The Flesh of the Mystery

26,000 adults in Rimini and others connected via satellite for the Fraternity Retreat. In the testimony of an attending journalist, the astounding recurrence of an encounter. As always, unpredictable

by GIANCARLO GIOJELLI

Giorgio Feliciani had not been talking for very long. For almost twenty years it has fallen to him to present the annual financial report of the Fraternity. The 26,000 people gathered together in the large space of the fairgrounds were listening, maybe feeling a bit tired, maybe not paying much attention. Each one felt some discomfort at hearing a discussion of the use of the common fund, because freedom has a slightly harder time when the purse is involved; this is human, it has always been like this. Nobody judges anybody, but each one sooner or later reflects. And the Fraternity account compels each person, at least for an instant, to draw up a small personal balance sheet. This moment could pass like this and bring the Retreat to a close like always, before the announcements and the final singing. Some were already getting ready to go; for many the road home would be a long one. They came from all over Italy to be there in Rimini. Like always, like every year. Now the long stretch awaited them on the wide road in front of the fairgrounds, which they traversed quickly to reach their buses and cars as people crowded there in the street, many friends meeting and hugging each other, seeing each other again maybe after years, and there is never enough time to greet everybody. It was time to go home, back to the children, back to work the next day.
Then, suddenly: “Sorry, but Father Giussani is talking to us…”
Giorgio hinted at a smile, but his image disappeared from the screen, and hearts opened up and the eyes of many widened as they watched him talk.
“We have been talking to each other for our whole lives…”

The voice of certainty
The screen transmitted the image of Father Giussani, a bit out of focus in the video-conference hookup which was not perfectly sharp, and his voice echoed in the hall hoarser than usual. But nobody felt tired or had their minds on other things. All fell silent, and gratefully fixed their gaze on him: watching him speak and hearing his voice was what they had been waiting for during these days.
“I am not worthy of what you are doing for me… every day my wonder grows at what God does…”
Each of the 26,000 people there felt that same impulse of wonder and looked at himself or herself in a different way; once again they looked at themselves in a different way. Giussani’s voice echoed in the hearts of those present just as many years ago a voice echoed in the house in Capernaum, and Levi, counting money, had looked up: “You,” the man had said.
“I?”
“You!”
Since the moment that You had entered his life, he never again said “I” in the same way as before. His name was changed and his life was changed, and his friends and history and all the world were changed by that You that had made him say, maybe for the first time, “I.”
Each of the 26,000 there in Rimini had discovered himself to be an “I” who is a protagonist of history and the destiny of the world. And perhaps for the first time he had looked at himself without pride or pretense, but only with wonder and an immense tenderness because it was interwoven with that great infinite tenderness that had brought him to this meeting, to this moment in time in which the echo resounds of that voice.
Each of the 26,000 had come to Rimini by some mysterious path.
Each road had been marked off by the initiative of Christ, of One who is certainly more inventive than man can imagine, more surprising than any expectation, capable of works and initiative; a man rich in initiative. This is the first impression noted in the profane notebook of a journalist: a surprising initiative of God.

From all over the world
Many, many people had arrived there from all over the world and many, many people were gathered together all over the world: they were listening in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Luxembourg, Holland, Poland, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, and Hungary. His words were echoing in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic, the United States, Venezuela, Cameroon, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda, Kazakhstan, Japan, and Lebanon.
Whoever imagined it? Who could have imagined it?
Different people, different histories, different languages, different cultures and mentalities: what do all these people have in common? What can they have in common?
There is something that, from the three steps leading to the entrance of a high school in Milan, has crossed seas and continents: the reply to the unruly objection of a young high school student, for whom faith and reason were not compatible, has involved thousands and thousands of lives. And each of these lives has felt called–has personally been called. Each one in a different way: For some, for many, the occasion of that first encounter was a happy one, a pleasure to remember. For others it was dreadful, like the death of a child. There is something that remained stuck to each one, and the echo of that “You!” resonates through space and time.

The goodness of the path
For two days the Retreat accompanied the reflections of each one there; the authority of the Church had come to confirm the goodness of the path inscribed in the firmament by stars called Mary, Peter, John, and Paul. Charism and Institution. For two days, the 26,000–with many others gathered together all over the world–listened to the symphony of music and songs and words that was born of the question and the desire for an answer. The same question that the young people at Berchet High School in Milan had heard from that priest: What is man?
And then that same urgency became almost an objection: If there is an answer, how can he know it?
But there were no question marks in the theme of the Retreat: “What man is and how he can come to know it.” This is the promise of an answer, not the enigmatic subjectivity of a question that remains desperately unsolved.
The answer is born in the flesh of a history and a companionship: twenty-six thousand stories, twenty-six thousand persons, twenty-six thousand times an “I” discovered in a “you,” in a vocation that is unrepeatable and incredibly personal.
There is something almost incredible in each person’s story. Almost, because each one was there, and it is impossible to deny that one is there when he is right there; you can touch and hear and listen to him. And he can tell his story and testify.
“In our relationships, what is missing is the memory of Christ,” Giancarlo Cesana had said, quoting Father Giussani. That harsh judgment, many said, was a shock. It was shocking when Father Giussani pointed to that moment in Jerusalem when Judas went out of the room where Jesus was, and it was already night. The darkness surrounding the Upper Room is not unknown. Darkness: everyone knows it very well. Everyone, at least once in his life, has encountered it.

Words and music
“But we move forward through our life by means of a confidence that burns up all our fears: hope for us is a certainty.”
Such certainty is passed on without calculation, beyond all imagining. Father Giussani recalled two 16-year-old girls who, years ago, wrote words and music that express the voice of everyone: one poor voice. The poor voice that every morning reawakens the sleeping conscience and asks for eternity in the fleetingness of circumstances. The songs and the thought of that night in Jerusalem accompany Father Giussani’s words. Those songs that everyone knows well, that many have known for decades.
How can a man hope, who holds everything in his hands but does not have forgiveness?
Judas goes out into the darkness. Each one feels the siege of that darkness reinforced by his own ill-doing. Each one hears the voice of Father Giussani like the promise of a fulfillment; in the halls of the fairgrounds the 26,000 people remain silent when they hear those words which read into the hearts of each one.
“Someone is needed who will free us from evil.”
And each one looks at the others with a more attentive gaze when Father Giussani recalls what companionship is made of: “The mystery became a tangible presence, flesh of our flesh.”

Between Ferrari and Referendum
In that instant, the miracle recurs of that surge of emotion that finds the heart convinced and happy. The encounter is absorbed, and there is something of the miraculous also in the silent, orderly exit of 26,000 people, who carry in their flesh the memory of that encounter, who are the memory of that encounter. Each one was called and sent out to be a part of the Glory of Christ; each one a protagonist of the destiny of the world and of history, each one a protagonist of the Glory of Christ. And this is the memory that they took away with them from the great spaces of the Fiera di Rimini, along the avenue that goes down to the sea or up to the superhighway, and then away, on the hot roads of this Sunday which tomorrow the newspapers would celebrate as the day of Ferrari and the Referendum, because this too had happened. Perhaps not many were aware of that little people gathered together in Rimini, because these are not people who make a lot of noise, they are not people who draw a lot of attention to themselves. But they are people who are there, and everything in the lives of these people who were leaving Rimini in that moment carries into the world a bit of Destiny; they are not better people than others, but they are people who know how to ask and beg that the breath of life not come to an end.