that we (friends from Rwanda) were absent, he started by recognizing our absence. I was only able to watch on the video that was brought by our friends Rose, Michael, Joachim, and Carras, who came to Kigali to share with us the message got from the Nairobi meeting–and that these friends came to share the Nairobi message was doubly moving. It was as if there had been a decision to send some of the friends who had attended the meeting to Rwanda in order to communicate  to them the message from Nairobi. I did feel as if I was present in Nairobi, and thus my heart was moved, and moved to cry for more and more friends—realizing that all of these friends, starting with Fr. Carrón, had put themselves in my shoes and wanted to share with me everything they had learned and experienced. Truly, the charism of Fr. Guissani is this tenderness of the Mystery that knocks to me and will be waiting to enter at my door. It is my responsibility to welcome all this fullness that comes to me. This is an encounter arriving to me with a human face.
Denis Bikesha, Kigali (Rwanda)