New World
National Diaconia

The Promise within
the Battle
Were circumstances like Dante’s dark wood of bewilderment? “Did you get lost–or did you learn something?” The urgency of this question posed by Fr. Carrón was palpable at this year’s North American Diaconia where 200 U.S. responsibles were involved in a dialogue that aided in verifying the pertinence of faith to life.

By Damian Bacich

Why would you to fly six hours from California to New York, in the middle of January? Much as I would like to deny it, this is the thought that went through my head as I took off my jacket, shoes, and belt at the airport security checkpoint. And as I emptied my pockets, removed my laptop computer and made sure I wasn’t carrying any liquids over three ounces, the answer quickly came to me: To be where He is happening. I had been invited to the Diaconia, and I was not going to miss it.
The North American Diaconia, which took place January 18–20, 2013, is the meeting of leaders of CL communities from throughout the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico held every January: three intense days of dialogue and discussion, encounters with friends old and new, and freezing cold temperatures (it is the Northeast, after all).
The New Yorker Hotel, an art deco icon from the 1930s, played host to the gathering and, as I arrived, it was bustling with activity: foreign tourists running out to go shopping or catch a Broadway show passed through the crowds of Diaconia attendees who greeted each other with the joy of old friends, even if they were meeting for the first time. Added to the scene were those who had come from all over the world to attend or volunteer at the New York Encounter, the cultural festival organized by a (surprisingly small) group of CL members every January. The Diaconia and the Encounter overlap–not by chance–and the combined atmosphere of the events is charged with enthusiasm and expectation. One of the first people I bump into is my friend Tim, a seminarian studying in Washington, DC. Tim’s life has followed an amazing trajectory over the last few years. His meeting CL “by chance” while studying in Chile, returning to Berkeley to finish his university degree, his Fullbright year in Colombia by way of a Masters degree in Milan, Italy, are all signs of a restless heart. It is the same restless heart that the three Magi had, as Pope Benedict told us in his homily on the Feast of the Epiphany, “not satisfied with the superficial and the ordinary.” And yet we humans are not the only ones with restless hearts. “God is restless for us, He looks out for people willing to ‘catch’ His unrest, His passion for us, people who carry within them the searching of their own hearts and at the same time open themselves to be touched by God’s search for us.”

A “working hypothesis.” Much as I would love to know more about what Tim is living, there is little time for catching up, as the meeting is about to begin. Fr. Julián Carrón, President of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, has flown from Milan to be with us and lead the weekend’s work. A year has passed since the last Diaconia and Carrón is here to offer a reality check. “Did you get lost before the circumstances?” he asks. He knows that even in the wealthiest country in the world, life has not been easy. The circumstances. How often have we heard those words over the past year? At times they have had an ominous ring to them, calling to mind Dante’s dark wood, where the poet wandered, bewildered, at the midpoint of his life. But to those who have been even a little attentive to Fr. Carrón’s appeals over the last several months, they also have the sound of a gauntlet being thrown down. “Did you get lost–or did you learn something?” Many of us could answer “yes” to both questions. Personal and family crises, national tragedies, disasters in many parts of the world, all have posed challenges fraught with risk, yet all have presented possibilities for growth, for testing our faith. Carrón speaks of a “working hypothesis”: that everything that happens in our life is a way through which the Mystery is calling us, calling us to become more mature. “Have you used this hypothesis?” he asks. The question is profoundly practical. “Did it help you tackle the circumstances?”
   He doesn’t waste time assuming all answers will be positive: “And if you didn’t use this hypothesis, did you learn something?” No fear, no self-pity, only a merciful gaze on our experience. As Fr. Giussani taught us, experience can only be experience if it is judged, learned from, compared against the criteria of our heart–the same restless heart the Pope spoke of. So the challenge of the weekend is clear: read your experience, verify the hypothesis of faith by putting it to the test in reality. And faith is not a given, not even for us, who talk about it constantly.
The next morning, jetlag and lack of sleep notwithstanding, everyone is eager to get to work. People are crowded around breakfast tables, talking about what they heard last night, or speculating on what the weekend will hold. All are ready with the meeting entrance ticket, which bears the phrase from Psalm 118, “You are my strength and my song,” underneath a medieval image of Christ who holds mankind, as if in a blanket. On the back there is a quote from Carrón’s November letter to the Fraternity: “If we follow with simplicity, then we will not miss out on the good that knocks at the door of our days, as Fr. Giussani always reminded us. ‘It is a promise within every battle. While the battle rages, through all the time in our lives that is struggle and toil, it promises us to enter more and more into the You, because the You is present: You are my strength and my song.” We are anxious to perceive this You, and we begin the day with  prayer and song, followed by time for an open conversation with Carrón. From Minnesota to New York, from Montreal to Portland, people have come to speak about their lives and the challenges they face. Some recount their experience dealing with the seemingly ever-increasing gap between the Christian conception of life and popular opinion. Others tell of their concern with our legacy as Christians in a post-Christian West, our contribution to the world. And yet Christ came into a world whose values were in many ways antithetical to the ones He proclaimed. Christ didn’t adopt strategies, build consensus, or create political movements, Carrón reminded us. “He generated Christianity.” The starting point is always the same–conversion,  as re-orientation of mind, not hardening of position. Conversion is what happened to John and Andrew. For them, “it meant to follow someone.” So the question is, “Are we open to following the people in whom Christ is taking the initiative?”

