Letters

EDITED BY PAOLA BERGAMINI
pberga@tracce.it

Milan
The Growing Forest
Some years ago, one Saturday afternoon, returning from buying a new couch for our house, my husband and I came upon a poor man who was begging. The contrast between our recent purchase and his poverty led me to say, “We can buy ourselves a new couch and he doesn’t even have the money to eat… who knows if he has a home!” My husband banged his hand on the steering wheel and said, “So what should we have done? Tell me! Should we not have bought the couch?” I answered, “No, but what we are doing is not enough!” However, I did not know what we should do. Some weeks later, I was invited to do the Food Collection. It was not a good period in my life: everything seemed dark to me, and all around me I only saw ravenous wolves, and looking at reality through this lens, I really did meet only wolves. The experience of the Food Collection was a ray of sunshine for me. How many people there were who realized the “need” and shared it by this gesture, without making a fuss, without going on the front page of the newspapers. There is a saying: “A falling tree makes more noise than a growing forest.” Finally I took my eyes off the wolves and saw that the angels, in silence, numbered many, many more! Since then, my life has changed; I have begun to ask myself personally what I can do, besides saying “poor things!” whenever I come upon a need. It did not take very much: through my work, I met a mother with a little boy, alone and very poor… One afternoon I talked about her with Elena, the mother of a classmate of my son, and that same day she introduced me to Rita, who “by chance” was there that day, and once again “by chance” I drove home with the car full of packages. Since that day I have started working with the Solidarity Bank of the Sacro Cuore. I have also discovered other things: that there is no need to “look,” as the need itself will look for you and expects only that you answer with a yes. Today, I have said yes to three families, and it is certainly not a hobby; each time it is so exhausting and requires so much of my strength that it forces me to renew the reasons why I do it and to renew my yes. What a surprise that I experience also the condition of the beggar when I collect for the Bank outside this room? I am not even capable of asking for a discountimagine, begging! I understood what was not enough in what I was doing. It is not enough to be a good daughter, a good wife, a good mother, a good worker; all of this is already due and taken for granted. To go to meet someone to whom you owe nothing, whom you don’t even know, who will never owe you anything… this is helping the forest to grow, in my opinion.
Simona

Japan
In the Center of Hiroshima
For three years, Fr Arnaldo has proposed the “AVSI [Association of Volunteers in International Service] Tents” to us. . This year too, along with the responsibles for Japan, we decided to do this fundraising gesture to make the Movement better known. On the day of the twentieth anniversary of the recognition of the Fraternity, we organized an AVSI Tent in the center of the city. We made a flyer reporting the projects supported by AVSI, the reasons for the gesture, and Fr Giussani’s text. Throughout the afternoon, about ten people gave their time to distribute these flyers and to explain to those who were more interested what it was all about. A friend of ours, too, stayed there all afternoon handing out flyers, even though he had serious problems with his legs due to an old accident. Even those who could not be present that afternoon gave their time so that this gesture could be accomplished: one friend, for example, translated the texts of the flyer into Japanese, while the parents of two others in the community offered to keep the grandchildren so that they could attend. Others offered to make “banners” to explain what was happening in the center of Hiroshima. At the end of the day, we had collected a large amount of yen and had understood, too, that this gesture can really help the person who makes it.
Sadahiro

Michaliovo
Only for His Glory
Six people from Pesaro (Italy) went to Minsk, Belarus, in mid-November to meet the little group led by Jean François Thiry with Natasha and Svetlana. This is the letter they received afterwards

Dear friends: The encounter with you and a series of other events have turned my life upside down. I feel like a completely different person. Just as little children learn to walk, fall down, get up again, smile, and go on, this is how I live. Faith in the truth, in good, in love sustains me every day. And then you are there, my friends, with our friendship (an event that has lasted now for five years) that will never end, because God has wanted it this way. And everything that has happened to me in life helps me to understand how important and necessary all this is for me, like air and sunlight. I am grateful to you for your letters and phone calls. You have helped me to understand so many things, to find answers to questions that have tormented me all my life. And God has willed that it be just you to help me to discover the truth. Our friendship, our faith warms my heart in difficult moments. I have understood that Paradise exists, it is around us. All you have to do is look closely, love this world, embrace joys and sorrows. It might seem that life here in the country is monotonous and uninteresting. But the days fly by and I am afraid I will not be able to do everything I should in my life. I love life, I live and enjoy it. I am learning to live with my heart open to everyone who needs me, and this gives me a meaning. Someone looks at me and learns. Everything that I do daily, I do it in the name of God for His glory. And life for me has really been transformed into a ladder that leads upwards, not a long and exhausting path with lots of turns and ups and downs. The steps of life are not easy to climb, but I understand that this road leads me upwards, and I feel confident of the support you give me.
Natasha

