LETTERS

LETTERS

Step by Step
Dear Fr Giussani:
It has been almost twenty-five years since I met the Movement. Ten years ago, I made my profession [in the Memores Domini], and for seven years I’ve been in America. All these years marked by you! I never stop penetrating into the immensity and the depth of what the Lord, vibrating in you, has generated in my life and in the world. The Lord is really great! These years have been marked by a growing desire to know and love Jesus–exactly my desire–and to be totally His, following you step by step, as I was able. It is really a desire for conversion, to be able to look at Him, to be with Him, always. And with you. Then there was the wonderful discovery of Our Lady, approaching the threshold of what reality is, the education to look at experience, the wonder of my “I,” the immense grace of friendship, the superabundance of your people, the growing passion for the use of reason, my work, being able to say “Father,” and to see with wonder that precisely in all my limitation, that limitation which hurts, I am able to love. Quam bonus Te quaerentibus! Sed quid invenientibus [How good to those who seek you! But how much more to those who find you!]? How could I ever thank you enough?!
Teresa, Washington, DC

The Real Task
Dear Fr Giussani:
For many years now, more than twenty, I have been suffering from a “strange” illness, a deficiency in my immune system that is having more and more effect on my life. Thanks to the great grace of my life in the Movement, this illness, more and more present, is less and less restricting. I graduated, I have lived and live a normal life, doing my job as a doctor. This limitation, this “misfortune” accompanied me in the history of my relationship with Christ, in my life, a sign, amongst the many I have had and still have, of His mercy, of His predilection for me, of His mysterious love for me–painful, dramatic, invasive–but the greatest love; the greatest love for me that I have known. And it is for this love that I work, live and exist; all this within the “scandal” of limitation, of my distraction, of my evil. The more I perceive existentially what my real illness is, the more I perceive existentially His mercy in my life, His embrace. Now this is happening: the illness is jeopardizing my capacity to work–the ability I’ve had up to now to serve Christ and be useful to Him in the world–or at least what I always thought to be by my task, my mission. And this is happening in happiness, the painful happiness of the company of some friends who are with me in this circumstance, who, in some way, are forcing me to obey Christ, mysteriously present in my life, to obey this Good present but never deserved. This is helping me to love my work more than I would ever have believed possible when I was doing it, precisely now that I am not doing it, because I have been off sick for almost two months. I am begging for Christ’s embrace, His love for my life, and I am asking my friends for it, and I am asking you, too; you, who are the dearest friend I have, because you are the one who made me know Christ. I am begging for Our Lady’s embrace, Christ’s peace, Grace, His presence, His mercy, and real peace. I am begging, like one who has no other hope, through those who belong to the Movement, my obedience to Christ.
Paola, Rovereto, Italy

