letters
EDITED BY PAOLA BERGAMINI
pberga@tracce.it

VENEZUELA
25 Years of History
Dear Fr Giussani: I cannot help expressing to you my gratitude for the gift I received ten years ago, through your daughters who are Trappist nuns in Venezuela. Summarizing such an eventful time, I shall recall only some milestones. First of all, the invitation that, without knowing me, came to me from a small town more than 200 miles away to draw up the plans for the monastery of Nuestra Señora de Coromoto. Thus, in a particularly dark moment of my presumptuous and vagabond life, I found myself in contact with the most noble, beautiful, and devout persons I have ever known. Thus was born a house that was different, authentic, and beautiful, similar to them in every way, without my being able to explain how we attained this result.
Then came 1991: I see before me the faces of Anna, Chiara, Ivana, and Paola as they spoke to me of the Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples in Italy and the chance to come to Italy to encounter this experience. Later, there was the appearance of Fr Filippo, who took it upon himself to go uncomfortably out of his way to see me during a stop in Venezuela, on his way back to Brazil. He was sitting in my study waiting for me, because even though I knew he was coming, I had been unable to avoid the unexpected hitch that delayed my return by an hour. So I found out about the Movement, and Fr Filippo introduced me to a group of university students, the first in Venezuela. Finally, there I was in Rome! It was August 20th, the feast of St Bernard (I realized afterwards), the great father of the Cistercians. At the airport my colleague Lullo, from the community of Pesaro, was waiting for me. The friendship binding us was immediately evident, as though I were meeting again a brother whose companionship had never been interrupted. Obviously, the visit to Vitorchiano, the mother house of our Venezuelan Trappists, was a fundamental stop along our journey to Rimini, and then Pesaro, which struck me with the same depth as the Trappe in Venezuela. The 1991 Meeting was a great one! “Antigone returned…,” it started with an outstanding performance of Antigone, in which tens of thousands of us, Il Sabato in hand, recited the part of the chorus, united by a deep harmony, the same harmony I perceive at La Thuile or every time we celebrate the liturgy or sing in our communities. The Meeting, with its countless events, was a gate to heaven, my hundredfold, at the origin of a belonging which gives my being its physiognomy, which redeems my limitations, pains, and frailties, which redeems the inertia of 25 years of distance from my Christian tradition! What a great beginning for a history that never ceases educating me to the love of the only newness, through faces and facts that sustain my human journey. Now I am living in my country, which is going through a phase of great confusion. But the growth of communities in six cities in Venezuela, the permanent contact with the center, the nearness of Mother Cristiana and her daughters in the monastery, all make so many great hopes reasonable. Dear Fr Gius, this year 2001 marks a watershed in my life: 25 years of turning my back on the presence of Christ in the world and 25 years, the last ten of them after my return, of a belonging that prays for consistency in my journey. I lived ten years at your side, and I keep in my heart the memory of the occasion when I was able to greet you in Milan. The next Meeting in Rimini will welcome me, if God so wills it, as a pilgrim doing his own little Jubilee. Thank you. May the Lord protect you and preserve in us the seed you have planted, so that many may live what the Spirit has called me to experience and which this year I celebrate with renewed determination.
Bernardo

MILAN
The Offering of the Instant
Dear Fr Giussani: I would like to shout a great “Thanks to the Lord!” because you exist and He has made you a cornerstone on which has been built a city of God. Thanks to the Lord for having let me encounter the Movement (even if at an age that is not so young), because He has given new freshness to my life. Looking back over the years at everything that has happened, I have understood that the Lord has given me immense gifts. In my moments of trial, He grabbed me by the hair. Now, however, I want to thank you for, among so many other things, having explained so clearly the offering of the instant. This has become my ejaculatory prayer, especially in the moments of great suffering, of physical pain that paralyzes the brain and keeps me from thinking or praying. And it suits me because weakness makes me feel that I am nothing and makes me beg with humility. I have stopped claiming things, even right and logical ones, and entrust myself totally to the Lord. “I offer You the instant and I belong always to You, Lord.” If the instant is so important as to be offered every time, it is also important for the gifts that every instant we receive from the Lord. Ever since I have understood this clearly, that every instant is a gift, it comes to me spontaneously to repeat often, “Thanks,” with a great joy in my heart. I have never appreciated life, just as it is, so much as now, at the age of 77. It makes me open my eyes wide on everything and, by recognizing that everything is a gift, everything arouses my wonder even at what all my life I have perceived as logical and taken for granted. The Lord is marvelous, He surprises me all the time; He never lets anyone beat Him at generosity. From this perspective, my relationship with others has changed as well; I look at them with new eyes. Even if, because of my limited physical and intellectual abilities, I cannot do great things, I have understood that I must communicate this joy to others with greater attention, with a smile, an encouraging word, pointing out, especially to older people, the positivity of what we are living in that instant because it is a gift. One can listen to or read certain teachings for years, but it is only by a lightning bolt from the Spirit that in an instant all is made clear.
Dolores

