gulu
Ebola: Martyrdom and Holiness
Pippo has just returned from Gulu, where he went yesterday with Daniele to see the situation of Lacor, which is very grave due to the devastation of the Ebola virus. There they found Dr. Gaetano, who works in Hoima but had gone to Gulu in recent days to take care of Matthew. He cared for him until the moment of death. Gaetano was deeply moved, but at the same time very impressed by the welcome he received from the Ebola “volunteers.” He was amazed by their position and their unity in dealing with the situation. It should be recalled that Dr. Matthew directed this whole group and perceived its greatness. At Grace Akullo’s funeral, as Sister Dorina recounts, he said, “A great mystery is taking place before our eyes. Among all our personnel who died of Ebola, we never heard a word of resentment, anger, or regret at having volunteered to help in such a dangerous circumstance. Only words of gratitude and praise to the Lord, as from Daniele a few days ago and now Grace. The martyrdom and holiness of our personnel are a great gift in the present time, which should be prized deeply. They were all young, they had just finished studying and had dreams and plans for the future, and yet they offered themselves to help ward off a great disaster.” He said this on November 19th, and then he got sick and last night he died. As you see, this is the same position that is present in the group of volunteers who are facing this situation today. This greatly struck and amazed Dr. Gaetano (who is a very close friend of mine and ours and works in a Hoima project along with Manolita and Stefano). Moreover, Brother Croce remains a rock of support for the whole group, as I have already explained in the past, and the nurses and members of the Movement are happy to be around him. No one as much as he has been exposed to infection or had the opportunity to contract Ebola, because he was the first to pick up the sick and to bury the dead when no one yet knew what it was. It is a great gift of grace that our friend has not fallen ill. In the face of this dramatic situation and these miracles of grace, I return with ever-greater ardor to the Prayer of Consecration, which in its initial form said, “all the sufferings that Your Son will choose for us.” The prayer came at a dramatic time and we are now once again in a dramatic situation. We have to pray a great deal.
Fr. Pietro Tiboni

Busto Arsizio
At the Oratory
Dearest Father Giussani: “Over the Oratory waves an ingenious flag: God, family, Fatherland.” You may wonder where you have already seen this motto… Here’s the story. After confession for the Jubilee of Families, my parish priest gave me this task as penance: “When you get back from Rome, go see Father Alessandro, whom you have not seen for a few months. Do an act of mercy.” Father Alessandro Luoni is my paternal grandfather’s brother. I know you know each other; he was the Chaplain of the Oratory of Desio when you entered the seminary. For me it was a wonderful encounter, hardly an act of penance! I went to see him at 8:30 in the morning. He was waiting for the priest to come with the Eucharist. “You know, I haven’t celebrated for a few days. I have a dispensation,” he said, somewhat sadly. He was waiting for the Lord, alert and ready as a soldier who does not want to be found absent-minded or neglectful during review. I found him seated at a little table with the Lectionary, the Rosary, and a series of pairs of eyeglasses (like every elderly person). On January 6th, he turned 96 years old! I see him living his last days patiently; he says that he still has a piece of road to travel. His eyes seemed to me to be fixed right “there where true joy is.” Father Alessandro knows that my husband and I have been part of the Movement for more than 25 years, and our three children attend GS and CLU, so he said to me, “If you happen to meet Father Giussani, give him my warmest greetings. I accompanied him on his path to Ordination. His family was a very fine and good one.” I was immediately reminded, as you have told us about them over the years, of your “Socialist” father who loved reason, and your mother who showed you the Mystery early in the morning looking at the sky. Then he added, “You know, on Sundays more than a thousand young people would come to the oratory! You don’t believe it? Before you leave, go look at the photo hanging on the wall of my study.” It left me wide-eyed and open-mouthed: I had never seen so many kids all together, standing still for a few seconds (practically impossible at that age), gathered around a very young priest and the statue of St. John Bosco. Behind them, on the wall of the courtyard, was a part of an inscription that my great-uncle remembered in its entirety. He said to remind you that this was the closing celebration of the famous “Six Sundays of St. Louis” and that you too may be in the picture, purposely returning from Venegono for this. The CL charism made me understand the value of the priesthood and to look with wonder and admiration at an elderly Ambrosian priest. The One who began a good work in him and in us will go on completing it until the Day of Jesus Christ comes. Thank you, Father Giussani, for saying, “Yes.”
Daniela

