LETTERS

LETTERS

A heart full of
passion and gratitude
Dear Father Julián: Listening to you at Beginning Day has been for me an event to immerse myself in, just like you said. For a long time, for me, recognizing Jesus coincided with following a path that, questioning reality, led me to its point of origin, or feeling the repercussions of what happened to the point of saying, “This is Jesus.” Yet, I don’t know why, getting to this point was somehow the end result of a process that didn’t imply the involvement of the core of myself. Recognizing Him was like when you find a note on a table, you pick it up, read it, and, recognizing your husband’s handwriting, you say, “My husband wrote this note,” and yet those words don’t make you quiver or move you. Saying, “This is Jesus,” didn’t move anything within me, didn’t penetrate to the core of my being. Jesus was left outside, while my “I,” my heart, was filled (albeit not completely) with something else. Then, one day, during a vacation, I saw a 13-year-old student of mine crying. I asked her why she was so distraught, and she answered, “A friend told me that she believes that when we say we see Jesus, we are being nonsensical. Every one of her words wounded me deeply; I saw Jesus die in front of my eyes. I felt a hole in my heart. I kept thinking about it, and that wound kept burning. Then I realized that the pain was good for me, because that wound was the mark that He left when He entered in me. I asked myself, ‘How could I live before?’ Up to that point, His name was just one among many others, but now everything has changed. When you like a boy, every time you hear his name your eyes glow, and you feel you are burning inside. Now this is what happens to me when I hear somebody utter His name.” From that day on, I have prayed every day to fall in love with Jesus like that, to feel that wound; I have looked for those in whom this passion for Him shines through, and I have desired to look at my husband with this wound in my eyes. When, at the Fraternity Exercises, you asked, “What remains of the fascination for Christ? Where is our first love?” I couldn’t stop crying for the tenderness with which He was there to embrace and answer me. You opened your talk at Beginning Day quoting the Song of Songs 3, 1-4: “All night long on my bed I looked for the one my heart loves,” and talking about Mary Magdalene. When you said how much you would like to feel a lover’s passion for Him, I felt once again embraced with tenderness and my heart cried out: “I too would give everything to feel a lover’s passion for Him.” I am literally flooded with sweetness and gratitude for the initiative that He is taking toward me: He is giving me people who are able to pierce through my armor to reach and win over my heart–a heart that, much to my surprise, is capable of a desire and a passion previously unknown.
Francesca, Italy

like mary Magdalene
At the Beginning Day
Dear Father Julián: I am writing to express my gratitude for Beginning Day. In particular, I understand the immense value of the Movement’s charism, because Father Giussani offered us a method to work toward our sanctity–that is, a path we can follow, and criteria we can use to judge our journey. What gift could be greater than this in a world where, as soon as we get up in the morning, everything affirms the opposite of faith? The way the influence of our times is slithering into every recess of our thinking is so subtle that, in order to fight it, we need every day to work on comparison, gaze, and prayer.  All these aspects can be summarized in a word that you used during your talk: following. I was struck by how you stressed that we can persuade ourselves that we are following Giussani, while instead we are following an idea that we created. I believe that the proof that we are actually following is that life becomes more authentic and glad–in a word, more full of life. Furthermore, there is an historical factor–just like the Pope is for the whole Church–that prevents us from cheating ourselves. In fact, one can try to interpret or manipulate Father Giussani’s words, but looking at a man whose humanity is completely enthralled while reading the Song of Songs and talking about Mary Magdalene, or while stressing certain aspects and preoccupations that Father Giussani always focused on, is something that can’t be reduced to an idea. At the end of your talk, I turned to face the colleague I had invited, and he said, “You know, I thought most of this would be lost on me; on the contrary, I understood everything. It’s very interesting. So, what’s next? Because, you know, if there is more I can call my wife and stay longer.” He stayed for the whole Mass, after not having set foot in a church for decades. I thought to myself, “You see, this guy is more similar to Mary Magdalene than I am. I thought I would need to do some explaining, but actually it looks like I will be following him!”
Luigi, Italy

The phone call to
a colleague
I called a colleague of mine who came to the presentation of the book La Vita di Don Giussani (The Life of Father Giussani), to hear her feedback. After some small talk, when I thought that our conversation was over, she said, “I have to tell you something. I immediately downloaded the book and started reading it because, with just a few words, Father Carrón literally transfixed me. Back home, I talked to my husband, an atheist, about what had happened to me. We talked till midnight, and he told me that, if what happened to me was true, he wanted to start reading the book too.” At the end of our conversation, she thanked me.
Name withheld

“My mother led me
to say, ‘You’”
The room was filled with a pregnant silence. His presence pervaded everything. It was a Presence loaded with questions. The setting sun called to mind the imminent sad parting, the sincere farewell. His Presence coincided with a sick woman and the pain she was suffering; the droplets of time leading her to the parting were accompanying her to a new life as well. I looked at her with a gaze filled with powerlessness–or maybe not. I couldn’t heal her, but I could share with her the greatest thing I ever met: You, Jesus. I looked at her with a gaze filled with joy for the affection I felt, filled with the encounter, and the farewell that would lead her to that which would truly give her peace, life, and light.Our parting was mysterious, great, and precious. She said, “See you soon,” and was gone. She was my mother. She is my mother. Thank You, Lord; how great life is, and how great You are. I am, as always, a traitor, a liar, a poor, empty-handed man. You are great, full of tenderness, light, and forgiveness. Thank You for allowing me to live this farewell with You by my side, within this community. I have never found anything better than You. My journey is not over; on the contrary, it continues on, full of You, full of her, who now rests in You.
Ernesto, Alcobendas (Spain)

