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The Great Battlefield

Notes from a dialogue with Italian students at the GS (Student Youth) Equipe near the end of last year. Questions, difficulties, and problems faced in the light of a total experience. Because Christianity has to do with everything

Alberto, from Perugia: Ever since I encountered the Movement, I have been interested in my school and the student council for three years. My experiences and questions are many, but one is pressing. I have “political” relations with the leaders on the right and those on the left who run the CPS of Perugia. It is not clear to me where the boundary lies between mission and political compromise, that is to say, how far I can go without betraying my Ideal and my interest, which is to testify to my Christian experience in whatever way the circumstances require.

Vittadini: Up to a certain point in our history, in the face of political problems, we were in the condition of having to ask experts in order to understand if the right or the left was the correct side. When I was in GS there were some who said, more or less, “Fr Giussani is fine, but he only goes so far, he only understands these things up to a certain point, and we are here to help you.” Just think if we had to decide on the basis of analysis if the right or the left is better! It would be like saying that Christianity gives you ethical strength and then you have to trust the judgment of the expert in the various sectors of society and politics! The Movement is different, and I will tell you this with two points:

1. There is an instinct that has not yet been destroyed in man; reason is still there. This instinct defines being as the desire for good.

2. Without Christ, one feels lost in himself, unattached to anything, incapable of focusing on reality, incapable even of only glimpsing some lasting experience.

The first thing we must look at in every situation is what our heart suggests to us–naively, positively.

This is the religious sense, the first way in which the Lord throws us into reality.

Christ came to meet us and we have seen Him; this desire has found an answer, has seen a man, people, who said, “Come with me!” Man’s desire, if it does not encounter this companionship where Jesus is, does not hold up.

What does this mean? That the criterion of truth becomes a locus where people do not talk you into something, but help you to understand fully what the truth is. So then, what does this situation mean for someone who has to go vote? It is not that we can stop here and say in this way he must vote on one side or the other. He has to vote, and at this point he needs someone who helps him to understand what helps the truth more. This is our companionship, which means that in the council, faced with any choice, the question is: what most safeguards, for you and for others, the desire for good that you have inside? This question then becomes: what most safeguards also the groups in the school? In order to choose, you have to ask yourself: what most defends teaching freedom, the possibility for creative experience? What defends you from regimentation? Who most defends the idea that inside the school there must be groups of teachers and students?

This is why school has become interesting for you, because before, school was something a little bit boring, whereas school is the great battleground, it is the place where your initial encounter is verified; it has to do with me because even in being on the council, I go more toward my happiness.

Cico, from Modena: In Modena, a meeting was held with the mayor and city council members in concomitance with the opening of the “tent,” an ideological anti-globalization core for youth financed by the municipal administration. Along with seven or eight speeches in favor of the tent, we spoke too, denouncing, among other things, the institutions that favor unilateral proposals and leave no room for freedom. The mayor replied to the other speeches, but did not say a word about us, as though we did not exist. Fr Giussani says in School of Community, quoting Jesus, to be as prudent as serpents and simple as doves: what does that mean in this case? We acted to affirm the freedom of being there, of being ourselves, but how can this need be maintained in the face of such destruction?

Elisabetta, from Turin: This year, two other kids from my school and I decided to do School of Community inside the school. Since there are no GS teachers in our school, we asked some of our professors if they were willing to lead us, but the answer was negative. So then we threw ourselves in among the initiatives of the Student Committee, trying to obtain permission to use, for one hour a week, the classroom that falls under student responsibility, and, albeit with great difficulty, we managed to get the Committee’s permission. Seeking this permission was a great challenge; finding that we live in a school environment that is often hostile makes us even more aware of the encounter that we have had and the great hope it bears. The fact remains that there is a great hostility that ends up in indifference.

Vittadini: What are we here for? Why has the Lord gathered us together here? In order to convince us that He is the answer to our humanness. To help us be convinced, He makes us understand that our experience does not defend itself, but it defends the human. It is the Lord who plunges us into this hostility, not a hostility to our group, but to the things that are right; we are not defending ourselves, we are defending the truth for everybody. At the beginning of the Movement, Fr Giussani and the first GS group fought a battle for freedom in the schools, and they won. We have fought a battle for freedom, a battle to say that if there is even one Jew, or one person from another religion, he has to have the possibility of being represented, even if we are in the majority, because each person has to exist. This is the first example in which the Movement put itself forward in the schools in order to defend the freedom of all.

