LETTERS

LETTERS

At the end, what do we
need in order to live?
Dearest Father Carrón: I recently found myself in need of everything. I needed to get healthy again after undergoing heart surgery, and to spend time with my family after a lengthy hospital stay; I needed to find a new job because the day I informed my superiors that I had to be hospitalized I was fired on the spot, notwithstanding having seven children and an unemployed wife, and I needed the support of my friends, who even took care of moving my family to our new apartment. Despite my evident helplessness, I discovered that my truest need didn’t coincide with the elimination of my worries, or the answer to each and every one of the questions, doubts, and uncertainties that my difficult circumstances brought on. Coming out of anesthesia after my first surgery, I felt as if I had been torn from my previous life (a life like many others), and taken to the starting point of a new journey that began with an uphill climb. I had to learn everything from scratch; I had to start breathing, just like a newborn, but with the awareness of a 48-year-old man, and I learned how to speak again. Then, I had to find a new job in the midst of the current crisis, and it seemed I had to forget about all the experience I had acquired throughout my career. Yet, the truest need, the biggest, inescapable question that emerged from all this was simply: “Why?” The doctor who performed my surgery, and followed my recovery like a true friend, once told me, “When I took charge of your case, your situation was so compromised that you shouldn’t even be here now. You should have died in Russia!” (That’s where I suffered the heart attack.) So then, why am I still here? What happened to me, and the aid I received from those who helped me face the many needs my circumstances implied, gave me the greatest gift: they helped me ask myself, “Why am I given a second chance? What’s my task?” This is now my truest need, and by deciding to leave this wound wide open, I found myself walking on the new path ahead of me, despite the uphill struggle. But is this enough to live? I ask myself this question, because it is true that this tension fades away quickly. Then, how can we help each other? I answer with the words and the simple insight of a friend of ours, who met the Movement a few years back. When my wife recently went to visit her, our friend told her, “Wednesday we had a beautiful School of Community.” My wife asked why, and she answered, “Because, during our meeting, the same thing happened that I heard at Mass this morning. [The Gospel of that day was the one in which the disciples ask Jesus to tell them whether or not He is the Messiah, and Jesus urges them to look at the signs in reality, and thus answer the question themselves.] The Movement today uses the same method that Jesus used with His own. Even better: Jesus makes Himself present today with the same method He used two thousand years ago.”
Chino, Milan (Italy)

Then those words arrived  in the midst of difficulties
Dearest Father Julián: We have been living in Nairobi for a year, and it has not been an easy experience. Firstly, we’ve had difficulties adapting to such a different environment. I work as a doctor in the local hospital. What strikes me most is not the evident lack of resources, but a sort of negligence, a trivialization of death. On the charts by the patients’ beds, the numbers indicating the daily heart rate and blood pressure are either made up or copied from the previous day; drugs that are supposed to be administered subcutaneously are given intravenously, and so on. On top of our difficulties with the social and cultural differences, we had a hard time  which we viewed as a scandal. We wondered if there was something we were doing wrong. In the midst of all this, the urgent desire to see His face–the face of that You Who took hold of our lives to the point of making us decide to move to Kenya–grew stronger. Then I read Ubi Fides, Ibi Libertas, where you said that “on many occasions, one is not moving in the depth of his being” [Julián Carrón, “Ubi Fides, Ibi Libertas”–Notes from the Assembly of Responsibles of Communion and Liberation, Pacengo di Lazise, Italy, March 3, 2013 ]. After that, attending the Fraternity Exercises and listening to all the questions you asked us on Friday night, I asked myself: “Where is my first Love?” Clearly, that question touched the very depth of my being. Then, the Saturday morning lesson was like a turning point–I needed to see His face.  During the following months, I understood more and more what you mean when you say that morality is generated by being in wonder in front of a Presence. Ever since the Exercises, every morning, before rounds, I read School of Community, because I need to do it in order to stay in front of His face. Life has not become easier–actually, it’s the opposite–and the drama and difficulties are still there, but I know that this does not mean that there is something wrong with me, because I have seen that the Lord can pierce through all my struggles and objections to come and embrace me. Even more, it is exactly by keeping this uncomfortable–and yet so unavoidable–question open, that His answer comes through. This is my experience of the verification of faith. In hindsight, if I have to be honest about this year spent here in Nairobi, I have to say that my “I” has grown. I have to thank you because, even if we are thousands of miles apart, your “yes” to the Lord has been a great companion for me. As you told my wife and I before we left, just as the “yes” of Mary has been the only possibility for the salvation of the world, our “yes” to Christ is the only possibility to bring about the common good.
Tommaso, Nairobi (Kenya)

