cl life
the Christian claim

Truly Within Our Lives
In England, the communities spent a weekend in dialogue with Fr. Julián Carrón. In Ireland, he spoke at the presentation of Fr. Giussani’s book, At the Origin of the Christian Claim. Two events that have spawned an openness to the newness Christianity brings.

LONDON
No Nihilism, We Are Men
by Gianluca Marcato
Sunningdale, a small town on the outskirts of London and home to golf’s European Tour, was once again the site of the vacation weekend of the English-speaking European countries (Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, and the United Kingdom), attended by Father Julián Carrón. It was a much-anticipated encounter, so much so that, on the eve of the event, the secretary found herself having to deal with a surprise 30-person waiting list for the booked-up vacation. There are new friends, met only yesterday, and old acquaintances, like Robert, who distanced himself from the CL Movement in 1996 and has returned. It is an indication of the pertinence of the title given to the two days spent together: “The Inexorable Positivity of Reality.”
Hearts leaped on Friday night when Fr. Carrón took up Benedict XVI’s homily for the Epiphany. “The restless heart... is the heart that is ultimately satisfied with nothing less than God, and in this way becomes a loving heart. Our heart is restless for God and remains so.... But not only are we restless for God; God’s heart is restless for us. God is waiting for us. He is looking for us. He knows no rest either, until He finds us.... And this is your task as successors of the Apostles: let yourselves be touched by God’s unrest, so that God’s longing for man may be fulfilled.”
The words of the Pope contain much of what emerged in the first assembly on Saturday. The testimony of the restlessness of man who, on the one hand, desires to reach God and, on the other hand, is aware of his own smallness, is immediate. The risk is that, confronted with your own limit, you freeze. But if that’s how it is, asks Amos, “what is the point of departure?” There are a few attempts at a response, then Aldo tosses out, “Actually, I would have answered: I am You who make me.” Fr. Carrón nearly starts in his seat and intervenes: “What is the relationship between receiving life and being scandalized by your own limit? He loves me more than my scandal. And this is an event that is happening now. When I am full of my shame, He is making me. Now. This is a judgment on the value of my life. He is making me now because He loves me.”

The experience of positivity. In front of the embrace of Christ, one need not wait for anything–like Imma, who thanks God at the same moment that she realizes that she has wounded her husband and son with an exaggerated reaction. We start to forgive ourselves, because we are certain that there is One who loves us, One who forgives us–this is the experience of Confession. Peter (father of seven children) who, having faced the premature loss of a son three months ago, speaks of this experience as painful, certainly, but also joyful. He describes the discovery of a love for the other children that is more real and more intense, and of a love that Christ shows in the simple gestures of friends and acquaintances: “Our lives were filled with an immense desire. The baby that Alison carried in her womb for only seven weeks made our most intimate depths leap for joy. We found that we were moved in the hope for eternal salvation for our son Raphael, and for Charis and Zoe (lost at the beginning of their marriage). We see that hope is a virtue and that God makes us express this hope in real events.”
But it’s not enough to see this experience of positivity in others, in order to make it our own. It has to enter into our flesh. Marco is 18 years old, and in the last three months he lost a friend in an accident, his girlfriend left him, and he was not accepted at Oxford University. He asks, “How can you have the certainty that everything is for you?” Carrón answers, “Could you swear that there isn’t a positivity in all this? Are you 100 percent sure?” “No,” replies Marco. Carrón continues, “This is the reason: openness. It’s up to you, then, to decide if you want to leave open the possibility for this positivity to enter or not. And opening yourself is reasonable because you, in your life, have already had the experience of situations in which reality revealed itself to be bigger than what it appeared to you.”

Undertaking the journey. Silvia speaks about the death of her father, which happened when she was little. She still hadn’t been able to really face this fact. She tried to forget her father, as if he had never existed. But during recent months, thanks to the work of School of Community, things changed. “I realized that by doing this I was actually killing him again, becoming an orphan twice. Now, however, I can look it in the face and say that reality is positive because he exists and is still present in my life.” Whatever face reality may have, it exists. And if it exists, it is created by an Other. But it’s impossible to fight the battle against nihilism–it was said, without tenacious work on School of Community, without, that is, willingness to undertake a journey. Only by having an affection for yourself can you have the reason to make the journey proposed by Fr. Giussani.
The weekend concluded with an evening of songs and the presentation of the new book At the Origin of the Christian Claim, which they unexpectedly (having prepared independently) outlined as the proposal for the new year’s journey: the verification of the fact that Christ today is the same as 2,000 years ago. The sign that Christ enters into our experience is the fulfillment of our life, the fulfillment of reason, affection, and freedom. And the test of this is to see affection and familiarity for the person of Christ growing in ourselves. It is what we began to rediscover in the miracle of these days in Sunningdale.