Credible witnesses. That afternoon, we were treated to concrete examples of this initiative, testimonies of ordinary people who faced their circumstances in an extraordinary way. Like John, the head of the CL community in Canada, whose tenacious group of friends dumbfounded the “Dying with Dignity Commission” established to introduce euthanasia into Quebec society. No pre-packaged strategies or talking points, just people–high school students, married couples, medical doctors–who shared their experience of loving, accompanying someone in the last days and hours of natural life. And Fr. Jerry from Minnesota, who told the story of Katie, the young woman diagnosed with cancer who refused to destroy the child in her womb in order to increase her own chances of survival. Her serene attachment to the person of Christ has become a beacon for all around her. Then Stephen, an English professor from Ohio whose audacity and sincerity generated “The Pittsburgh Encounter,” a three-day public cultural festival aimed at exploring faith as a method of knowledge (see http://pittsburghencounter. wordpress.com). Finally, there was Elvira, the neonatologist whose comfort-care center for terminally ill newborns at Columbia University Medical Center sprang from the challenge to find positivity in what seemed to be invincibly hostile circumstances. If we were wondering where Christ was taking the initiative, whom to follow, the answer was right before our eyes.
That evening, I finally get to experience the New York Encounter by taking in The Katrina Letters, the unforgettable dramatic reading of love letters set to an incredibly moving musical score, the letters seem to speak a language we have forgotten in our jaded pseudo-sophistication: the language of love purified by suffering. It is the only language capable of speaking to a situation as horrific as that of the Newtown, Connecticut, shootings of last December, as Fr. Peter Cameron reminds us the next day. Fr. Cameron saw with his own tear-filled eyes the incredible rebirth of the thirst for God that so many people underwent in the subsequent days. What these people were seeking was a “credible witness,” to use Pope Benedict’s words, who is, according to Fr. Peter, someone who is “faithful to God’s faithfulness to us.”
Fr. Carrón, in closing the Diaconia, reminded us that “nothing is more convincing to man than a gaze that takes hold of him” and that by rising from the dead, “Christ makes Himself present through those whom He has taken hold of.”
As I stood outside the hotel the next morning waiting for the airport shuttle, that phrase evoked the names and faces of dozens of people whom I had seen, heard, and spoken to over the weekend, people putting the hypothesis to the test, as I wish to do. Will we escape the battle unscathed? Probably not. But judging from what I saw, if we take up Carrón’s challenge, we will emerge more certain, more mature, and more serene.  “You are my strength and my song.”