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Unity, the Law of Knowledge

Notes from the lesson and synthesis given by Julián Carrón at the International Assembly of CL Leaders. La Thuile, August 26-30, 2000

1. Event and ideology

Yesterday, Father Pino defined the context in which we are all called to live by two factors. On one hand, the first factor is the evidence of positivity and the wonder at the work God is doing in our lives (the World Youth Day, the Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples, and the various CL vacations were mentioned, for examples). Father Giussani said a month ago on Memores Domini Profession Day1 that God made man is the true subject of everything that happens among us. Commenting on the song Jesu dulcis memoria, he said, “The true subject of what we are doing now (the Professions) is His sweet Presence.”
The second factor is the influence of ideology. Father Giussani’s emphasis on the dangers of ideology in his interview with Panorama has struck everyone, because we all thought that ideologies were dead and gone. The presence of ideology has been documented in many ways. In the newspapers’ reactions to the event of the Meeting, for example, this ideology took the form of a reduction of reality, of what had happened there, to their own measure.
Now, the ideological context in which we are immersed influences us more than we realize. I became aware of this recently, at the Professions. In what does ideology consist? Hannah Arendt says, “Ideologies perform their task so well that they protect one from every experience.”2 Those in power–as we were saying yesterday–cannot prevent the beginning, the event, but they can attempt, an instant later, to abort it, to block what has happened, pulling us away from it. The real arouses in us a wonder that binds us. Ideology “protects” us from this experience, blocks it and pulls us away from it; thus, our thoughts go on by themselves, detached from any experience. “Ideologies,” Arendt further states, “never deal with the miracle of being.”3 Ideological thought becomes independent of every experience, therefore it cannot communicate anything new, not even if this is something that has just occurred.
Here freedom also enters the picture, because this detachment from the event is not simply a question of frailty; this exists, but it’s not the important thing. What matters is that we, on so many occasions, act in connivance with this frailty and detach ourselves from what is happening. We heard this last year, when Teresina recounted her experience working in America. She said she was completely influenced by everyone’s conception of work, and talking to Father Giussani she had realized this. So she had asked herself, “How can it be that I, who have been in the Movement for so many years, participating in Memores Domini and living a vocation like this, can give in to the prevailing mentality?” And Father Giussani had immediately swept the problem away: “This is not important. What is important is not that you, in your frailty, end up thinking the way everyone thinks. What matters is that when someone tells you the truth, you have the simplicity to adhere to it.” It is not a question of being heroes, but of living this simplicity in which freedom comes into play, in the first instant when the event arouses wonder in us. Therefore, an instant later, freedom can block the event.
The fact that this ideology influences us, that it does not define only what surrounds us, was Father Giussani’s judgment. He himself said, “The true subject of what happens among us is His Presence,” and at the same time, “It is the memory of Jesus that is still missing in the relationship between us.”4 How can these two things be brought together?
It is not that Christ is not the true subject of what is happening among us, but that we lack the memory of Christ; the problem is not that Christ is not present, but that we do not realize it. This is precisely how ideology influences us.
“The true subject of what is happening among us here–in front of 103 newly professed [Memores Domini]–is His sweet Presence.” Why does Father Giussani say this? Because it is true that today, in the situation, in the context in which we live, the fact that 103 normal adults dedicate their lives to Christ is something from another world. The only thorough explanation for this fact that we were all there to see, the only exhaustive explanation is His sweet Presence. Because without this Presence, which arouses an attraction that draws the person and his freedom all the way to a total devotion of his life to Christ, the fact that we were all there to see this would not have happened. Father Giussani is not a visionary; he saw the things that were there, but that not all of us saw. So much so that all of us who were there were struck by this phrase, to the point that it became the judgment for the development of the Memores Domini Retreat this summer: “The true subject at work among us is His sweet Presence.”
