Letters

out of the quicksand into an embrace
Dear Julián: A few days ago, I went to see the psychologist who, in the past year, has helped me overcome an eating disorder that has plagued me since high school, and which I started dealing with only after the encounter with the Movement. At the end of our session, the doctor told me that she thought I was on my way to recovery, and that she wanted to let me try walking on my own for a while. She was surprised that my situation had changed in such a short time. In that moment, I felt an explosion of happiness within me, and I thought, “In the end, You really won, Christ. You met me four years ago, You embraced my nothingness and my desperation, and You gave life back to me.” As the day proceeded, I felt a question growing within me: I wanted to understand how that change had happened, and what had changed to the point of allowing me to get rid of a problem that had besieged me for so many years. I picked up the text of School of Community and, comparing my experience with the words that I was reading, I realized  I had had an experience of conversion. Conversion allowed me to make space for Him and allow Him to enter, and to fearlessly follow the design He had in store for me. At our last School of Community meeting, a friend said, “Conversion doesn’t put you in the center; it makes you look at yourself in relation to what happens in your life. This activity of my ‘I’ is indeed a passive one, of becoming aware.” That’s exactly what happens: when you put yourself at the center, you feel you are walking on quicksand. There is no certainty, and you are at the mercy of fleeting emotions; you find yourself facing a need you can’t respond to, and this sense of impotence prompts you to build a world for yourself where you are the strongest, and where everything depends on you–even though it all could crumble in an instant. All the while, your heart cries out in pain because nothing can satisfy you. Once you realize Who took hold of your life, you experience the greatest love you ever had; everything you do is connected with what happened to you, and if you try to sever that link, you immediately feel your life crying out and asking to turn your gaze again toward that greater meaning you caught a glimpse of through the encounter. If today I can look at my past with tenderness, instead of rancor, it is only because everything was redeemed through the encounter with Him; or better, those moments of pain and desperation have been the way through which He chose to meet me; they have been the opportunity to understand that my value was greater than my obsessions. It is through those wounds that life reached me, so much so that, if I stop and think about it, I have to say, “What a grace I received!”
Giovanna, Italy

“life is a work,
A work of mine”
Dearest Father Carrón: At the beginning of September, I had to compete for a position that, from the professional point of view, mattered a lot to me. I had been preparing for three years, giving everything I could. Yet I failed, and it all happened in a very unfair fashion. For two whole days I refused to see or talk to any of my friends. I had bet everything on that competition. I said to myself, “What about all the effort that went into it? What about my prayers, as well as my friends’ prayers?” I was angry at God, almost as if that event was something He had made happen out of spite (as if He owed me something!). Since we got married, my wife and I have always prayed the Memorare at night, but for two nights after the test I chose not to do it. Everything had crumbled! Just because of a test! I was a practicing Catholic, I belonged to the Movement, and I had always been convinced that I had it all (or nearly all) figured out; yet, all my certainties had vanished in an instant. After a few days, I said to myself, “I have to forget about the whole ordeal and get back in the saddle…These things happen to the best of us.” I started doing everything I was doing before–trying to pretend nothing had happened–but this course of action did not satisfy me; every night sadness and anger came back to me. It was thanks to my wife and some of my friends that I understood the need to face what had happened to me. I needed to judge it. I didn’t have to do it alone, but I had to be the one doing it–meaning that it was a work I alone had to do. I still cannot say what good is in this for me, and I still don’t have a clear judgment. Yet, I would not be honest if I didn’t say what I learned. First: my certainty is weak and fragile. Second: thank God I have friends–not because they solve my problems, but because they witness a truer position in front of life. Third: the “problem” is mine; the journey, the path, is mine! Never before have  I had such a clear perception that life is work, and that nobody can do it in my stead. Otherwise, notwithstanding a thousand witnesses, meetings and Schools of Community, the next time I fail a test I will doubt everything again.
Paolo, Italy