Milan
25 Years of Priesthood
Dearest Massimo: Your fidelity to the sacrament of Holy Orders, the mature development of your Baptism made a compelling challenge to your life within the history of CL, has generated for the Church one of the Movement’s finest fruits, a priestly fraternity that is the unexpected and surprising spreading wide of your heart, overwhelmed by Jesus when you were little more than a child. I am thinking of myself when I was a seminarian and at Studium Christi with Manfredini and De Ponti, we too overwhelmed and won over by the announcement of the Word made flesh, in the school of great priests. May your Silver Jubilee find you even more certain that the One who began a good work in you will go on completing it until the Day of Jesus Christ comes. And may your father-like responsibility to so many young people who draw near to you earn for our company men so full of passion for the Event that has reached them through you and us, as to go to the ends of the earth–as so many have already done–to proclaim the Good News; fathers, that is to say, tender and steadfast, to whomever they meet as they make the Church. May St. Charles never deprive you of the passion for the human glory of Christ in history, faithful to the mandate of John Paul II, who on the thirtieth anniversary of the Movement told us to go into the whole world bringing the truth, beauty, and peace that are found in Christ the Redeemer. Your grateful friend,
Father Luigi Giussani

***

There is nothing that can launch one in life like a father’s embrace. For this reason, the greatest gift I received for the twenty-fifth anniversary of my ordination was the letter from Father Giussani who–as always happens with his great heart–read in my life its past and present much more profoundly than I myself can presume to see. Father Pino shared the letter with many people, above all the parents of seminarians and priests and the friends from the Fraternity of St. Charles Borromeo, during the Mass for my anniversary on Sunday, December 17th, at the Certosa of Garegnano. It would be only superficial vanity to call people together just to celebrate one’s own ego, if this were not instead the occasion for celebrating together the greatest gift that a man can imagine, that which all of us have received: faith, baptism, a living consciousness of this in the continuing education of the Movement, lived in the vocation to which Christ is calling us. Therefore I thank all the friends who were with me at the Certosa, in particular the Archbishop of Ferrara, Carlo Caffarra, who chose to join us as a sign of a long and lively friendship. I wish to be that tender and steadfast father whom Father Giussani invited me to be, especially to the brothers who are closest to me.
Father Massimo Camisasca

Peace on Exhibit
Dear Father Giussani: Our names are Fedi and Monica, and we live in and attend high school in New York. This year some truly great things are happening in America. We are sure of this because we follow Chris and Doni (our GS leaders), who in turn follow you. GS is growing in the United States, and not only in number. We are helped by the older ones, and together we are learning to judge the reality that is around us (school, friends, family…), starting from the experience of the encounter which each of us has had with the Movement. The clearest example is the exhibit on peace. Last year, in Columbine, Colorado, some kids our own age went into their school and killed their schoolmates and then killed themselves. Everyone justified this event by saying that modern music, movies, and TV programs were what had driven these kids to do this. We, instead, talked at length about this event, and we realized that the problem was that these kids were lacking the reason for which they did things, for which they lived. So then, why not do something to tell about what gives interest to our life? For an entire year we worked to put together an exhibit to explain what peace was for us. It was a wonderful experience; not even we knew at the beginning what peace was, and doing this project, we learned that peace is “a gift along the way, the experience of life as a pilgrimage, with the certainty of the goal.” We finished it in July and presented it during the summer vacation. One day we went to our school principal and showed her our exhibit. She was very struck by it and immediately encouraged us to present it to all the girls. So we did this during an assembly of the whole school. It was an incredible thing for us, but what amazed us above all was the girls’ reaction: they all had nice things to say about the fact that girls our age could get up in front of the whole school and present something like this. Thus, gradually, some of them started to want to be around us, because they saw something new. The clearest examples were Kim and Amanda. We were amazed when Kim said to us, “You don’t just say that you care about me. You show it, and this is different from all my other friendships.” We presented the exhibit also to the boys’ school, where Chris teaches, in front of 1,500 boys. There, too, it was a wonderful experience for us and all the teachers and students who were able to listen to us. At the end, many professors and students came to pay us compliments. What is more, some of us went with Father Rich (one of our leaders) to present it to a GS group on Staten Island. Two girls very nicely went to their school principal and asked permission to start School of Community and to present the exhibit. The principal not only agreed, but asked Father Rich to do it with them. In any case, GS is growing in many other places as well. GS Beginning Day was held for the first time in Washington. Even in a far-away place like Minnesota, there are kids who do everything they can to make this thing known to all. In short, Father Giussani, we cannot even express what we feel. What is happening to us is something so great that we realize it cannot be anything but grace. Very often it’s hard, but even in the exhibit we say that when Christ speaks of peace He does not speak of something that cancels out life’s difficulties, but He means that one has the assurance of not being alone, of being in the hands of an Other, of One who loves us and died and rose again for us. All the GS kids in America know who you are and pray always for you. The desire we all have is to be able to see you, but in the meantime we want you to know that we care very much and that we love you.
Fedi, Monica, and the GS kids in America

