The introductory words of Fr. Giussani

A passage of the Bible that the Church has us recite in the breviary impresses on our memory what the Lord wants to bring to all our minds so that we don't betray him, even unconsciously, in these dark times.

"Thus says the Lord:
'Stop on the road and look,
enquire about the ways of the past,
which was the good way. Take it, then,
and you will find peace for your souls'" (Jer. 6:16)

In this terrible test through which God is making the Church pass, when all its children, when all the believers in Christ are being assailed by the State as by a convincing and-as it happens-only teacher, the voice and the cry of the prophet Jeremiah appear as the directive for true salvation.

My wish for you is that this reminder be accepted as I have understood it from the biblical reading, accepted and understood as a divine suggestion for your every position in life and in society.

My wish for you is that God give you brothers who may be an example of this and, thus, be of use to you on the journey.

Here we propose the notes from the address of Giancarlo Cesana

What is the problem-not the objection, because our approach to reality is positive-that we whave tried to tackle during these years? How can we sum it up synthetically?
I would say that the problem is the disarray of the "I," that is to say, the disorientation that has affected modern man, that has affected each one of us and the society we live in, the incapacity to have coordinates, to have a criterion for tackling reality, bewilderment, and uncertainty before oneself and things.
Fr. Giussani has always spoken of it, and, at least as I see it, the moment in which he pointed it out clearly was fifteen years ago at an Équipe of CLU, when he said that man today seems to be suffering from the Chernobyl-effect: apparently, exteriorly equal, but struck by a radiation that affects him inside, so that his relationship with reality is more fragile, more sick, more at risk.
We have always tackled this question, and certainly Fr. Giussani has always felt its urgency. However, it seems to me that the moment in which the question was brought to the fore and tackled systematically was with the new edition of Alla ricerca del volto umano [In Search of the Human Face]; the introduction was a centering of the problem of the "I," of me-and since it is a question of me, it's a question of everyone.
So in 1995 we began the School of Community, trying to find this human face that can no longer be found. Every time I go to galleries of modern art I am struck because there is never a description of the human face, they are no longer able to draw it: man is no more.
On this journey we came as far as organizing the Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples last year, on the theme, "Life is not a dream"-denouncing the most frequent attitude in the face of disorientation, uncertainty, hardship, the stress of living: escape.

"I" and people
Last year, returning from the International Assembly of the Responsibles that is held every year at La Thuile (there was Piccinini, Savorana and myself), we went to see Fr. Giussani for an initial assessment with him of how the Assembly had gone and on how we had tried to tackle the problems that I have described.
He looked at us, he stopped, wrapped in thought, and said, more or less: we are insisting on the disarray of the "I," on the disorientation of the person, on its incapacity and fragility before reality, but how can this "I" recover? A discourse is not enough, and not even a reminder. The "I" must be tied to something, it must be supported by something, it must be helped, it must tie itself to a people.
So, if you remember-following the press, because Fr. Giussani published articles in various newspapers- there was a series of articles that tended to describe the nature of a people, above all pointing out the prophecy that the Jewish people is for the Christian people: the reality constituted by God through a bond of blood, a prophecy of us, because in order to be Christians we have first to be Jews; a prophecy of us, so the reality of the people is still more dramatic and powerful, because it is not a bond of blood, but a bond of freedom, an adhesion.
But Fr. Giussani felt even this reminder to be insufficient, and hence the last Exercises of the Fraternity, based on two words: "belonging" and "Christ" (the first and second lessons, "Christ is everything in everyone").

People and belonging
Fr. Giussani insisted on the fact that it is necessary to rediscover belonging not as an optional extra, not as a choice that one can make ("I choose to belong"), but as a condition of our nature as creatures, that is to say of the fact that we did not make ourselves; and since we did not make ourselves, then Someone made us, we are His.
He stressed this and he re-proposed Christ as the fulfillment of this elementary perception of the human spirit because, if he looks at himself according to his own experience and with simplicity, man cannot fail to acknowledge that he belongs, that he is made by an other: by his father, by his mother… and even more: by an Other.
But it is Christ who reveals the why and the how of all this, it is Christ who reveals the Creator, who reveals Him who made us. As Fr. Giussani said-and you can find it in the last insert of Traces-God wanted that man, nothingness, should love him freely and in Christ he revealed this greatness of ours and this freedom of ours, this destiny we are called to.
Here is where the recovery of the "I" begins: from the discovery of belonging to Christ. Now, how is this belonging expressed? Or, if you will, said more crudely, what use is being a Christian? Because God makes the sun shine and the rain fall on good and evil alike-we suffer, we get ill, we die like all the others-so why be Christians?
Or to say it with the Psalm that Fr. Giussani is always quoting recently: What is man that you should care for him? What am I that you should be so concerned for me? And what can I give in exchange for myself?

