EDITED BY PAOLA BERGAMINI
pberga@tracce.it

NEW YORK
For Always
Dearest Father Giussani: I just got back a few days ago from California, where I went for a week of study for my Ph.D. My classmates and professors are all far away from the Church and religion, and since they know I belong to a Catholic movement and live a consecrated life, they asked me a lot of questions. They were all amazed when I told them about the Movement, and they told me they did not know movements existed. What struck them most about Memores Domini is not so much that we live in poverty, chastity, and obedience, but the fact that I have been in it for more than twenty years and have no intention of leaving. For them, the fact that something can be for always is overwhelming. In any case, since one of the objectives of the course was to demonstrate that we can all learn not only as individuals but also as a community, when we met to plan the semester, three different people said, “Only Lorna can teach us what a community is.” My classmates know that I like classical music, and so they asked me to present a piece of music. I chose Schubert’s “Unfinished Symphony,” and presented it using what is written in the jacket notes for the CD of the Spirto Gentil edition. At the end, one girl said to me, “I too would like to see things the way you see them.” Thinking about what she said, this time, my immediate response was not, as other times, that this is the way Monsignor Giussani sees them, but that this is the way I see them, and this time I felt even closer to you, even though I only mentioned you afterwards. While I was in the redwood forest studying, I kept well in mind what you told me in January, which was that it is possible for my classmates to encounter Christ through a face that has been changed by His presence. Back home, I became aware of what a great grace it is to have been chosen by our charism. I also realized that the sincere, profound desire to know Christ better and better is accompanied by–or better, coincides with–a passion and desire for sincere friendship with my classmates.
Lorna

washington
The ideals of my Youth
Dearest Father Giussani and Giorgio: At the recent meeting of United States Responsibles, I was moved by the simplicity and profundity of the work we did. So I would call that moment an event, the mercifully unceasing initiative of the event. As an American, I have to say that your attention to the reality of our country is an embrace so unexpected that it has enabled me to return unhesitatingly to the ideals of my youth. Growing up in this land–my early youth corresponds to the time of JFK and the Peace Corps, Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement, Lyndon B. Johnson and the War on Poverty–I breathed the air of the promise of freedom, justice, and opportunity for all. For a young heart, this is the stuff that dreams are made of. I remember feeling profound gratitude because Christ allowed me to live the one true faith in the most fortunate country in the world–and, I would add, in the most beautiful and liveliest city in the world: New York! Over time, the charm of these words wore off in the face of the proposal of a shrinking horizon, and the American dream seemed to evaporate. In its place, we have put some very poor things. Hearing your challenge, Father Giussani, to go to the root of these ideals, has been like a second youth, a new and better chance to get back what was lost. For this reason, you are always a father to us, you have waited for us outside the door and celebrated when we came back in. So many things in this encounter have gone to the heart of the matter. I was especially stimulated by the idea of belonging as self-awareness, as you described it in Recognizing a Presence. The discussion touched my “I”–this is precisely the level where Christ has taken possession of my being. At the same time, I recognize the boundless discrepancy between this supreme desire for unity and my capacity to stay at that level. I felt the need for a companion on this level, and I understand that without this belonging, everything falls into the abyss of the meaningless and fleeting.
Barbara

