In the Heart of the Great Russia

It seemed impossible: the presentation of The Religious Sense in Russia. Yet, on March 6th, the Aula Magna of the Humanistic University of Moscow was packed. A discussion with outstanding speakers

BY GIOVANNA PARRAVICINI

The years seemed gone forever when in Moscow or Leningrad just by word of mouth you could call together dozens of people to listen to a poetry reading or visit the exhibition of an avant-garde painter in some private apartment, years when the books banned by those in power were passed around from person to person in samizdat, virtually unreadable typewritten copies. Today the Russians, at least in a megalopolis like Moscow, are disenchanted and skeptical, often vaccinated against Christianity. Out of twelve million officially registered inhabitants (without counting clandestine immigrants, refugees, and others), Catholics in Moscow number about two thousand (including foreigners), and practicing Orthodox–statistics tell us–are no more than one percent of the population.
All of this is to say that, when some months ago we found ourselves trying to imagine the way to present The Religious Sense in Moscow, the most obvious thing was to think that it was a virtually impossible feat, given the problematic relationship between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox hierarchy and the difficulties inherent in bringing together cultural and ecclesiastical institutions in any undertaking. We felt this even more so when we thought about the relative smallness of our little community… Only one thing was certain: that The Religious Sense was a very great opportunity, a response filled with certainty for the suffering humanity, often disoriented and dissatisfied, which each of us here encounters every day, from students to work colleagues to the dreary masses packed together in the metro, where every Muscovite passes on average at least a couple of hours every day. Well, we wagered on this one certainty, deciding that it had a greater value than all the consciousness of our limits and the difficulties of the situation… and we are the most wonderstruck of all, now, as we see that this is precisely true, and that we have won our bet.
As a matter of fact, in Russia The Religious Sense was already known some time ago to Father Aleksandr Men’, the Orthodox priest killed by unknown assailants in September 1990, who was one of the fathers of the religious rebirth during the Soviet regime. In order to tell the “homo sovieticus” about Christ, he had even rewritten the Gospel events in an accessible and at the same time well-constructed narrative, placing in the foreground the fascinating humanity of the “Son of Man” which is the great newness of Christianity. His book appeared also in Italian under the title Gesù maestro di Nazaret. La storia che sfida il tempo (Jesus, Master of Nazareth. The Story that Defies Time), published by Città Nuova in 1996. Struck by the way the text responded to the need to “rediscover man and his fundamental questions,” a need trampled underfoot by decades of incessant ideological propaganda, Father Aleksandr Men’ wrote an afterword for the first edition of the book (published by Russia Cristiana at the end of the 1980s, still under a clandestine aura), addressed specifically to the Russian reader, which the new Russian edition of the text has preserved, along with the preface by Cardinal Stafford.

The “Great Friend”
In a word, we started off: the propelling force of the whole undertaking was the Religious Library, a cultural center started by the Russia Cristiana in 1993 and directed by Jean-François Thiry, which–since about a year ago–has become an international organ made up of both Catholics and Orthodox. Besides organizing cultural events (in recent years it arranged the exhibit “From the Land to the Peoples” in Moscow and numerous other cities in Russia), the Religious Library in particular handles the publishing and distribution of religious texts in Russian. But we realized that in these years, books were above all the instrument for encounter, friendship, and sharing of our experience, for relationships with former dissidents and men of culture who since the days of terrorism knew and appreciated the Movement through Russia Cristiana, for collaboration with the Orthodox ecclesial world and with the structure of the Catholic Church born with perestroika, and for contacts with old and new, state and private cultural institutions, all having in common the search for new outlets and resources.
The miraculous thing is that in a sensitive environment like Russia, where every intellectual starts his own magazine and every “parish” cultivates its own garden, spitting venom, if it can, into the garden of its neighbor, in these years a sense of esteem has grown up around us that always fills us with wonder. But this esteem, in the final analysis, is for the “Great Friend” who guides our steps–and this astounds us even more–and is the true protagonist of our actions. Retracing the steps in the presentation of The Religious Sense in Moscow means meeting this “Great Friend” every step of the way. For example, from an essentially chance encounter with Father Pepe and the friends of the community in Vienna, the idea arose of organizing an exhibit and film forum on The Religious Sense which enabled us to meet and invite numerous students. From an almost equally chance telephone call came the opportunity to present the book personally to the “great old man” Alexander Solzhenitsyn. A friend of ours who is in the Focolare Movement, the day of the presentation, seeing the Aula Magna of the Humanistic University packed with listeners, in large part university students but also many figures from the world of culture, asked me wonderingly how we had managed to make so many people (almost three hundred) come. Certainly we all worked hard, each of us having invited everybody we knew, summoning up all our inventiveness and energy (the Sunday before, we had set up tables in front of the two Catholic churches in Moscow, and I guarantee you that sitting still in 15° below zero weather for two hours is no fun, but we sold 40 copies of the book and invited practically all the Catholics in the city)… but the secret lies in the attraction of the “Great Friend” whom people meet when they meet us.

