LETTERS
EDITED BY PAOLA BERGAMINI



APURIMAC
Seduced by Mystery

An Augustinian missionary in Peru sent us this testimony, recalling our dear friend and mentor Enzo Piccinini, who died on May 26, 1999

This was one of those pieces of news that leave you motionless, wordless, no comments to make, only a great pain inside. It was like this with Enzo, after a meeting we had been at with Father Giussani, on a cold night in a Milanese winter. After that meeting we crossed paths. I was with an old friend of Fr. Giussani. Enzo greeted me with a question, "And who are you? This is the first time that I have seen you." "Pleased to meet you… and for me too, this is the first time I have seen you and listened to you: ball to center court, 2-1 for you." He smiled and shook my hand, and with no further ceremony took his leave, but not without first giving me a message: "I hope to see you again somewhere." I saw him again, but he never saw me. I was one of a crowd, just one of the many listening to his talk at the university students' meeting in Bologna. He said something that touched me inside, and that now I found again in the talk he gave the evening of December 12, 1998, during the Spiritual Exercises in Rimini in front of 8,000 CL university students: "I understood that the problem was simply this, that the unity of my personality was determined by something I carried with me inside and that had been with me ever since I was a boy and began playing soccer… something that characterized me: a need for happiness that nothing could erase, and that would always come out, maybe even as bitterness. I had understood even from then that the unity of your person begins with the fact that you put your heart into what you do, whatever you do, whether it is sitting in front of a computer or cleaning the stairs in an apartment building. Putting your heart into what you do means putting yourself, and putting your heart means putting into play that need for happiness that is invincible because it is part of our very essence, of our being." Since I have been here in Apurimac, more than once I have wondered if and why it is worth it, and I have never found a more exhaustive answer than the one Enzo indicated to me. It was and continues to be the "motive" of my being and my acting here. I feel that it is true and is the only thing that helps me to be true, even if sometimes the circumstances of life risk making me forget it. If I think that on that foggy evening of our first meeting in Milan when we had heard the "Boss" thundering against those who-in the name of the Diaconia, of service-become proud little dictators who want to dominate rather than serve, who get furious when, instead of serving, they feel they are not being served… then, my dear friend Enzo, with a certain amount of envy, but with the loyalty of a friend, I say to you, "Congratulations, you won the game. You reached the goal very quickly and, perhaps, for just this reason, the Lord called you earlier than foreseen (by us)." Yes, I really hope to see you again, but this time where and when will be for always.

Father Giovanni



KARAGANDA
Meeting a Friend

A student from the community of Karaganda wrote this letter to a friend who teaches Italian in the Kazakh university

Dearest Claudio: I read your letter, and I understood that I have a true friend. You know that in these treacherous present times, especially here, it is not easy to find true friends. I thank God that He allowed me to meet you. You know that I do not believe in God, because that is how my parents brought me up. But seeing you I start to believe. I thank you for coming here. If I had not met you, what would I have done? I would have gone on living without knowing anything about Christ. That is, I would not have had a true friend. I hope that you are able to do many wonderful things, that is to say, everything that you think and would like to do in the future.

Igor



RAVENNA
The Ways of the Lord

Throughout my whole life, people have said to me, "You have a strong character, that is why you are able to act like this." Now I know that this is not true, and for me it has been a liberation. An only child with sick parents, I have always faced problems head-on. I would pray and work hard, but the result was that one day I found myself alone in the house, shouting my rage to God: "What more do I have to do? Why me?" In all those years, I had not built anything. But something changed, because little by little my request to the Lord became, "Help me to face what you want to happen." I opened the door to God. Recently my son was sick, and for about twenty days my husband and I watched, helpless against his illness. I was really afraid, but I never felt alone, because the Lord made me feel His love and tenderness even stronger than ever. It was a confirmation of what I had intuited. Our trips to the hospital, the waiting, helped to make us truly understand that He chooses His own paths to come into our hearts. Now our son is well. The phrase that we hear often, "God is a Father, not a master, and sooner or later He answers," has become beautiful reality.

Carla



TUNIS
Going Back to Teaching

We publish here the letter sent to some Memores Domini friends in Milan

Dearest friends: I want to tell you that each of you has a place in my heart. As you well know, I have started teaching again after ten years; what a joke! I really didn't want to do it, but the Lord mixed the cards so well that one fine day I found myself with a full teaching load and the job of vice-principal. I am amazed at how easy it was for me to get back into this world, which I thought I had left for good. After four years, I have made close ties with many nuns and priests. Some of them are my friends, and I am beginning to talk about us, using concepts they can understand. People are hungry for what we say, they want to be regarded and respected the way we are. In these days I have been thinking about myself when I began, 16 years ago: how faithful and confident the Lord has been-He never abandoned me! A few days ago we went to pray at the Roman amphitheater where Saints Felicity and Perpetua died. The place is badly kept up. In the chapel where they were probably martyred there is only dirt and ruin; you can't go in but have to look at it through a gate. What poverty, I thought, but in this poverty there is a visible richness. They can knock you down, but they cannot take away from you the richness of which life is full. I see myself as so poor, but there are endless riches inside me. Our life speaks of this richness, without being able to say we are speaking…

Cristina



MILAN
"Normal" Kids

Dear Father Giussani: Every morning when I walk into school, the wait is evident. Everyone is waiting: students, colleagues, custodians are all waiting for something that will give meaning to their day. Even the occupation or the silence of the most nihilist among them shouts out this wait, but in reality no one knows how to express it or what name to give it. When I had just arrived at this school, more than a year ago, a student wrote to me, "Live, why? Live for whom?" and since then every day I ask, for each of them, that they may know the name and address of the One Who, alone, can answer these questions, even if it is only through my limits and excesses. With many of them a friendship has started. We recite the Angelus in the morning and some come to School of Community and have asked their schoolmates to participate in the collection for the Food Bank. This friendship interrogates, amazes, attracts, and sometimes scandalizes. One of the students, who is most obviously linked to our companionship and who, alas, is not brilliant in a couple of subjects, was advised by two teachers to put aside his "dreamy" nature, to avoid meeting to pray and to work on School of Community, to go back to being a boy like all the others and to do "normal" things, like going to the gym. He wrote me, "I want to be able to be what I really am, without pretending. Thanks, Prof, for your presence, thanks for not pretending with me, thanks for telling me, every minute that you spend, about how much joy there can be in a man's life. Thanks for waking me out of my torpor."

A "prof"