Letters

Somebody to hold your hand when you are afraid
After witnessing a night of fighting, screaming, and nasty exchanges, I fled to a friend of mine just to stop seeing what was happening at my house. After one hour, wondering why my parents had neither called nor answered the phone, my friend and I walked back to my house to see what was going on. As we turned onto the last block, we looked at each other, visibly worried. The street was unusually lit; the sidewalks were crowded with whispering people–who went silent as we approached. We didn’t know what was happening, yet our hearts were beating furiously. As we entered the path to the garden surrounding the house, I saw the blue light of an ambulance fill the alley. The building was surrounded by cars, people, policemen, and journalists, silently crying tears of pain and disbelief. Nobody wanted to tell me what was going on. The people around me just wanted to hold me tight. I feared for my mother, and wondered if, maybe, something had happened to her. I couldn’t get an answer... Only a few hours later I finally understood that both my parent were dead. They died in an unforeseeable tragedy: my father, overcome with anger, stabbed my mother to death, and then, having realized the gravity of his actions, decided to join her and stay with her forever. I don’t have any concrete memories of what happened for the rest of the night. For hours, I was unable to say or do anything. I believe I have never been so sad and afraid of the unknown, as in those moments. Yet, that girl in the middle of the garden, unable to move or to meet the eyes of the people around her, started to feel that Somebody was there, close to her. Somebody supported her the whole time. Right in that moment, Somebody grabbed her hand and did not let it go. I now feel fully supported, and filled with a strength and a joy that I never felt before that day. I know I will never see my mother’s eyes or feel my father’s moustache caress my cheek again; yet I also know that what I experienced will never be lost, and that the path that my parents pointed out for me really suits me. It is that very path that, even without my parents’ support, is able to help me and to make me feel alive. I have my moments of desperation, and I can’t say I’m completely happy–I still feel somewhat empty–but I have certainties, and I know I am not alone. Just like a friend of mine reminded me, having solid certainties to hold on to when we face difficulties is the only way to keep our heads up; problems will keep coming, but if our certainties are unyielding, nothing will be able to destroy them. Yet, I have to nurture them or they will wither. This is just what friends are for; they remind us that we are never alone. I need to constantly feel the presence of somebody near me, particularly now. I’m lucky because there is always a friend ready to reach out, even in the middle of the night, when fear seems to drown out any other feeling and to triumph over reason. It is because of this certainty of having adults and kids my age at my side, that my life–which is like a flower–does not wilt, and that every single petal of certainty is not wasted. The challenge of last year’s Meeting (the last vacation I spent with my mother) was: “Everything that happens is in the hands of One who loves us.” How could I not believe in the truth of such a sentence after the past three months? The desire to look at the world with a smile is greater than everything else. Nothing happens by chance; especially if He is by your side, if He fills your heart.
Name withheld

OPENING A CRACK
IN THE WALL
Dear Father Carrón: The night before leaving for the CLU Exercises, after a fight with my mother, I decided to stay home. In the confrontation with my mother–with whom I have an often dramatic relationship–everything that I needed came brutally to the surface. I found myself face to face with that urgent need that, up to a moment before, I had decided to silence. I said to myself, “Reality is positive only when it wants to be! If what I encountered can’t stand its ground in front of my need to be looked at and embraced now, it can’t do it in front of anything else. I don’t care that my mother has been given to me if You–who gave her–don’t show up in my relationship with her to make me re-discover that she has been indeed given to me. Tomorrow I will not go to the Exercises, because the title is a lie and my heart is not looking just for consolation and lies, forgetting everything that happened with my mother.” Later, I remembered a St. Augustine quote: “My heart is restless until it rests in You.” I thought I would never be able to rest in this world, and saw my need as useless and disproportioned, if compared with the events of the previous days. My mind was almost made up, and the following morning I didn’t show up at the bus for the Exercises. I said “almost,” because by 6:30 pm I was in Rimini. On one hand, I was bothered by passing on one more occasion in order to assert again that everything was a lie, and on the other hand that urgent need I had experienced the night before was still there, so I decided to hitch a ride with a friend. It was one of the greatest and truest choices of my life. You spoke about me more than I ever have. You embraced me totally. When you started the Friday night lesson quoting Elliot, “Where is the Life we have lost in living?” (T.S. Eliot, Choruses from the Rock, 1934), I said to myself: “How can this man get right to the point, and talk about me with the first words that come out of his mouth?” It was the same for the entire three days. Saturday morning, when I left the conference room, I couldn’t escape the great challenge and the many questions triggered by your lesson. I brought them up during lunch, and at first I had the impression that nobody was really interested in them, and that they were just a hindrance to what you had told us. Then the assembly and the following morning gave me relief. You did not neglect even a smidge of what I am. You took me for what I am, with all my need to understand, and to be loved and happy–with my sinfulness and my limitations. Finally, on Sunday, when you talked about that possibility to open a crack in the middle of the wall of our skepticism, I completely surrendered to what I had in front of me, that is, you, talking about a possible journey. I went back home carrying the same question I had Thursday night regarding my mother. Yet, unlike that night, I was in front of her in a totally open way, loving her. My questions are valid; they make me great, and they are the evidence that I have been made by an Other. Sunday, I was grateful for my restless heart–so restless that it needed to rest in front of you. I experienced that what I desire is real, and inexorably positive. Finally, I discovered that I need a place and friends to help me keep this awareness alive. I need friends to help me face every hour of my life, just like you did when you made me reach a judgment on that Thursday, on those three days, and on what I am.
Gloria, Italy

