CL

Hope Is a Presence
Society, study, work and family: these were the four themes dealt with in the testimonies accompanying the work of the American Diaconia. January 16-19, 2004

by Michelle Riconscente

Society
“ The experience we have of Christianity is an experience that makes it possible for us to be in reality.”
Julián Carrón

The waitress serves water while the addresses are given at the microphone. She listens and pours. At one point, she stops and says to one of those present, “Can I take part in this thing? You see, I find it interesting, and then I would like my twenty-year-old son to take part, too.” This happened in the big hotel in Minneapolis, where the meeting of the responsibles of the Movement in North America was taking place. It is the last of a series of facts, which in the past year document a new way of approaching reality, both in ordinary situations and in more dramatic ones. From water to coffee, as someone from Minnesota explains: “Last year, as we said a prayer before eating, the waitress, Alexandra, waited to pour coffee. She apologized for interrupting and we talked a little. She was from France, working at the resort for the summer to learn English. Upon hearing that she found Minnesota boring, I invited her to my house. She was surprised, but accepted, and a friendship began that led to her baptism this past September.”
Before the Christmas break, Fedi’s professor told the students that she was going to ask her husband to leave. “All the girls encouraged her: move on, be free. But every time she talked about splitting up I told her about my parents and how they were when my mom got sick. The other girls think I’m dumb but when I came back from break the teacher told me she hadn’t asked her husband to leave, mainly because she wants to stay with her husband like my parents, stay together and wants to be with her kids like my mom stays with me. I know I’m limited, but something found me.”
In Northern California, Holly teaches at a school that this year faced the death of two seniors and a teacher. “One thing that absolutely confirmed to me that Christ exists is that I could stay in front of that with the kids and my colleagues, without backing down or being sentimental. It didn’t come just from me, but from the companionship in the [Memores Domini] House and in the community.”
On a national scale, the war with Iraq has been a focal point for discussion and a challenge to judge. In one of the Texas communities, they gathered to discuss the flyer “No to the War, Yes to America.” “Even if we were not 100% in agreement with it, the flyer helped us all look at reality in a different way, through the eyes of the Movement and the Church. In so doing, we began to look at ourselves, our relationship with Christ, and our friends in a different way. For the first time in the history of our little community here in Houston, we have been challenged by the fact that Christ and the Church (through our Movement) is something that penetrates all aspects of reality, even the ones that normally here in the USA are not part of what people consider a religious experience. On this occasion, Christ had to do with reality; Christ was really the cornerstone of the building.”

Study
“ We truly express our desire when we cry out, when we ask”
Julián Carrón
In the US, the experience of the Movement for university students (“CLU”) is largely lived by one or two people on campuses as large as 40,000 students.
In this context, the urgency to live all aspects of student life–not simply as necessary passages to some future fulfillment, but as a search for a present meaning–has sparked them to take risks in their environments.
This fall in California, Katie, Mary, and Brian organized a discussion on their campus about what it means to be in the university. For Katie, the experience was one of “risking myself with something that I knew made me happy,” inviting friends and professors, and handing out hundreds of flyers to passersby.
In Texas, Luca and Vittorio bet on the theme of the CLU retreat last May–“The Answer to our desire was made flesh”–and invited Monsignor Albacete to visit them. One hundred twenty people attended a talk he gave, together with their parish priest. After hearing Monsignor Albacete speak, the priest put aside his own talk and instead began asking questions!
During the Friday morning assembly, Luca said, “The problems are simple: work, study, girls! The way to deal with these problems was the face of Monsignor Albacete, the friendship with you, and what Fr Giussani tells us. I understood that our starting point is those desires you want answered. So people are impressed by what happened and you see from their faces that they’re happy.”
Jennifer, a photography student from California, was also among those who spoke. Last October, her mother, a scientologist, was diagnosed with cancer. “This situation has allowed me to stay home and be with my mother, for her to see how my friends love me and her. After eight years, I finally understood what it means to be free.” One day, Jennifer’s mother explained that, according to scientology, she has cancer because of a mistake she made. “Hearing this, I could not keep silent. I asked her what decision gave her cancer, and she was taken aback. She said it was the decisions she made about the family. I told her that that she raised me well, that I love her, and that she didn’t have cancer because of a decision she made.”
“ In these months, whether looking after my mother, grocery shopping, or taking the dogs for a walk, I really begged for Christ to be present, and I am the most happy I’ve been in years. It struck me that I could wake up in the morning with ‘this explosion of the fact of Christ,’ knowing that my mom has cancer and at the same time having this intensity to live life. ”

