Fraternity
Retreat
Event of Freedom
Rimini, Italy, May 2-4, 2003. More than 26,000 members of the Fraternity for
the
annual Retreat, linked with 56 countries throughout the world. Images and excerpts
from the lessons, homily by the Apostolic Nuncio to Italy, and final assembly
Most
Rev Msgr
Luigi Giussani
On the occasion of the Spiritual Exercises of the Fraternity of Communion
and Liberation on the theme “Event of Freedom,” I wish to extend to you
and the participants my greetings and good wishes, along with the assurance of
my spiritual closeness. While I hope that a renewed experience, in reflection
and prayer, of Christ’s freeing presence may arouse in each one the resolution
to adhere more closely to Him and His Gospel for an ever-more incisive testimony
of the event that changed the course of history, I invoke on all of you a copious
outpouring of the gifts of the Spirit; as a token of this, I send to you and
the entire Movement a special Apostolic Blessing, the sign of my constant affection.
Johannes Paulus II
Vatican City, April 28, 2003
His Holiness John Paul II
26,000 participants in the annual Retreat of the Fraternity of Communion
and Liberation in Rimini, and others from 56 nations of the world linked
by videoconference,
on the theme “Event of freedom,” thank You for the message You sent.
Every time we listen to Your words, Your figure is present in our eyes, and our
life is always completely stimulated. For this reason, we pray to God that the
word of the Spirit may invest the personality of each one of us. Your recent
encyclical on the Eucharist cries out to the world that the event of Christ is
not a pious remembrance of the past, but a living presence that continues to
be seen, heard, and encountered in the mysterious body of the Church, “placing
a seed of lively hope in the daily devotion of each of us to our tasks.” The
twenty-fifth anniversary of Your pontificate finds us more attached to Your humanity,
from which we learn the certainty that the force of the Lord is the joy of His
people. May she who “offered her virginal womb for the Incarnation of the
Word of God in the physical reality of His Body and Blood” gladden Your
days and sustain You in Your daily toil.
Fr Luigi Giussani
Prof Giorgio Feliciani
Milan, May 4, 2003
Attraction: Object of Freedom
How often we wake up in the morning, viewing the day as a piece of the adventure
of the desire for happiness and good, and then we reduce the perception of
things to a demand for convenience, and we make this convenience coincide
with ease,
pleasure, instinctivity, instead of following the greater attraction, trying
to make it clearer to our eyes! It is a struggle. Our life is a struggle;
not a losing battle, but a struggle, militia est vita hominis super terram.
This is why we need the strong call, the urgency of an education, equal to
the size and depth of the struggle between men and the struggle within our
lives–either
conceiving of ourselves as free of the whole universe and dependent only on
God, or free of God, and so slaves to every circumstance.
Fr Pino
Our Life Is a Struggle
Reality, creatures, are the way in which the Lord, the Infinite, What satisfies
me completely, final perfection, Being as happiness draws me to Him, becomes
present, is present as an attraction for my heart, continually reawakens
the thirst for happiness in me, awakens the need for justice, truth, and
love. The
object of my freedom is this attraction, is this winning attraction, delectatio
victrix, as St Augustine calls it. We are not afraid to say that reality
attracts us, that reality is positive, that it awakens the urgency, the need
to be satisfied.
We share this need with everyone, we share this original experience with
everyone.
Fr Pino
The Experience of Freedom
Freedom is an event. Experiencing freedom as a good, as the satisfaction of
the desire for happiness about which Fr Pino spoke so effectively this morning,
is an event, is a surprise, as it were, is something unexpected that becomes
real…. A real presence is needed, one so attractive that it draws all
our affection along with it. This bond cannot be established by any rule–no
ethic, no spiritualism can do this. What is needed is the event of a presence
so correspondent that it is able to overcome all our resistance.
Julián Carrón
Belonging Makes us Free
Communion is the victory over this absence of ties which is slavery. Jesus
died and rose again precisely for this, in order to gather together God’s
scattered people, to make of us a true communion.
Only a love like this, only belonging like this makes us free in the real,
enables us to stay within reality, in circumstances, without being defined
by them.
If we are like this, we are also a good for everyone. If we do not have a love
like this, we pull ourselves into the hole of our little life. To be free within
reality, a love like this is needed, and this is a good for us and for everyone.
Otherwise, we are behind bars.
Julián Carrón
Recognizing this Presence
Adherence to a presence means that I, by following you, loving you, love you
because of what you are following; I am not your slave. I love you because
you are a bearer of the Mystery to me, of the life-saving Mystery… because
I have encountered and I am made up of this encounter; I am made up of this
encounter both when I am in company and when I am alone. And I continue to
ask to recognize this Presence, to live this Presence; I continue to make memory.
When you are alone, the Presence is attached to you.
Giancarlo Cesana