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The Victory Is the Victory of Easter and of Immortality.
Thus the Victory of Easter Is the Christian People.
This Is Christ’s Victory over All the “Victory” of Nothingness
Notes from the addresses to the Fraternity Spiritual Exercises of Communion and Liberation.
Rimini, April 24 and 25, 2004

by Luigi Giussani

Saturday afternoon, April 24th
This lesson by Carrón is the best thing the Lord has given me to understand in all the meetings of our Spiritual Exercises. I beg you to ask your priests, ask your leaders to give you the typescript of the dictation of Fr Carrón’s talk. It is the most beautiful thing I have heard in my life, the clearest, most beautiful invitation, in which the entire subject of the grace that Christ has granted us lies in the fact of that people who, in front of the things that happen in life, will make the impassioned gift of something great, great beyond compare.
I hope the Lord will give me the grace to take part in all your gatherings and to hear the meaning of things explained again as we have heard it explained today. Because, believe me–I realize I am not able to say it well, because I ought to be able to do immediately what Fr Carrón did so well just now–we want to be faithful to Christ. Faithfulness to Christ is faithfulness to the fact that the meaning of life exists, is revealed, is relevant and revealed for each one of us, in which it is impressive that the condition of life is positive, no matter what.
I am in a condition to be able to “calculate” also the contribution my experience can give to the destiny for which we were made, for which we were ordained. It is not one particular act; it is not one particular victory, but is the true victory, which is shouting out the positivity of our life, because Christ’s victory, in His death, comes from this: His reading of life as not dominated by evil, not dominated by difficult language, not described by the newness of a vocabulary, but determined in an infallible way–yes, in an infallible way–because this way is infallible, this positivity of our time, this positivity of our existence.
The fact that even a pagan is called to testify to the truth, Christ’s victory in his life, is something that we shall have to remember. We must remind each other of it every day, every day we must remember the victory of wholeness, the victory of the victory, the victory of the resurrection of Christ, which will bend our hearts to being the vehicle for the knowledge that our companions in the people, our companions in the community, our companions in communion will have the right and duty to communicate to us, making of the positivity of life the salvation of what we have always wanted.
The problem is not a victory as a relief inside a death, but the meaning of death inside the fervor of a life.
I beg you to call me, to give me, as soon as you can, the opportunity to admire your faithfulness, the faithfulness of your decision, the faithfulness of your companionship, the faithfulness of our companionship, because this is the companionship that saves the world.

Sunday morning, April 25th
Let me greet you again. The more I reflect on it, the more I want to thank the Lord and each one of you, because the theme of this year’s Exercises is the most beautiful and boundless theme imaginable. Because Christ’s victory is a victory over death. And the victory over death is a victory over life. Everything has a positivity, everything is a good so intrusive that, when the Lord gives us notice and an endpoint, it will form the great suggestiveness for which this world was made.
So there is the courage that each of us must bring for the positivity of living, so much so that any contradiction or any pain has, in the “vehicle” of this life, a positive answer.
And as a specific example, I hope we can come to a clear agreement with the Lord that He will enlighten us in everything that puts us in the “new” conditions of acting, so that we may see that man’s life is completely positive, profoundly positive in its final intent.
Because life is beautiful: life is beautiful; it is a promise God made with the victory of Christ. Therefore, every day that we get out of bed–whatever our immediately perceptible, documentable situation may be, even the most painful, unimaginable–is a good that is about to be born on the edge of our horizon as men.
And we must try to translate this also into a correspondence in history. We must act so that the very history of our life is viewed as the life of all the peoples in the world, from the first all the way to the very last–as we were saying before–the very last edge of our own, of the reality which is the life of a man. Because it demands a new attention, an attention that bears within it a grand prize–the grand prize!–that bears within it already the grand prize that lies at the end of everything for every man. Where we must help each other, where we must support each other, where we must be brothers is in this ultimate positivity in the face of every pain: it is a serenity that makes our adherence serene.
And “studying” the history of mankind with this intent at demonstration will be a new way to thank the ones who make us burst with joy at God’s bounty, in the face of His bounty.
My best wishes to all of you, that each one of you may find on the road of your life the emergence of good which is the Risen Christ, may find the help of what awakens in man the positivity that makes it reasonable to go on living.
Praise the Lord who is victorious over death and over us!
Greetings to all!