Letters

EDITED BY PAOLA BERGAMINI
pberga@tracce.it

Turin
The Friends from Point Coeur
Dear Fr Giussani: November 28th through the 30th, Fr Thierry de Roucy invited us to Paris and Vieux Moulin, where the Mother House of Point Coeur is located. Fr Primo and I, who am in charge of the Italian secretariat of Punto Cuore, went. The last evening, we talked with Silvano about the various faces of France that we had seen: on one hand, there is a secular society that hands out a legal sentence to a gynecologist for not warning parents that their child would be handicapped, and on the other there is Point Coeur, that welcomes children just as they are. In the same way, Point Coeur welcomed us: when we arrived in Paris, awaiting us was Audet Guillet, consecrated in the Molokai Fraternity, which was born out of Point Coeur. The first evening, Fr Thierry, together with Gonzague (who also belongs to the Molokai Fraternity), came from Compiègne to eat with us. At the table, Gonzague told us about the two weeks that all the students from the Thomas Philippe Institute–an institute for training in philosophy and theology founded by Fr Thierry–spent in Sion, in the Swiss Alps. There they organized a two-week retreat based on your text, School of Religion. Every morning two students would present a chapter, and in the afternoon they did School of Community on that chapter, and then pursued the topic further with films, music, art works… “It was great,” said Gonzague, “and it was a real grace to have Fr Thierry with us. He made things clear to us, helped us, and explained the charism of Point Coeur more deeply, because Point Coeur and Communion and Liberation have a lot in common…” On the 29th, we got to know the Point Coeur of Villejuif, on the outskirts of Paris. Four girls live there, one from Honduras, one from Peru, and two from France. One of the French girls is Aude, who, until a month ago, was at the Point Coeur in Kazakhstan. That same day, in the Paris office of Point Coeur, we met Sven, a 19-year-old German boy who was leaving for the Point Coeur of Pier Giorgio Frassati in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil. This Punto Cuore is in the parish of Fr Guido, who belongs to the Movement. Aude told us, “I love Fr Giussani very much. I came to know him in Kazakhstan, where I experienced with Fr Livio, Eugenio, Giulia, Vacia, Sacha a companionship that sustained me… . The friendship with CL in Kazakhstan truly enabled me to stay with my vocation, my mission–in the first place because their gaze, their love for reality taught me to love the place where I was, and secondly because they helped me understand that the first mission is belonging to Christ. Seeing how Fr Livio, Eugenio, Giulia, Sacha, and the others love the Movement, seeing their loyalty to CL, I understood that belonging to Christ comes through belonging to a companionship, to a community, to faces… I saw that the companionship of CL and the companionship of Point Coeur are at the same time very different, but also “the same thing”–they are different charisms and we acknowledge the fecundity of our friendship, and they are “the same thing” in the sense that we look to the same point, the Face of Christ.
Eleonora

Moscow
What Is Experience?
Dearest Fr Giussani: For five years now, I have been going to Byelorussia with someone from the Moscow community to visit our friends in the little community in Minsk. This friendship started with the Faculty of Orthodox Theology in Minsk and has now spread to others (Catholics or simply people they met). This Saturday, we went with Natasha. Frankly, my desire to travel two nights in a row on the train after a week of work just to see our friends for a few hours, when they are already busy with their lessons, was about equal to the temperature outside in these days (5 degrees below zero). This time, however, I had little choice, because six people from the Pesaro community had planned to come to Byelorussia this very weekend, just to go say hello to a friend of theirs who had been to Italy the past few years with the children from Chernobyl, and to invite her to School of Community. That they decided to travel 3,200 miles simply out of love for the destiny of their friend (because they wanted to give a hope to her life–her daughter died two years ago) was something that took away from me and Natasha any temptations toward laziness! This weekend, we worked on God’s Method: event and not our thoughts. For the first time, Aliosha, one of the most dynamic young theologians, started out by explaining to two newcomers he had invited that “the question is not to understand if what Fr Giussani is saying to us is truer than what St Augustine or St Gregory say, but to read the experience of a man who says, ‘I live Christ like this, let’s walk together and we shall receive the hundredfold.’ My experience, ever since I encountered the Movement, has been precisely that Christianity is this proposal: an event that changed Mary’s life and my life and that must continue to determine all the other gestures of our lives.” And Natasha (a third-year student) went on, “We who study theology run a great risk, which is that of reducing Christianity to intellectual knowledge. In fact, in the beginning, three years ago, I placed everything that had been written in doubt; now I work on it, but starting from the encounter that I have had.” Marina, a young Catholic, did not agree on this point: “I feel the need to know more because, then, when I read a book or hear someone speak, I feel so frail that I would like to go away.” So we went back to asking ourselves: what is experience? What use is judgment? The fundamental step we took is that these young Orthodox friends of ours affirmed for themselves the primacy of experience. I ask the Lord that this may be truly the beginning of the Movement in the Orthodox Church, so as not to “reduce Christianity,” as Aliosha said, “to a matter of law, ritual, or social concept.”
Jean-François