Encounters
at University
When I came to Genoa five years ago I was very, very sad. I was with my boyfriend, but I was missing my family and my friends at home terribly. I was angry with everyone because I had to be so far away and so unhappy and I was asking God, “What wrong have I done You, and why have You brought me here?” Then my boyfriend had to go away to follow up his studies in England. At this point, my question to God became even stronger and more desperate. In the meantime, at the end of my first year, my boyfriend introduced me to two friends of his from the faculty who were very kind and helped him continuously. They are Marzia and Ilaria and they belong to the Movement. The first time they spoke about the Movement I said, “So, you’re not Catholics.” They laughed and told me, “We are. We belong to a Catholic movement.” I am Orthodox and knew very little of Catholicism or about the Movement, but I thought, “Now if they are Catholics, I don’t understand why they need a movement.” Later, I understood. Anyway, when my boyfriend Antonios left, I didn’t know where to live and they told me, “Come and stay in the flat with us.” I was so happy because I realized that I had with me people who loved me. Marzia and Ilaria helped us a lot and were very concerned for us, and I asked myself, “Why do they do it? What do they care for two poor Greeks like us? Why should they come to see us and eat with us? Why do they call us and stay up till four o’clock in the morning to help Antonios with his exams? Who makes them do it?” We were two steady, perhaps good-natured youngsters–but why did they love us so much? What is most surprising is that they loved me just as I was, they accepted me just as I was, though I was not an easy person to get along with. I was always sad and always crying, but they kept close to me, they told me to pray, that everything is for the good and in all that happens there is a fine plan for us. Then I got to know Narcy and Laurina, who is a year younger than me and studies languages like me. The previous Christmas, the girls had given me Fr Giussani’s book At the Origin of the Christian Claim as a present, with this dedication: “What I am, what I desire, is important. I am more important than the mountains because if I weren’t there to look at them they would be there to rot. Reality is not a contradiction to my desire: everything is for me.” I tried to read the book on my own, but I couldn’t really understand it, and since it is the book for School of Community, Narcy asked me, “Why don’t you come with us? Then we can read it together.” At first I said, “I am Orthodox, I love the girls,” but I didn’t follow a lot of things. I found it hard; I was critical of them–I was even reading a book written by a Catholic priest! All the same, by following School of Community, I found that I discovered answers to my questions; that the questions of a Catholic are the same as those of an Orthodox; that all that was said was for man, whoever he might be. I understood all this through the love of my friends and through the beauty of the things they were doing, which I realized were not done just because they were kind people, but because they had encountered something great: Jesus Christ. Now I am happy, glad. I will finish this year and go back to Greece. I had waited a long time for this moment, but now I’m sorry and I’m afraid to lose this great thing I’ve encountered. I pray that it doesn’t happen. I hope not. I wish people would understand that everybody needs this encounter, because it’s something true. My following the Movement does not lead me away from my being Orthodox, but rather helps me to be aware of what I belong to, of what I am: a Christian.
Vasiliky, Genoa, Italy

How Beautiful
the World Is
Dearest Fr Giussani:
It’s hard for me to explain what I want to say, because it’s a question of eighteen years of history, and my heart is moved every time I begin to tell my story. In 1985, in Mexico City, I met Amedeo Orlandini, and on that same day I met you; I have never forgotten the place and all those I met on that occasion. Amedeo, after staying with the community of Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, came to Mexico City, and after a few months Bruno Gelati arrived. My ignorance did not allow me to understand at once what you were proposing. I was eighteen years old and up to then I had lived in a material poverty that forced me to work, study and dream. I desired, I dreamed that one day things could be different. I looked at how many people were living and I wanted a better life. The lack of my father and the lack of all that was needed to live made the life shared with my mother and eight brothers and sisters more fraternal; the situation had taught us to be more charitable to each other. Despite this, who were we? I knew I was the daughter of Froylan and Josefina and a sister for Juan, Minerva, Max, Lulù, Alma, Fray, Lupita and Cristobal, all of us aged between 12 and 24, all in search of happiness, justice and truth. God had had a place in my childhood; my mother had taught us as much. In fact, without the awareness that He was there, it would have been impossible to bear the circumstances of our life. I don’t know how and why, amongst the almost 15 million population of Mexico City, Amedeo and Bruno decided to start a School of Community in our house. Amedeo, Bruno, and later Stefano, became father and mother to me. My wise mother, Josefina, opened the doors of our house so that those men could begin to educate her children. The story is long and touching, made of songs, encounters, laughs, Schools of Community, holidays, recollections, the Meeting, belonging, and going away: they taught me to be free. After a few years living with them, seeing I belonged to a companionship, the Church, discovering every day the happiness in their company and that of many friends, I thought of myself and my family, and I asked myself, “If they go away what will become of us?” Today I am 36; Amedeo is no longer with us, he’s gone back to Italy, and Bruno died on June 7th of this year. It was unexpected. Bruno, this man who has marked the story of my life and that of many others in this country, had died. I know that he has died so as to be born again, and so I am not afraid if some of them are not here. I have many fine memories of Bruno, this man who, for 18 years, educated men to be free, to love and not drop the guard until we are truly free; who dried our tears, who guided many of us, repeating that the true life is Jesus Christ. I don’t feel lonely, I am not afraid, I am part of a great company, and Bruno is always here amongst us. The question now is not “Why us?”–now it’s clear that “God’s strength is the joy of his people.” I know that I, my mother and my brothers and sisters who belong to this fraternity and many friends who through Bruno, Amedeo and Stefano have become part of my life, will look at what Bruno looked at while “doing God’s will.” Thanks to you for this history, Fr Giussani, whom I met only once and with whom I ate without knowing who you were and without having considered Communion and Liberation; to you who, through many Memores Domini, through the many who, like Bruno, have had the courage to say, “Yes Lord, You know I love You,” have taught us to be free and to seek true happiness. Today, at the age of 36, in the circumstances of my life, I can say with certainty the words that your mother pronounced: “How beautiful the world is, and how great is God.”
Lilia Pineta,
Cuernavaca, Morelos

