A Miracle of Unity

The Benedictine monastery Cascinazza celebrates its thirtieth anniversary. The example of a new way of ordering life around the certitude that only Christ saves. Testimony from the Prior and notes from a dialogue with Fr. Giussani on communional judgment

On communional judgment
Estracts from a talk between Fr. Giussani and the Cascinazza monks, March 20, 1982
Perhaps the most frequent topic is communal judgment; how communal judgment is reached.
Why is a judgment necessary? A judgment is necessary because judgment points out the road, it leads. But then, there is something that comes before judgment, and this is the love and the will for the road. This is not something banal, because to the extent that we did not love the road above all, the judgment would become either something about which we don’t “give a tinker’s dam,” or an expression of self-love, a search for self-love.
Now, what is our road? The Lord has said, “I am the Way.” The road is the deepening of our relationship with the Lord. Therefore, it is the deepening of memory, that it may impact on and determine all of life. This is the feeling which St. Paul expresses at the end of the eighth chapter of the letter to the Romans.
Therefore, before being able to evaluate the word “judgment” and trying to establish how it arises, or must arise, we must pay attention to the point of our departure; that is to say, we must start out from inside this search for Christ, this memory of Christ–or not, because it is weak, taken for granted, habitual, or in other words extraneous to the mechanism by which we seek this judgment.
We can use a word that has in a sense been made current among us by this year’s School of Community [Luigi Giussani, Moralità: memoria e desiderio, Jaca Book, Milan, 1980 (Morality: Memory and Desire, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1986)], which is the word “belonging.” A judgment springs forth from the consciousness of belonging; it is conditioned by the consciousness of belonging. To whom do I belong? To whom do we belong? Judgment always arises from how we answer, and live our answer, to this question. For if you are on your journey, you belong to the way, to the road which is Christ; if you are on the journey toward your Destiny, you belong to the road which is Christ.
We say, then, that the judgment must be communal. Evidently the word, the term “communal judgment” means “communional judgment,” because otherwise it would mean a judgment made by everyone on which everyone agrees. This, besides being dangerous from the viewpoint of the eventuality (which rarely happens), it would also be indecent from the viewpoint of the journey, because it would mean that there would never be the sign of something more; that is, there would never be obedience. “Communal judgment” means “communional judgment.” What does this indicate? It indicates a judgment which springs forth from the communion we live with each other; the communional judgment expresses a life of communion that is lived.
What does a life of communion that is lived mean? A life lived together in order to live the memory of Christ. Because it is in fraternity, in fraternal companionship that Christ’s Presence is most pedagogical, communicates Itself in the pedagogically greatest way, and is assimilated in the way that is most alive and certain. If fraternal communion is lived, then we can also speak of a judgment that is truly communal; but to the extent that there is no effort to live the life of communion, communal judgment will be the locus of presumption, in which we presume or demand to impose our point of view.
In other words, the locus where the communal judgment is formed is the expression of the common desire, the common effort to identify the road which the community must follow, so that each one–and therefore I in particular–may be helped to understand and love Christ.
Even when you talk about the stables or the fields, you are talking about the stables and fields not because you are “marossee” (as we say in Milan; marossee means “go-between”), but because you seek Christ. In short, if you say a window goes here or goes over there, you have to keep this in mind, not because it has anything directly to do with the window, but because it has to do with the reason why you are doing something about the window, and this reason can provide starting points and can provide perspectives, or it can provide a different sensibility even for talking about the window. “Christ, everything in everyone”: this is the formula of Christian life, and therefore it is the formula of monastic life, which is almost a sacramental sign of Christian life.
But how is this communal judgment reached? I have already said two things, which are the most important ones:

1) The first is that to give a judgment you have to live love for Christ, because this is why we are on this road.

2) In the second place, to give a judgment you have to live the communional life; only in this way does the judgment become the expression of your love for the communal life.