Food Bank collection:
Starting an initiative
We organized a Food Bank collection in Paris. The idea came from a CLU [CL university] girl, because of her friendship with a family with whom she worked at the Food Bank in Milan, and her desire to re-discover Who answers her own need. We called the French Food Bank Association, asking if we could lend a hand. We immediately gave our availability and participated en masse, extending the invitation to the adults of the community as well. It was the first time that the Movement participated in this initiative in Paris. Among other things, we were greatly impressed by the Scout children who worked with us, as well as by some Italian in-laws who, having only two days in Paris, decided to spend one entire afternoon working for the Food Bank. They did not speak any French, so they just stuffed boxes and said “merci!” to the people dropping off their offerings. The initiative involved other friends, like our French college mates, and the parents of the Scout kids, who stayed to help us. We met many people, like Kader, a young Muslim Tunisian who, after reading the flyer we had prepared for the occasion, went shopping for the collection and inquired about us. He told us his story, and asked us if he could join us next year. In this initiative, we started from something that already existed, and it helped us keep our questions open and to look at reality. The origin of the community’s participation in the initiative was someone who looked at reality as a possibility of change for each one of us. Everything changes when I realize to Whom I am answering. Reality questions me; the more I desire, the more I need for my reason to grow, so that I can grab onto reality and what I see, not as a discourse, but as something that coincides with my humanity. How can I have an experience of reality and of what fills me with wonder? Only if what I live does not end with the Food Bank initiative; only if it happens again, in different forms, so that it will not just be because of a feeling that I can speak His name.
CLU students, Paris (France)

Sharing the questions
of Agnostic Friends
Dear Friends: Recently, my mom’s boss asked her to read Christopher Hitchens’ book, God is Not Great, and in turn she asked him to read, God at the Ritz, by Monsignor Albacete. They read these books and Bill wanted to expand further their discussions about Christianity. So my mother asked me to invite some people who might dialogue with him about the faith. We invited several of our friends, to meet Bill, who also brought an agnostic friend, Peter, to join us in the discussion. Bill had sent some questions for us to consider before he arrived. One of them was a question about death: How can we have any certainty in front of it? This question was so poignantly our own the very day he was coming, as we had just gotten the news of the passing of  the mother of our dear friend Barry. There was a Rosary right before our meeting and I was really struck as the words: “...now and at the hour of our death...” resounded over and over around that crowded living room. What is the certainty that we have  and Who is making this? Barry, after we prayed, told us: “Thank you for coming, because it is in you all that I see Him happening, and for this I know that I will see my mom again, and that my dad is already there waiting for her.” We went back to my house after that to meet with these men whose hearts were burning to discover why anyone would believe the Christian claim. We began speaking about the terms “reason” and “faith.” Vincent went on to say that, even in their confusion, the Apostles didn’t leave when the “dogma” came around because they had a relationship with that man, Jesus, and they knew He didn’t want to trick them. Gil told Bill, “Your question is my own question! It’s mysterious to me, but I cannot deny that these people live differently, and the more I follow, I see these differences happening in my own life as well.” In the end, we came to the judgment that man is made to be in relationship. Bill’s friend, Peter, has done meditation for decades. Toward the end of the night, he spoke up: “You know, you guys have made a really good case! I’ve meditated for a long time and I have to say that the place it falls short is when it comes to community, like you’re talking about. ” He left very happy. “How do you like my friends?” I asked Bill. “I love your friends!” he responded, throwing his head backwards a little and looking a bit amazed. He left happy too, as did we all, because, as Carron told us, “the relationship with Christ is the most beautiful thing!”
Catherine, Maryland (USA)

