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

The urgent need
to say “You”
Dear Fr. Julián: My story, like many others, is a bit hard to digest. I was abandoned at birth, and later adopted by a family who–in turn–found itself in great difficulties having to deal with a 13-year-old boy with no point of reference and a lot of bottled-up anger. For a long time, the encounter with the Movement, which happened when I was 14, functioned as a sort of mask, covering my cry of pain. All the choices of my life aimed at silencing my pain and my cry. I can’t imagine how many times Christ crossed my path, and looked at me, but I–just like the rich young man–went away sad, because I was not able to make that move which simplicity of heart allows. Time, though, didn’t pass in vain, and about two years ago, the pain I felt became almost overwhelming. I was forced to slow down with my studies, and seek medical help; but with each new therapy, new events in reality would invariably make the therapy fail. Christ wanted me, and He was set on starting an astounding battle with my heart, to the point that my pain became atrocious, and even my doctors ran out of ideas on how to help me. The people around me were scared, and I received a plethora of suggestions, both from a psychological and a human point of view; but none of those words were enough for me. Then, one morning, I went to see Fr. Giorgio–a priest who belongs to the Movement. Our meeting lasted barely 15 minutes; I started asking for help in my difficulties, and then I broke into tears. He did not ask for any details, but looked at me and asked, “Have you ever had a hard time before, because of pain?” I said I had. He then told me, “Well, with the passing of time your pain doesn’t increase, but your responsibility does. Your pain today is not bigger or smaller than before. Yet, now that you are grown up, with the passing of time the urgent need to say ‘You’ has become more imperative.” Finally, someone told me what my heart was waiting for, something that shook me and made my gaze shift from myself to Him–I didn’t need a miracle, I needed to be on a journey. Suddenly, all I was going through started to acquire a meaning and a direction that, little by little, allowed me to get on my feet again and gave my life substance. The more challenging reality becomes, the more one needs to say “You” in order to penetrate the core of things and life. My pain did not go away, but I began going to its depth accompanied by His Presence. In the gaze of Christ, concretely present in the flesh, what is inside of me has become transparent in experience; in His company, I can truly face everything, deal with everything. I have been taken over by a zest for life, because I have become curious; I want to see where this dialogue between the Mystery and myself will take me. I stopped looking at myself and I started searching for Him.
Federico, Genoa, Italy

A TORRENT OF
(WELCOMED) CHANGE
Dear Fr. Carrón: When I was at the National Diaconia a few weeks ago, you posed a question to a crowded New Yorker Hotel conference room: “How do you know you need to change?” Immediately, hands rose, followed by a string of answers. While I listened, I recognized that something radical was happening to these people and to me. The very fact that we in the Movement want to change is revolutionary! And so I write this letter to answer your question. A year ago, I was living in a small, rural Nebraskan town. I was earning my Master’s degree in Education and teaching in a town of less than 500 people. In those months, I taught classes, went home, and did nothing. I avoided my friends, especially those in CL. I played SNL episodes back-to-back for hours because silence was unbearable. My personality, usually over-enthusiastic and eager, seemed annihilated. Slowly, the intensity of my sadness ebbed, to be replaced with the dull throb of self-disgust. I had no tenderness towards myself. The core of this arose from a belief that I was somehow self-made. When that flimsy foundation crumbled beneath me, when I realized that my efforts were not enough to make me “good,” I couldn’t stand who I was! With a backwards “nobility,” I censured my wants and my attractions because I considered myself undeserving. This was not a conscious thought, but an attitude I had absorbed from the culture. Then a new drama began unfolding. I met a friend who began giving me back my personality, simply by being who he was. He was so generous with his own personality that I saw what he had and began to want again. I would catch myself being happy and I would try to put an end to it. I would catch myself wanting to go outside to see something beautiful, and I would stop myself. But my want was relentless, pressing, urgent. I wanted life. I just didn’t think I deserved it. This tension culminated on a late summer evening when I was lamenting my brokenness to a friend. She suggested, hesitantly, that perhaps this was an opportunity for someone to show me mercy. I grew agitated and shouted, “But I don’t want mercy!” My friend was silent and I had wide, sudden-seeing eyes. Those words had been churning inside of me for some time and speaking them was like a surgery to remove a cancerous tumor. Some light that I had forbidden switched on suddenly, and I gasped, “Oh my God!” I began to see myself for what I was: a creature–a totally contingent being, made by God, unnecessary and yet, somehow, existing. Everything I had, from the moment of my conception, had been one extravagant mercy after another. To reject mercy was to reject my humanity. By embracing my total need, the burden of “being noble” was lifted from my shoulders. My job was to follow and pay attention as I walked. I started going to School of Community in Omaha, I went on the CL Young Workers Vacation in Estes Park, Colorado, and the Advent Retreat in Atchison, Kansas. I just looked, and I was educated. When I began teaching at a new school in August, the theme I chose for the school year was: “The road is beautiful for those who walk.” Step by step, I follow, provoked again and again by my joys, my sadness, my attractions, my mistakes. I have the memory of 12 months of change to remind me that I will change again and again through a torrent of mercy. I am filled with anticipation for whatever will come.
Emily Taber,
Omaha, Nebraska (USA)

A birthday present and Common Fund
Dearest friends: I didn’t know how to fill the gap in the Common Fund contributions of both my husband and I (we didn’t pay for half of 2011 and all of 2012), given that our financial situation has gotten worse because I have been focusing on fighting cancer. I felt uneasy, and I had a need that I didn’t want to ignore. I wanted to find a way to give something back for all that I have received in my dramatic circumstances, but I didn’t know how. A few days ago, on my birthday, I received a donation for my most urgent necessities. I didn’t hesitate a second: I decided to use this for the Common Fund, so that the faithfulness to that gesture will remind me of what the foundation of my life is.
Name withheld

“Could you pray for me, please?”
A few days ago, I had breakfast with some friends of my Fraternity group at a restaurant that we often go to. As I was leaving, the waitress approached me and asked, “May I talk to you?” I was in a hurry, but I felt her need was greater than my time, so I listened to her without interrupting. She said, “My life is full of problems, and I have come to the conclusion that God alone can help me. I have never attended a spiritual retreat, but this weekend I will attend one for the first time. Since you seem to be a very religious person, I want to ask you to pray for me for the next few days, and I also want to ask if you could tell me what a spiritual retreat is about.” Her words caught me by surprise. Without a doubt, Christ puts me in circumstances I don’t know how to respond to. I barely knew her, and the only answer I could come up with was: “Let yourself be surprised by everything that will happen. Ask mostly for your own conversion and ask for answers to all your questions. This is the only way you will find the answers–if not immediately, in the future. You can count on my prayers.” I thought about her for the remainder of the day, and the following Friday I gave her a note, to thank her for choosing me to pray for her.
Irma, Coatzacoalcos (Mexico)