Work
“ From the moment I got here, I heard people tell of their experiences, and this is the fundamental issue of method.”
Julián Carrón
A stream of testimonies from the workplace documented an awareness of a fact that happens. One expression of this has been through seemingly impossible relationships with colleagues that have instead led to friendships. For Dino, it started with an ethics dilemma posed by a colleague over coffee. “I told her, ‘You can’t talk about ethics without understanding Christ as a presence.’ Three times in this conversation, she went back to that point, asking, ‘What does that mean?’” They have since begun work together on The Religious Sense.
A thousand miles away, Giorgio battled for tenure at a physics lab in Chicago. “To embrace my boss or colleague who is fiercely competing with me for better results is something I can try to do myself, but it doesn’t last long. I first need to be embraced in order to work differently. My freedom is recognizing that I belong to this place. Then I see that my life is better. For example, I am able to collaborate with my colleagues because of my experience in the Movement that changes us, makes us more clever, more able to relate to other people.”
Awareness of belonging was also highlighted by Paolo: “Through my work as an architect, I discovered, in the relationship with the people around me, that the subjectivity of my being can only exist within a belonging, because it is belonging that gives value to my day, exalts my I, multiplies it.” And Cristoph, a theologian and professor, remarked, “In my profession, the ruling criterion is reason as the measure of all things. I’m now fifty, and I don’t want to do that anymore. I no longer want to write or read according to the dominant criterion of my discipline. I have to rediscover–and this is very painful; all the rationalism has taken root in me–new ways of talking about knowing reality, about reason, experience. I’m grateful that there are people in the Movement who are also engaged in the academic life with whom I can do this. Before talking with others in the academic field about this, I need help to rediscover reality according to my experience of belonging.”
Steve, another professor, was asked by his university to make an address to all the first-year students. “I need to become more aware that we carry the meaning of the world, since it is true. When I asked why they had chosen me, I was told that several administrators were moved by me. I have never explicitly said anything to them about Christ. They simply are able to see in me a new way of being present in the university.”
“ Perhaps my greatest desire has been to do something great, big, useful, important in the world. I’ve always had this dream and since I’m also curious and fascinated by certain things, I focused my career on science.” For over twenty years, Massimo, an astrophysicist, fought his way to the top, to the point of working at the lab with the most powerful telescope in the world, the Hubble Space Telescope. “Yesterday morning, the chief of NASA cancelled my project. One hundred million dollars and five years of work evaporated in that 10-minute conversation. Since yesterday, I’ve been turned upside down. I wanted to do something big, and now–where’s it going? What is the meaning of what I and my colleagues have done in these five years? I was thinking that what remains is the way I’ve been, day by day, in front of my computer and my colleagues, what they’ve seen, what I’ve said, not said, my silence, jokes, and questions. My humanity that my colleagues saw there cannot be cancelled. And I’m feeling that in fact the mark I was thinking of leaving as an instrument, isn’t an instrument after all, but is my presence–my presence, the friends I’ve encountered; it’s what is at the bottom of my heart: Christ. And this is the science of our life, our work.”

Family
If I have discovered my humanity, seen a change that affects my whole person, it’s because I’ve encountered Christ.”
Julián Carrón
This year, many faced serious illnesses and difficulties in their families and jobs. These became a begging to Christ, who responded with the hundredfold. Take BJ from California, whose story sounds impossible: he has melanoma, and this year both his mother and sister Nancy were diagnosed with cancer. Without health insurance, Nancy’s “yes” took the form of accepting the help of strangers in Italy who provided medical care, welcomed her into their homes, and embraced her as family. It was there that she met the Movement. “They let me see that God was really there through the humanity they offered me.” While in Italy, Nancy read about San Riccardo Pampuri in a Traces article, and recognized him as the one to whom her brother BJ had prayed. Before her surgery, she herself began praying to him and, to everyone’s wonder, the doctors found no signs of cancer. Accompanied by her new friends, she made a pilgrimage of thanksgiving to San Riccardo Pampuri’s tomb in the church in Trivolzio. For both Nancy and BJ, it was a miracle that went beyond a physical healing (BJ’s melanoma is also miraculously in remission). “Out of the hopelessness there came a miracle, not only of health, but an answer to my whole self.”
On the East Coast, a couple has struggled to have children. When faced with the options presented to them at the fertility clinic, they kept at heart Giussani’s words about the Virgin Mary, who “did not impose her own method.” Thus, they turned down the option of in-vitro fertilization, to the shock of their doctors. “We said, ‘No,’ and he started asking me why, and a relationship was born. Finally, we got pregnant but it didn’t work out. This week, I went to the clinic, and the doctor told me he knew I had a conference this weekend, and asked me what kind of conference it was. I told him about Diaconia, and he closed the door, sat down, and said, ‘You’re the only person who comes here with a positive outlook.’ In saying ‘Yes’ to the circumstances, our desire has been opened and we’re able to see that it has already been fulfilled, for example, in the encounter with this man. We look at the desire to have a baby knowing that it’s not just for us but is the way God educates us to participation in being. Our desire is given to attract us and make us protagonists of His plan. This is why we pray constantly to the Virgin Mary, that our yes could be for everybody.”
One afternoon, Danny’s young son didn’t come home from school. When later he was found wandering the neighborhood, Danny’s fear was replaced with anger. “I went into his bedroom, and something happened to me–the moment I opened that door what I wanted to say to him was gone. I saw this son that I love, not because he’s coherent or obedient, but because he’s given to me. This new way of looking was not something I did to myself. It was the gaze Christ has on me, full of mercy and love.”