FEBRUARY 11, 2000

Anniversary of the Pontifical Recognition of the Fraternity of CL
Fraternity


"We thank You, Lord, because You are great."

This is the expression with which, when I was a child, my mother made my heart leap.
It is the same sign, the same voice that continually made all the believers of the Hebrew people perceive the unfathomability of God: righteous and merciful.
The introduction to the discovery of the Mystery in our personal life happened, with the same devotion of all those who preceded us, exactly in that decisive encounter with the Mystery of Christ that, on February 11, 1982, was invested by the supreme recognition of the Church.

Our life, day after day, consciously completes, with every sunrise, the capacity of God the Savior: veni Sancte Spiritus, veni per Mariam.

Whenever we can, let's say-together with the whole community-the prayer to the Virgin Mary that Dante wrote, the highest expression of the intelligence and love with which Dante lived the faith, which is the way the history of our people created and enriched us.
Father Giussani

Prayer of Saint Bernard
to the Virgin Mary


Thou Virgin Mother, daughter of thy Son
Humble and high beyond all other creatures,
The limit fixed of the eternal counsel,
Thou art the one who such nobility
To human nature gave, that its Creator
Did not disdain to make himself its creature.
Within thy womb rekindled was the love,
By heat of which in the eternal peace
After suchwise this flower has germinated.
Here unto us thou art a noonday torch
Of charity, and below there among mortals
Thou art the living fountain-head of hope.
Lady thou art so great, and so prevailing,
That he who wishes grace, nor runs to thee
His aspirations without wings would fly.
Not only thy benignity gives succor
To him who asketh it, but oftentimes
Forerunneth of its own accord the asking.
In thee compassion is, in thee is pity,
In thee magnificence, in thee unites
Whate'er of goodness is in any creature.

(Dante, Paradiso, canto XXXIII, verses 1-21)