Meeting A Faceless Enemy by Marco Bona Castellotti In a sermon on the purification of Our Lady, Saint Bernard says, “In the ways of the Spirit, not going forward is the same as going backward, because you cannot remain motionless in one point. Our perfection consists in never deluding ourselves that we have arrived, but in always striving forward, in the endless aspiration for the better, trusting in divine mercy as the remedy for our misery.” Right away, I would substitute the word “better” with the word “truth”–“in the endless aspiration for the truth.” The ways of the Spirit are those that we lose very often, while they should be those that truly are walked, even in daily life. We all are obliged to pass along the ways of daily reality; the ways of the Spirit are not something abstract but, for us who are called, are what give meaning to daily experience. The Meeting title reminded me of Fr Giussani’s two messages to the Fraternity Spiritual Exercises. Fr Giussani entrusted to this people, to us, a task that is the most precious treasure of an inheritance, to announce to all, and to announce to each other, the positivity of life. This task is linked to the title, to this progress, that is precisely a progress of the announcement, to be understood actively in missionary terms. Mission is a task of our culture. In this sense, in order for it to be full culture, its self-awareness (that characterizes a people) can’t help but be critical: if it isn’t so, it risks extinguishing its ardor, because the fact of being critical and self-aware presupposes that it be a criticism to which our own work itself is exposed, in a form of perennial–but constructive–dissatisfaction. If this factor is missing, inevitably you risk a satisfaction synonymous with closure. I feel that this Meeting, in its 25th year from its foundation, as something of ours (andprecisely for this reason), must be as little ours as possible. It must be communicated to the world more than it has ever been until now. In order for it to challenge all the asperities of a different culture, it has to be ever more aware of an identity. What I expect from the Meeting is what I expect from the Movement: keeping alive the élan it had in the beginning, which it has maintained, but which, in recent years, is ever more tested by a creeping cultural opposition that no longer has a face, and thus is ever more dangerous. I am talking about “bored” nihilism, which has neither semblance nor strength, because it knifes you in the back without your seeing it. The Meeting, inasmuch as it is an expression of the Movement, and the Movement itself, are called to recognize ever more fully their own face, that is, their own identity. The more they recognize their own identity, the more they will oppose a faceless enemy. Our openness is born of the fullness of heart and mind of he who has led us to this point: the openness of heart and mind of Fr Giussani, a passion in front of the creation. This dimension of grandeur must be lived ever more deeply by the Meeting.