SANTIAGO
Singing with a Reason
An evening like so many others after another trip; another stop, in a familiar or unfamiliar city, it doesn’t matter: it is wonderful to have within me the certainty that someone in this city is living my same life, belongs to what I belong to. And so I pick up the telephone and call the number that the CL International Secretariat or some friend of mine has found for me. “Hi, my name is Marcello and I’m passing through your town.” How many times I have repeated this phrase! “When do you meet for School of Community?” Thus a new phase in my journey begins, alongside people who are always different but ever ready to share their life in the name of the blood, the vital sap that binds us together and makes us one in Christ. I am an opera singer by profession, and I want to tell you about the peculiarities of life as a “gypsy on the music road.” For ten years, I have been living like a nomad, in the past five returning only rarely to Italy. But behind all my work, behind every note I sing, there is a burning love that gives my singing that special color, that participation of the soul in the artistic act which unfortunately by now few colleagues still cultivate, caught up like all the others in the question of the economic return of their work or their self-centered satisfaction. I carry within me a people, my people, which is not the only people walking toward Christ, but they are my people. I carry this people with me when I sing, in that singing which is “praying twice” as St. Augustine said. I carry it inside me when I work, travel, and meet people who often live an alienated existence (and seeing me recite the Liturgy of the Hours, they ask me, “Are you a Buddhist?”). I carry it inside me when I have to fight, put myself on the front line, take risks for Christ. For example, last November I was in Spain and was rehearsing Puccini’s Tosca, in which I had the role of the treacherous Baron Scarpia, the head of the Vatican police during Napoleon’s time, who burns with desire for Tosca and thus blackmails her by promising her, with no intention of keeping his promise, to free her lover in exchange for a night of love. Rehearsal was drawing to a close when the director said to me, “I just had a brilliant idea. I’ll dress you as a cardinal! Can you imagine the impact on the audience? In the finale of the first act, when the full chorus sings, ‘Tre sbirri, una carrozza’ [Scarpia’s most famous aria], I’ll have you wear a tiara and long red cloak. They’ll give you a crozier and you bless the people in church and start celebrating Mass.” Never mind that Scarpia sings this aria forgetting that he is in a house of worship, the victim of his amorous passion. The “strong message” to the audience was this: “Look what Church men do.” Within two minutes, the amount of time it took me to reach the office of the artistic director, I had communicated my decision to leave the production for artistic differences (forfeiting my fee). Nobody understood why I did this, and everyone said, “We’re Catholics too, what’s the problem? Everybody knows priests do these things…” Out of professional courtesy, I continued rehearsals, but when my replacement arrived the day of opening night, as I was about to leave, I was called to the theater. In my dressing room there was a costume for the head of police, Scarpia’s traditional costume. “The orchestra conductor said you have to sing.” The strength of my position and their desire to have me sing on opening night made them spend a fortune to make me a new costume. Since then, I have an enemy (the director), but I believe I gave strong witness of my love for Christ and the Church. My vocation–since my voice is a gift from God which I have the task of using for His glory–consists of giving to the public of all the world emotions that are (since they are connected with art) already little openings for the divine to shine through, and to witness this to my colleagues and all the people I meet. I don’t preach sermons, but I am myself, and often someone comes up to ask me, “How come you’re always in a good mood? What makes you so happy?” Or that someone, seeing me recite the Hours, approaches me out of curiosity and asks me what I’m doing. Or, when the weekend rehearsal schedule is announced (the day off in the theater is Monday), I raise my hand and ask with pleasant irony, in the name of the Catholic minority, respect for our right to go to Mass. Some call me Father Lippi, but their teasing is good-natured, because more and more often it happens that a colleague asks to talk with me privately and puts to me questions that are the foundation of the religious sense or unloads his problems and suffering to me. I always have a smile and companionship to offer. And sometimes I propose a gesture, with the liturgy as my starting point, like the time in London when a French colleague told me she wanted to take a walk with me, and I said to her, “Fine, but Mass is at 6. Do you want to come too?” Once she got over her initial astonishment, she said, “Yes.” I discovered that it was the first time she had ever entered a church. This is the reason why I have written these few lines. There may be someone who thinks it is not possible to live and witness to Christ in this profession or in general as an artist. The art world needs people of faith who are not afraid to be just that and who live with simplicity, carrying always in their hearts a light and hope that is for everyone.
Marcello

Mental Health
Dearest Father Giussani: Pardon me if I take the liberty of calling you “Father,” but for me, after seeing you in a photograph in a field kitchen of some volunteers in Nimis, during the terrible trial of the Friuli earthquake, you have always been “Father Giussani,” not even abbreviated into “Father Gius,” as I have heard so many times, especially in Milan. As I was coming out of the interview that would have awarded the position of “director of a complex structure” to one of the applicants (in this case, four), and being pleased with how the interview had gone, the faces of my parents and your face came into my mind. I am sure that I have reached this professional position thanks to the history in which I have been involved since that distant 1976, and so you come directly into this. The previous director of the Department of Mental Health, Dr. Righetti, always told me that I could stand firm, and thus be a help to others and also a “good” department head, precisely because of the companionship that supports me daily. I too am convinced that without the School of Community, the help of the Fraternity, the Diakonia, the intelligence of my companions of these most recent years (Father Beniamino, Enzo, and Bino), and the discreet friendship of so many others from the center of the Movement and the region and city where I live, I would never have come this far. The passion for my work, my attention to others (the patients I treat, but also colleagues and friends), and the great desire to verify my life (that is, to see it growing in gladness and humanity), have been communicated to me, as I go along, by you and all the others who over time have been close to me, for your sake. Ten years ago, when I was entrusted with the responsibility for the Movement in Friuli Venezia Giulia, only my wife Alfredina and I were there. Now our marriage has brought forth four children, my “little puppets” as I like to call them, Sara, Maddalena, Silvia, and Daniele, and I would like for them to be there too, as testimony of a life, my life, that has been accompanied and blessed by the Lord.
Marco, Udine