Then, as a further step,
3) A judgment is the work of the intelligence, or of consciousness.
A) In order for a judgment to be really–to arise truly as–a communal judgment, or judgment of the communion, each person, certainly, has to have the chance, the freedom, the sincerity to express his opinion. Therefore, the freedom and sincerity to state one’s own opinion must be safeguarded, keeping in mind what I said before. In other words, someone expresses his opinion out of love for the common reality, just as he is used to living it, just as every day he tries to live it. In a word, if a mother and father are truly interested in their children, then “this also sharpens their brain,” as we say. They become intelligent, attentive to what their children need. Thus, if we love our life in common (as the first piece of the Body of Christ in the world, the part that touches us)– this is the problem – then someone (according to his temperament, according to his training) will have one kind of need and therefore will give a certain kind of judgment—and may he have the freedom and sincerity to say it! The first factor of the genesis, of the birth of a communal judgment is that each individual can express his opinion.
However–I insist here for the third time–it is not “opinion for opinion’s sake,” but it is the opinion of one who lives the communional life, and who speaks out of passion for the communional life.
B) Secondly, each one must be attentive to grasp in others, that is, must reach out to grasp in what another says whatever new thing the Lord tells him, whatever new thing the Lord puts in his mind as useful, for himself within the life of communion, or for the life of communion where he is.
One of the symptoms that everything is being destroyed in the fatuousness and vanity of self–love lies in the fact that someone–maybe even passionately–has reached an opinion about something. The others can talk as long as they like and he listens to them like a good boy, but the reasons of the others do not penetrate him, they don’t budge him, they don’t pierce him; if the others had not talked it would have been just the same!
Instead, the first symptom that the judgment in common is a gesture of conversion (here I introduce this idea: if it is not a gesture of conversion, the common judgment is no longer a Christian judgment) is that someone, whatever opinion or whatever certitude he has, is completely intent on capturing, understanding, and giving value to whatever good there is in the other, in what the other says, ready to complete his own opinion, to change the aspect of his own opinion, or even to change his mind.
Christianly speaking, there cannot be a judgment which does not participate in the “Judgment” which is Christ. “The Lord is coming to judge the earth,” and when this is manifested in the Last Judgment, it will change even the doors and windows, it will change even the way of making fields and gardens, because it will put everything in order.
No judgment must be made without the awareness that it belongs to the Judgment which is being made on the world, the judgment which is Christ. This is why both the love for the truth which makes us express our opinion, and the attention to the reasons of the others are a gesture of conversion: they make us build, they prove that we want the road, they make us build the road.
C) But there is a third factor. The conclusion could be established by majority vote; in that case there are two things to keep in mind:
1) The first is that the majority does not establish what is true or false, what is true or more true, but the majority vote is used to reach a decision.
How important it is that the decision be born out of everything we have said earlier, and not out of someone’s stubbornness, someone holding his own point of view!
2) The second aspect, even of a judgment established by the majority, is that (if there is a rule establishing that there be a majority) the end–let’s remember–has to be obedience, submission, just like Christ to the Father… and He was not of the same opinion! He would not have been of the same opinion (at least in His agony, but also earlier!).
Even if a decision is reached by a majority vote, it has to become obedience. For a communal judgment does not concern only the things to be decided, but an evaluation, it gives an evaluation. And so the communal judgment–since it gives an evaluation–in any case has to make something change in you, because it gives you something different.
We must be here day after day with our hunger and thirst for change in Christ, with the same unsleeping continuity with which the earth turns, with which the earth makes its cycle–even when it is still, it is not still. Therefore the communal judgment–whether it is a decision or an evaluation (and this latter always happens)–must change something in us, it must give us something, it must make us better understand something.
All this occurs in a supreme way when the decision is made by the Superior. A judgment, in a communional reality, must always be communional in origin, as its genesis. It can be formal or not formal; that is, it can be formal when all are called together and each one gives his opinion, but the communional judgment is also informal, or implicit, because the Superior (in making a decision or passing a judgment), since it has to be he who does it (in certain circumstances in which it is not possible or convenient to gather together), cannot avoid taking into consideration—that is, cannot avoid starting from–the opinions and positions of those in the house.
But now I do not want to dwell on formality any more; I want to insist instead on the fact that when the communional judgment has as its decision the Superior’s opinion, this is the height of clarity, of sureness, and thus of peace, in obedience.
On this point, perhaps we should add a note: if we want judgment to be communional, even when it falls to the Superior in his capacity as Superior, then we have to be close to the Superior. In other words, we have to be on brotherly terms with the Superior, we have to go tell him things, we have to go tell him our opinion, because then the concept he arrives at is more communional.
D) The last point. Since without judgment, without a judgment there is no decision or construction, the Evil One has a vested interest in weakening the judgment. Judgment is what judges (condemns) the devil, is what gets rid of the devil: it gets rid of the devil because it is constructive. A judgment on you fights the devil that is in you, because it asks you to change; therefore, for the devil, judgment is a nuisance. So he tries always to debilitate judgment, to nullify it. And how does this happen? First of all, it happens when somebody doesn’t care; by now it would be stupid to be in a community if someone didn’t care at all about the judgment; this can happen if someone commits a sin, but this is not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about more acute things, that is to say: somebody accepts the communal judgment, made by the majority or made by the Superior, with evident reserve, in the sense that he accepts it, all the time meditating on how to overturn the outcome of the battle. Thus he does not obey, except formally. The fact that something already decided, a choice already made can be rethought in function of another choice that changes it, is something that can happen sometimes, in cases of extreme prudence. Well, the attitude of our self-love, or of our individualism, in the face of all decisions–if “one is not of the opinion”–lies in wait for the moment to change the decision, or to let it drop.

