Letters

ITALY
Modena
Sharing in Order to Live: Caritativa
We offer our readers the text of a flyer written by a GS high school student in Modena, Italy, to invite her friends to take part in charitable work.
To experience the law of our hearts, which is sharing, we have restarted the gesture of caritativa, charitable work. The proposal is spending an hour on Sunday at the Charitas Institute, where mental patients are taken in. What can we share with people who are reduced almost to the vegetable state? “A stupid walk, maybe;” “a meaningless ball game”... This is what we often are led to think, and in order to break free of the need for that “something more” not contained in these answers, we pretend to be satisfied by saying that “it depends on how inventive you are.” This state of “satisfaction” can last an hour, a year, or even a whole life, but no one can avoid the moments when the hunger for a meaning in life comes back to gnaw at our entrails... Caritativa has been one of those moments for me, and without my pulling out any sort of inventiveness, I experienced the Mystery that lies within every relationship we have, from those with mental patients to those with our friends, our boyfriends or girlfriends, our parents, our teachers... everybody! It is a challenge, the challenge of opening our hearts to comparison with another’s. And it is the reward of finding out that we are so unexpectedly the same, and companions in the desire and search for happiness. Fr Giussani says, “Here is the simple, direct road for the development of our being; here is the fundamental educative norm for the fulfillment of our personalities: to put our self in common, to share the divine and human reality just as it reveals itself or rises up in front of us, to share in order to live.” The date is every other week, starting on Sunday March 9th, at 3:15 pm (be on time!) at the Istituto Charitas (via Fratelli Rosselli).
Carlotta, a first-year high school student

ITALY
Roseto degli Abruzzi
Around Traces
Dear Fr Giussani: Heeding what two friends told me to do, a year ago I started doing School of Community in my parish in Roseto. Now we are a small community of 14 people. Three have asked to adhere to the Fraternity, and with everyone we are living the kind of relationship that is already Fraternity. From the beginning, we accepted the suggestion of our friend Mimmo from Giulianova to sell Traces after Sunday Mass, and over the months it has become for everybody a gesture of faithfulness. What amazes me is that we too look forward to it with curiosity, and when the phone call from Giulianova comes, there is always somebody ready to go get the issues. This time, three of us went, and the short trip was the chance to tell about ourselves, about how and how much the encounter we have had is changing our lives. That we read Traces is shown by the fact that both at School of Community and when we are with each other, we talk about the articles that have struck us, ask about the ones that weren’t clear to us, and tell about the letters that moved us. In our little country parish, some thirty people have been reading Traces for a year now. Those who bought it buy it again, and the parish priest, who subscribed immediately, says to the congregation: “As you go out you will find our magazine, that tells about the Christian experience going on in every sphere...” In the course of the year, we adhered with generosity and creativity to many of the gestures proposed by the Movement: the Food Bank collection, the AVSI Tents, and six families have decided to do long-distance adoptions. I am grateful and moved because of everything that is happening here, because it is happening to me.
Monica

BRAZIL
Rio de Janeiro
Atop Corcovado
Dearest Fr Giussani: Every morning, as I go to the subway, I walk along a street from which I can see Christ the Redeemer on top of Corcovado. It is a magnificent sight, but now, after almost two years, I sometimes walk down that street with my head bent low and the day’s thoughts swarming around in it... this morning started out like that! I was thinking about my friends, the Young Workers, these 20-year-olds: “Who knows if they will stay?” and then I thought about the climate of war and tension looming over us, and I said, “Let’s hope Our Lady helps us.” At a certain point, I lifted my head and saw that embrace of Jesus and the words came to me that you said in Recognizing Christ, when you were talking about the apostles: “There was something greater than their house, there was something out of which their house was born, out of which their love for their woman was born, which could save the love with which they looked at their children and concernedly watched them grow up; there was something that saved all this more than their feeble strength and their weak imaginations. What could they do in the face of the bad years of famine or the perils to which their children were exposed? They followed Him! Every day they heard what He said; all the people were there open-mouthed, and they were more open-mouthed than the others. They never grew tired of hearing Him.” I cannot get rid of my worries, because that’s the way life is. In front of a great and wonderful thing just as in front of a problem or something sad, this is how it is: if it is great and wonderful it has to be forever, if it is sad or wearisome it cannot be against me! For there is an embrace, the embrace of Christ today, now! It is this embrace that takes all of me, my desires and my worries, and says to me, “Don’t worry, I am with you!” The Movement, which as you said is the “face and arms of Jesus,” is where it is possible to recognize this Presence that embraces me and where I become the face and arms of Christ for those I meet and who want nothing more than an embrace like this!
Bracco

