Fraternity 2005

The Beauty of a Heritage
27,000 adults in Rimini for the annual Spiritual Exercises, and thousands of others following the event in sixty countries, preached by Fr. Julián Carrón, President of the Fraternity since March 19th. This is the first course of exercises since the death of Fr. Giussani. Benedict XVI sent his message: “Your Founder passed away shortly before our beloved Holy Father John Paul II. Both were ardent witnesses of Christ and they leave us the heritage of a witness of total dedication to the ‘hope that does not disappoint us’”

by Alberto Savorana

An unusual “workers’ feast,” in Rimini, May 1, 2005. The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom invades the immense spaces as 27,000 of us enter the hall for the last day of the Spiritual Exercises of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation. The notes of Rachmaninov’s music, written for this liturgy (published in the “Spirto gentil” music series promoted by Fr. Giussani), unexpectedly awaken a personal memory. It was in 1997, and Benedict XVI, Cardinal Ratzinger as he was then, told us a story in the course of an address at the Eucharistic Congress in Bologna. “An ancient legend on the origins of Christianity in Russia tells that, one by one, the representatives of Islam from Bulgaria, the representatives of Judaism, and the messengers of the Pope, coming from Germany, came to present themselves to Prince Vladimir of Kiev, who was seeking the true religion for his people, each delegation proposing their faith as the right one and the best of all. The prince, however, was dissatisfied with all these proposals. The decision was to mature when his envoys returned from a solemn liturgy they had attended in the Church of Santa Sofia in Constantinople. Full of enthusiasm, they told the Prince, ‘We went to the Greeks and we were taken to where they celebrate the liturgy of their God… We don’t know if we were in heaven or on earth… we experienced that there God lives amongst men.’ What convinced the envoys of the Russian prince of the truth of the faith celebrated in the Orthodox liturgy was not a kind of missionary argument whose reasons were apparently more enlightened than those of other religions. What struck them was the mystery as such, which, going beyond discussion, made the power of the truth shine out before reason.”

Sons as never before
These are the first Spiritual Exercises without Fr. Giussani, yet with Fr. Giussani more present than ever–first and foremost in the beauty of the event, a beauty that sustains the memory of those who have discovered they are his children as never before; in the songs sung by the choir and by the assembly; in the precision of the secretariat and the order in the announcements; in the care shown in the prayer of Lauds and in the Mass; in the meditations given by Fr. Carrón; in the arrangement and decoration of the hall, etc. After all, is this not the secret of fatherhood? When the father goes away, all the wealth of his humanity–his words and gestures, the original method that takes flesh in words and gestures–is re-echoed in his children, who inherit everything so that it may bear fruit as something living and not simply preserved as a dead letter. If we keep our simplicity, we still have hope.
The auditoriums of the Rimini Fiera are the forum of one of the most important gestures of the Movement’s life and, above all, one of the finest. (Fr. Giussani once said, “There is nothing more anti-Christian than a Christian gesture badly done.”)

A fever of life
Fr. Julián Carrón is not new to the experience of the Spiritual Exercises. It has been some years running that Fr. Giussani has had him come from Spain to preach in Rimini. What is new is the position he speaks from. He is now “President” of the Fraternity, in the place of the one from whom was born the people who crowd the Fiera, and the other thousands of friends who are following the event live all over the world.
“It is better for you that I go.” These words of Jesus recalled by Fr. Carrón at the beginning of the Retreat had an incomparable effect this year. They were addressed to each of us who was there listening, each and every one of us a part of the community generated by the “fever of life” of Fr. Giussani who left us on February 22nd for that “celestial kingdom that fulfills every feast that the heart has longed for”(Jacopone da Todi); of him who was “touched, wounded by the desire for beauty”(Ratzinger) which he now enjoys beyond measure, we dare to hope, along with his friend, Leopardi.
“It is better for you that I go.” Fr. Carrón’s words dig deep into each one’s heart, as they must have marked the faces of the disciples when they were challenged by their friend Jesus who was leaving them.

