A Present Ideal, the Place of Hope

Presented in Rome on June 28th in the Foreign Press Room, the program for Meeting 2000, scheduled for August 20th to 26th in Rimini, Italy. Meetings, exhibitions, entertainment for a week not to be missed. Remarks by Giancarlo Cesana during the press conference

2000 years: an ideal without end. The title of the next Meeting, which will take place during the Holy Year, is centered on the figure of Christ, because the ideal without end is Christ. As everyone can easily see, it makes no sense to speak of the Jubilee–even if it is spoken of extensively and in many senses–without referring to the Incarnation, because we are celebrating the 2,000 years that have passed since the birth of Jesus.
When we say, “ideal,” we use a word that is rather unusual today. It is very rare, in fact, to hear people say that they are acting for an ideal, especially among young people. Certainly it was more frequent when I was twenty years old. For us now, the word “ideal” is a whole new area for exploration, because the ideal is just the opposite of ideology.
Ideal is an adjective that is also a noun: we speak of the ideal husband, the ideal wife, the ideal job. We speak of something that exists in history, but that, in a surprising way, fulfills the desire that we have inside us. Thus when we speak of ideal, we are talking about something that is not above the clouds, but is right here in everyday reality and for this reason fulfills, contributes to fulfilling, what we expect for our personal good and destiny. An ideal factor is something that breaks through history, that is to say, one that is able to respond to man’s needs not only in terms of expediency, opportunity, but in the terms that man’s desire is seeking. And man’s desire seeks the Infinite. When a person is born, he cries, he is hungry; he is not born satisfied, and nothing is capable of truly and completely fulfilling his desire.
One of the most dramatic aspects of today’s society is that the structure of power reduces man’s desire, making him incapable of totally involving himself in what he seeks, which is the Infinite. Thus it is likely that one lives under someone else’s mastery, because if the Infinite–God or truth–does not exist, there is nothing to live for, nothing which makes life worth living in freedom, since the oppressive weight of those in charge can easily become heavy and final.
The Meeting makes the figure of Christ the center of focus as a historical fact that is present, that responds to what man’s desire is, the desire felt by us who are men like everyone else, and that puts us in the best condition for approaching all of reality. From this point of view, the Meeting is an impressive documentation of openness to all of reality in the widest terms, because it is interested in politics, religions (not only Catholicism), and culture. It is interested also in all the aspects that are crucial ones within the horizon of human experience.
Two central moments of this next Meeting will be Tuesday, August 22nd, and Friday, August 25th, when Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, Archbishop of Bologna, and Monsignor Angelo Scola, Rector of the Pontificia Università Lateranense, will speak, respectively, on just this theme and title of the Meeting.
 

By EMILIA GUARNIERI
The opening remarks at the inauguration of the exhibition

“Peter and Paul. History, Cult, Memory in the Early Centuries” is an exhibition that the Meeting has prepared on the occasion of this great Jubilee Year, in collaboration with the Vatican Museums. For us it is an event of extraordinary importance, which the presence of authorities here today and the messages of greeting and good will that have reached us in recent days confirm and emphasize.
We enthusiastically and gratefully accepted the invitation extended to us by the Pontifical Council for the Laity to organize here in the heart of the Jubilee City, in the heart of this Rome of the Year 2000, an event which is particularly close to our hearts, because it is an exhibition dedicated to two great figures, captured in a particularly significant moment of their human and Christian experience: their arrival in Rome. This underlines the centrality of Rome both today and at the time that Peter and Paul arrived here, consolidating definitively the city’s position of caput mundi. The exhibition today underlines the great strength, the profound Christian determination of these two personages.
This is a moving display of relics… but the relics are here because there have been saints, and there were saints because a great presence came into their lives and affected it in such a profound and radical way that it made their faith decisive and determined all the way to the point of martyrdom, and their life capable of judgment of all of reality, capable of embracing, giving value to, judging, and keeping what was best of everything that their experience happened to encounter.
The exhibition that we inaugurate today is thus a great testimony of faith and of that capacity for culture that the Christian faith has had from its origins.
These are, briefly, the reasons for which this exhibition on Peter and Paul is particularly dear to us and is profoundly rooted in the intentions of this year’s Meeting.