Belonging and ontology
How does our belonging to Christ manifest itself in our life and how does it manifest itself to others?
This was what we reflected on during the Assembly of the Responsibles at La Thuile this year, and Fr. Giussani had already anticipated it two years ago, observing that morality is tied up with an ontology, it is the consequence of an ontology, in other words of the knowledge one has of who he is. So it is a problem of knowledge: what Christ introduces us to, what God introduces us to is a new knowledge of oneself and of the world. Belonging makes us know, in such a way that freedom can express itself and adhere. If you are in a coma, if you are distracted, you don't know and you are not free.
However we must understand this word-knowledge-well, because in the modern world it is contorted by a defect of intellectualism, it is too much linked with a conception of intelligence as a circuit of neurons, as if there were a computer in our head, and we were computers, or, if you prefer, over-determined beings like animals. I would no longer be a doctor, but a veterinarian of superior beings!
Personally I became aware of the meaning of the word "knowledge" before meeting the Movement, when I met, at a distance, the members of GS. I remember one evening-every so often the Catholic groups of the parish would meet-I had heard a discussion of how Fr. Giussani had read Dante's account about Ulysses. It struck me very much, certainly for the genius of the interpretation, that is to say that Ulysses had dared too much, not because he had gone toward the infinite and had tried to go beyond the Pillars of Hercules, but because he had dared to go with his own means, with his finite means, with his little boat, and he had lost it.
It struck me very much that the person who explained the passage of Dante should explain it as if it were his own; it was clear that he was aware of what he was saying. Secondly it struck me because I knew that passage, I knew it by heart, but I had not understood it at all, in other words I did not know it. The problem of knowledge is not a scholastic problem, it is not an intellectual problem.

Ontology and knowledge
When do you know? You know when the adhesion to a certain proposal, the adhesion to what you see implies, requires the adhesion of life. Knowledge of reality is born as adhesion to an event that questions us about our destiny, not about our knowing or not knowing one thing rather than another. In other words, we know with the heart, as Fr. Giussani explains well in the School of Community: intelligence and affection.
You know because you are struck in such a way that the particular content that is proposed to us is a question about the whole of life. This is, existentially, the experience of an event, that is to say of something that does not leave you as before, and is existentially the experience of the hundred-fold, because the hundred-fold is an event in your life that opens you to infinity. It is the introduction-as Fr. Giussani said-to a "fever of life," to a restlessness thanks to which life can no longer be as before.
Recently Fr. Giussani returned to this word "hundredfold." We think of the hundredfold as the realization of what we expect in exchange; in exchange for our availability, for our dedication, and for our commitment we expect the hundredfold of what we give. But this is not the way it goes. The hundred-fold is not what we expect (the last insert of Traces says as much), but it is the acknowledgement of the answer that God gives. Because the hundredfold is not what you expect, it is the answer that God gives you. But acknowledging the answer that God gives means to know, to be aware of how God is present in history; in other words, of how destiny, the meaning, the reason for life, what we are in the world for, what made us come to birth, that for whom we exist, that for whom we die, is inside life.
From this point of view the stress on reason is decisive, because it is not a knowledge of yes-men, it is not a hallucination, but it is a knowledge that is based on reason, in other words that acknowledges the correspondence of the datum with reality, that affirms it as a contribution for everyone, in its universal value, as a sign of the destiny to which we are all called.
When they invite me to up-dating courses for teachers on the relationship between psychology and education, I repeat what I've learned from the School of Community. I myself am first of all struck by the fact that no one objects, because it is so elementarily true. What we are living is so true that there can be no objection, but only questions, and all kinds of questions come out.

Knowledge and identification
Hence the untiring nature of the reflection, of the dialogue. The series of books called "Quasi Tischreden" are the testimony that Giussani gives us of this continuous desire to know, to get to the core of things, to realize, with the awareness that the journey toward infinity is always just beginning. And this is fantastic, because what fascinates is the beginning, is the discovery of what is new: if a thing is taken for granted, then it's no longer any use.
The second lesson of the Exercises of the Fraternity introduced us to all this: acknowledging Christ as the origin and possibility of the hundredfold, as the realization in life of the hundredfold, acknowledging Christ as attraction (The Attraction that Is Jesus), accepting the challenge of modern society, that bases its power of conviction on attraction. The power of conviction of modern society is addressed to the desire and to the instinct, in other words to what draws man out of himself, catches him and makes him its own. Fr. Giussani accepts this challenge, and hence the attraction that is Jesus.
In Porta la speranza [Bearing Hope] Fr. Giussani says that the Christian proposal is not a divertissement, it is not an intellectual game, but is something cogent, a proposal that is addressed to an "almost biological level of human experience."
Because the questions that The Religious Sense speak of (Who am I?, What will be my end?, Where do I come from?) are structural to human nature, structural to the tending of man. Christ answers these questions, and He is an attraction because He is an answer to them, and I believe we are here for this. I don't think that we are here out of duty, but because of an attraction: we have seen something that draws us, something that has taken hold of us.
From this point of view, our education is different from all other types of education, that take for granted the principles and are concerned only that people be consistent with these principles. So at the age of fifty-one has the same knowledge of the faith that he had when he made his First Communion. Education is rather getting to the core of the content of the proposal, in such a way that freedom can make its move, because man's freedom is irreplaceable and man's relationship with God is personal.

Identification and attraction
We are here because of this attraction, an attraction that we lose if we presume to have it, because first of all we no longer discover anything, we are no longer interested in understanding what we are talking about, then we become proud and full of definitions that become intolerable (the definition of the other is the enemy of friendship).
Therefore, following Fr. Giussani, we must be untiring in referring back to the origin, in the tension for knowing the origin of the attraction, for knowing Christ and therefore, because of our history-because we have known this origin through him-in identification with him. The identification with Fr. Giussani is not a continuous quotation of his phrases, but the testimony of an experience and the comparison of this experience with the contents of his proposal.
This is the School of Community, and this is also our task, the mission that has been entrusted to us: to discover the attraction that is Jesus and fills the world with this attraction, so that the world be more true, more just, and more at peace, if for no other reason than for that knowledge that a small remnant has of the world and of reality. And this is dramatic, truly dramatic.