WORD AMONG US

Ejus dulcis praesentia

Sweetness as the ultimate evidence of the truth: of the truth in action

Notes from Luigi Giussani’s address to the CLU Retreat, in Rimini, Italy, December 8, 2002

I would like to take advantage of this occasion that, charged with its littleness, is something even too big. It forces us to think, everyone is forced to think it, even if someone among us does not believe, he too is forced to think it: God made man, God generated by a woman. Jesu dulcis memoria, sweet to remember, full of sweetness in the remembrance of Himself that He brings about.

This is why I would like Our Lady to intercede for us, in this moment, with God, so that Christ may be really a presence in our lives, “the” Presence–because the difference between a presence and the Presence is that the Presence is the meaning of a presence. A presence has meaning only in its ultimate totality.

“God, if You are there, reveal Yourself to me,” has been recalled to us many times, and these Exercises, too, have renewed the Event. How many times have we referred to this in our fortunate life as Christians!

“God, if You are there, reveal Yourself to me.” A presence is God; even if it is not felt, if it seems not to be adequate, adequately motivated, it is there, instead, as an irreplaceable word.

“God, if You are there, reveal Yourself to me.” Reveal Yourself means: let Yourself be perceived as part of our, of my experience! This has to become a prayer, it has to become an entreaty, because prayer is entreaty. It has to become an entreaty in us, that arises even from our arid hearts, educated so far away from the memory of what happened and happens, of what happened and happens in the world. Because the memory of what is happening in the world is proportional in each person to the fact that this memory is tied to the event, to the event of life that we are living.

Jesus, sweet to think about–to think about, to renew the announcement, the announcement of His being a presence.

What does presence mean? Sed super mel et omnia, ejus dulcis praesentia. His presence is the best, most beautiful, the sweetest thing in our lives. I am not embarrassed to say this in front of all of you, who are so much the children of your time, of us who are so much the children of our time: “Above all sweet things, You are sweetness to me.”

Presence means something that transforms the event into its very essence, impacting the meaning of the gesture I make, of the forms that fill my eyes.

I wish you not to be afraid and not to be embarrassed: not to be afraid, in your hiding, when you are hidden from what surrounds you, and not to be afraid when the entreaty for Christ, the Mystery that makes all things, has trouble taking root, seems not to take root. The Spirit who has made things, who makes things, from whom everything flows, out of whom everything flourishes, the Spirit who germinated the physiognomy of Our Lady, this Spirit makes us more readily disciples of the Word who changed actually the history of humanity and who, by our adherence–by the forms in which we look at, hear, perceive and touch things–changes the way we use things, transforms it. It is a change that defines the “presence,” which can be defined only by a change. This was so for the Unnamable Man in Manzoni’s novel The Betrothed; may it be so every day in the novel of our daily lives. Otherwise, it would receive the counterblow of a lack of definition.

May your and my prayer in front of, inside the call of this memory, the memory of Christ, occur with simplicity but, as time passes, in accordance with a maturity that no one can hinder, except ourselves.

May this memory become presence, changing the face of what we are, of ourselves, of the people around us, the earth and the whole world, in that time and in that space which will constitute also the scene of the last goal, the last judgment, the last judgment on life. The glory of Christ will be that last judgment.

May sweetness posit itself as permanence in our lives: may His permanence, His presence in our lives take concrete form, for the last judgment.

Presence! I thank you for giving me the opportunity this morning to feel, with the profundity that is given and ensured by years, with the certainty, then, with which He makes Himself seen before our eyes, that the Lord is present, that Christ is presence.

My best wishes to you for this.

Fr Pino: Thank you, Fr Gius!

Applause.

Fr Giussani: Thank you, you are right to clap for me. Not for how I was able to say it to you, but for what I said to you, because what I said is what makes you begin every day. What I said today is what makes you begin every day, to the extent that you are part of the community, of the real, “fleshly” body of Christ. Thank you very much for this opportunity you have given me.