But what if someone, albeit accepting what the Superior has decided, in conscience feels he cannot abandon his own opinion, feels that the matter in question is so delicate and seems to him so demanding that he must ask that the decision made be reconsidered?
In that case, first of all, he will first try to identify with the reasons why the Superior or the majority voted differently, because the truth is communicated in many different streams.
Second, he will adhere with all his heart to what has been decided, offering it to God with the sacrifice of himself.
And third, he will not live waiting for the moment when he can get his revenge, but with discretion and humility he will say to the Superior (in due time, when it seems to be the right moment), “You know, in my opinion…, try to rethink it…” In other words, he will repeat his opinion to the Superior. And with great discretion, he could also say it in the community; however, with a humility which, above all, keeps him from repeating it every time he speaks. Because if a decision has been made, God has to have the time to bring it to fullness and make it go forward. And I shall state my opinion, and say it again–if it really seems to me so very clear–after a certain lapse of time; because otherwise…
However, to the extent that it remains in my consciousness, humbly but also tenaciously, I will state it to the Superior and will say it in the community in a way that does not cause a scandal, and this depends completely on the manner, on the humility with which I make it known (but you have already had good experience and examples of this!). Not even a fantastic idea can build anything if the only criterion for action is that of pushing it through; this is not constructive! The majority decision, too, is an obedience, after all. Overdoing it in these things is either the symptom, the sign, that we are at the beginning of the journey, or it is a sign that we are getting bogged down in vanity. One sole thing is important; then, going here or going there… well, maybe it’s better to go there, in the end, but if the decision has been made to go here, you get there just the same, in fact better, if you obey. The first two points we have said are the most important things toward safeguarding the communal judgment.
In a word, morality is doing everything for something greater, which is Christ, as we say in Morality: Memory and Desire. And what is the opposite? The opposite of morality, that is, immorality, is acting by reaction. And what is reaction? On the plane of intelligence, it is opinion; on the practical level, it is instinct.
But woe to us if we adore our own opinion instead of Christ!
Conversely, the Spirit of Christ guides a community by means of the “head” of individuals, the conscience of individuals; that is, through the experience of individuals. Therefore, putting your experience in common with the Superior’s contributes to creating a context from which the communal judgment emerges. So that, even in the cases when the Superior must decide personally, individually, almost without realizing it he brings forth his judgment from what he hears, from the air he perceives around him, from the common experience that all are living.