Walking toward
the gift of His presence
T his year, I went on the pilgrimage to Czestochowa for the second time. In the message Father Carrón sent to the pilgrims, he wrote: “If you come back home from Czestochowa having experienced faith as something  present, as the recognition of His presence here and now, that would be the greatest gift you could receive in order to go on living.” I have received that gift. I have seen it present in more than one circumstance.  This is the easiest to relate: on the third day, after the lunch break, we started walking again. Sensing an imminent thunderstorm, we all put on our ponchos. As expected, it started to pour. When we reached the camp where we were supposed to pitch our tents, we were all hoping to find a shelter to spend the night. We found one and, later that night, we all slept indoors. After setting up my things in the shelter, I joined the small group of friends who, with me, were in charge of preparing meals, and we reached the gazebo that had been set up outside (in the meantime, the rain had stopped) and we put on the water to make polenta. It had been a hard day, and we were all hungry and cold, so somebody started preparing bruschetta with the bread leftovers to keep our hunger at bay, and we put on a big pot of water for some hot tea. There were at least ten people in the gazebo working to prepare dinner, with very little elbow room. After a while, we started dishing out around 150 servings of polenta and gravy. The distribution took no time at all, because we had a lot of help. When we were done serving, though, some people were still hungry and asking for seconds; we had some gravy left, so I kept filling plates. At a certain point, I thought: “I am the only one who has not eaten yet.” As soon this thought popped into my mind, somebody came to relieve me. Later, with the help of a few volunteers who came to our aid even before being asked, we distributed hot tea and candies; we all felt better after some comfort food. I stopped and looked around me: it was evident that He was there with us. He was there and was molding our hearts. He surely was molding mine. I realized that the whole time I had never focused on how tired I was, or on how much I would have liked to lie down and sleep; I had only thought about the fact that every person there needed to eat dinner, and I had strived to prepare a good gravy and to serve enough portions to feed everybody. We were all there, looking in the same direction, looking at Him who was present, allowing us to love each other. He kept us together. Three things moved me during the pilgrimage. Silence:This was the most difficult moment while we were walking because, as long as I chatted with my friends, I sang with them, or I said Morning Prayer or the Rosary, or as long as I listened attentively to the lesson for that day, I didn’t focus on how tired I was. On the contrary, when we were asked to be silent, I felt my legs aching, and how fatigued I was. Nonetheless, it was the most beautiful and useful moment of the day; it was a privileged time to become aware of all the things we were given, of all the unplanned things that happened. It was during that time that I felt all my being in need of everything. It was a time to ask that Presence to come, and to completely entrust myself to Him. Fraternity: The flyer about the pilgrimage, which we were given as soon as we arrived in Kracow, listed all the features that a pilgrim must have. One of them initially sparked some hilarity: “Let’s be open toward each other, let’s call each other brother, sister, and let’s help each other.” I had a first-hand experience of that fraternity, first and foremost with some of my college classmates. Unlike the previous years, the group I belonged to, who were responsible for the preparation of dinner, was able to walk all the legs of the pilgrimage only on account of the help of others who, once we reached the camp, would take our backpacks and pitch our tents, allowing us to immediately devote ourselves to our kitchen duty. Their generosity made me feel accompanied by brothers and sisters, because in their freedom they said yes to our request for help–we would have had to skip one leg per day if they had said no. Humility: On the first few nights, after dinner, the group of pilgrims the three of us cooked for would applaud the other two people in charge of the kitchen for the good meal we had prepared. My name was never mentioned, which upset me; but I soon realized that what upset me even more than that was my lack of humility. I talked about it with one of the priests accompanying us, who made me understand that I wasn’t free from the outcome of my actions–something we talked about at School of Community this past year. It wouldn’t have been wrong for my friends to acknowledge my efforts, but that was not the reason why I was doing what I was doing. I was doing it for the glory of Christ. Looking at things from that angle completely changed my attitude; it increased my desire to make everyone happy about their dinner, and to make sure that the eight ushers relying on us for their lunch boxes could receive the meals for the following day before going to bed, and it took away my need to be applauded for my work. On the last night, they did applaud me and I was moved to tears. I came back home with my eyes filled with the image of the Czestochowa Black Madonna, my head filled with the words I had listened to, and my heart brimming with the faces of the people I met during those days–some of them not for the first time. Now I am ready (for the second time) to resume the journey of my daily life with the certainty of His “present presence.”
Serena, Bresso (Italy)