Paullo
Flight into Egypt
For New Year’s, I went to Egypt with some friends from the choir in Milan and a large group of friends from Casale Monferrato and various parts of Milan. The trip included Coptic monasteries, where monks still live, the Sinai peninsula, Fr Claudio’s community of Sudanese Christians in Cairo, places from the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt, and a visit to Patriarch Gattas…

We were accompanied throughout the entire trip by our Egyptian guide Fawzy, a 37-year-old Muslim. A familiarity was immediately established, which grew as time passed. His human attention, along with his competence and professionalism, were truly amazing to me. During the bus rides each morning, we recited Lauds. On some occasions we sang. And Fawzy always listened to us attentively. In the meantime I was struck also by the sense of unity, especially among us of the choir who had been assigned the task of choosing the songs, setting the pitch, and directing the rest of the group; it was like a desire to affirm simply and sincerely what binds us together. This is a unity that can exist only if each one himself asks the Lord to bring it about, each one begs for his own fulfillment regarding everything he does. And there is a respect, a patience, an understanding, an openness toward others, that otherwise would not be possible. Fawzy has let us know that he misses us very much and he misses our songs. What can cause someone to be struck so greatly, to the point of emotion? I think it is not the temperament, originality, or any other quality of a person, but Jesus, who in His discretion, in the simplicity and even through the precariousness of human relationships, reawakens the humanity of a person and his infinite desire to be happy and fulfilled. And thus the only desire is to stay with Him.
Irena

Inexorable Need
“What can give a man of today the assurance of being able to move about in safety when violence seems to corrode relationships and actions?” About ten students from London and fifteen or so from the rest of England decided, along with Fr Jeremy (the priest responsible for pastoral work with the students of all the universities in London) to meet Saturday, November 3rd, to discuss these provocations. The proposal of a friendship in which it is possible to share life’s true interest was extended through the testimonies of Amos (a researcher at Reading University), Fr Jeremy, and Mandy (a visiting lecturer at the University of Birmingham). Amos, picking up on the invitation flyer, told about his work at the university and his encounter with the Movement as “the moment when I began to take seriously this question about the meaning of my life: coming upon an exceptional Presence that is impassioned about my humanity and says to me, ‘I have come to stay with you.’ Christ has become familiar to man through a mercy that we experience in some concrete relationships.” It is precisely the experience of this passion for the human and of Christ’s initiative toward us that made Fr Jeremy’s conversion possible (he was previously an Anglican priest). “What changed Zacchaeus? A ‘unique’ encounter with Christ in the context of a friendship. Christ took the initiative and Zacchaeus said yes. This is what happened to me when I understood that faith is not something good to do or a series of rules to follow, but yielding to a person–because Christ is a person. My question about the reason finds an answer in a friendship, the friendship of Christ.” And precisely this “inexorable need for a companionship” is what Mandy has always lived, in the beginning as a promise that seemed destined not to be fulfilled, and after the encounter with the Movement as awareness of the only possibility for a truly human path. “When I was at the university, I met Ana Lydia. She took me seriously, she looked at me in a way that enabled me to say, ‘Truth and beauty are the things I am looking for; I was made for them.’ Once, she said to me something that stayed in my mind for a long time: ‘You are a relationship with the Infinite.’ I did not understand what this meant, but I felt attached to her because this friendship was attractive and I could trust it.”
Gianluca, London