friends that tell us:
“There is life here”
Dear Father Julián: I’d like to try to describe the personal work I have done, starting from the question that you asked us: “How can one live?” I have to confess that, when I first heard it, I thought it was a useless–or at least obvious–question. A living man asking himself how one can live sounded like asking why water is wet; it felt like a worthless provocation with a predictable outcome. Truth be told though, listening to and remembering that question over and over, I realized that one can live without truly living.It may sound like a play on words, and yet it is something concrete and easily a part of our experience; an authentic drama that touches all of us. Like when I get to the end of a page (even an interesting one) and I ask myself: “What did I just read?” I did the work, I made the effort of reading, but I wasn’t there. Keeping the question open over the summer–at the vacation in Cervinia, and later at the vacation with my community, the time with my family at the seaside, the Rimini Meeting, and then returning to work–I marveled at seeing all that overabundant life right in front of me. I found myself looking at people and circumstances and saying, “There is life here.” I have seen friends with an unthinkable capacity to welcome, or with a passion that made them move with unswerving perseverance; men with an astounding understanding of reality. All those experiences clearly indicated that reality is the most precious factor we have at our disposal in order to live. This is the kind of life I want; I desire to keep pursuing it and following it. Therefore, the first fruit of this summer’s work has been the decision to keep the question “How can one live?” open; it is the only way to stay in front of everything that happens with that curiosity and zest for life I saw in others, and to avoid settling for an easy answer that would dispose of the question itself.
Alberto, Pavia (Italy)

the explosion of my questions
In a conversation yesterday with my mother, she asked me, “But why do you need the Movement? Why do you insist on their company?” In the face of her questions, I was speechless. I had nothing to say that could answer those questions–and not only for her, but for myself as well. Why was I so attached to these people? What is the real reason I stay with them? Today, however, after having School of Community with some other philosophy students from McGill University, I left feeling refreshed, as if their pointed and searching questions had been given to me to drive me on and to help me to persist–in the midst of all my struggles and failures–in seeking His face always. But it wasn’t until I got home this evening, and was thinking about my mother’s questions of yesterday, that I realized that today’s School of Community was the precise answer to her questions. The Movement is not present to answer my questions, but is the method God has chosen for me to confidently seek answers to them. I see that in my adherence to the Movement, my questions–about my life, destiny, relationships, vocation, and all the rest–are not extinguished, but rather begin to flourish with a movement that is like an explosion. This is how I was meant to live; this is what I was meant for.
Cole, Montreal (Canada)

A day with Nanny Mimi (and her question)
Dear Father Carrón: Mireille (I call her Nanny Mimi) from Cameroon came to visit us and through her, we felt we were welcoming you and Rose. Nanny Mimi struck us all with her contagious joy, her ability to judge reality, and the witness of how Father Giussani’s charism renewed her life. Leandre, who recently joined our community, told us, “I was edified by the human warmth of all these people whom I was meeting for the first time, and by the spirit of commitment and perseverance that–despite the pouring rain–drove both the organizers and the participants to work for the good outcome of our meeting.” It had been a day of songs and witnesses. Nanny Mimi focused on a question to Christ: “Who are You? Who are You who love my husband, my wife, my relatives, my children more than I do?” Her question was a huge wake-up call for me, because I had never fathomed that anybody, not even God, could love the people who are dear to me more than I do myself.  Quoting Benedict XVI’s homily of  April 25, 2005, Nanny Mimi reminded us of our mission of introducing Christ into the lives of those who don’t know Him. We also benefitted from the account of her first experience of charitable work. What makes you a Christian is not merely spending time praying in church, but breaking out of the confines of your small world to go toward what dwells in the depth of the suffering of others. The days that we spent with Nanny Mimi gave a new burst of energy to our belonging to the Movement. For this reason, we want to hold on to the hand that you stretched out through this visit, and walk with you, Father Julián. Father Giussani entrusted us to you before his death, just like Jesus did with John and Mary. Nanny Mimi went back to Cameroon–and we have to go back to our daily lives as well–but our hearts are now ablaze and forever marked by a person who is truly in love with reality.           
Éveline, Abidjan (Ivory Coast)

Havel: a companion on our journey
Re-reading The Power of the Powerless, by Vaclav Havel, I was moved when, toward the end of the book, the Czech playwright reaches the awareness that without the experience of transcendence hope does not make sense, and neither does human responsibility. Reading this statement completely changed the way I was approaching the text. Having read it in the past, I was just re-tracing a path I already knew; I didn’t have any problem understanding Havel’s analysis of the post-totalitarian system, as well as all the facets of the falsehood he described, and of the kind of life that fostered the dilation of said falsehood. These were all true and interesting insights, but my understanding of Havel’s work ran the risk of having no connection with the present, as well as losing the attractiveness that is typical of a challenge. Then I got to Havel’s statement on transcendence, and it was like a ray of light had appeared, finally allowing me to realize that what the book offered wasn’t just a convincing analysis, but the relationship with a man who had lived being both a dissident and, later, the President of the Czech Republic, as an opportunity to grasp the meaning of reality to the point of recognizing its transcendence. Havel became my companion on this interesting journey toward the recognition of that which can give strength to the present–that openness to the infinite that can hold us up in every single moment. Fighting falsehood is easy, because we all sense what does not correspond to our heart; yet, the power of the powerless is something more. It occurs when living in truth becomes a work that allows us to unveil the “miracle of being.”
Gianni, Italy