Let’s stop a minute to understand what has happened. We all went there just as we were, determined by our context, with our minds on other things, with our ideology, without being able to see what was happening. Someone, not “we don’t know who,” but someone, a human presence who has a name, Father Luigi Giussani, opened our eyes for us, making us like children, so that we could see and recognize Christ’s sweet Presence. The result this aroused in me was that I felt a yearning desire to love this sweet Presence, and since I have felt this, it won’t go out of my mind. The influence that Father Giussani’s presence has had on me is that it brought my gaze to bear on that Presence: it made me focus on, fix my eyes on that sweet Presence.
But this man who has this effect on me, who has the effect of overcoming ideology, of counteracting the reduced range of my gaze, what is his source? Where does this Father Giussani come from? Was he born by chance? If I am fair, looking into the depths of his humanity, I cannot get to the bottom of it without saying, “Jesus.” Jesus is the origin of that presence which is able to open my eyes, to overcome ideology, to overcome this reduction that I exercise even toward myself. That presence is a person in history who cannot be explained completely without saying “the” name: Jesus. It is he, Giussani, who has known how to see everything that was taking place, that is, that the true subject of what we all were seeing was His sweet Presence. Through the historical, real, fleshly presence of Father Giussani, we have participated in Christ’s triumph over ideology, not in the next world, but in this one, today. For this reason, Father Giussani says that Christianity did not arise as a religion, but sprang forth as a potent love for the human in the concreteness of the person who bears it. A passion for the human: this is Christianity.
All of us, if we reflect for an instant, can find evidence in ourselves of the influence of ideology and, at the same time, of this event; we participate in an event that frees the person from ideology. Without the Christian event, without an event like this, there is nothing to be done. Ideology triumphs everywhere, not because people are evil, but because no one can go back to his original position by his own strength alone. If there is not an event, an historical presence that awakens an attraction so powerful as to open our eyes, to make us stick to His presence, then there is nothing to be done; it is the triumph of ideology. We can protest all we want, but this is the way it is.
The outcome of this triumph of ideology is that, inexorably, a factor of reality takes the place of Mystery, as Father Giussani said in his interview with Panorama: money, a woman, put whatever you want, each one according to his own frailty, his own temperament, his own weakness. The triumph of materialism means turning a particular into an absolute. This factor “strikes the feelings and criteria of human beings, shaping their mentality to the point that it becomes more and more a universal prejudice.”5 A particular factor becomes a preconception, an ideology, and, above all, a mentality.
If it is an event that overcomes ideology, then we can understand well what Father Giussani said at the close of the [CL] National Council a few months ago: “The only word which can show clearly the path that must be followed is the word event. The challenge is that something has happened in the world that takes the words ‘Christian event’ to their true value, their synthetic and great value. The challenge is an event, a fact, a case, we would say. It is not a matter of ‘building up unity,’ but of welcoming each other and welcoming something: what has happened and what happens. What is happening is what has happened.” But we cannot say this without going all the way to the heart of the matter. “What happens is what has happened. For it bears a name, a name that is the name, the name of the Lord: Jesus. May we see and feel, think, see and perceive in this word that everything that Jesus came to bring to the world comes together as one!”6 The only thing that clears the path (we have learned from our own experience) is the word event not an analysis, but an event.

