Last year the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation celebrated the twentieth anniversary of its pontifical recognition, decreed on February 12, 1982…Fr Giussani himself set the essential lines and structure of the celebrations surrounding this anniversary when he wrote, “We are starting afresh, always! What has to happen is something new, an extremely weighty step in our history” (Letter to the Fraternity. February 22, 2002). In other words, there is no time to be wasted in “self-celebrations;” we must not stall in illusory self-congratulation, because the Spirit continues to throw out challenges to us…
Two particularly eloquent events marked the year 2002 for the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation…
The first was the personal message from the Holy Father to Msgr Luigi Giussani. John Paul II never fails to be present in the most significant moments in the life of the Movement. At the Pope’s explicit request, I had the honor of personally delivering the message to Fr Giussani on the very day of the anniversary, February 11, 2002. I shall never forget his face, and above all, I shall never forget his eyes. Despite the harsh suffering caused by his illness, they radiated an extraordinary light in which all his faith and all his love for the Church and the Successor of Peter could be read. The second high point of the year was the pilgrimage made by the Fraternity to the Holy House in Loreto on October 19th. This too, for those who took part, was an unforgettable spiritual experience. The people of CL–more than 20,000 persons–crowded not only into the Sanctuary Square, but also the adjoining streets and squares. And yet, what was most striking was the extraordinary intensity and profundity of its prayer. The pilgrimage to Loreto was an “epiphany” of the Movement, which draws all its spiritual force and missionary dynamism from contemplation of the face of Christ together with Mary, “the living fountain of hope.”

Fr Giussani’s book, L’opera del Movemento: la Fraternità di Comunione e Liberazione fits organically into the context of the celebrations of the twentieth anniversary of pontifical recognition of the Fraternity. It is a book that merits attention for various reasons, and not only that of members of the Movement. Rich in stimulating cues for reflection, it lends itself to being read in different keys. I would like to propose a few of those that, to my mind, are among the most meaningful… The reader is invited to follow this fascinating itinerary and to enter into the great “workshop of faith” that is the Movement, with an outstanding guide, Fr Giussani and his word that always touches on the essential, immediately leading right into the very heart of the Mystery.

The history of the Fraternity of CL presented in this book is not a history written in an ivory tower. It is a history photographed, so to speak, in the moment when it was happening. It is a history made up of speeches, letters, and dialogues that are impassioned and exciting. At the same time, it is a history and a theology of the Movement written “from inside” this experience. Fr Giussani’s every word is a living word, charged with emotion, imbued with a constant spiritual tension toward the truth of God’s plan for the Movement. The reading of these texts thus soon becomes an extraordinary spiritual adventure, and it is difficult to resist the wonder and marvel that break forth in front of the almost palpable work of the Holy Spirit when He enters into human history.

Fr Giussani’s book is a testimony of the memory of the Fraternity of CL. And, in the life of an ecclesial movement, memory plays a very important role, because it is out of memory that its identity is reborn and consolidated. In the life of an ecclesial movement, then, memory is never a gaze fixed statically on the past, but a dimension giving it structure that summons it to keep constantly alive the faithfulness to its originating charism…

How can one fail to feel wonder at reading the pages of the book that speak of the beginnings of the Movement and the Fraternity of CL? No one could foresee them, much less plan them. A little group of students in one of the many high schools in Milan gathers around one of the many priests in the city. But under the apparent ordinariness of things, God begins to fulfill His plan that is anything but ordinary…
It is the Holy Spirit Himself who chooses rhythms, times, ways. And this charism is amazing not only because of the contents and forms of evangelical life that it arouses, but also for its extraordinary ability to spread throughout the world. Today, the Movement of CL is present in some 70 countries on five continents, and it has become an experience of faith that has radically changed the lives of thousands of people, men and women of different ages and cultures.