Reading Faust
I want to tell you about returning to school after the end of semester break. In the first German literature lesson we came to the passage in Goethe’s Faust where Faust answers the question about what he thinks of religion, saying, “Who can ever say I believe in God?” Our teacher picked up on that phrase, stating that this is really a rhetorical question, because no one can affirm something like this by himself, unconditionally. I raised my hand and said that I believe in God. The teacher, perfectly neutral, asked who in the class doesn’t believe at all or only believes a little. All the others said that one of these two possibilities applied to them. When the teacher asked us to explain our reasons, the motives they came out with were confused and in all cases pointed against me. For some, faith has no use, while others are already satisfied with their lives, and God would only be a disturbing element that they may deal with when they reach 80 years old. I said that for me faith has a very big “use.” Especially if I compare my life two years ago with my life now, I understand that I have truly found the hundredfold, since in Him I have found a meaning for my life, so that it becomes interesting even to come to school and study (widespread consternation), and my relationship with my friends and all the rest have become much nicer. This implies acknowledging that life is something given and my personality something made. I cannot consider myself the casual product of the encounter between a sperm and an egg. One boy responded to this by saying, completely seriously, that he was very proud to have been the winning sperm–and I congratulated him. Another argument against me was the statement that it was truly stupid to believe in something for which there was no proof and besides, even if God does exist, I could not know what He is like. First I asked them how they can look out the window without at least having the perception that something more exists. Certainly I cannot define God, because He is a mystery. But this Mystery became man and now, as He Himself said, is present in the Church. This is why I follow the Church and the Sacraments, because they bring me closer to this Mystery. These were the most important parts of the discussion. The rest was very confused, an hour of going back and forth. What became clear to me during the lesson and that moved me is that I, in spite of the confusion and insults, was so sure of and at peace with the reasons for my faith. I even grew calmer as the attacks became more and more ferocious, to the point that in the end the teacher abandoned her position of neutrality and sentimentally came to my defense. I was conscious of not being alone, that He was fighting the battle with me and giving me strength. After the lesson, I went home truly glad, not because I had obtained any particular success or because I had been courageous, but because that hour had become mine; but not only that class period–also the whole day at school, because at school I had with my personality taken a stand and all of reality was mine.
Katharina, Bruchsal

Rebuilding
Dearest friends: We wanted to have a farewell party in our office in Pristina for Alfredo, an architect who worked with the EAR house-rebuilding project. Before organizing the party, we Italians and Engjell, the Kosovar who has been to Italy to work on the city of Bergamo’s Rom project and encountered our architecture community there, decided to read the School of Community together. In the afternoon, Engjell phoned to tell me that Father Nosh, the parish priest of Pristina and responsible together with Ilir Rodiqui of AYA (Albanian Youth Action), was coming to bless our office. What is more, he had invited all his AYA friends and asked me to explain what the Movement is, what AVSI (Association of Volunteers in International Service) is, and why we decided to come to work in Kosovo. I explained briefly that AVSI was born out of the experience of the Movement and that its volunteers take particularly to heart the fact of doing something for the Church. I told how this experience began for me by meeting some people at school who made me rediscover the fascination of the faith, teaching me that it corresponded with all aspects of life, and that also the fact of working for AVSI in Kosovo increased this awareness. Umberto then described how he encountered our companionship in the university and that these same friends had proposed that he work in Kosovo. He said that when the time came to choose a local engineer to act as consultant for the project of rebuilding the schools, we asked Ilir to give us the name of one of his friends, because we wanted to take up the challenge that Alberto Piatti had repeatedly thrown out to us, which was to join others in friendship. Over the months, we realized that this challenge became more and more our own, and every Sunday morning outside of Mass we were struck by the unity of the AYA group. This pushed us to pursue the relationship with AYA more deeply. The proposal to Engjell to go work in Italy for AVSI arose from the friendship that grew up in these months. When he returned, Engjell immediately told Ilir and his friends about the beauty of a companionship he had experienced in Italy. Engjell often says that for him, his most recent trip to Italy had made flesh the Pope’s words during the World Youth Day. At the end of the encounter they invited us to the moment of catechesis and prayer they have every Wednesday evening, and we returned the invitation by asking them to come to our next School of Community.
Manuela, Umberto, Irina, Matteo, Marco G., Stefano, Alfredo, Michy, Samuele, Marco T., Francesco, Pristina, Kosovo