Under the “snowfall of the century”
There was some last-minute apprehension (due to catastrophic weather bulletins urging people not to leave the city, not to go out of the house in anticipation of the snowfall of the century; and then one of the speakers seemed to have come down with the flu…), but the great day came and on March 1st at 6 pm we were all at the university.
Besides the Religious Library, sponsoring the presentation of Father Giussani’s book was the Center for the Study of Religions, founded in 1992 within the sphere of the cultural programs of the Humanistic University as a place to study religions (in an evident attempt to counter-balance the atheist propaganda of the Communist regime).
We were especially concerned about emphasizing, first, the cultural value of the system of thought and the experience proposed by the author. As Giancarlo Cesana (who participated in the presentation with the purpose of outlining Giussani’s personality and charism) affirmed, Giussani proposes first of all an encounter with the living personality of Christ, as an answer to man’s most pressing questions. It goes without saying that Cesana’s communicative passion and clear speaking style made a deep impression on the audience (he was invited also that morning to meet with a group of students and professors at the university to discuss the problems of the university and of the Christian presence). The profound significance of the book in the current cultural situation of Russia was pointed out by the Rector of the Humanistic University, Yurij Afanas’ev, who remarked upon the similarity between what Giussani says and early twentieth century Russian religious thinkers (Solovev, Berdjaev, Bulgakov), who had profoundly renewed the vision of Christianity, reproposing it as the Event which transfigures man and the entire universe, and spoke of its value as a methodological tool, which finds its first and most natural utilization right in the formative process of the younger generations inside the university.

Averincev
The high point of the evening was the presence of the academician Sergej Averincev (recently awarded the Agnelli Foundation Prize in Italy), an honorary professor at universities throughout the world, including the Pontificio Istituto Orientale, but above all a master in the search for truth for entire generations through his university teaching at a time when it seemed impossible to speak about truth in the Soviet Union. The deafening applause which greeted him testified better than anything else to what he means to many of those who were present. Averincev insisted especially on the “Pauline thrust” of announcement which characterizes the text and on the persuasive force of the life experience which is offered there; a proposal that is “patient but irreducible, which forces the removal of all ideological masks and does not grant the interlocutor any other possibility than to take it seriously,” he said, commenting on the episode of Father Giussani’s encounter with the young man who had set up as his ideal Dante’s Capaneus. Averincev also emphasized the value of the experience of faith in the terms in which Father Giussani proposes it, “as a reasonable hypothesis against the background of the collapse of all the ideological fictions when they are sifted by reason.” He observed that today, faced with the “dangerous temptation, especially for those who consider themselves believers, to understand the faith as one more ideology,” the author’s insistence on “measuring things against elementary experience, which must become habitual in everything if we want to become adult, free persons” is fundamental.

Sedakova
Finally, Olga Sedakova, a university professor and refined poet, started from an observation: the evil of modern society is that “man has lost his nexus with reality and with himself. More than by the traditional symbols of shackles or prison, today’s non-freedom is expressed by seasickness, by the lack of a place to stand firm, by the insecurity that assails man in the simplest things. This insecurity and this systematic skepticism have taken on the nature of ideology” which bases itself on a claim to being rational. Father Giussani “unveils the irrational and unreasonable nature of this presumed rationality,” Sedakova added, identifying the “religious sense” as the road to a return to awareness, to the “finding oneself”again of the person, that is to say, to the rediscovery of his authentic, immortal “I.” And this is what the world, Russia, and each of us needs.

(From a conversation between Father Giussani and Maurizio Vitali, published in La Nuova Europa, no. 3, 1992, pp. 7-15)

Father Giussani, how did you become interested in Eastern Europe and the cultural tradition of Eastern Christianity?
Already in high school, I was attracted by the figure of Solovev and struck by the writings of late nineteenth century Slavophiles, Chomjakov in particular. In the years after that, when I was studying theology at the seminary in Venegono, I systematically pursued this cultural interest by going directly to the Russian sources. Finally, I was given the Chair of Eastern Theology at this same seminary. For my course I used the five-volume text by Jugies and looked closely at the texts of the Slavophiles published in Orientalia Christiana and Orientalia Christiana Analecta.
From that moment on, my interest was not a solitary one. I worked closely with the Bible scholar Msgr. Enrico Galbiati, a profound student of Russian culture and Eastern culture in general. After I became a priest, right after World War II, I met Father Romano Scalfi, who was founding the Russian Christian Center (Russia Cristiana)–which remains, still today, a point of reference for me.
I said that I was attracted to the Eastern world initially as a cultural interest. In reality, it was not only this. What moved me, in the final analysis, was a passion for Christian unity. Even then the fracture between Orthodox and Roman Catholics seemed to me without real and adequate justification.

Is it true that you were persecuted by the Fascists for this interest of yours?
Yes. A letter of mine to the Jesuit Father Caniato was once opened, in which I emphatically maintained the idea of unity and collaboration with Russian Christians. This was evidently interpreted in political terms…

… suspected of Bolshevist sympathies…
The fact is that the Fascists came to the Seminary to get me. I remember that I escaped on a bicycle. But let’s leave all of that. I want to emphasize this: precisely the passion for the unity of the Church made me sensitive and open to the enormous contribution, the fascinating complement to our Western mentality which could come to us from a stable, fraternal dialogue and relationship with Russian culture. ...
The presence of CL in the peoples of Eastern Europe is a fulfillment of the human right to pass on to them what has saved us. Not by taking their place. But by humbly supporting them by being present as an example of how the Church can be lived. We don’t want to overwhelm them, but to be companions, submerging ourselves as much as possible in their history and their needs. In the end, it is an attempt to compensate our Eastern brothers for what their experience has given us, culturally and as an example of life: the testimony of a tenacious fidelity to tradition and an admirable ability to resist for so many years the systematic attack of atheism.