Juridical recognition of an ecclesial movement by the Church is undoubtedly a milestone in the unfolding of its history…
Given the newness that the movements were bringing into the life of the Church in those years, also on the plane of the juridical norms with all their limitations in relation to the extraordinary richness of charisms, recognition was the result of an itinerary that was not easy. The Fraternity of CL has the merit of having been one of the first ecclesial movements to undertake this path and of having worked with wisdom, courage, and a vivid sense of the Church, offering a valuable example for the others.
The act of recognition of the Fraternity, welcomed with great joy and gratitude, manifests–according to Fr Giussani–the greatness of the authority of the Church, which is the “fatherhood that embraces and augments every face according to its structure” (p 49)…
The Church’s recognition, while representing a step up for a movement’s presence in the structure of the Church, certainly does not solve all the problems of its internal life, nor does it eliminate as if by magic the obstacles the movement encounters outside. Following the Master’s example, disciples of Christ must constantly measure themselves against the challenge of being a “sign of contradiction.” Recognition, however, gives a sense of serenity and a new certainty of being accepted in the Church and participating in her mission.

What image of the Fraternity of CL emerges from this book? What are its constituent traits? The Fraternity is “the apex and heart of the real Movement” (p 107). Fr Giussani emphasizes insistently, “The work that is asked of us in today’s Church is called the Movement of CL, that’s all” (p 132). And in its origins, the Fraternity is nothing other than the concrete expression of an enduring “Christian methodology” in the history of the Church, which consists of “communionality”…
In the current debate on the ecclesial movements, the question often arises as to whether, to be Christians in our time, other types of belonging than the basic, generic belonging to a parish are truly necessary. Fr Giussani’s answer is very simple and clear. The Fraternity is for him like a sort of “convent within the world.” And so he writes, “One can be Christian without entering a convent, but the more one aspires to Christ, the more he will desire a stringent companionship toward destiny. This is the plan for a rule. For St Francis, what was the rule, above all? It was his companions who traveled along with him” (p 48). Indeed, the idea of confraternities, as he points out, “is really one of the most brilliant ideas in the history of the Church” (p 48)…
What does it mean to be a part of the Fraternity of CL? Today there is an enormous dearth of environments in which a person truly receives an education, and this is true also within the sphere of the Church (especially for adults, but not only for them). And in fact, by joining the Fraternity, “the adult chooses a stable, educative sphere that is the most precise possible for him, with personal responsibility for his choice” (p 50). This is not a matter of the formation of an elite. Fr Giussani reiterates forcefully that “it is not a question of an elite, but is a question of acceptance of seriousness and commitment” (p 53)–in other words, precisely what ought to distinguish an adult. Joining the Fraternity, then, one must be aware that it is above all a “locus of conversion” because it is a “locus of education to a new humanity” (p 56). It is anything but a comfortable refuge to guarantee oneself a safe protection from the snares of life in the world. For those who join the Fraternity with an “adult” attitude, it becomes their “primary dwelling place,” in which they are “restored and continually recreated for the journey” (p 73). The Fraternity is “a formative friendship,” because it aims at being “a channel that forces one to the truth about himself, i.e., that compels him to a true relationship with Christ” (p 105). Here is where we touch the focal point of the life of the Fraternity: the person of Jesus Christ. Fr Giussani writes emphatically, “Christ the reason for existence, Christ the motive for our creativity, not through the mediation of interpretation, but directly; there is no other position that can be Christian than this latter; all the rest-–the mobilization of existence and creativity–will come afterwards, but Christ as the reason for existence and motive for creativity, this has to be recovered. It is like an impassioned desire for recovery of the original purity of the life of our Movement” (p 101). And in his message for the twentieth anniversary of the Fraternity, the Pope chose to emphasize precisely this aspect by writing, “The Movement, therefore, has chosen and chooses to indicate not a road, but the road… The road, as you have affirmed so many times, is Christ” (no 2).