Friends because friends of Christ
“Hope does not disappoint.” “Is it possible?” we asked ourselves as we read the title chosen for the Exercises 2005 on the backdrop of the stage. It was not a skeptical question, and even less a rhetorical one. How is it possible that hope does not let us down, as we think of those two deaths that united in their last moments two men who were friends because friends of Christ?
On Friday evening, Fr. Carrón climbed the rostrum and read Benedict XVI’s first message, sent by Cardinal Sodano, the Secretary of State: “Our dear Fr. Giussani nourished himself with this hope, and your esteemed Fraternity means to continue the journey in his footsteps. Your Founder passed away shortly before our beloved Holy Father John Paul II. Both were ardent witnesses of Christ and they leave us the heritage of a witness of total dedication to the ‘hope that does not disappoint us’ (Rom 5:5), that hope which the Holy Spirit pours into the hearts of the faithful by giving them the love of God.” The tension dissolves in an applause full of gratitude. Hope does not let us down.

The grain of wheat and its fruit
Fr. Carrón introduced the Retreat and quoted, “When the Son of man comes, will He still find faith on earth?” He spoke of relativism and of a widespread nihilism that penetrates into our life, then he added, “We know very well what this faith is; we have seen it in two giants, Fr. Giussani and John Paul II. Without this witness of faith, history would be a wilderness.” What is the Lord pointing out to us with their deaths, that mark the present moment, a moment “that culminated in the election of Benedict XVI?” Carrón asked. “If the grain of wheat does not die, it remains alone. If it dies, it bears much fruit.” It is impossible to think of Fr. Giussani without referring to this phrase of Jesus, which forces us, Fr. Carrón says, “to verify the aim of our Fraternity; to answer the urgent call that the Movement sends us in the same mode that we experienced in our relationship with Fr. Giussani: to make present what he made present for us–Christ. Thus, Fr. Giussani’s charism goes on, not because we evoke his figure from the past or repeat a perfect, neat discourse, but because we are a vortex of charity that makes the victory of Christ present–a people.”
We need conversion, we need to become adults in faith, not remain children, driven about by the waves of false teaching, as the Pope said. “And when are we adults?” Carrón asked. “When our faith is rooted in Christ’s friendship,” the measure of true humanism. “The Pope calls us to this, to answer the urgent need of our present time.” “‘Follow me,’ Benedict XVI reminded us. The answer to the call must come from each one through the circumstances of life.”

Desire and hope
Saturday morning, the first meditation: Carrón spoke of the desire for totality that dwells in man’s heart as the foundation of hope, and then modern culture’s attempt to separate the desire of man’s heart, subjecting it to the “dictatorship of desires” as a product of man’s imagination.
Saturday afternoon, second meditation: Hope is born only from a present experience; the fulfillment of our desire is Christ present, whose victory is a fact that can be recognized–the Christian people.
“A companionship guided toward destiny” is how Fr. Giussani always defined CL. As we left the Fiera, I got a telephone call: “What Carrón says is true, I could document every point with my life, and yet what he said was absolutely new. It’s paradoxical… everything was already there, but not yet ‘everything.’” And we go back home with the certainty of not being orphans. The infinite nostalgia with which we came to Rimini has not been cancelled as if by magic, but embraced and overcome by the evidence of a fatherhood that does not die because it has its roots in the Eternal, as Fr. Giussani told us twelve years ago, and we had barely noticed the depth of those words, a prophecy of the present. It was in February 1992: “To give your life for an Other’s work; this ‘other,’ historically, phenomenally, as it appears, is a particular person; in the case of our Movement, for example, I am the one. As I say this, it is as if all that I am were to disappear (because the ‘Other’ is Christ in His Church). A historic point of reference remains–the whole flow of words, the whole torrent of work that was born from that first moment in the Berchet High School. So we have reached a very serious moment, which urgently requires everyone, as a matter of loyalty and fidelity, to become aware of his own responsibility. It is the moment for each of us to take up his own responsibility for the charism. Each one, in his every action, every day of his life, in all his imaginings, in all his resolutions and in all his doings, must be concerned to compare the criteria of his actions with the image of the charism as it emerged at the beginning of our common history. So our greatest concern must be for this comparison with the charism, methodologically, practically, morally and pedagogically.” Now these words have an infinitely greater specific weight. On our way home, we are accompanied by a thought of St. Gregory Nazianzen that Fr. Giussani had us discover with the beauty of his life: “Were I not yours, O Christ, I would feel a finished creature.”