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Is there a man who desires life and longs for happy days?

Now and for Eternity
Rita Negri, housewife (Reggio Emilia, Italy)
Recently, a very dear friend, who has been in a wheelchair for some years as a result of a bad accident, told me, “I am sad and depressed. It seems to me that I have only caused trouble in my life. Maybe if I were a ‘believer,’ I would feel better. I thought of you, and I said to myself, ‘They are happy because they are believers.’ Is this true? You are happy because you believe, aren’t you?” I have never been asked such a “radical” question, that goes right to the root not so much of “believing” but of what makes me happy and why. What does happiness, being happy, mean to me? Being united with my husband, seeing my daughters content and well on their way to fulfilling their vocations, my first grandchild, so unexpected but “adored” so much. This is happiness for me. I am not able to think about it abstractly; I feel that this is what is important to me, what is close to my heart. But I also know that it is not in my hands, it does not depend on me, because I want everything to be for eternity, no matter what. Only one Person has guaranteed the “always” of everything, and this is the greatest joy: to have the certainty that all this is now and for eternity.

A Mystery Is the Center of Everything
Stefano Pranzan, custodian of the cemetery of Isola Scala (Verona, Italy)
It is not easy to describe in words what the heart desires. But at a certain point the desire for happiness began to take shape around me through other people, like a baton that is passed from hand to hand. Now, at the age of 38, I can say that the desire is to look at reality (that is, everybody and everything) for what it is, and not for what it seems. I have worked in a cemetery for many years. I see, on one hand, how people become after they have been dead for a while (and I risk growing cynical), and on the other the love and grief of those who remain behind. I cannot forget, even in front of a body that is falling apart or a person who is crying, that each one was generated by a mysterious and merciful love, that each one “desires life and longs for happy days.” I cannot forget it because I feel that this love is directed at me. For a beautiful thing has touched me: some friends, years ago, heard a priest from Milan (whom now I can call a very dear friend, dearest Fr Giussani) saying that there is a mysterious thing that demands to be the center of everything. This Mystery has begun to call me by name and show me His face. God saves man through man. And, to the extent of my capability, I shout this out and desire that each day something or someone may call my attention to this mysterious thing, that at times reveals itself and at times hides, but is always there, is there with me.

In Obedience to the Bell, an Unending Fecundity
Sister Chiara Piccinini, Trappist nun in Venezuela
When I encountered the Movement, I encountered Christ, and in Him the mystery of my person and all my existence. In a very human, I would even say ordinary, encounter, my quest for meaning and justice (I didn’t know where to turn, I didn’t know who to obey) was given the certainty of an answer, “You are somebody–not a number, not a case–and you always will be.” Christ defined Himself to me, implacably, as true and total Love, the Bridegroom, the Good Shepherd. All the “others” had come to steal and destroy my quest for life, but not He. Recognizing what Christ is meant turning my life immediately over to Him in total obedience, filled with an unending inner resonance of His Presence in my heart. “Rejoice, Mary!” Entering the Trappist order represented the decision to stay, to remain forever in this joy, to recognize this announcement and follow it, involving all of myself in the very normal dailiness of life in the cloister. Thus, in the patient, very clear, and intense process of transformation, remaining in the phantasmagorical profundity of obedience to the bell, to the indications of the Rule of St Benedict, to silence and simple, careful manual work, little by little I was covered with gratuitousness and continuous praise, which has become the existential mode of my freedom, the breath of my life. But certainly the beauty that has marked me most deeply has been the recovery of the dimension of being a daughter–a daughter in the Son–which the Vitorchiano cloister has given me. The more I let myself be generated by the word and example of the Mother, by the encouraging gaze, strong with an unending, consuming love of the elderly mothers, by the separation from my mothers who were leaving in order to live our charism in faraway lands, by the loving embrace of the support, sharing, and correction of the community, the more I was able to put behind me the slavery of my self-sufficiency and independence, of my pride and intolerance, of the evil I bore within me, in order to put down indomitable roots in my belonging to the Church, inserting myself into her history, into what she contains and means. I felt loved without deserving it, forgiven without demanding to be forgiven. This is an experience of unthinkable regeneration, mystical because unutterable, that has never abandoned me and provokes me to stay in an unstoppable state of offering, so that His Face, the face of my first encounter and of every instant of this, my today, may become an experience of happiness for all. I want nothing more than to spend myself in this fecundity, where once again I find completely my fullness of being a daughter and a woman. However, there is one last desire I have: let us help and support each other so that every man may become a thief of Paradise, just as Christ stole me from the cross of my limits and sinfulness.