USA
New Bedford
Work: An Unusual Friendship Begins
I am the shop foreman at a mid-size microelectronics firm in Massachusettes where we produce packages for the military, telecommunications, and aerospace industries. Some of my duties are to schedule jobs for the machinery and the people to run these machines. A particular job came in that I had to run on two machines side by side. The two workers I chose to run these machines could not have been more opposite. One of them is from the Philippines and is always singing and happy at his job, and gets along with everyone. The other worker is a 22-year-old American who listens to “hate rock” music, swears constantly, and has multiple face piercings. Most everyone thought it was crazy to put them near each other, but I had a feeling that they would eventually help each other. Before they started working on these particular machines, I told them they had to work together and help each other in order to complete the job the customer had requested. At first it was what everyone was expecting: the worker from the Philippines was singing out loud, and the American was swearing at him. My first reaction was to go out there and tell them both to shut up and do their jobs, but instead I waited and let them work this out within their own freedom. Later that same morning, they began to take breaks together and you could already see a friendship beginning, and this was amazing to me and to the other people around them. The manager, who only two days before had threatened to send home the American for not keeping his machine running, could not believe the change in this worker. These two workers exceeded their production goals by 25%, and are continuing to work side by side on this job, taking breaks together and joking with one another. The American worker now comes to work without hate, because he is not just coming to do a job, but to be with a friend. In this friendship I can recognize the Presence of Christ, but only through the education of the Movement am I able to recognize this Presence.
Bob Sampson

St Augustine and Bush
Dear friends:As I was chatting in the car with my wife, something she said pierced me like a ray of sunshine: “Someone should give Bush De Civitate Dei.” Augustine wrote this book for those who accused Christians of not having been able to save the Empire and Rome from the invasion of the Visigoths in 410. The enemy is not a bulwark to be conquered–the relationship between the citizens of the City of God and the citizens of the City of the World is a relationship of amazed comparison: the other who now appears to me and can be so far away can be near an instant later. Grace is not an institution, but is like a passport; it is like the passport for going from one city to the other. This brought to my mind an author whose prayer I had framed on the headboard of my bed when I was a child, Reinhold Niebuhr: “Lord, give me the strength to change the things I can change, courage to accept the things I cannot change, and wisdom to know the difference.” I thought about this, smiling, like when happiness walks along with you. On a day leading up to the war, in the city of men, in my car, De Civitate Dei came in.
Lorenzo, Rome

My Road
Dear Fr Giussani: My name is Pina; I am 37 years old and have three children. I separated from my husband six years ago. Now, what I desire most is to repeat to you the promise I made to Jesus during this past Christmas season, which is to live my life in poverty, chastity, and obedience. I know that the Lord approves of my decision because, in these years I have understood that this is my road, for my good and the good of my children. I would like for you, too, besides Jesus, to gather me into your arms . Infinitely grateful, I would feel even more secure.
Pina, Bergamo

The Prayer of the Muezzin
Dearest Fr Giussani: Very recently, I was in Turkey for my work. Suddenly, in the middle of the night, I was brusquely awakened by a lacerating cry. After an instant, the cry of this male voice began again in a sing-song rhythm, and then I understood that this must be the muezzin, so I recited the Angelus. In the morning, it was explained to me that what I heard was the first prayer of the day, which is very special because all the angels come down from heaven to take part in it, and the voice that calls tells everyone to wake up because praying is better than sleeping. That muezzin surely did not imagine that his voice in the night would contribute to the occurrence of the presence of Jesus in the world.
Paola, Turin

Working for Life
Dearest Fr Giussani: For 37 years, I was in charge of the instruments in an operating room in the Obstetrics and Gynecology ward. In my region, Molise, the rate of recourse to voluntary interruption of pregnancy has always been very high compared to the total population. Because of my affection for Jesus, I applied to be an objector, but I did not wash my hands of things just because of this. Quite the contrary. I tried to make Jesus present in those circumstances in every way my creativity could invent. I would talk with the women to open them up to welcoming the little seed that was already inside them; many times I would sterilize the instruments that others should have checked so that the operation would not result in more pain; I would debate with my non-objector coworkers to show them the lack of sense in their choice, and above all I would talk with the doctors who performed abortions. In so many years, the Lord has given me the grace of seeing many babies saved through me. But the greatest gift the Lord gave me came the day the abortion doctor on my ward phoned to tell me that after so many years of my witness, his heart had been touched, and he had decided to apply to be an objector. He had understood that my admonishing him, urging him, was born of a real affection for him, of a real desire for his good. The Lord has used me so that the creature He loved could discover the love of his Creator. Now I have retired, and in the hospital where I worked, as a consequence of this doctor’s objection, abortions are no longer performed. I have learned from this experience that what counts in man is the task each one has in life, but no one is ever alone in this task, because God’s Mercy always makes itself our Companion. Thank you, Fr Giussani, because the Yes that you said one day has made the Lord’s embrace possible for me in a way that responded so fully to my heart.
Enza, Termoli