2. Jesus, a factor of present reality

Think of the influence of ideology on us, here, in these days: who of us in these days has been “compelled”–hearing a song, being together, in an encounter–to say Jesus’ name? Not “spiritualistically,” in certain moments that we can call “religious,” but in our contact with reality, in what was happening in the present. Since this does not happen, then the spiritualistic way is the only one left: we say, “Jesus,” in a spiritualistic, sentimental manner.
This lack of acknowledgment of the true subject, of His sweet Presence in reality, leads us inexorably to say, “Jesus,” detached from reality. It leads us to think that we are the ones who generate Him by saying, “You.” And if this You, this Christ, is only a spiritualistic or sentimental way of speaking, it does not have the capacity to become a secure point of support in life, because something that is virtual cannot be a point of support. We can understand why so often there are people among us who seem to be governed, in the final analysis, by fear, and we can understand why at times our hope is so frail–this true, real point is missing, onto which to lean all of one’s life.
I was struck this summer, at the Memores Domini Retreat, by the observation one person made: “Up to a certain time I thought that Jesus existed because I said, ‘You.’” It is as though, since we do not habitually acknowledge Him in reality, we had to generate His presence by saying, ‘You.’ This is, to my mind, the influence of the modern mentality, which says that reality is a creation of the ‘I.’ From this comes the lack of certainty. This is to say: In place of a certainty to be reached following the path of knowledge–that is, because we have acknowledged, at the base of reality, what is there, His sweet Presence, the true subject of action–we substitute an energy of our own, and for this reason frailty prevails everywhere, because we all know our own frailty very well. We can become aware of this by visiting a family. As soon as one sees the children, he can understand what is going on there. If the children are sure of their parents’ love, they move about freely, they feel at home. When, instead, they look at you from a distance, and don’t move, as though they were blocked, you know that something is wrong, because their lack of security leads them to try to earn their parents’ love by what they do, and if by chance they make a mistake, they are in trouble. In the same way, since we are not sure, we try to attain this security through ethics.
The person I was quoting concluded, “What I discovered was that ‘He exists, therefore I can say, You.’” He exists, therefore it is not our efforts that create His Presence; they are an acknowledgment. If we are the ones who have to create this Presence, then we are never sure.
For this reason, Father Giussani, in a book from his “Quasi Tischreden” series, says that “for every Christian, in every battle there is a certainty. This certainty can be there as a point outside of what you are doing, beyond what you are doing. Whatever confusion, whatever thing does not go well, it cannot take this certainty away from you, because the point of certainty lies elsewhere. Therefore, the winning point in a battle is not in what you do [in saying, “You,” or in what you do with your actions], but in what you have and that is something other than you, which you have already thanked and embraced and kissed and has made you glad so many other times.”7 Who is this “what you have and that is something other than you” if not His sweet Presence? Therefore, “the only vision, beyond your visions, that can give you security and thus tranquility and peace is Jesus. But [watch out!] not Jesus as a picture or image or object of piety [generated by saying, “You”], like an altar to which you go to raise your prayers on bended knee; Jesus as a factor of present reality.”8 This is the point! If Jesus is not a factor of present reality, it is a case only of pure spiritualism, and this cannot give you security. This is the problem.
We need this secure point of support. But since this point that can give us security becomes solely an object of piety and is not acknowledged as a factor of reality, then it cannot take away our fear and give us security. “Because if we analyzed present reality, if 99% of people analyzed the factors of what they are doing, they would get all the way to the bottom of their list without naming Jesus.”
During the Movement’s vacation in Spain, we invited our friend Dado Peluso, who now lives in Peru, to give his witness. Afterwards, we asked, “What did you think?” and everyone replied, “He was great! Fantastic! Wonderful!” That’s all. At the most, someone picked up on a phrase, a judgment. But if you stop with this, what happens? Who is this man who spoke? Where is he coming from? Where was he born? Someone doesn’t go to Amazonia or Peru just like that, without a reason! It is very hard to find someone who, in front of such an impressive testimony, says Jesus’ name, tells the story that made him what he is to the point of saying His name. Therefore, the vacation comes to an end, and since it was not an occasion to see, to acknowledge His Presence and become more certain of it, when one returns home he is alone once again, with his own fears and uncertainties.
“Ninety-nine percent would get all the way to the end of their list without naming Jesus. Instead, it is impossible for us not to reach the point of having to affirm Jesus, to affirm Him as a factor of present reality. Jesus is present, just as Coki is present, just as Mandy is present when she sings.” But who, when he hears singing like we have heard, says–is forced to say–Jesus? At the most he says, the singing is beautiful. “What makes us happy,” Father Giussani continues, “is not Mandy as such, but what she sings; it is the witness she gives, it is what she is testifying to.”
Jesus can be the winning point only if He is a factor of reality and not solely an object of piety. Be careful, there is no middle way: if He is not a factor of reality, we pronounce His name as an object of piety. We can say it a thousand times a day, but nothing will happen to us.

