LETTERS

LETTERS

losing my job and the
caress from the Nazarene
After a meeting for entrepreneurs and unemployed managers, a friend of mine, who has been out of work for more than a year, wrote the following letter.
Dear friends: I just started working on a project, which will keep me employed for three months, aimed at the reorganization of a small company that works in a field I have never dealt with before. It’s a completely new challenge for me. As we heard at the meeting we just had, the most important thing is to listen and let ourselves be stirred by reality. I will work at a totally new job, in a city far from home, and I will give it all I got! I have decided to give my full availability; the rest is not up to me. I am happy because getting back into action is very important; for this reason, I started looking for any job, even waiting tables. Unfortunately, in these times of crisis, nobody wants a fifty-year-old man. Therefore, I can say I was lucky. I hope that Divine Providence, to which I entrust my whole life, will continue to come to my aid. Nowadays, skills are not enough, and this crisis is a great opportunity to start anew, and take the time to appreciate all that we were taking for granted–all those things that were,  in fact, Grace.  I am serene and persuaded that a good Destiny accompanies us all. What do we have to fear? I hope that all those who are experiencing  work-related problems will find a way out; work gives you consistency, it’s an existential issue.  The meeting we just had approached the issue in the correct way; we were told to stay in front of reality for what it is, and for what it reveals as urgent, not for what we would like it to be. I am facing this trial as an opportunity, not as a misfortune. I have learned this attitude by listening to and contemplating the many, beautiful, and simple events that occurred. My family, my parents, my in-laws, my relatives, and friends have been by my side with the patience of those who know how to wait, and, at the same time, with the urgent need to help me–some with a hug, others financially. I never asked for anything, and yet I have been literally lavished with attention, which has helped me a lot. The caress from the Nazarene really exists; I have proof of it. I discovered that there are many people who really live the faith. It is a moving fact but, in order to recognize it, one needs to surrender. It is something I have never done before, because I have always trusted too much in my own skills, thinking that in order to be accepted and loved I had to necessarily give back what I had received, if not more. But that is not true; we are already loved, “no matter what.” It is so liberating that everything becomes lighter. The cross does not disappear, but you don’t carry it alone.  During one of the interviews I had when I was looking for a job, I was asked how I could be so at peace. I tried to give an explanation, but it is something that is difficult to understand if one does not have an experience of faith. I am grateful for what has happened to me. I would not have had this experience if I hadn’t been forced by circumstances; I would have gone on as usual, in my “plain vanilla” mode, while now I am grateful for every little thing that happens. I prayed a lot, asking to understand why I was going through all those difficulties and, in part, my prayers have been answered. This is just the beginning; the rest is yet to come.
Giovanni, Italy

Taking care of others;
taking care of ourselves
“Today, I attended a true medical science class, something we all greatly need.” This was the comment of the President of the Faculty of the Pavia Medical School, after attending the presentation of the Lejeune exhibit, on April 30, 2013. I had never seen that lecture hall so full before. Everything started from the freedom with which a small group of students responded to the proposal of a professor to bring the exhibit to their university. They invited Pierluigi Strippoli, a genetics professor from Bologna, to give the presentation, and they asked me to introduce him, and to pose this question: “What does it mean for you to be an MD and a university professor in light of Lejeune’s challenge?” It was a great challenge for me, too, one I didn’t expect and that forced me to rethink everything. I am deeply grateful for this, and for my ensuing newfound friendship with the students. When I forget the meaning of what I do, everything is reduced to a routine–one that gets even more burdensome in times like these, when both at the university and the hospital complaining about everything and everybody has become the favorite national sport. The possibility to “meet” a figure like Lejeune forced me to redefine my position and attracted many students to both the presentation and the guided tours–despite the skepticism that caused many among my colleagues to label the exhibit as an inappropriate provocation on ethical issues. For the whole hour and a half of the presentation, from the stage I could perceive a silence pregnant with attention and curiosity, which spoke volumes about the great interest that the audience had in Jérôme Lejeune’s humanity. As we said while preparing the presentation, we all have the possibility to learn to look at our profession as medical doctors with the same gaze that the scientist had, one in which taking care of somebody else inevitably means taking care of ourselves as well, of the human need for meaning that belongs to both the caretaker and the person who is taken care of, to both the patients and the doctors or nurses, to both the students and the professors. I am infinitely grateful to the freedom of that small group of students, who, with their initiative, reminded us that the university can and should go back to being a great place where people can meet and compare experiences. I have an increasing need to stay with people such as those students.
Stefano, Pavia (Italy)

