LATIN AMERICA
ASSEMBLY OF RESPONSIBLES

On the Wing
For some, it is the first time. In São Paulo, 350 people from all over Central and South America (including the Caribbean) gather at the Assembly of Responsibles with Fr. Julián Carrón. The situation in their countries is harsh, but they want to be “at the height of the circumstances,” and of their own desire. What is the path?

by Davide Perillo

For many, it is the first time: the first time that they see him in action, that they hear him speak. The face and words of Fr. Giussani roll by onscreen, and time passes in an instant. It is Friday night at the ARAL, the Assembly of Latin American Responsibles. Fr. Julián Carrón, who leads the movement of Communion and Liberation, has just introduced their work, taking his cue from the Fraternity Exercises: “Fr. Giussani saw very early that ours is a time of evangelical poverty: the question is not, ‘Who is right?’ but, ‘How can one live?’ It is a challenge that none of us can avoid.” And Carrón brings another challenge with him, which is the title of this encounter: “How is a Presence Born?” “A presence is original if it flows from a different source. What experience have we had of this in recent months?” And Giussani’s responses in the video of the interview from 1987 immediately show what we are dealing with. They foreshadow what Michele Faldi outlines later, while presenting the biography of Fr. Giussani written by Albero Savorana (not yet published here). Above all, they show everyone the living origin that brought them here to São Paulo, Brazil. There are 350 of them, from all over Central and South America, including the Caribbean.

The Pope’s mate. Sherline, for example, comes from the Caribbean islands. She is the first Haitian to attend the ARAL. She is 29 years old and lives in one of the toughest corners of the world, and yet she is radiant as she recounts that she met Christ by stumbling upon a girl from AVSI who was reading Is It Possible to Live This Way? with three friends. “They were talking about St. Paul, and she said, ‘It was God who sought him out, not the other way around.’ And suddenly, I understood that the Lord is always present in man’s life. I thought that He was only present if you sought Him out. Instead, I can have the same experience that St. Paul did.” That’s how it started–and now there is a School of Community in Haiti.
The assembly begins with a provocation by Julián de la Morena, who is responsible for CL in Latin America. Three months ago, in Córdoba, Argentina, the police went on strike. The result was violence, looting, and homicides. “The Pope invited the priests to go out into the streets and ‘drink mate with the people’”–in short, to be present, by simply bringing Jesus. Carrón relaunches the provocation: “Who believes in this? Who believes that this can affect history, and respond to the challenge of violence? Who could believe in the method of God who, in order to change history, called one man–Abraham?” The floor is open.
Doris, from Colombia, talks about how the illness and death of her sister gave rise to questions so powerful that she even had to ask her middle school students, before beginning her lessons, “Who am I? Why does it make sense to start over every morning?” And they, too, began to ask themselves the same questions. “They started to write to me, to tell me what was happening.” Like one 12-year-old girl who, in the middle of one of her mother’s fits of rage, asked herself, “Is she only this anger? And who am I?” “Do you understand? Twelve years old,” stresses Carrón. “It’s not that she has to have a Master’s degree in order to reawaken her humanity. What happened to her? What changed in your way of being? There is a way to be present that leaves the charism by the wayside, and another that reawakens the ‘I.’ We need to understand this difference.” Just as we need to understand what emerges from the painful helplessness of Paola, who, in front of the mother of a boy who was murdered in the streets of Salvador, finds herself “with no words. I didn’t know what to say to her. I thought that perhaps I am incapable of dealing with a situation like this, or that I don’t have enough help.”
Carrón asks Davide Prosperi to speak. He, too, is here for the first time, since he was asked to share in responsibility for the Movement. He talks about another dialogue, with a father who had lost his son in an accident and, months later, felt all of the lack and the apparent absurdity of 20 years of sacrifices made to raise a life that then disappeared in an instant. The response could have been a “correct” phrase. Instead, a question came to Davide: “‘Imagine that you have him there, just born, knowing about all of the sacrifices that you were talking about, and imagine that you already know it would end like this. Would you do it all again?’ ‘Yes,’ he answered immediately. ‘Ask yourself why.’” “Prefabricated responses are not enough to make people grow,” observes Carrón. “We need to challenge them to look at experience. Davide did not give him the answer–it came from that father, drawing on what he was living, and without a moment’s hesitation. It’s clear that he will still be nostalgic, but he will be able to live with it.”

Without bread or milk. Cleuza recounts an incident from December: their boat exploded, and she and Marcos wound up in the hospital. “The doctors were surprised by our serenity. We were in pain, but that presence was stronger. What the Movement says is true; I’ve seen it.” “Where does this strength come from?” asks Carrón. “This is an original presence, because it causes a question to arise in others: ‘Who are you?’ It is the same question in front of Christ.” Alejandro speaks of Venezuela: the violence, the grocery store shelves without bread or milk, the desire to be “at the height of these circumstances”–and the question born from the impact with the Gospel: “Love your enemies...” “It caught me off guard. If they hurt my family or my friends, how can I love my enemies?” Carrón answers, “How does the School of Community respond to this question of yours? Who saves all of the factors of humanity? Only in this way do we understand why Fr. Giussani asks, ‘Who is Jesus?’ Only if we grow in the certainty of the relationship with Him can He help us to make the entire journey, to the point of loving our enemies. We are not able to do it. So then, what is our task? Join the barricades, stay out of the fray, or generate a new presence? How is this possible today, if Christ is not risen?” It is the same question posed by Aureliano, whose work is cutting precious stones in Bogotá, Colombia. “I have been asking myself if Christ is everything or not. I ask myself this question, but I am already automatically thinking of how things should be–and it’s a trap. Instead, I want to follow Him in what happens.” “It’s true,” replies Carrón. “We reduce Christ to an image of ours. But He manifests Himself only in following Him. We cannot start by already knowing.”