3. Learning to watch

Then the challenge “is to welcome what has happened and what happens.” How can it be that one of us, who sees these things, can still say, “It’s a very nice promise, but life is a big cheat,” as we have heard some say? There are two possibilities: “the event no longer exists” or, “our difficulty is the difficulty we have in acknowledging it to be present as a factor of reality.”
The objection, “the event no longer exists,” can be immediately answered, because in these days, between the World Youth Day, the Meeting, and what we are living now, it is all too evident that we are not the ones who are doing all these things. It is absolutely clear that the event continues and endures in history, not as an abstract object of faith, an article of theology, but as our own experience. It is too obvious that the event endures in history! Then, if it lasts, the only problem is that we have difficulty in acknowledging it–this is the influence that ideology has on us. For this reason, Father Giussani has said that the challenge is to welcome what happens, what happens and has happened, which bears a name: Jesus. To help one another to welcome what happens is the educational aim of the Movement. “In our Movement, the educational effort hinges precisely on the way in which we can today reach certainty about Christ, so as to develop the great Christian certainty in our own awareness, so that all of our life, with all its positive aspirations, with a clearer and clearer awareness of our own weakness, incapacity, or evil, may be rooted in the Mystery of Christ.”9
The goal is to reach certainty about Christ, within one’s own weakness. Father Giussani does not say that we have to overcome our own weakness, but that “within” our own weakness we can be certain. A child can be sure of his mother’s love, even if he is as fragile as a flower. Then, how can we reach this certainty about Christ as an object of reality, as a factor of reality, today? Father Giussani has traveled this path in his book L’attrattiva Gesù [The Attraction that is Jesus]. A person asks him the question, “Speaking amongst ourselves, it emerged that the most important thing is to watch Jesus. I wanted to know: what does this mean for you?” He answers, “Acknowledging Jesus as the subject who is present, in whom the Mystery that makes all things is made flesh and becomes event, and through whom It announces forgiveness, acknowledging this Jesus, is either something abstract, an abstract [meaning, sentimental, devotional, theoretical, spiritualistic, written on a tombstone, etc.] word, or, is something that is an event; there is a subject. ‘I drink.’ I drink, there is a subject who drinks. ‘I forgive.’ I forgive, there is a subject that forgives! Recognize means ‘become aware of,’ that is, encounter. The most complete word–in the sense that it summarizes all the possible verbs that can be used to indicate the fact of an encounter–is the word ‘watch.’ It is by watching that you see someone forgive, not just by running into him; it is by watching that you see someone do a miracle, not just by meeting him on your way.”10
Remember that the disciples reached certainty about Him through two conditions: living together over time, and attention to signs–that is, watching what happened with that Presence. But we, who do not have His Presence here among us, what should we watch, what real thing should we watch? “Watch one who forgives, who performs miracles; watch one in whom the Mystery becomes event. It is through the reality of men that He made to be like Him [it is in the midst of those that He made like Him] that miracles occur. By His strength He makes like Him the men who acknowledge Him, so that the men who acknowledge Him form a unit; they are precisely His visible aspect, His body.” What should we ourselves watch here, in these days? The unity and the miracles that happen in this unity. Watch, not imagine–watch, watch! Like the disciples watched His humanity and the miracles that occurred by being with Him.
So then, how do we watch Him? “It is we, or better, it is our unity. The image of His presence is our unity; it is not Tom, Dick, or Harry among us, but is our unity.” We can see our unity without saying His name, once again taking for granted that we are all here but no one acknowledges why. If one stops a minute and says, “Why are we all here? All of us who are here, why are we here?” he cannot get to the bottom of the matter without saying His name.
“Then it is by participating in and living our unity that one changes, that is to say, that one can watch Him, touch Him, hear Him, see Him, and finally, stay there watching Him, therefore acknowledging Him. It is only by living our companionship that one can recognize Him.” This is why the title of our meeting is “Unity, the law of knowledge.” It is only by participating in this unity that one can acknowledge His presence and all that He is. Within this word one sees and feels everything that Jesus came to bring to the earth coming together as one.
“Then, how does one watch Him? One watches Him by watching the endurance of His person in time and space, that is, the memory of Him. We call memory [careful!] the tangible, sensible, visible content of a thing that has begun in the past and is still lasting today.”11 Hardly just an object of piety, hardly just spiritualism, hardly just materialism! The Sign and the Mystery coincide.

