01-09-2010 - Traces, n. 8

CL lIFE
La thuile


CONVERTING OUR GAZE
Rose and the kids from Kampala. Marta. Father Aldo, and many other friends from the U.S. A personal diary of the five-day assembly of CL responsibles from around the world: A few short notes to tell the story of a beginning that can always happen again.

by Paola Bergamini

While driving to La Thuile, I talk to Davide about vacation time, family. We joke. I know Davide and have worked with him for over 20 years. He is the creative soul of Traces, and a dear friend. He spells it out: “After 25 years of marriage, when the children are grown and life’s patterns change, you go deeper into the goal of it all. You say yes again, with more awareness. You still have the same questions, but you decide once again to stay with that person. It is a big step.” That phrase is burned into my memory. It is always a beginning, as is this International Responsibles Assembly, regardless of how many of these assemblies I have already attended.
 We arrive at the Hotel Planibel in time for supper. The restaurant is filled with a hubbub of multiple languages. 480 people from 69 countries, 3 of which are represented for the first time: Haiti, New Zealand, and Ukraine. As I stab my fork into my pasta, Suzanne, who works for Traces in the U.S., asks me: “What are you doing here?” My first thought is to answer, “What a question! For Traces, obviously, to meet people, to write…” And, instead, I don’t say anything. Nothing is obvious at the beginning.
After supper, we are in the meeting hall for Carrón’s introduction. I sit at the back of the room and see so many friends pass by in silence. With some of them, I began the experience of CL in high school; others I met during my college years; others through work. Rose, Gelsomina, Maurizio, Roberto, Alberto... All of them “encounters.” On my notepad, I copy down the title that leaps out at me from the stage: “Can a man be born again, once he is old?” It is the slogan from the Fraternity Exercises. Davide’s words come to mind. Everything is brought into play all over again. And we begin by invoking the Spirit “to make us aware of our entire need, in order to make us open to what He wishes to give us during these days.”  Carrón goes straight to the attack, as always. We are living “in a world without Jesus, after Jesus,” as Péguy wrote. We are all in it up to our necks, people who are asleep, whose souls are not “shaken by the thought of the meaning of life.” That is why, as the Pope said, we need to be converted. The first word is conversion–a word that means allowing the unease, the weariness, that infinite love, which bent down over my nothingness, to enter. We have to be open and available to His initiative toward us, giving in to this event that is happening now, giving in to the preference that the Mystery has for us.
At the end, I take another look at the oversized image of the Easter poster: the father’s embrace of the prodigal son. Conversion was probably the last word that I was expecting. It is for “others.” I once heard Fr. Giussani give this definition by looking at the word’s roots: cum vertere, “turning one’s eyes”–no longer focusing on yourself, but on Him who embraces you in your nothingness, which for Him is everything. The horizon opens up. It is a new world.

From New York to Kampala. In the hotel lobby, I see Michele, who has arrived late from Rimini because he led the final presentation on Giussani’s book with Fabrice Hadjaj. “Are you happy about the presentation?” I ask him. “I was discussing it with my wife on the way here,” he tells me. “I was worried about forgetting so many things.” “What did she say to you?” “She was quiet for a minute and then she said, ‘It’s better that way. Your wound will stay open and you won’t close the book.’”  Someone to keep us awake!
Sunday morning: assembly. The instructions are clear for the assembly: provide evidence from experience of whether it is possible to be reborn, whether there is a change in our way of perceiving, of judging reality. Interventions follow, one after the other. They testify to a life lived in tension within particular circumstances, but above all in the now. Carrón intensely engages with the questions, because he, more than anyone, senses the urgency of what is happening. Cristina, Chris, Ignazio, Annibal… Everyone tells how–after leaving behind worries about organization, to live the Movement, recognizing the grace of that Love that bent down to us–life has taken on its true drama, how it has become obedience to reality, to “You who are making me.” This is Giussani’s method, which cannot be learned by just reading texts and by interpreting, but by living. It is an encounter, an event that causes the self to be reborn, to the point that you say,  “I am the way I am, but I need You to love me as I am.” It is the dynamism of the self. Here is the flash of conversion. As the poster says, “Conversion to Christ ultimately means this: to exit the illusion of self-sufficiency in order to discover and accept one’s own need–the need of others and God; the need of His forgiveness and His friendship.”
That afternoon, Marta Cartabia, Professor of Constitutional Law, tells of her year in New York, where everything is wonderful, perfectly organized… i.e., where the project of “a world after Christ, without Christ” seems to have been achieved, where the death of God exists in perfect compatibility alongside “bourgeois religion,” as Nietzsche said. Outside, having a cigarette, I discuss this with Guido and Damian, two Californians. “It is the same where we live,” they confirm. “Maybe on a lower level. What matters to everyone is success. To some, sex.” That is the challenge. T.S. Eliot’s words come to mind: “…dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.”
That evening, our hearts are opened. Luigi (actually “Luigi Giussani,” his baptismal name) and Dennis, both from Uganda, tell the story of how, after meeting Carrón at the Meeting Point International in Uganda, they went to Rose, head of the Meeting Point operation, to ask for Baptism. Rose could not understand. She re-read her notes: Carrón had never spoken of Baptism at the meeting they had there. “Typical African over-enthusiasm,” she thought. “It will pass.” But it didn’t. Thirty-eight were baptized. In the end, she understood: the Mystery calls whom it wishes, through whom it wishes, and when it wishes. She was the one who needed to follow them. From that point on, she no longer looked to Carrón as the “boss,” and began to look where he was looking, just as those young people had. Carmen whispers to me: “It is like in the Acts of the Apostles. They heard Peter and the others and they asked for Baptism. Grace at work. Now I understand that passage I have read so often: ‘Those who received His word were baptized, and there were added that day about 3,000 souls.’” I had heard Rose’s story before, but I needed a friend to keep those words from sliding off of me, to raise my eyes upward.