New York
The Broken Window
Dear Fr Giussani: My exposure to CL began about a year ago, and I have been attending School of Community since September 14, 2001 (I thought I was simply going to a discussion group on the September 11th event), but my life has already been changed immeasurably. I now live, mostly on a daily basis, with intensity I never knew possible.
As I walked into the meeting on the 14th, I was greeted and embraced by a table full of people, but especially by Maurizio Cappuzzo and Simonetta Wiener. I was so glad that I had chosen to attend and was sure I wanted to return again and get to know those people better.
As we walked to our cars after the meeting, I discovered that mine had been broken into by someone shattering a window. My immediate response was, “I never should have come. I should have gone out for dinner and drinks with a friend.” (I had turned down such an invitation to go to the meeting.)
Later that evening, as I felt torn by the pleasure and support of the meeting and my anger about the car, I had an amazing insight. The presence of evil was live and trying to manipulate me away from the positivity of the people I had just met. I had a choice to make. I could try to listen to what God had in mind for me with this group or I could exercise my willfulness and let the ifs, ands and buts annihilate the encounter. For once, I prayed for guidance and was blessed with the courage to stay in the Presence. My life has been changed forever.
As I have read, discussed, tried to contribute and mostly tried to stay in the moment and open to God’s will, I have changed. I am now frequently aware of God acting or communicating through me. As I have accepted that, for now, He wants me to be in the crazy office where I work, the quality of my work and my contribution to the company have been magnified.
Maureen

Florence
Reading Coelho
Dear Fr Giussani: This Christmas, a dear friend of mine gave me a book, The Handbook of the Warrior of Light, by Paulo Coelho. When she handed it to me, she said, “Read it, because this way you will understand what was the source of half of my malaise that I told you about, before I met you and this history (CLU–CL university students).” I read it and I must say that she is right: this book gives you a stomachache. From beginning to end, it is full of advice, recipes, good precepts. It is really a handbook. It tells you how to behave, what to do, and what to think. I agreed with some things. But reading it, and especially comparing it with myself and what I am living, I realized that I don’t need a book that tells me how I should be; it’s not enough for me, no matter how right it is. This is what makes you feel bad: realizing the abyss that lies between how you should be and how you are, which is undeniably limited. As the days passed, one of the needs of man, of every man, became clearer and clearer: man needs someone, a friendly presence that stands by him and keeps him company on the path he is traveling–a friend who does not try to make you fall in line, who does not tell you what you should do or how you should be, but who comes down with you into the limitations and greatness you live every day. And along with this first clarification it became evident that the books we advise each other to read (starting with School of Community, the book of the month, and Traces) do not arise from reasoning and thinking about life, they are life. It is a man’s experience! Before everything else, there is this: a man who lives these things, who embodies them, who renders them concrete in the way he knows how. This is what often encourages me and makes me stick it out without too much malaise. Through other men (my friends at the university), I am accompanied toward my destiny without censure of anything of what I am as a person, with real respect for me and for everything I bring with me. I need a friend to whom I can entrust the things that are dearest, most precious to me, so that they may become true and ever more profound. We need men like this.
Andrea