4. A man who is present

Let’s take a further step. I refer to another page from The Attraction that is Jesus. “It seems to me that they are not seeking Christ.” Father Giussani visits a house of Memores Domini, they sing a song, and he comments–let’s identify with him, in order to see how it happens with him, how he manages to acknowledge all of reality in a way that overcomes ideology, because it is only by identifying with him that we can begin to do this–“It is really very beautiful both as music and the way it was sung, and as a human feeling of friendship and fraternity and companionship in an adventure. And yet, if things could be listed the way I just listed them and that was all, and something else were taken for granted–accepted and acknowledged (let’s understand each other) but taken for granted–and it were not His name produced by an emphasis of dialogue, of a desire to be heard, a desire to hear Him; if He did not have a personality that at a certain point is autonomous, if He did not have a face that is ultimately unique [it is not the totality of the company, no!], whose features are unmistakable…,”12 then we would remain on the threshold, at the level of appearances. For this reason, we can listen to beautiful songs without encountering this personality that is at a certain point autonomous, with unique and unmistakable characteristics. These songs are not enough, they are not sufficient to fill the heart with joy, to become a secure point of support for life. If music, singing, and human feelings of friendship become detached from His unmistakable face, they are not enough for the heart.
“But what prevails [among us, so many times] is what should be a temporary analogical foretaste, an unsatisfied analogical approximation.” We stop there. “Let’s watch out, because Jesus among us can be the origin of all the human world [good company, great friends, valuable initiatives, songs, concern for each other], full of joy and friendships, of formally unexceptionable reasons and formally–but also materially–concrete help, and yet He could be reduced to being ‘the portrait of a beautiful woman carved on her own tomb.’ (Leopardi) If Jesus came here in silence and sat on a chair over there, and at a certain point we all became aware of Him, I don’t know how many would feel a truly spontaneous affection, even while preserving a certain self-awareness. ‘What can man desire more powerfully than the truth?’ What is the truth? [What is this thing that our heart desires, in such a way as to fill our life with hope?] A man who is present, a man who is present: He cannot be impoverished or diluted by the beautiful and glad appearance of a company of faces that should be a sign that is a clue to Him!”13
Make no mistake; the faces are only a sketchy sign of His sweet Presence. That is, seeing what we see among us, if we do not stop at appearances, we cannot get to the end without saying His name. So then, everything that we are living, all the things that document His Presence, are part of the path to certainty in life. Otherwise everything that happens before us is not part of the path of certainty. Think of all those who have children: What if all the enormous amount of attention those mothers pay to their children did not become a path to a greater affection, to a greater certainty?! How could a child reach this certainty, if it did not come about through what is real, through the gestures of his mother? He would never get there.
But when one follows with simplicity, like a child, then it is easy, it is simple. The child does not detach his gestures from their origin, from the subject who enacts them, and thus he becomes ever more certain; one can see from the way he moves that his life is determined by this certainty. Thus in us, as soon as we move, one can see if our life is determined by this certainty or not.
“Christ’s presence in the world is the miracle of our company. But this is the emergent clue of a sign that ‘sinks where it is most true,’ or better, it is the visible clue of a sign that as to all the rest drowns in the common meaning, for all the rest it drowns in the common naturalness. For this reason, the more intensely one loves, it is not a matter of absorbing the weight of our friendship [to arrive at this You immediately, do we have to pass over things, friendship, companionship, etc.? No!], but it is like a kind of exasperated tension [through what we see]–of everything that I have named and that makes up our company–to cry out Your name, oh Christ.”14 It is not a going outside of reality to reach His name (this is the temptation), but it is an exasperated tension: watching the faces of friends, listening to songs, looking at the mountains, one cannot help shouting His name before he’s finished with it.
To do this, one understands that he needs–as I recounted earlier, speaking of being present at the Professions–someone who witnesses to Him, like Father Giussani. But what is this testimony? Someone who recognizes His Presence. Not to substitute for us, but so that we can become more ourselves, in order to see reality as it is, without reduction.
The challenge for us, then, is this recognition; we must give each other a hand, help each other toward this acknowledgment, because the first basic change is to recognize, to acknowledge that the Mystery is present and has an unmistakable face.
The serious problem, the biggest problem that exists (it is the simplest of all, but it the biggest one that exists) is to acknowledge. Acknowledging is an act of freedom, and we all know the fragility of our freedom. Here, again, ideology can be an influence that blocks it. How? By the stumbling block of our own limitations.
Our limitation can become an alibi (“since I am like this…”) or can become an opportunity, a stepping stone, as Father Giussani said, “By an inexorable factor, by the imponderable factor of His Presence, everything can become a stepping stone, a passageway for acknowledging His Presence.”
“But I am still like this, I am as impertinent as before. When will I be different, when will I feel different?” And he answers, “It is in God’s plan that I change according to a certain time; our change is in God’s plan. So then, does one stand there with his hands in his pockets, asleep, waiting for the time, without doing anything? No, he cries out, he entreats, and not only does he cry, but he belongs, that is, he organizes his life in accordance with the company, in keeping with the locus that has awakened in him the promise of life.”15
We hear so often a way of talking about the entreaty that is like saying, “I pray because there is nothing else that can be done.” Before the encounter with Christ, this is the only thing that man can do: cry out. But after the encounter, one cannot cry out without belonging, without organizing his life in keeping with what he has encountered. Before they met Jesus, the disciples could only cry out. Then, after they had met Him, they could go look for Him. We can organize our lives according to what is told us, because all the directions–the rule, as we call it–of our belonging are the first way of following. Our freedom is brought into play, therefore, above all in entreaty, and one who truly entreats follows–he organizes his life in accordance with that to which he belongs.
If we want to watch in wonderment, in the present, the triumph of Christ over ideology, so that our humanity may become truly great, truly a new protagonist in history, so as to sustain the hope of all men as well as our own, we must be like children and follow the presence that has been given to us for achieving it, which is our charism that has a name: Father Luigi Giussani.