MY birthright
for a mess of pottage
Dearest Julián: After being unemployed for nearly one year, in February I was offered a job in a company that deals with the management of human resources.  I accepted, and in July I won an award for “salesman of the month.” Nonetheless, from the get-go, I sensed that my colleagues had a peculiar view of life, and that this attitude of theirs was reflected in the way they dealt with our clients. After a while, I discovered that, albeit indirectly, they were connected to Scientology. Interestingly enough, this did not give rise to an objection in me. On the contrary, I gave everything without ceasing to be  myself. In the past months, I started working with the senior partners as a consultant. There were a few episodes when I couldn’t but take a stand. For example, after analyzing a company, we discovered that one of the partners wasn’t up to par with the responsibility he had. My colleagues’ goal was to get rid of him. I pointed out that he was a man in his forties, with a child and a mortgage…There had to be some task for him within the company. My senior partners took notice of this attitude of mine and told me, “You have a strong set of beliefs that condition the way you work. What is life for you?” Instinctively, I told  them, “For me, life is a gift; I’m not the one who decides that I will wake up again tomorrow morning, and I’m not the one who decides that I will still be alive a minute from now.” They replied, “We teach that life is a Spa, where each of us is the majority shareholder. The minority shareholders are your wife, your kids, your work-related problems, your bank, and so on. Our clients are the first to forget that they are majority shareholders; therefore, they let other people make decisions about their lives. We are not asking you to abandon your creed; we are asking you to choose. When you are home, you can do what you want, but when you are with us, you have to be one of us.” When we parted, we agreed that I would take a certain amount of time to come to a decision. When I went back home that night, I was very confused and angry because, after a long time, I had a job that I liked and that I was good at, which offered an excellent outlook from the point of view of future earnings; but on the other hand, there were all the events that I had seen in my life…I came to Beginning Day filled with these thoughts, but most of all asking: “Christ, if You are real to the point of answering my need as much as a job, as much as a substantial bank account… reveal Yourself!” I started listening to you, and you mentioned John and Andrew who “looked at Him speak.” I looked up and I said, “There You are; I am looking at You speak.” I became aware that what I really wanted–more than money or awards–was a gaze like that on myself, or an embrace that was able to reach me in my suffering, piercing through my sense of defeat, disorientation, and confusion. That night at home, I spoke to my wife, and I told her that I had no doubts about how to proceed. We are now facing the decision to quit my new job, and the great struggle and suffering that it caused. Yet, knowing for a fact that there is One who, in the midst of my problems, becomes a breath of the infinite, makes me certain that what defines me and makes me be truly human is neither my paycheck nor my job. A friend asked me, “What will you do now?” Thinking about Esau’s story, I answered, “I surely will not sell my birthright for a mess of pottage!”
Damiano, Italy

They May All Seem Insignificant Details...
Hello Julián: Reading the first pages of your intervention at Beginning Day (in Traces No. 9, Vol. 12), I was greatly struck by two points you made. First: when you explained the song “L’uomo cattivo” (“The Bad Man”), you said that the moment the bad man started asking himself who it was that gave him life, he started becoming aware of the reality surrounding him. Second: in the first letter you quoted, the writer says that after the encounter he had at the community vacation, he spent the entire month of August looking for that same gaze, and he realized he was a gift to himself. At that point, you remarked, “This is conversion.” The dramatic battle that I feel growing everyday within me, as I try to affirm the truth, is won whenever I experience a re-birth, which may happen because of a conversation with a friend, or the rule of the house, or the words we are asked to read. Believe me, they may all seem insignificant details, but it is indeed through something exceptional that I am born again.
Alessandro, Italy