A New Mentality
Dearest Fr Giussani: I am writing from Albania, from a village called Babice and Madhe. I want to thank God through you, because He is bringing about a miracle with us. His presence is revolutionizing and changing everything. The GS high school group that I guide is discovering the only important thing for life. The kids are always right on time and speak fluently of their experience, of what is good for them and for others. What strikes me most is that they carry the experience they have of Christ also into their families, which are Muslim and live in a way completely different from the way they live. Their parents themselves, meeting me in the street, continue to thank me for what I am doing with their children. Often they see them changed; the parents are surprised to see them growing because of something different–the beginning of a new mentality is evident in them. Fr Gius, they thank me, but I am aware that what I do originates in Christ, in you and your presence that has seized me and is also seizing them, not only in some small ways but for a total witness. The faithfulness of these children is amazing: some of them have started school in the city, but they have not pulled away from GS. Others have embraced their commitment to their studies in a new way. Still others decided that their passion for soccer and sports had to become a mission. So we organized a soccer championship among the villages, through which we can bring our friendship and our announcement, which are the real Presence of Jesus. Dear Fr Gius, I entrust these children to you one by one, these who are discovering through our help what the truest thing for life is. I entrust to you their freedom to belong more and more.
Renato, Babice and Madhe, Albania

In Movement
Many new things have happened since this time last year. These events are a cause for joy–not because we have made many, many new friends, but because we have moved; we have been in movement. We are reminded of Msgr Albacete’s words to us: “There are two things you can do: do something, or do nothing.” It appears that together we have finally chosen the latter.
For three years, we have held School of Community at my brother Vince’s parish, posting the CL meeting announcement every week. Finally, one of the deacons asked Vince, “Who are you guys?” So we made invitations and flyers for the “Arts and Letters of van Gogh” presentation. Twenty five people attended, and the discussion afterwards, spearheaded by our friend, Dr Balducci, made it clear that Christ is the answer, for van Gogh and for all of us, because He gives a sense, a purpose to everything. Our friendship with the doctor grew more rapidly after this event. More recently and more specifically, Dr Balducci expressed a great desire to bring The Risk of Education to the medical center! Although at my parish we often use the hall for Beginnings Days and retreats, we didn’t understand how well our pastor trusted us until we went to propose “The Religious Sense Movie Series” to him, and even before I explained he said, “Whatever it is, the answer is, ‘Yes!’” We offered six movies that illustrated different elements of the religious sense.
This presence in the parish, along with our participation in the choir and my volunteer work on the RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults) program last year, led my pastor this year to ask me to run the RCIA program. This was a great honor! I contacted Fr Rich Veras, who gave me his materials which condense the PerCorso trilogy by Fr Giussani. Through RCIA, we are proposing the faith to 11 students in the way it was given to us: developing the question, affirming the attraction, and trusting the relationships that are given to us. One of the students told her boyfriend, “The class is really great. They are starting with life!”
My pastor is very excited that we have decided to start a School of Community in my parish, hoping to invite people again to a presentation that will show the hope and certainty we have in life.
Joe, Tampa, FL

God’s Faithfulness
My dear friends: God is really faithful! Diogo and I have been moved by your presence in these two months since we have been aware of Diogo’s disease. Immediately following the news, we began receiving visits, phone calls, letters, pictures of your families, etc. All of it has been a very concrete instrument of God’s faithfulness and of Jesus’ presence. In fact, the friendship that they express sustained us in the impact with the surprise of this event. It was not a coincidence that an hour after receiving the news on November 15th we had a meeting with our small Fraternity group on the topic “vocation is for a task.” Those lines have been a constant reference point for us.
I have to say that many days I feel a great sadness. Diogo is at peace, but suffering is very much present. We have been given the grace of being a part of a people, concrete persons who have been educated by Fr Giussani–some still living close to him. Some friends are suffering greatly and allow us to witness their crosses. God knows how this gives me strength!
This illness happened not only in the context of a very fulfilled matrimony, but also in the context of the story of two people who are immensely loved by the only One who will not abandon them. I have a clear sense that I cannot hold Diogo back. He belongs to God and to the design God has for him. To recognize this is to “let him go,” in the little and big things of everyday.
Please beg God in His omnipotence to make Diogo last! The supreme value of life is eternal life, but the immediate value is life, this life that He Himself gave to us. And we love life. Pray as well that we be obedient to what Jesus sends us.
Every instant from the very first has been offered for the Movement and the Church.
With great affection for each one of you,
Mariana, Milan