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Synthesis

1. Event

Let’s look together at what we have lived in these days. It is impossible not to acknowledge that something has happened among us. The only fully adequate word is event. We know that something has happened because of the change in us; each of us can find evidence of this, can look at it in his own life. One has to look at it, not only listen to me and then repeat the contents of your notes to the others, but look, look at what has happened in us, that has made us different.
While I was preparing this summation yesterday, speaking with some of you, I asked, “What has happened to you in these days?” “I am returning home more certain,” one said; and another, “They have made me want to know Jesus better,” or, “We have seen that in this way life is more of a life.” Each one can use the expression that is best suited to what has happened, but it can all be summed up in a change, a change in ourselves.
Why are we going home different? What happened? We go home different from how we came (we all have to admit it) because in these days we have come up against an event that is alive, that cannot be reduced, because of our impact with a difference that is irreducible. Each one of us came here in a different situation (a mood, a particular moment we are going through), but the impact with this irreducible event has changed us, has begun to change us. Why is this event irreducible? Because it is something other than us that has the force to penetrate us with something new.
A friend said to me, “It’s been a long time since I have anticipated an assembly so much. For a long time nothing has been happening; it was as though I was stalled.” There were a lot of comments like this. We see, wonderingly, how things are moving in us again, things that at times we were already beginning to think were blocked forever, maybe even with a glimmer of skepticism.
In front of what has happened, wonder can only grow into a greater wonder than what we felt at the beginning. We are part of an event that is so irreducible that when all the rest falls away, this event lasts in time, in this way demonstrating its truth; it makes us start over again, it causes a new beginning to take place in us. It is the new occurrence of the beginning. This is the strength of the event in which we are taking part, of the event of Christ among us.
It is an event that arouses hope in us. “In order to hope,” said Péguy, “one has to have received a great grace.”16 This is why we continue to hope. So many of our contemporaries no longer hope. The fact that we still have this hope seems not to surprise us, at times; but, for so many around us, this hope ran out a long time ago.
Even if we have seen this change only in others, it indicates that there is something, or better, Someone at work among us, who is also our hope. Hope for us, says Father Giussani, is a certainty, a certainty for the future: because of what we have seen at work among us, we can return home more certain.
What is the basis for this hope? The basis for this hope is the One who brings all this about. “The true subject of all this that we see with our eyes is His sweet Presence.” We are calm, we know no fear–He is among us, stronger than we are. He makes us look in a different way at everything that is missing, everything that still has to be changed, because we cannot get His Presence out of our eyes, we cannot look at ourselves any more without having His Presence in our eyes, His sweet Presence, unless we deny what we have seen.
Faith is the acknowledgment of this Presence at work among us, so that one feels like shouting, “Thank you, Christ, thank you because we have seen You in these days! Thank you, because without You everything becomes nothingness, everything is flat. Without Your hand at work among us, we would be at a stand-still, we would go back home just as we were before. Without You, without Your strength, without Your merciful embrace, without the appreciation for our personality that we have experienced in these days, what would happen to us, to me, to you?!” For this reason, we too can say, like the Samaritans in the town said to the woman who had made them meet Jesus, “Now we believe not because of what others say [the others who said to us at the beginning of these days, “There is a subject at work among us.”], but because of what we ourselves have seen.” And thus the certainty grows, the certainty of that sweet Presence.