Watching
the TV News
These are days of great sorrow for what is happening in the sight of all, but even of personal sorrow: my husband Glenn has gone back to the States (for the second time in a month), because his father is dying and many, too many, of my students (almost all of them American soldiers) are leaving continually for Iraq, and many others cannot attend lessons any more because they have to organize support operations for troop movements. I would like to keep them all here, because it breaks my heart when they say they cannot register for the next course because they have to leave. Is it right that people be sent to be massacred like this? I have just finished hearing Fr Giussani’s message on the Television Evening News. In all of Italy, and perhaps in the whole world, there is no one these days with such a great awareness, the only one who was at last able to say something reasonably consoling before all this pain and (it almost scares me to think of it) it is as if in these months we were patiently preparing for this, because five minutes ago, as I watched TV, I was not listening to a circumstantial discourse, but Giussani repeated what our stubborn ears for some months now find hard to understand. In my home, where there is always an infernal chaos (four daughters…), not even a fly moved while Giussani’s message was being transmitted…. Perhaps this is how we need to be, in silence so as to look where the charism is pointing, where he is looking now.
Stefania,
Pordenone, Italy

Our Contribution
to Education
Dear Editor:
I am writing to communicate the reflections that the events of these painful days for Italy have suggested to me. While the whole country came to a stop, struck by the sacrifice of those killed and by the dignity, even the Christian dignity, of their families–while even Parliament, for the most part, abstained from the habitual divisions–my school was “occupied” and is still under occupation. Not a word, not a gesture from the students nor, what is more grave, from the teaching staff, about the events in Nassiriya. You can understand my bitterness. So as not to give up, I went to re-read some parts of The Risk of Education and of Porta la Speranza [Bringing Hope] and got strength from there. For where can we turn if not to the word of him who has reawakened us to the faith and to a life spent in the task of educating many generations? Thank you, too, for having published your suggestions for the School of Community. Never as in this moment have I perceived that our contribution to education of the youth, even civil education, passes through the care and the love for the little community of GS [Students’ Youth] present in the schools, through the esteem and collaboration with the teachers belonging to CL first of all, and with those few colleagues who had the courage to be indignant at the sad educational failure recorded by our school on this occasion.
Laura, Milan

Justin’s Question
Dearest Fr Giussani:
The parents of a man in our Federal Prison in Rochester came from New York to visit their son, Justin. They are lovely parents and all of their ancestors come from Italy. They live in Brooklyn and drive 20 hours, one way, once a month to visit Justin. Justin has been sentenced to thirty years in prison. I want to share with you what it meant for them to visit our Memores house. We had them for dinner after they had spent the day in the prison visiting their son. The next day, I met them at the prison. They were filled with the awareness that they had really met some friends. They spoke with such affection for you because of being at our house and experiencing the depth of a Presence. A Presence they know, but desire and long to see, taste, and touch in the flesh. They loved their experience with us and now they will get connected with the house in New York. I gave Angelo their phone number. Their son, Justin, is a real man with a heart. You would love him. He is 31 years old and served as a policeman in New York. He asked me, “How can I continue to experience Christ in prison for the next thirty years??” Justin mentioned that it would be easy to stay for a couple of years and then find Christ when he was finished, but thirty years means he needs to know Christ in prison. Father Giussani, I am grateful for your charism and for the way you teach my heart and give me the method and way to speak the truth to Justin.
Also, there is a young priest in the prison who has become very interested in your books. He is serving five years and has been struck by your charism. He is writing you a letter and wants to receive more information about you.
Father Jerry, Rochester