“I stumbled across a sign”
A friend called me this morning. I could hear his melancholy over the phone. He is alone. I told my friend that I understood; I myself went through a period in my life of deep sadness  until I truly met the Movement. I have learned that  I have this desire in my heart that is insatiable. My friend is 42, divorced, and retired with several million dollars in the bank but that has not satisfied him. He has only been “retired” for a couple of months. “Why am I unhappy?” my friend wonders.  So, I tell him, “You are trying to fill an infinite void with finite stuff”: Finite stuff / infinite desire = 0.0000000... Infinitesimally small number = nothing. Yet our stubbornness insists on material possessions as the solution. I tell to my friend that the only Infinity is God and God is “caritas.”  True love or “caritas” amongst us is a reflection of our Infinite Creator. Love is why He came, to show us the biggest form of love.  Yet we don’t believe. This is the human struggle that Fr. Giussani talks about. This is why we all feel lonely. We deny Him, and fail to see the way: the Church. It is difficult to put this simple solution into practice. The solution is obvious because of His infinite love for us: Infinite Being / infinite desire = everything. How I wish I could have this Presence in my mind every second of my existence. I am now blessed by His Grace when I pray, when I give Him my “yes.” He showed me the Movement. I stumbled across a sign, a poster that led me to meet these people that shared something that I could not put my finger on. I did not understand a word they said at the time, but there was something that made me stay. And I kept coming back, and they kept looking for me for no reason other than that they loved me, so I kept coming back. He was there with all of you.
Felix Antonio Villalba-Cervantes, Dallas (USA)

a relentless roommate
One month ago, I was hospitalized for surgery. The girl I was rooming with there immediately expressed her preoccupation about a particular test she had to undergo and about the ensuing surgery. She was very bitter toward destiny, because she had to once again face a trial that she wanted to avoid. I wasn’t in a listening mood, because I had my own problem to worry about; yet her presence and her insistence forced me to pay attention to her and to keep her company. The day she was sent home, she said goodbye to me, embracing me and thanking me with these words: “In all my hospitalizations, I never met a person who really listened to me with the heart, and who was able to communicate such serenity. Not even my overpaid psychologist is able to do that.” Moved by her words, I stopped to consider everything I have been given and I felt grateful for Carrón’s companionship, which reaches me through School of Community, as well as for all the witnesses that I come across every day, for my family and for my friends in Padua. Most of all I am grateful because, through that girl, Christ forced me to lift my gaze and to turn the witnesses that are given to me into flesh and personal experience. I now understand what it means that Christ is contemporaneous.
Mariangela, Italy

betting everything on a crumb of freedom left
Dear Julián: After summer break, my boss told me that there was something wrong with my work–or, better, that there was something wrong with me. His judgment on me was so negative that I thought of quitting and finding another job. In front of his hostility, I realized that either his judgment was the last word on me, or Another had to emerge. Why do I think that Christ is contemporaneous? As I was listening to my boss, I recalled your face, when, during a School of Community at the end of May, you told us: “Who–whatever the situation, whatever the difficulty he is having, whatever the bad circumstance he is living, the psychological state he is in–who, among the people present here and the people who are listening to us, who can say that there isn’t a crumb of freedom left, enough to start to look at ourselves like God is looking at us?” Staying in front of what was happening, I understood clearly that the judgment on myself did not coincide with my boss’s opinion, but with the fact that Another loved me in that very moment. Recognizing Him present allowed me to remain at my job and to start working even more intensely; to find new strategies, and to stay with my boss with no hostility on my part. I now realize that I stopped being defensive; I am free because I am with Another. Without the work of the past years on School of Community, and without your constant challenge, as well as that of my friends, I would have certainly run away. One day, I went out for lunch with my friend Claudia, to vent and to find some consolation. She told me: “Anyway, there are no excuses; you have to get into your head that this year you have to study. You have to keep your head down and work hard.” At first, I was a little taken aback… Then I accepted her challenge. Now I submit to what reality asks of me, and I am more committed to understanding certain work-related issues. What’s surprising is that I am re-discovering a new-found enthusiasm for my job, and the desire to communicate it. Most of all, what’s emerging is my “I” and my desire to belong to Him.
Paola, Italy