Encounters
Dearest friends: I have been in a village of 800 people, Morro Vermelho, about thirty miles from Belo Horizonte. You can get there only by traveling an unpaved road for about seven miles. Miguel, who lives in a Memores Domini house and is a university professor, is doing research on the way of life in the village, which preserves and lives traditions that descend from the Portuguese but are no longer practiced even in Portugal. Up to now, this could seem to be merely an interesting bit of folklore, but the extraordinary thing is that these events of the past are lived just as though they were happening now. Everything pivots around the Catholic faith (for example, they relive the fight of the Christians against the Moors) and a great devotion to Our Lady. Hearing some people speak, from a 94-year-old lady to an 18-year-old boy, I was deeply moved, because either this is a phenomenon of group madness (but the people do not live closed up in the town, they work in the city, live in Belo Horizonte, and return to Morro every so oftenthey have contact with the outside), or there is really something else involved. A boy told us about the feast of September 8th, when they celebrate Our Lady’s birthday: they bring sweets for the occasion, the band plays “Happy Birthday to You,” and one time they invited St Anne (ie, the statue from a neighboring town). And too, devotion to the–as they repeat–apostolic, Roman, Catholic Church (if you know anything at all about liberation theology, this emphasis is very important) and to the Pope. Yesterday, I went with Marquinho and Elenice to meet some Sisters who, years ago, had known some of us here and were now asking for help with their educational work. As soon as I arrived at the convent, I realized that the congregation (Our Lady of the Snow) was the same one as the Sisters who ran the kindergarten I attended as a child. Sister Maurizia, one of those responsible for the congregation, started telling us about the work they do, and what emerged was not an activist emphasis or a love for the poor as poor people, but love of Jesus and the desire to communicate this, because to know Him is the true need that each of us has, even those who do not know it, and even those who seem to be in a state of such great material need that we would be tempted to give them only that. When we started talking, she stopped us short and called all the Sisters to listen. Before we left, I threw out: “Do you know Fr Giussani?” She said yes, they met him many times in Albenga (Italy), and now Fr Ambrogio Pisoni preaches their retreat, because, she added, “It is God who gives His gifts to whomever He wants, and it falls to us only to recognize Him and to ask for help, knowing that something great will come of it.”
Luisa, Belo Horizonte

Free Reason
Why should we say yes? This question stayed with me and my wife when we found out about the existence of a baby girl abandoned at birth. The baby had multiple birth defects. Roberta was abandoned by her mother because of these defects, which were plausibly the result of unsuccessful attempts at abortion. When our friend Maria spoke about her at a Fraternity meeting, as we listened we would never have thought that this would be an important moment, the beginning of a story of welcoming. The facts were: firstly, a deformed baby; secondly, an abandoned baby girl, who was living in a hospital cradle and did not want to die; thirdly, a baby who needed specialist care; finally, a baby who needed to be welcomed. The little girl needed above all care and sensory stimulation. I am a neurosurgeon, and often my work consists of facing complex medical problems like Roberta’s; at the least, I had the right skills and suitable friendships to be able to offer the child some chance at a cure. My family is quite large and I would say very noisy, because my children are all about the same age: 13, 12, and 10 years old. All of us could ensure adequate bombardment with sensory stimuli. But the most convincing consideration was that the history of belonging to the Movement teaches us freedom and companionship. That is, freedom from the rational schemes that plan out life and sometimes shut it up in a cage, keeping you from making that leap into what you don’t know, but where there is something greater than what you already know. The freedom learned in our belonging to the Movement and the companionship, that is to say, the awareness of never being alone, enabled me and my wife to see in the face of poor little Roberta the face of Christ next to us. We spoke with our children, and then we went to the judge to inform him of our availability. Two days later, Roberta was at home with us. When she arrived, and only in that precise moment, did we meet her physically and realize the gravity of her malformations. Results were not long in coming. Roberta, albeit within her illness, seems to bloom each day more and more. Now she recognizes her house, her things, and the people who are around her, and her response to the stimuli she receives constantly is almost adequate. Our family is more serene, the atmosphere is more joyous, we still argue but much less, and our children in particular are changing. My relationships have changed with my colleagues, whom I involved in Roberta’s therapy. As soon as they heard about the gesture of welcome we had made, they offered their professional skills, as though they wanted to be a part of this story. In fact, for the first time this year, they participated in an AVSI gesture, coming in large and above all joyous numbers to the dinner we organized. To conclude, a thought for the future: we are learning not to be afraid of it any more. When we started this adventure, we made it clear to the judge, who was incredulous at our availability, given the child’s condition, that we were taking her as a temporary foster child. My wife and I have decided that we shall continue to keep Roberta, at least as long as our strength and our freedom allow us to do so. We shall not ask heroic, dutiful efforts of ourselves, but the freedom to obey reality, which is the way to obey the Destiny that creates all things.
Gerardo, Caltanisetta

At the Pizzeria
As an initiative in favor of the Avsi “Tents”, we decided to go to some pizzerias to ask them to devolve part of the cost of a pizza to AVSI. In one, we met the cook, to whom we explained AVSI and above all, what we are. In the end, unexpectedly, the cook said, “This is too great! Everybody has to take part in it!” We decided to take up the challenge, going around to all the pizzerias in Porto Viro, and to our great surprise, almost all of them accepted our proposal. After the campaign was over, the pizza cooks told us about some customers who had ordered one type of pizza and had changed their orders after reading our poster explaining the initiative!
Marco and the AVSI group of Porto Viro