“A certainty that doesn’t make me feel anxious”
Lately, I have been asking myself if there is something wrong with me. I generally feel others are better than me–they organize better initiatives, they are perfect mothers with perfect children, ideal husbands, generous friends, and so on. Sometimes I envy them for what they have and I don’t. I am not perfect; my house is always messy, I am always fighting with my husband, I have five children and I can’t put together beautiful dinners or events. I am always running around, dividing my time between work, family, school, and whatnot, and something invariably falls through the cracks. What’s wrong with me? What can I give to others? The other day at the parish a mother told me, “Life is really tough; I am always anxious.” I answered, “As I look at my kids, I too feel a heart-wrenching sensation when I wonder what will happen to them. I would like to keep them with me, but I know they are not mine and I have to let them go.” She looked at me and said, “I wasn’t talking about my kids. I was talking about me. I live with a constant sense of anxiety; today I am anxious and tomorrow I will be anxious. I am afraid of what will happen today and of what will come tomorrow.” I immediately replied, “I am not anxious. There is certainty in my days. I know that even if I am angry, or if I made mistakes–or I am sad, or I cried, or I am afraid–I am alive and at the end of the day. I can ask for forgiveness for my smallness and forgetfulness from Someone to whom I entrusted my life. I am certain of His presence, and I am not anxious.”
Gabriella, Italy

Taking one’s Pulse on the other side of the world
The last weekend in May, the adults of the Perth community and the CLU students of the University of Western Australia attended the Fraternity Exercises in New Norcia. For the first time in the history of the Movement here in Perth, we decided not to watch the tapes of the lessons that Fr. Cárron gave in Rimini; instead, we asked Fr. John O’Connor to come from New Zealand to ask us, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ?”–while filtering Fr. Carron’s words through his own experience. For someone like me, used to belonging to a community with hundreds of members in Milan, the first striking thing was the number of attendees and the place where the Exercises were held. Here in western Australia, we were no more than 20 people, and we had the Exercises in a living room, sitting on sofas in front of a roaring fireplace. All the same, we had a deep desire to remain totally faithful to the gesture that took place in Rimini; projecting the slides of sacred art and listening to classical music before our lessons were two powerful and effective tools that I will never be able to take for granted again. Even silence, which we observed every day before the lessons and sometimes throughout the day, has stopped being a simple absence of words, and has given way to the awareness of His presence–or at least to the possibility to leave time and space for this awareness. “How are you, really? Who are you really? Are you really alive?” were the questions that Fr. John asked at the beginning of each one of his lessons. They were a relentless challenge to consider the deepest and most authentic desire of my heart, with the awareness that, being a creature, I depend on Another. He told us: “Take your pulse! Are you making your heart beat? When you feel lonely and abandoned, take your pulse!” He didn’t ask me to simply remember concepts that I once knew and had forgotten, but to really recall my structural human need for a charitable gaze on me, a gaze that doesn’t reduce me to my inability to follow, or to my presumptuous claim to be able to satisfy my desire on my own. Fr. John pointed out that the English verb to remember contains a reference to the members of a body; it is a reflection that proceeds from judging an experience we live in the flesh. He kept challenging us: “Imagine that you lose your job, your successful career, or a relative you love: could you still affirm that what defines your ‘I’ is the need for a Mystery Who has a name, and Who offers a path you can follow?” The only truly human position coincides with rediscovering my relationship with He Who created me, and my original dependency–a discovery that doesn’t require either a titanic effort or taking shelter in what Benedict XVI called a bunker. The concreteness of this experience does not allow me to think that 20 people in a living room is something less than what happens in Milan; it is not a matter of form. The Mystery simply comes through the circumstances we live (whatever they may be), which are not only the main tool but the only tool we have at our disposal in order to affirm Him, and to achieve an intelligent faith, with a gaze capable of embracing the totality of reality. The Mystery accompanies me in the flesh of a companionship that, just like Zacchaeus, has been chosen to recall the loving gaze that only Christ can bestow on us. In fact, Christ does not act in the past or in the future; He becomes my companion within the Church today. He can only be at work in my present. I discovered, with joy, that even on the other side of the earth there is a place I want to belong to, where I am reminded to “take my pulse.”
Simone, Perth (Australia)