2. Belonging

When one sees what has happened among us, he cannot help becoming more attached to this sweet Presence. Belonging to this Presence is, in a way, the result of knowing Him, and Him at work. This is because true knowledge is always an affective knowledge; if it is not affective, it is not even knowledge, so much so that–more than through an action of our own, a decision we have made–we surprise ourselves by being attached to this Presence. As Father Giussani describes in his very beautiful Introduction to The Attraction that is Jesus, “The initial wonder was a judgment which immediately became an attachment (like one who sees you on the northern hill of Bergamo and says, ‘What a pretty girl!’ and attaches himself to you). It was a judgment that was like a glue; a judgment that glued them.” A judgment; that is, feeling the blow of His Presence that draws along the whole of our sensibility, the whole of our affection. “It was not a sentimental attachment, it was not an emotional phenomenon. It was a phenomenon of reason, precisely a manifestation of that reason which attaches you to the person you have in front of you, in that it is a judgment of appreciation; looking at him, a marvel of appreciation grows in you that attaches you to him.”17
Friends, we are not the ones to decide to whom we belong. We do not decide what corresponds to our heart: we recognize it, we are surprised by it. An instant later we may deny it, but we remain His forever. Forever. All those who have encountered Him might go away, but they remain struck forever. It is an evidence that endures.
The company of all those who are attached to this Presence–of all those who cannot help saying, “I don’t know how, I don’t know how, Lord, but You know that I love You”–is called the Church. Belonging to this company of the Church, however this company may be, is born of an event, of an encounter from which springs forth the beginning of something new in me, of a perception and an adherence to myself that are different; the beginning of a new creation springs forth in me, a new creation that cannot be attributed to what I think and feel about myself.
It is in belonging to this company that our life changes. It is based on two conditions (I have already said this in the past few days):
1) Crying out, entreating this sweet Presence that we have already known, already loved, that has already begun to be familiar among us: “Come, Lord, come, be present, remove, start everything over again in me, so that everything, all the circumstances, all the occasions of life in every moment become steps toward You; come, Lord, so that everything may become a step in the itinerary toward You, in the adventure of being more Yours.”
2) Organizing your life in accordance with the company to which you belong. Not only crying out, but belonging. What does it mean to organize your life in keeping with the company to which you belong? It means to follow. Look at how we have lived here. Our gestures (the Angelus, School of Community, the proposals, the announcements, the songs, these readings, this music) are like a paradigm of what has to become normal life.
Organize, then, our lives in accordance with the company we have encountered. Imagine if in these days each of us had done whatever we pleased–nothing would have happened. If we, going home, do just what we please, then we shall say, “Nothing is happening any more.” It happens by belonging, it continues to happen by belonging, by organizing our lives according to what has happened to us. Don’t change your way of acting when you return home, as though only here you had to follow and then, returning home, you do whatever your fancy invents. There are only two paths: either you follow or you invent. If someone does not follow, his fancies prevail (even good fancies, to be sure!). But what has been made evident is that in whatever we think up to do, nothing happens.
So then, both these conditions are the same, because following is the first form of prayer. And in organizing our life in keeping with the company we have encountered, in belonging, as time goes by everything in our person changes.