MILAN
Spectacle to the World
Dear friends: I happened almost by chance to celebrate the funeral of a 26-year-old boy from Livorno. He had been adopted more than twenty years earlier by a couple who were among the first to start up the Movement in that city. The doctors had given him to them–it was a clinically maddening case–saying, “In any case, he’ll last four or five months.” He “lasted” 26 years, because of the kind of devotion that this man and this woman had for him, hour after hour. The thing that made me reflect the most is that the center of Livorno (which is certainly not a Catholic city, because it is the Masonic capital of Italy and the city where the Communist Party was founded) came to a halt. Evidently, the way they had seen, for more than twenty years, this man and this woman treat that human “wreck” had made them perceive an announcement which, above and beyond all their ideological differences, made them come to the funeral and stand outside the church (because not everyone could fit inside). I do not believe that there has been in Livorno a more explicit moment of public announcement of what Jesus Christ is in the world than the funeral of this young man.
Fr Luigi Negri

MELZO
The Photo that Tells All
Dearest Fr Giussani: During all the years I have been in the Movement, I have always felt the desire to meet you or at least to write to you. But ever since my university years, when you taught me in class, I have never known exactly what I wanted to say to you; I could not manage to focus my thoughts on some concepts to express to you. It was as though, overcome by a sentimental wave of experiences that made me happy, I could not find “the right thing to say.” This year I went with my family and our Fraternity to spend two days at the beach, where my husband took this picture of our group. When I had it developed and saw it, I said, “That’s it! This is what I want to say, or better, what I want to show!” I look at these faces and I see the people who share my life; I see the experience of all these years, always and in any case attached to these faces; I see the whole history of us kids, who are now grown up, and of our children who now play together, and I think that all this would not have been possible without your charism, which has been placed at our service through the action of the Holy Spirit. I could not help sending you a copy, just like this, without having anything else to add except that I am immensely happy for having bound my life to these persons and to our history, and I want to thank you and hug you like a father. I ask the Lord that this grace never be taken away from me.
Paola

Examination
We sent a dear friend of ours, a professed Sister who has been living for a few months in the Middle East, the text of Fr Giussani’s telegram to the Pope. Here is her reply: “What Fr Giussani wrote, that ‘the immense sacrifice of this journey gives concrete form to Catholic ecumenicity,’ was the thing that really was most evident to me. This visit was indeed a veritable popular festival, and not only for Christians. Everyone was astounded and, if you will, captured by a confused joy, like at an unexpected gift, in front of the simple and true self-presentation of this man, who is not afraid to show himself just as he is, old and ill, because he has a message to bring, a message of goodness, and he insists on bringing it. ‘His inner strength interrogates us and wakes us up,’ said an Arabic language teacher, a Muslim (‘a sign of contradiction and hope’). Among other things, the days of his visit coincided for me with the days of my final exam in Arabic. So, for the oral exam, I had prepared myself to talk about the Pope’s visit, because I imagined that they would ask me about it. But what I did not expect was the question of one of the professors, if I had eaten the ‘bread’ at the stadium (where Mass was celebrated)! Thus, I don’t even know how (in Arabic!) I explained what the Eucharist is for us, in front of an audience that was visibly struck by the enthusiasm with which I spoke of it. Afterwards, they didn’t dare ask me anything else. It was the best exam of my whole life!”
Vittoria, Milan

Belonging
Dear Fr Giussani: For me the CLU vacation was an education like never before to the greatness of the Event that called each of us to stay together to know the meaning of everything we live. Once again it was evident that “God is not stopped by my evil”–because through these precise faces He calls me, and stays with me, continuing to pour out His mercy on me even when I am not aware of it. The vacation, where it was so simple to throw myself into all the activities, opened up a huge attraction and a desire to really possess everything. Yet, as you teach us, this position is vertiginous–we cannot sustain it. But this desire to hold onto the joy of the vacation helped me see that the point is this very position of attraction in front of reality, so that it is not the circumstances that define my possibility for happiness, but rather the certainty of His merciful presence that saves everything, and therefore the begging that He come again and show me His face.Thank you for generating this place, because it is only in the certainty that I belong to you and to this people that this simplicity and attraction are possible, so that I can risk giving myself totally in everything–from games, to skits, and to the relationships with the others and the One who called me here. With great affection!
Michelle, Washington DC

Loving a Presence
Dearest Fr Giussani: I am writing to you some of my immediate impressions, returning from the Spiritual Retreat of the Fraternity. First of all: Thanks! I am more aware than ever that what I am now, I owe to the encounter with you and your fatherhood, which took my desire for happiness seriously! At the Retreat, I was struck by the gesture as a whole–the songs (great soloists and choir), slides (the most beautiful ever seen), speakers (so different, yet so united), and announcements (timely and precise). “Every detail in relation to the whole.” The people arrived from all over and stood there, quietly, awaiting the indications given by the secretariat, and then they went into the various rooms that had been pre-assigned. Fr Gius, imagine seeing a river that rises higher and higher and then runs off into little streams, then comes together again and rushes impetuously to the sea. During the Saturday afternoon lesson, Carrón said, talking about memory, something I had never heard before, which was that to live memory it is not necessary to always be conscious of His Presence. It is necessary that you love this Presence; it is a love. If you desire it with sorrow, ask for it! Finally, what you said in your message on Sunday is true: the more time passes, the more I understand that it is necessary to cry out, that prayer is the modality par excellence to “check in” with the Lord. Two years ago, at Gudo, you said to me that “the job to be done all day long (all life long) is to repeat: Veni Sante Spiritus. Veni per Mariam. If the heart cries out to God, God does not remain in silence, He does not stay hidden.” The point is to never stop asking. I am proud to belong to this people!
Fulvia, Milan