The Gift
of a Magazine
Almerina and I taught some years ago in the same high school, by chance. I have always been outgoing and eager for knowledge, always looking for answers. One day, after numerous exchanges of ideas, Almerina handed me a magazine. “This ought to have the right answer for you,” she said. “What are you giving me? A CL magazine? That group of fanatics!” (Obviously, that’s only what I was thinking). I am courteous by nature, so I took the magazine and thanked her sincerely, especially for her taking an interest in me. When I got home I opened it and read the insert by Msgr Giussani (see Traces, November 1997). Everything suddenly became clear, with a perfect logic of feeling. St Augustine calls it illumination, I believe. Everything means everything. All the meaning of my existence, of all the Christian teaching I had received; all affections, long-ago and recent; the Mass (which before I would sit through, hoping it would end soon); all the sacraments I have received; the prayers, the Creed; my priest’s words; the signs that the Lord has always given me to show me that He has never abandoned me. I experienced the new person in me. “Whoever sees me sees the Father.” Almerina gave me a gift, Giussani’s article, and Giussani gave me a gift, Christ, by now my faithful and sincere life companion. And after Christ I saw God. And with time I also understood and came to love that transparent figure in the light of God, discreet, sweet, strong, and present, the Mother of God. This was an earthquake in my spiritual life. But the gift of faith is the only good that we can hope for others, even for those who hurt us. Almerina did not come to my high school by chance, she came as an instrument of God, to give me the only method for knowledge, the light of my life, the peace I did not have. It transformed the black hole in my mind, where everything went to die, into a fountain of light and an inexhaustible resource.
Maria Vittoria

The Way Home
This is a letter from a friend to John Zucchi, leader of the Movement in Canada:
Dear John:
I am in the Movement because I recognize that it’s the nearest thing to the Garden of Eden, to our original state.
Although I had been doing School of Community for a couple of years, it was not until I was talking with Marc one glorious spring day in Stanley Park that I understood what it meant. I was so struck by him that it was as if all of a sudden the mountains, the trees, and the ocean began to breathe. I was again a child at Christmastime when the lights on the tree really sparkle and the air dances with anticipation. And yes, there were presents! For me, “who had been there, seen that, done that,” there was the promise of new possibilities. Everything had a new meaning.
The world I had constructed for myself up to that point instantaneously fell away and I found myself in a much larger landscape. And I was much smaller, much more vulnerable, yet more real. I was frightened–frightened by the beauty and majesty of the glimpse of the Divine made possible by my encounter with this man. We are fallen creatures, no longer in the Garden of Eden, but the Church is where we should be. Where we really belong. The Movement shows us the way home.
As you know, I have no expertise whatsoever in theological matters, but it is your encouragement, John, that has shown me that the open heart is the fertile ground where God chooses to communicate His love.
And it is only very recently that I have come to understand that I am called to this desire to share God’s love, that it is, in fact, a vocation. Everything else stems from this.
God Bless you!
Mary, Vancouver

Hope and Fraternity
Dearest Friend:
Thank you for being with us for Beginning Day! Your insights and advice for me is a grace I will never be able to thank God enough for–more and more everyday I continue to follow you, Mike, Bruce, Emily, and the rest because my hope is beginning to be focused more and more on my true desire for fraternity. It is still a struggle, for my hope, if I let it, can lead me astray everyday into something that does not give me hope, but gives me nothingness. That is why I must stay with you, Mike, Bruce, Emily, and the rest every day to keep me from sliding where I know that there is no hope. That is why I must strive for virginity–to be transparent to myself, to God, and to you.
Chuck, Indiana