25th wedding anniversary at Casa Santa Marta
Dear Father Julián: I wanted to surprise my wife for our 25th wedding anniversary, so I sent a fax to Casa Santa Marta, requesting permission to attend the morning Mass of the Holy Father. So it happened that, on our anniversary, we met the Swiss guards, who waited for us at the gate with our names on the guests list, and shortly after we were face-to-face with Pope Francis. He preached the homily off the cuff. Seeing him speak and listening to those words (the same we all use), so filled with experience, was really impressive. I felt the same about his silence, which was as significant as his words. When Mass was over, we turned around and found him right by us, praying. Then he left, discreetly. When we were about to leave we were told to stay–he was waiting outside to greet us all, one by one, smiling like a friend on the threshold of his home. It took our breath away. “We are here to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary, and to convey the affection that the Movement has for you.” That’s all we managed to say; just a few words that expressed all that we hold dear. He caressed us and, after thanking us, he left, giving a thumbs up sign, as if to say, “Keep going!” A few minutes later, St. Peter’s Square was full of people, in awe just like we were, seeing and listening to him speak at his public audience.           
Marco and Rossella, Ravenna (Italy)

Asking that Everything be an event
On the GS vacation, Friday night Fr. Rich spoke to us about St. Therese of Lisieux and the friendship she had through letters with a seminarian named Maurice during the last year of her life. When Fr. Rich started to speak to us it was an event in itself, because I came on the vacation with the question of friendship. It was nothing I did, but it was simply given. It was amazing because this was a question I have had since my freshman year when I started to come to GS. Learning about the simplicity of Therese and Maurice’s friendship was so helpful to me. Maurice was far from being a cloistered nun, but  Therese simply wanted to live in front of Christ together with him. This was inspiring for me, because I want to live all of my friendships that way–both in and out of GS. I love my friends so incredibly much and I want more than anything that they experience GS with me. All I can do is continue ask that everything with them also be an event.
Isabel, Washington, DC (USA)

My first love in the gaze of Pope Francis
Dear Fr. Julián: For the past few weeks, I would get to the end of each day (even when good things happened) feeling totally empty, as if nothing had happened. I attended all the initiatives of the Movement, School of Community, charitable work, and so on, but I did it as if merely obeying a “command.”  So much so that I reached the point of saying that I wasn’t interested anymore; I felt suffocated. I went to Rome for the meeting with the movements on the eve of Pentecost Sunday in this state of mind. I was angry and a bit lost, because I didn’t know where to look anymore. While I was there, something happened: Pope Francis’ gaze, as he was riding the pope-mobile among the crowd, embraced me and captured me, so that all my uneasiness and my anger for the void that lately had ruled my days where defeated, and for one moment I finally felt free and at peace. I understood how Zacchaeus felt. The week after returning from Rome I wanted the Pope to be near me, to look at me like he had done, and make me feel at peace. Obviously, that wasn’t physically possible, but that desire of mine transformed my days. I realized I needed everything; I needed the gaze of my boyfriend, my patients, my family, and my friends, and I needed School of Community again. I am far from being at peace, and things are as messy as ever; I struggle but I am alive, because I am aware of my pressing need for His gaze present here, in the flesh. I was struck by the passage from the Book of Revelation that you quoted at the Fraternity Exercises: “You have endurance and you have suffered for My name, and you have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: you have lost the love you had at first”( Rev 2:3-4). I think it describes me to a T. Where is my first love? I need Him now, a week after Rome, because something that happened once in the past is not enough, and I want to be at peace now. I realize that I have to rediscover my total need every minute in order to get to know Jesus. I can’t just live a lie.
 Lucia, Italy

“No matter how long i am away.” The spiritual Exercises this year really hit home for me. I have been away for a little while but the overflowing of Christ’s love is something that fills my heart. No matter how long I am away, I am always captured by the gaze of Christ at the Exercises. This event allows me to put myself in check and completely let go of everything to open up more to Jesus; it is a place where the reigniting of my soul is sparked
Nick Farias, Fall River (USA)