Human signposts.  “It wasn’t because of the 30 pieces of silver.” Monday’s lesson opens with the words from the song “Il monologo di Giuda” (“Judas’ Monologue”). The battle is between the hope that “He provoked within me,” and power, which seeks to reduce our hearts to stone. It is a battle of personal, social, and cosmic dimensions. In order to understand the nature of this struggle, it is enough to read the text of Fr. Giussani’s final summary from the Equipe (University Student Gathering) of January 1986, one that is extremely current. As I take notes, I realize that this is a dizzying path; there are many factors at play.  And yet the issue isn’t comprehension but of what it provokes in us. There are no longer any programs or organizations that can hold up. Carrón shatters the equivocation of opposing the individual to the companionship, the self to communion. The issue is not whether you are alone or in a group, but the recognition of Christ’s presence in the here and now. That is why prayer, asking to belong to Him, is necessary. Only in this way can we become a good for others, for the Church, and for society. The world awaits our witness, as the answer to humanity’s cry.
Throughout this year, so many events and reminders have marked the life of the Movement, as Roberto Fontolan witnessed that afternoon, reporting on myriad Movement initiatives all over the world. And Giorgio Vittadini, who described the six days of the Rimini Meeting. All were tangible signs of a self that is impacted by reality and accepts its challenges. That evening, the deep voice of Fr. Fabio Baroncini reads and explains “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor” from The Brothers Karamazov. Freedom’s challenge is documented in Dostoyevsky’s words.
Tuesday morning: a hike, lead by Fr. Carrón. During the drive to the trailhead, we meet the university students who stand along the roadway to point out the route. Giovanni, who works in the secretariat and who is the “official” photographer for the week, explains the concept to me. “Will they be left behind?” I ask him, jokingly. “Don’t worry… we’ll come back to get them.”

Berries. It is a spectacular day, but the frigid wind is biting. In silence, split up into groups, we ascend toward the hikers’ refuge at the top of the mountain. In front of me is Rose, who, from time to time, picks berries and gives them to the young Ugandans who are walking behind her. “My mother used to do the same thing when we would go on outings,” Davide tells me. Halfway up the mountain, “Mamma Rose” holds her hand out to the friend who is walking in front of her. She needs help–exactly as she had described Sunday evening. At the refuge, with everyone bundled up, we sing songs of the Italian mountain troops: La montanara, Joska, E col ciffolo del vapore...  In the front row, alongside the other choir members stand Denis, Caesar, George, and the other friends from Uganda, singing without missing so much as a word. They learned the songs in Uganda by downloading them from the Internet. They would sing them to the women who break stones in the quarries of Kampala. On our way back, the student guides are no longer along the road.  Thank goodness, I think to myself.
Before supper, there is another assembly. Monday’s lesson was an event, as Fr. Pino said. The self was taken hold of. Christ took the initiative. It is moving, in the sense that it takes you to another place, like the intervention of Fr. Aldo, who, once again, with passionate vehemence stressed that everything is played out in the difference that characterizes our life together, with which we live the relationships that the event presents to us. As was shown in Aldo’s relationship with Giussani.
Life can be complicated at times, and we look for help in Giussani’s words (either heard or read), “because this is my life’s treasure,” Javier Prades said. But by yourself, it is impossible to re-live the liveliness, the impact of that treasure, and you feel trapped again by the overwhelming circumstances. A remembrance is not enough. You need a relationship, an encounter that makes that treasure present, one that gives you back everything, because it is all embracing.
As I listen to him, that lump of happy nostalgia for Giussani that I have within me begins to melt away. One by one, the faces of my friends pass through my mind, those friends who make him seem so present, and at times I don’t even realize it.
As I walk back to the hotel, Jorge approaches me. The first evening, he told me stories about Paraguay, about the School of St. Catherine, about his passion for work. A moment of silence and then: “He read my heart. My whole history with Giussani. ‘What peace!’ for him, just as it was for me.” That night, we watched the video about Maria Yudina, a courageous witness to Truth and Beauty during Stalin’s Soviet regime.

The bad man. Wednesday: the last day. We sing Claudo Chieffo’s L’uomo cattivo (“The Bad Man”). For three straight days we had found the sheet of paper with the lyrics on our chairs. Pippo Molino taught us the song. I had not sung it since high school.  Who doesn’t find himself again? As Carrón insists: “It is possible for us to have had the encounter with Christ, and yet we can get up in the morning and everything annoys us.” Or else, alternatively, we can follow the path traced out by the witnesses, and give in to the presence of Christ in our companionship. The most resounding sign of Christ’s presence now is the reawakening of the self in its fullness, the reawakening of reason, which gives me a new intelligence regarding things; it is the reawakening of the will to change. Only the divine saves the human. The Mystery’s true challenge to us is what He does. In short, just turn your eyes, convert your gaze.
In the entrance to the meeting hall, Jorge calls me: “This is for you.” I open the beautifully wrapped present and find a CD of a famous Paraguayan singer. Then I realize that Jorge and I had never met before. The Mystery is at work.