On the occasion of his meeting with the ecclesial movements in St Peter’s Square in 1998, John Paul II pointed with unmistakable clarity to the two great challenges facing the Church in our time: “There is so much need today for mature Christian personalities, conscious of their baptismal identity, of their vocation and mission in the Church and in the world! There is great need for living Christian communities. And here are the movements and the new ecclesial communities: they are the response, given by the Holy Spirit, to this critical challenge at the end of the millennium. You are this providential response!” (May 30, 1998, no 7). These words from the Holy Father suggest to us another key for reading Fr Giussani’s book, perhaps the essential one, which embraces and synthesizes all the preceding ones we have tried to sketch out.
Everyone agrees that contemporary culture generates fragmented, inconsistent, and thus weak and unstable personalities. Christians are not spared the influence of this culture. Thus we have half-hearted, confused Christians, and a superficial, inattentive religious belonging that is incapable of being incisive in a meaningful way on the choices and behavior of people. How does the Fraternity respond to this plague of our time? In Fr Giussani’s writings and speeches, the expressions that recur most frequently are: adult, responsibility, freedom, belonging, totality. These are words that indicate the peculiar dimensions of the pedagogical project of the Movement and the Fraternity of CL. In a context of partial, weak types of belonging as is the case in our contemporary societies, the question of belonging to the Movement takes on crucial importance. And in this respect, Fr Giussani is very clear and demanding. “The experience of the Movement is either all-embracing or it fails in its purpose and is a waste of time,” he writes, without mincing his words (p 188). This is thus a conditio sine qua non of human and Christian formation in the Fraternity of CL, because within it, one lives an experience that embraces the whole person. As the author points out, this means that the Movement “is what comes before everything else; not as a value in itself… but as an historical, factual way, in which Christ’s mercy has moved us” (p 91). As a consequence, “the Fraternity must become the mentality that one then takes with him wherever he goes” (p 93).
What is striking in the pedagogy of the Movement of CL, and thus in the Fraternity, is the trust placed in the human person, in his freedom and his sense of responsibility. Fr Giussani writes, “The central idea of the Fraternity is that all the responsibility, all the initiative, lies with the person, who is an adult and is thus responsible for his own destiny” (p 141)…
In the life of the Christian, this formative process has very deep roots. Fr Giussani reiterates that “it is Baptism that makes us so mature as to be protagonists in the world of a new human reality” (p 36)…
For in it, like in a sprouting seed, is present all the genetic code of the Christian! Within the sphere of the Movement, another important factor comes in: charism. This is a gift and a particular impulse given by the Holy Spirit to the founders, and through them to many other people who, thanks to this charism, can live their vocation and Christian mission with a special intensity and a spiritual thrust well beyond the ordinary (cf. Christifideles laici, no 24). Today, the ecclesial movements are one of the most meaningful expressions of the charismatic dimension of the Church.
One of the risks run by not a few Christians of our time is the temptation of a flight from the world in order to seek refuge in a disembodied spiritualism. The Fraternity of CL dodges this danger because it is profoundly attached to man and the world. And it is precisely this that is the criterion for measuring the maturity of a Christian…
In the secularized society of our day, Christian lay people have become a minority that is often mute and intimidated by the clamor of the prevalent culture. Nonetheless, as a well-known journalist has noted, the fundamental problem for today’s Christians is not that of being a minority: yeast is a minority, but it makes the dough rise; salt is a minority, but it flavors the food. The problem is rather that they are becoming increasingly insignificant in the world, “useless,” because of their inertia and spiritual mediocrity–a yeast that no longer rises, a salt that no longer flavors. We have to wake up. We need to become aware of what we are by being Christians! In this sense, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger observes: “It is probable that facing us is a different era in the history of the Church, a new era in which Christianity will find itself in the situation of the mustard seed, in small, apparently non-influential groups, that nonetheless live intensely against evil and bring good into the world, that leave room for God. I see that a great movement of this type is already going on…, there are strong ways of living the faith, which enliven people and give them vitality and joy, a presence of faith, therefore, that means something for the world” (The Salt of the Earth, p 18). The life of the Fraternity of CL and the life of so many other ecclesial movements confirm this diagnosis, and as John Paul II says, they continue to be “a reason for hope for the Church and for men” in our time.