Breaking free from our
projects and schemes
Recently, one of my colleagues, Daniela, the Literature teacher, passed away after a long and painful battle with her illness. Daniela was an atheist and, standing by her, I had always tried to respect her position; I only told her I prayed for her, fearing I would hurt her if I said more. I surely wasn’t expecting her to want a church funeral, but that was the case. During the homily, I learned that, around March, Daniela had decided to meet with a priest and, following the suggestion of one of our colleagues, had gone to see the pastor. After that first meeting they became friends, and she told him she wanted to become a Christian and be baptized. She was given a great and “enviable” faith, which gave her an unswerving certainty that eternal life was in store for her. The pastor said that, at one point, she asked for the Book of Psalms, and that in just one day she learned two of them by heart. Listening to the story of her conversion, I understood how great and merciful God is, and how petty and blind I had been in my failure to recognize her need. I felt trapped by my own schemes; I finally understood what reducing one’s faith means, and that (thank God) the way I look at people doesn’t have anything to do with the loving gaze that the Lord bestows on each one of us. It is this limit of mine, this tendency to always put my own schemes first, that does not allow me to abandon myself totally to Him, and say “You.”
Marina, Italy

There are no small responsibilities in the eyes of Christ
In December of last year, I took responsibility for the distribution of Huellas magazine (the Traces edition for Spanish-speaking countries). I initially approached my new responsibility from a strictly organizational point of view. For a number of reasons, we were unable to sell the April and May issues of the magazine in the Church of St. Louis, where a group of adults, young workers, and college students usually sell it. When I realized that I was left with a lot of unsold copies, I started giving them to the people who showed up at my office. Initially, I devised this as a marketing strategy to sell more copies, but it quickly became the occasion to propose the path I have been walking on with the Movement for the past 15 years. I talked to them about how important that magazine was, offering commentaries on some of the articles–which forced me to read the magazine cover to cover in order to be able to tell them the main topic for each issue. One of the people I came across said he was actually looking for it, so he purchased one copy of every issue for himself and as many for his employees, explaining to them the significance of the magazine. Another person, who had previously purchased one copy of the April issue, came back a few days later and, seeing that the May issue was available as well, asked a friend who was accompanying him for some cash to buy it. Then we started talking about some witnesses concerning Pope Francis that were printed in that issue. On another occasion, a woman saw the magazine and told me that she would buy it just to give me a hand with the sales; I told her that she didn’t have to buy it to help me out, but that it could be of help for her own life. For a long time, I thought that proposing the experience of the Movement to the people I came across at work was impossible, and that my responsibility with the distribution of Huellas was just a small thing. Then, the reality I had in front of me and a conversation with Father Leonardo clearly showed me that what I lived was so true for my life that I was able to naturally proposed it to others. I also understood that there are no small responsibilities in the eyes of Christ. The method through which I now propose Christ to the people I meet–which before coincided with a sort of strategic planning–has become much more simple, as it springs forth from my adhesion to reality and to the truth of the path I walk on together with my friends.
Martin, Mérida (Venezuela)

School of Community at the bar. Dearest Father Carrón: About one year ago, we met and became friends with Matteo and Angela, an unmarried couple, and their son. During the year, they decided to get married, telling us that if they hadn’t met a companionship like ours, they would never have done it, since it wasn’t in their plans to marry. We started to meet in a bar they used to frequent, just to talk about life and judge what was happening to us. This gave birth to an unplanned School of Community meeting that started generating new friendships with the young people who hung out at the bar–despite the fact that we are about 20 years older than most of them. I don’t know what will happen next, or where this will lead, but for now the evidence of His presence is overwhelming and invaluable, and I stick to this Presence, which is always a source of newness.
Francesco, Fidenza (Italy)

“Now I live expecting something surprising to happen”
Below is the letter that a friend wrote after a vacation with the Cesena community. She had not received Holy Communion for over 16 years.
Dearest friends: This vacation I spent with you has been the most beautiful of my entire life. It is changing my life. Throughout the day, even now, I keep seeing your faces, your smiles, and your gazes. Observing you, I have seen something beautiful come to life; seeing you in action, I have recognized the work of Another.  We talked, struggled, sang, prayed, and walked together, and I felt such joy in this friendship that I had not experienced in years. When I finally said “Yes” to Him–Who had never stopped loving me–something great happened to me. All of a sudden, my horizon broadened, and I was able to touch and be touched by reality. This event brought about a series of unexpected gifts. The most beautiful gift, the one that you were able to see with your very eyes, was Holy Communion. I now live expecting surprises. I don’t know when something surprising will happen again, but I wait, and this waiting enlivens me. The Lord is not waiting for me; He is coming to meet me. Wherever I stop, He is already there. I have received this gift after 16 years, and I treasure it, but I can’t keep it for myself; I want to share it. That piece of bread is an embrace; it is Jesus embracing me in the flesh.
Elda, Italy