The Grace of Being Son and thus Father
Barry Stohlman, carpenter (Washington, DC)
As soon as I read this question, I thought immediately of two things in my life that, the more I go on, the more I understand are not mine, that is to say, I do not possess them, but they were given to me and are given to me in a new way to be discovered every day, and are the living answer in everyday life to my desire for happiness. These two things are my family (my wife and my five children, with another one on the way) and my work. There is no more concrete experience than this. Work is an opportunity to express all my humanity and creativity, taking part in society in a constructive way. The family is source of joy and experience of love in this world, ie, the chance to love and be loved. But I would not be aware of all this if it were not for the experience that I have been able to live during the past 16 years by discovering Christ present in the real world, which truly changes everything every day. This has been especially evident in the last five years, when I have had the great good fortune to live here in the United States, where the multitude of facts that happen and friends with whom we try to follow and love the event of Christ–however and wherever it presents itself–make me keep my eyes open and throw wide my heart. In short, I want a life like this, so full of expectation and entreaty, for me, for my children, my co-workers, and my friends.
If I have the possibility of being a father, in my family and on the job, which is what makes me happy, it is thanks to the fact that I am a son, a son of Fr Mauro and Fr Giussani... and this is Grace.

A Fixed Point of Joy for Himself and for Others
Fulvio Farina, factory worker (Abbiategrasso, Italy)
I was an anarchist and smoked pot, but in the gaze of that woman there… In a word, Rosanna, who is now my wife, had a different way of looking at things. I felt welcomed, I still feel that way, and so I am welcoming. I recognized something different; it is not that I merely got my head in order. And now I live happily. When I go to work (in the painting division of a tractor factory), however, I feel like I’m going to war. People hang their heads, with frowns on their faces, then often when they meet me, their faces lift, because in front of them is a presence that smiles at them. I don’t talk only about soccer; I am more open, and sometimes this bothers people because I talk to one and turn toward another. My co-workers are all leftist or Jehovah’s Witnesses, but when they need help they ask if I will stop a minute. You become a presence they can trust, because you give them a hand with the Solidarity Centers, with the Food Bank. When I bring out the judgment of the Company of Works, they call me “Formigoni,” and when I talk about Jesus they say I am crazy, but when they need help they call me. I do not feel like I am alone. I am like a compass: it may seem that the pencil that draws the line is the important part, but without the fixed point, the pencil cannot trace the circle. Boy, how lucky I am! I am happy even when I am angry. I am content because my desire is greater, and what is more, I get angry when it is not fulfilled.

The Evidence of the Answer: Consciousness of One’s Limits
Lorenza Violini, Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Milan
I believe that the answer to this question–and to the more radical one about its actual realization (“Are you happy? Why?”)–cannot avoid starting from the consciousness of one’s limits, or at least this was my first, instinctive reaction when I started reflecting on it. It is a consciousness that lives in secret, just as the radical intuition that the truest response to this question is a heartfelt, total “Yes” starts to come out in secret. Called to come to the light, this otherwise hidden dimension of the heart is completely full of the memory of a history that is good, enriched by someone who taught me to measure everything against my desire for happiness and to hand everything over to God’s mercy. It is a culture, a depth of consciousness that up to now has enabled me to encounter and live every kind of moment in life, to go through them by taking to Him the toils of which life is made, but also to live its joys with unexpected intensity, seeing them as gifts received and opportunities for going more deeply into the meaning of the relationship with the Presence that renders everything dense with meaning. Simplifying to the utmost degree, I think I would not, for anything in the world, give up either the companionship that asks this question or the answer, all mine and all given as a gift, that comes surging up from the secret recesses of my heart and makes me say with a gleam (but identical in nature) of the consciousness that was St Peter’s when he answered Jesus, “Lord, You know everything, You know this.”