Like the first millennium. It’s easy to think that you already know. You see familiar faces, in the same place as past years. You think about how to avoid writing more or less the same article. But then the encounters upend everything. Oliverio, who is responsible for Mexico, tells you about what is happening in Coatzacoalcos, his city. It is violent, like all parts of this country where the state has retreated, leaving space for the drug cartels. “Several months ago, in order to respond to the violence, we started to propose a gesture: the Rosary, once a month.” At first glance, it’s nothing–like the Pope and his mate. But the last time they met to pray, there were 600 people. A woman came to him afterward: “Thank you; this prayer is causing me to change the way that I live at home.” How can one live? In evangelical poverty, to which Christ responds.
Carrón takes this up again in the afternoon lesson. He returns to the themes of Page One in the last issue of Traces, then goes beyond; he shows how the Church, from the Second Vatican Council onward, has recovered its original tradition and vocation, focusing once more on a decisive point: freedom. “It is part of the very nature of truth to be able to be reached freely, not by imposition.” To take up this thread, as Benedict XVI did and Francis is now doing, is to return to the beginning, to what is needed in order to live in a world that greatly resembles the first millennium–and not only because values, “detached from Christ,” are crumbling one by one, revealing a fabric where evident facts are no longer recognized. Examples of this crop up everywhere–here, too, where life is worth less and less, as they deal with clashes in the streets, criminality, and the liberalization of drugs in Uruguay. The work proposed responds to life, not to the debates in the newspapers.
You realize this as you talk with Alejandro and Conrado, ages 36 and 42. This is their first time here, too. They come from Cuba, arriving after navigating an odyssey of paperwork and permissions. Alejandro says, “In encountering Christ, I found the answers.” To what? “To the ‘difficulty of living’–as Pavese says–to pain, and to the question that I asked my father when I was seven or eight years old: ‘What happens after death?’ He said, ‘Nothing; you cease to exist.’ But that wasn’t enough for me.” Then, at age 25, he met a Catholic family. “I was surprised by how they were with each other and with me.” And later, by chance, he started a dialogue with Conrado, who had met CL in Italy and gave him The Religious Sense. Three weeks later, Alejandro told him, “I understand. This is what is needed in order to live. What other books do you have?” Now there is a School of Community in Matanzas, too. “It started last year on February 22nd. We realized afterward that it was the anniversary of Fr. Giussani’s death.” There are nine of them, including “a retired professor of Marxist philosophy.” 

If the sun burns out. That evening, Prosperi gives a witness. He recounts a number of facts in which he found “the mark of what makes me certain.” He speaks of the encounter with Giussani, “who communicated this affective certainty,” of the responsibility he has, which “is not a chore,” nor is it a series of things to do: “It’s not how many things we do that fills life, but having the goal in mind.” He talks about how struck he is by these days–“It’s much more than what I imagined. I am having an experience here”–and of the friendship with Carrón, which is “watching together as things are born.” There is much more, and it leaves a profound impression.
Carrón introduces the final summary beginning from the songs just sung: Razón de vivir and Ojos de cielo. “‘To lighten the weight of life… To not have the sensation of losing everything,’ what do I need? ‘That you be here with your clear eyes.’ ‘If the sun that gives light burned out, and dark night got the upper hand,’ what would we need? ‘Your eyes;’ heaven in your gaze. ‘Because your sincere eyes are the way and the guide.’” What “clear eyes” do we need to meet? “It happened in reality. In history, a fact happened that introduced these eyes.” It is a fact–Christ–and a method. “The School of Community is these eyes, irreducible to us, to our feelings, to our reactions. And they cannot be manipulated by anyone, because they introduce the gaze of a Presence that is completely different from us.” It is what causes Giussani to pose the decisive question–Who is Jesus?–in Chapter 8 of At the Origin of the Christian Claim. Who we are, and the mark that we make on history, depends on this question. “Imagine those fishermen from Galilee who came to Rome with only this, with new eyes. If John and Andrew were here now, how would they defend values? As Jesus did–by letting this gaze enter into everything that they did.”
That is why the challenges that we have before us “are an occasion to rediscover what Christianity is, and what our task is. We know that Christ is risen, because we can meet this presence among us, these ‘eyes of heaven.’ Without this, I would be ‘abandoned in full flight’ in life.” Instead, one can live “at the height of the circumstances,” as Alejandro wishes to do, anywhere–and at the height of our desire.