3. Mission

Someone who has changed, by his very nature–because of the change, not because of what he does on the side–becomes a witness to Christ’s Presence. Mission arises from having been struck by this fact, by this event. This being struck by a fact is what makes us new creatures, what makes a changed “I,” and “when people meet you they realize,” says Father Giussani, “that you see in a different way: your nose and your mouth (because your mouth says words in an different way, it has a different tone, it carries a different emotion) are different, and others see this and ask, ‘How can you be like this?’ In the banality of this question lies all the mission that we can offer, lies the content of our mission.”18 How can you be like this? You cannot answer this very simple question without recounting a history and saying to whom you belong, without uttering His name. You must begin to recount a history that has reached all the way to you. I have come upon an event, a Presence, here and now, in real, unmistakable faces, and this history goes all the way back to “the Angel of the Lord brought the announcement to Mary.” It can’t stop any nearer to us. I am like this because I have encountered Jesus in the event of a presence, here and now.
Therefore, mission is witness. It is not doing things, not adding things, not the thing “after” what we already have to do. No! Father Giussani says, “Witness is proclaiming inexorably, by the very way we live [underline this: “by the very way we live”–work, affections, free time, money] One (with a capital letter), One who is there.” It is an event that lives in us, that is at work in us. To witness is to affirm His Presence inexorably, in such a way that if someone asks, “Who knows if He exists?,” Father Giussani says, “The fact that I am changed here forces you to say, ‘He exists,’ [and gives the reason], because all the reasons possible for the difference that I am, what is different in me, is something that comes from the presence of something Other.” You cannot explain this difference if you do not refer to something Other. Therefore, your testimony demonstrates His Presence, in the change which the life of the witness carries along with it.
For this reason, witness is anything but just doing things, because “doing things” is something anybody can do, but to bear His Presence, something has to have changed in us, His Presence has to be at work among us.
The first mission is among ourselves, the first charity is to our closest friends. The Lord has brought us together in order to accompany us, to make us companions on the road to Destiny. No one needs someone true to accompany him more than we do; not someone who repeats quotes to us (for heaven’s sake!), but someone who accompanies us, who enters into life with us. Similarly, the child, when he is afraid, doesn’t need for his mother to say to him, “There’s nothing there; don’t be afraid!” This does not relieve his fear. What takes his fear away, what truly accompanies him is his mother taking him in her arms and going into the dark room with him. Someone who goes with us where we are afraid to enter, going so far as to look at what we have never been able to look at. Since someone has looked at us like this, we have been able to look at certain things in life. Someone goes with us. This authoritativeness amongst us is what we need.
Mission is witness before others. And putting ourselves in front of everybody with what we have encountered (think of book presentations, think of the judgments of the Movement, of this company). Putting ourselves in front of everybody without taking our eyes off Jesus is part of the verification of what we have encountered, it is what makes us more certain of what we have encountered, which is so powerful that we can say it in front of everyone. Whoever does it, whoever does this, whoever makes a presentation, whoever succeeds in stating in front of everybody the judgment of the company to which he belongs, grows. He grows, even if there are no results that can be quantified; his “I” is increased, enlarged.
Father Giussani said to us at the beginning of these days, “We bear the hope of all.” Who, in front of something like this, does not feel the disparity between our frailty and our task? It is this disproportion that urges within us the prayer made by the Hebrews: “We shall not move from here, unless you come with us.”

Notes

1 In the Memores Domini experience, "Profession" is the commitment, for one's entire life, to adhere to the ideals which the Church has traditionally identified as leading to the fulfillment of true humanity, generated by the death and resurrection of Christ and continuously renewed in Baptism.
2 H. Arendt, Che cos’è la politica, Edizioni di comunità, Milan 1997, pp. 15-16 [quotation translated from the Italian].
3 Cf. Arendt, Le origini del totalitarismo, Edizioni di comunità, Milan 1996, pp. 642-644.
4 L. Giussani, “Unity, the Law of Knowledge,” in Traces, Vol. 2, No. 4, 2000, p. 5.
5 A. Sallusti, “Io, il Papa e questi milioni di giovani,” in Panorama, August 24, 2000, p. 10.
6 L. Giussani, “Event,” in Traces, Vol. 2, No. 7, 2000, p. 1.
7 L. Giussani, L’attrattiva Gesù, BUR, Milan 2000, p. 180.
8 Ibid., p. 182.
9 A. Sallusti, op. cit., p. 13.
10 L. Giussani, L’attrattiva Gesù, p. 239.
11 Ibid., p. 241.
12 Ibid., p. 148.
13 Ibid., p. 150-152.
14 Ibid., p. 153.
15 Ibid., p. 241-242.
16 C. Péguy, Lui è qui, BUR, Milan 1997, p. 289. [quotations translated from the Italian].
17 L. Giussani, L’attrattiva Gesù, p. IX.
18 Cf. ibid., p. 173-174.