How should I act when I see that there is confusion, not on just one point, but on everything–that is, in the way problems are posited, in the disorder of the decisions, in the lack of clarity of the judgment? I often realize that if I intervened it would make things worse, and not having a solution to offer, I am tempted to pull back…
First of all, since the Lord put you on this train, you stay there. He put you in this company, and you stay. This is why the love of Christ and the memory of Christ–sought after also in these conditions–make you move forward and become more mature than even if everything were clear and straightforward, because the important thing is that you mature vis-à-vis Christ and, as far as the governance of the house and community is concerned, the community does what it can. If you had a clearer idea than anybody else, then you would say it; but you don’t have it either, therefore even if all is confusion, since you have to live, you do the best you can and everybody struggles to go forward together. When, however, you find yourself in conditions like these, it can be useful to ask for advice from a particularly wise person, to ask for help. But understand that there were moments when the Israelites, too, were in the thickest cloud, not the one that was leading them, but the one that did not let them even see the battle…
However, you should never be resentful among yourselves for what you do not succeed in giving, because otherwise it is like blaming others for something which has already wounded them, because not being able to understand completely becomes a wound… Take heart, and lucky you!

BY FR. SERGIO

“I was told, everything must be taken in without words and held in silence. I understood then that perhaps my whole existence would be spent realizing what had happened to me. And the memory of You fills me with silence.”
These beautiful words of Laurentius the Hermit, proposed by Fr. Giussani since the very beginning of the Movement experience, is one of those phrases that never grows old, and expresses very well what has been the lot especially of each of us, monks of the Cascinazza.
It expresses the intensity of the instant in which the human “I” discovers it exists, feels itself being born of the encounter with the Event of the present Christ. It is the perception of hearing the call, of hearing the One who made everything say to you, “You are mine, you are the most important thing for Me,” and feeling suddenly that everything is accomplished, that life has at one blow achieved its end which is at the same time a new beginning.
No longer masters of ourselves, but filled with this Presence which guides and determines our steps, all that remains is the silence filled with wonder and with work, which tries to realize what has happened to us. In the language of St. John, it is “remaining in Christ,” it is living His memory.
June 29th of this year, the feast of the Apostles Saints Peter and Paul, marks thirty years in which we have been given to live entirely within His Event, in this monastery, in total belonging to Him, even in the most minor daily details: from the passing time to the work we do, to the gestures that are repeated and yet ever new, and to the embrace of our brothers who share this call with us and which opens us wide to a universal embrace. Nothing is banal anymore.
The year 1971 marks the beginning of this attempt at renewal of the Benedictine experience. It was a beginning “before which we must stand in wonder, as though before a miracle,” as Fr. Giussani said at the time. And it is a wonder that grows over time. To the extent that the beginning is always closer, always more at hand, life becomes ever more true. Also, the need to understand, to make ourselves small and to take in, becomes ever greater. None of us could have imagined how the fact of staying in this place would unleash life so intensely. St. Paul shows us the wellspring of all this in 1 Corinthians 2:2: “I was resolved that the only knowledge I would have while I was with you was knowledge of Jesus, and of Him as the crucified Christ.” Here, this “no knowledge other than Christ” is not a restriction, but the condition for knowing and possessing everything. Everything is given to us, but we are His.
Staying in faith where He has put us, enduring in what “we have seen and heard,” is a response of love and profession of our life.
In Christ we are no longer alone, but are one Body, His Body. This is the miracle that He brings about in us. This is why the monastery is a place of peace, in as much as Christ reconciles us to ourselves, and in obedience everything falls into the right place, is where it is supposed to be. This does not mean that we are not like other men, with the problems, difficulties, limitations, defects of everybody, but we are sure of God’s faithfulness; this is what grants us the certainty of our path and an edification. Peace is the gift of the Risen Christ, it is the face of the ongoing Resurrection, because it is the sign that He is present, is here, is within the consciousness of being a community. My “I” is You, a You present here.
Our gratitude for the Movement and for Fr. Giussani, who aroused this vocation in us and has nourished it in these thirty years, is boundless. We are here because of this, our life is this Thanks within all the organic implications of our existence. This is the drama and at the same time the task that we are called to live, above all before the angels of God: to accept being loved and remade new every day by His mercy, aware that the salvation of the world depends on the fulfillment of our “I.” This is also our Thanks to all those who sustain us with their witness and their friendship. This is the offering of our life, so that this Dwelling Place of the Lord may be ever more a “heart” for His people. On the occasion of this thirtieth anniversary, we would like to share with everyone this beautiful lesson on “communional judgment” which Fr. Giussani gave us on March 20, 1982, a lesson to which we still refer as a source of support and correction.