Meeting The Goal is Infinite by Giancarlo Cesana Anniversaries and birthdays can be very sad, because they show that we’re getting old and heading downhill–unless you like the life you’ve lived and, above all, it’s much more interesting now than when it began. In this case, it isn’t that the anniversary loses importance, but it becomes secondary to the question you have at the present moment. What was there before is of value because it somehow explains what is here now. “Our progress does not consist in presuming we have arrived, but in striving constantly toward the goal.” If there’s a goal we’ll never reach, what do we care if there’s a goal? What’s the use of truth, if it isn’t attainable now? It is very true that we haven’t reached the goal, but the problem is that the truth and the goal are beyond measure, infinite; they’re attainable, but they are a different conception, another experience of self and of reality. You never reach the goal, in the sense that it will never be yours, you will never be its master, but it isn’t that you don’t touch it. Quite the contrary, you touch it, you experience it, even if you understand that it is always more. Precisely because the goal is infinite, it is the object of a continuous striving. This means that, in life, what matters is the beginning, that life itself is always a beginning. Life’s journey isn’t for arriving at the end, but for going deep into the beginning. It is the opposite of progressivism, which, instead, theorizes advancement in and of itself. The word charism expresses the action of the Spirit, giving life to what would otherwise be dead. When we speak of the charism of Giussani, we say that for us, outside the encounter with the Movement, Christianity would have been something dead, while now it is alive. Going deep to the core of the origin, then, means going deep into this encounter that each of us has had. If a goal is given, a road is given. The commitment is to adhere to the goal and the road. For me, this title means that the most important problem of life is the beginning, because the goal is contained in the origin. The goal is attainable, it is an origin I experience, and I go forward experiencing it, like a walk. Ephraim the Syrian said, “If you go to the spring and you are thirsty, you will be happy that you don’t use up all the water, because when you’re thirsty you’ll still be able to drink.” The enjoyment lies in the drinking, not in using up the water. The enjoyment isn’t the consequence of something that was, but something that has to be born from us now: this is what striving for the goal means. The origin was, for the Movement, 50 years ago; for the Meeting, 25. It’s either reborn now or it doesn’t matter the least bit to anyone. The way to affirm the road you’re on is that now a new thing should happen that makes you say, “This road I’m on is so beautiful!” We do the Meeting as a documentation of life, that we read starting from our experience, which enables us to appreciate not only our life, but also that of all those who have something to say about life (this is why everyone has come to the Meeting). What does it mean to presume to have arrived? Thinking you know everything. What has to happen is what happened 24 years ago, but with an ever greater profundity.