The Christian experience is today, throughout the world, the defense of the “I,” of freedom, of the truth, of justice; everywhere the Church is, she defends this “I” against every dictatorship, whether of the right or the left.

The world hates a Christian who loves Christ, i.e., truth, justice, freedom for all, for the exploited and the weak. Just think that in the last forty years, the one who has defended the truth for everybody was not the anti-globalization demonstrators or the powerful, but the Pope, who at the same time has always spoken in favor of the West and freedom; then he went to the Africans and spoke of poverty.

Coma, from Modena: At school, studying St Augustine in philosophy, I was struck by his position with regard to history: he maintains that any historical event, no matter how inauspicious, is always on a path that leads to the positive; it always has a constructive meaning. I tried to compare his position, full of hope, with the current world situation, and immediately a question came to me: where is it possible today to see this hope at work in the world?

Vittadini: Study is a way God invites us to know Him; because of the encounter we have had, we want to study.

Christian hope wants the “I,” the individual “I.” Jesus is happy if he takes us one by one. He came for everybody, while no one else cares anything about “each one.” If you are saved, it is already a changed world, it is already a hope fulfilled, because you are worth the whole universe. It is a beginning. The “I.” And how can Christian hope save the “I”? It tells you that your desire for hope cannot be taken away by anyone–no power, no Communism. Barabbas, when he met the Phrygian slave in the mine and the slave was someone who had encountered Christianity, noted that he had this sign of Christ on his chain, and Barabbas was struck because he too had encountered Jesus, but did not believe. The slave, when he finds out that Barabbas has encountered Jesus, becomes his friend. He wants to stay at the bottom of the mine with Barabbas. And he is a free man! Barabbas is angry because he sees him free! Christian hope saves the “I”! It makes you understand that your desire for happiness has an answer. The beginning of Christian hope is each of us saved.

Martino, from Brianza: We want peace just as the anti-globalization protesters do, we want a more livable world like them, we care for the poor, so what is the difference between us and them?

Vittadini: Man is desire for happiness, but we have original sin inside us. The problem is: who gives you peace? It is not within our capabilities.

The question is: who gives you peace?! This is the difference between us and the anti-globals: we know that peace is not within our capacity, it is not the fruit of a thought, an analysis. We have to find someone who gives us peace, who enables a man and a woman to forgive each other. Just think that Jesus gave Peter, who betrayed Him, the Church! Like if a friend wrecked the car you lent him, you wouldn’t lend it to him again… but instead, Jesus not only gave Peter the car again, but also the garage! He gave His legacy in the world to someone who had betrayed Him. How can the Jews and Palestinians stay together after they have slaughtered each other’s children? A greater force, a superhuman force, is needed! Our difference is that we understand that every single person must be freed; there are not good guys and bad guys, the bad West and the good East, bad corrupt politicians and good magistrates, good Third World supporters and bad businessmen, but there is man who is a sinner and bears this toil within him: he wants good, but he can’t achieve it. Who will deliver us from evil?

After the barbarian invasions, the world changed, because the barbarians encountered the Christians; after two centuries, they converted and their kings became saints. The world was changed because the violent barbarian changed his aspect in the face of a testimony of truth–and he changed the world, too, not just the “I.”

Teresa, from Bologna: In my school, after classes, a collective was formed that expresses the ideology dominating my school. Their slogan is to be against–against school reform, against war, against terrorism, against their teachers, against their parents… I have encountered a companionship that constructs; it does not want to destroy. How can I be a constructive and proposing person?

Vittadini: Go to the bottom of what is here in this companionship, like when someone falls in love; everything becomes different because everything reminds you of the person you are with. Everything is different: “In the experience of a great love, everything becomes an event within its sphere” (R Guardini). Then, this experience will make you look at those people with mercy and clarity. It is as if the Lord had put us inside a richness and a profundity and a consciousness of our limitation and of the gift that He is, which makes everything interesting and enables you to face everything that happens.