An afternoon spent studying verbs
Recently, I spent one afternoon helping my son prepare for a Greek test. We started from an Italian verb, and he would tell me the paradigm. When we got to the verb to judge, he told me the paradigm, and added: “You know, mom, this is the root of the word crisis and the verb to criticize.” An unexpected new horizon dawned on me, because these days the word crisis is largely misused–both to describe the current economic juncture, and one’s personal situation. Thinking about the fact that that the word crisis is linked to the act of judging caused a radical shift in my position. I went from the scandalized and slightly presumptuous assessment of the limitations that surround me, to the awareness that a moment of crisis (both global and personal) always coincides with a moment of judgment, that is, of recognizing what my heart holds dear. I discovered that, while being scandalized leads me to an impasse, judging makes me start again.
Chiara, Brugherio (Italy)

A reality that hits like a train
I just came back from my first GS vacation, and I have to say that for the first time in my fourteen years of life, I was truly loved, and I understood what freedom really is. I was intensely involved in the games, found the meanings in the songs, and was able to appreciate the simple act of just being present with my friends. I know that before my weekend, I was not attached to reality. I did things, said things, but never realized I was dealing with my own life. My life always felt like some sort of game with no rules except that of a generalized common sense. I held deep sadness in my heart, and I did not know why I was so sad, what was missing in my life. To me, God was something people made up to feel good about dying. But during one of the masses, reality hit me like a train. Fr. Wingler told us: “God is not over there, or in the past. God is not in the future or outside. No, God is right here, right now, and He has chosen me. He has chosen you. He chose all of us, and brought us here today.” That’s where I was smacked awake. My eyes have now been opened, and I am able to see the world. I am no longer afraid to ask myself questions such as: “How did I get here? Why am I human? What is reality?” I am able to go to the depths of the moving truths about the reality I live in, and maybe a little bit beyond that. I have made the first step in a journey of many steps. Now, I am certain there is a face in the darkness we explore. I have been granted an impossible and liberating happiness.
Francesca, Ottawa (Canada)

traveling 300 miles, to sing
When I arrived at the choir concert–the Christmas Tents AVSI missions fundraising event in Stuttgart–just 15 minutes before the beginning, I discovered that the singers had been there since Friday, in order to have a rehearsal on Saturday. Much to my surprise, I realized that they had come from all over Germany. I was expecting to see part of the Southwest Germany choir, but then I saw a friend who lives over 300 miles to the north, and a girl from Berlin, who asked her husband to give her this trip as a present. Their presence caught me off guard. In all, there were more than 30 singers. The place they chose has a particular meaning; in fact it is the local Marian shrine. The choir’s singing was moving, because they were moved. It was immediately clear that they were not just singing for the audience; they were clearly praying. They were happy, glad. They were bearing witness to what they were singing. For this reason, the concert was a real Christmas Tent. They would have experienced beauty even with an empty church. They gave to the audience more than whatever the audience could have given through their offerings; they gave their witness about the depth of the Mystery present. They communicated the profound reason behind our charitable works, that is, the experience of being moved by a beauty and truth that touch the heart. The Tents are first and foremost for those who make them happen, and for this reason they are a missionary gesture. They happen right here, not in Africa; but in as much as these witnesses involve those who are present in a prayer filled with wonder, they also help our missionary friends in Africa. I came to this realization as, in awe, I listened to the choir singing. The initiative of the Stuttgart community involved many people from all over Germany, and the horizon of the gesture reached the entire breadth of our experience.
Martin, Eichstatt (Germany)

The prayer in the morning. After the dinner that we had last night with my small Fraternity group, to which we invited Carras (one of the CL “responsibles”), I understood that all I had to do was to surrender to the attraction that I felt as he was speaking about his life and answering our questions. This morning, still under the influence of last night’s enthusiasm, I asked Jesus to make me simpler, braver, more certain, smarter, more, more, more... At the end, I realized that I was asking to become super great–just the opposite of what I am now–so I said, “If You want, You can make me like that; but if I have to stay as stupid and poor as I am now, Lord, make me be Yours, and make Your glory shine through me, despite the way I am.” I felt free!
Sandra, Italy