Sailing on the Internet
Lacking any knowledge other than a name from your flyer, I ordered a book from Amazon, and this sloppy, snowy weekend I curled up to read it. As is my habit, I began with the table of contents–and was admittedly totally baffled and fairly intimidated. So I moved on to browse for a sense of the author’s style and randomly flipped to a page set off with a formula containing the values r, f, v followed by the sentence, “The object of knowledge, in as much as it interests us (v), evokes a state of feeling (f) that conditions the capacity for knowledge (r).” Gulp. I ceased petting the cat, curled up a little tighter, and considered my options: either dismiss Luigi Giussani’s The Religious Sense as not my cup of tea or start at the beginning and try to figure out what is going on. I chose the latter. And I was rewarded one week before Christmas with a wonderful reminder about the scope of the true Mystery, a spirited affirmation of the human’s rational need to “wrestle with God,” and a cogent argument for the respective roles of human reason and divine revelation in voyages beyond the Mare Nostrum. (OK, I do think it was a little ratty in his conclusion about revelation to leave us dangling on the “vertiginous” edge, but since he has yet to make a particular averment about Christianity, I suspect he is just foreshadowing for his second book.) Giussani conveys all of this with tremendous grace and skill–the pedagogical grace and skill of a born teacher dedicated to his craft and his subject. (And he gets bonus points for introducing me to several terrific new poets!). I am recommending the book to Dan and our preacher. I went back to Amazon last night to order the second volume of the trilogy (he’s got a lot of questions left to answer) and, of course, a volume of Giacomo Leopardi. (Who is that guy? Does he have a CD? Kidding.)
A friend, South Bend

The Expected Guest
I read the words by Gius that we were supposed to work on numerous times; at first I thought: “What do I have to do with Memores Domini and especially with the House?” It seemed something far away from me and really not to have much to do with me at all. I have always been interested in reading or hearing how a Memores Domini House is set up, organized, and lived, and this year, in particular during vacation, this was even more pronounced, so much so that when we returned home, I tried–and it wasn’t easy–to “keep house well,” as though every day I were expecting an important guest. I discovered in this way that it is not a mania for order and cleanliness, but attention to the persons in it, to my husband and my daughter, as though Christ lived in me through them, by their means, and for them. If this is what the house is to me in physical terms, in these days that I am not at home because of physical problems, and this is truly hard, I am discovering how really the dwelling in which Christ makes Himself present to me every day is the face of my husband and my daughter, the face of that man with whom three and a half years ago I said “yes” to Christ, and with whom every day, when we recite the Angelus, I ask to be able to remember and relive that “yes” by fully living every circumstance, even the most difficult and painful. It is very clear, however, that this dwelling cannot live and thrive by itself, because we are truly limited. Thus it needs a larger place where we are taken in and constantly recalled, a locus that for us is the Fraternity and especially some very specific faces, who constitute a real point of reference for our life. So, what strikes me most of all is Gius’s wish that we may have the simplicity of a child who never has any prejudices in his relationships with everything that is around him, and this is also my entreaty to Christ in my vocation.
Valentina, Pescara