INSIDE america Our Progress, Our Goal Every Single Moment and Occasion Becomes a New Beginning, a New Departure Point “Our Progress Does Not Consist in Presuming We Have Reached Our Goal, But in Continuously Striving to Achieve It” (Theme of the 2004 Meeting in Rimini, 25th Anniversary of the Meeting; 50th Anniversary of the Movement). I read this statement to a number of people and asked them how they understood it. Some thought it came from a politician running for office and dismissed it as a political sound bite. Others wondered what the point was, since it stated the obvious. “It’s the very definition of progress,” they said. Reaching the goal stops all progress. “It’s what life is all about.” To stop striving is to die. When I said that the statement came from a Catholic source, some thought it was a description of the “mystical life,” something like the stages of contemplation outlined by John of the Cross or Theresa of Avila. The rest understood it as a description of the “search for holiness,” or some other spiritual quest. No one was really struck or provoked by it in any way. Actually, it sounds very “American.” This country is kept together by a “continuous striving.” Our unity is sustained by a striving toward the future, since there is no “common past” uniting the astounding variety of races, ethnic groups, original nationalities, and cultures that characterizes our citizenry. This striving forward toward a goal (freedom, happiness, economic success, etc.) is what constitutes the so-called “American Dream,” and if we ever think of having “arrived” for sure, our history ceases. Moreover, “striving but not having arrived” seems to ensure the possibility of change, and this is important to the American Dream. Liberty seems to require the possibility to change paths in the pursuit of happiness, as well as the open-endedness of not having arrived. Liberty also seems to require the possibility of choosing– and changing–the “goal” toward which we progress. This goal may be set by communities of people, but ultimately what matters is the individual’s right to set his or her own goal. This is an example of what Fr Giussani (in Why the Church?) calls the present difficulty in understanding the Christian vocabulary. The words are the same–progress, striving, arriving, goal–but they do not mean what they mean in the Christian vocabulary. The Christian vocabulary pre-supposes the experience of grace, that is, of an attraction that cannot be explained by anything that has been experienced before, indicating the presence of something radically new and always new. “Progress,” therefore, is movement in a direction we do not initiate, toward a goal that we do not set. The goal, so to speak, enters into our life, our world, and generates the attraction that governs the progress. Because of its nature as something always new, we are never tempted to change the goal. Our experience is one of an attraction that always takes us beyond the possibilities of our efforts. That is why, rather than limiting our freedom, this goal makes it possible by allowing us to go beyond the possibilities inherent in the particular moments in our path toward it. This experience cannot be reduced to the level of the “interior life.” It engages everything in our lives. It opens up the possibility of newness in this world and for this world, allowing it always to be transformed into a new world, preventing any totalitarian power or ideology from enslaving us into its view of what is desirable or possible. Our goal is the life of the risen humanity of Christ communicated to us by the creative Holy Spirit. It is not something that happens only to our “soul,” but to all of our humanity, to our relationships with others, with all of creation, and with the Mystery of our destiny. Every single moment and occasion becomes a new beginning, a new departure point. If the experience of the encounter with Christ is absent, this statement is meaningless, or dangerous, because it can be interpreted to mean exactly the opposite of what we intend to say.