WORD AMONG US

The event as prayer

Notes from Luigi Giussani’s closing address to the Assembly of Responsibles of Communion and Liberation. Milan, February 4, 2003

I hope that the occasion of this meeting may make me better in the sight of God and more generously open and moved toward men. Our initiatives are not things beyond our horizon, but make all of our life take part in what has happened, in what has happened to us, in what has happened in the world–the world in front of which Jesus says, “Who knows what people will be like in the face of My presence?”

I thank the Lord for the gift of your companionship He has given me today, because it is a companionship that brings rebirth–what brings rebirth is always a companionship! And the companionship is made to be reborn by something that happens, that happens among men, happens among men who live the same moment of history.

The grace the Lord has granted me today was granted to me through the talks by Giancarlo and Fr Pino. They persuaded me, even more than I already was, that what has been said to us is something that has to be done. What has been said to us is not and does not have a point of arrival, a theoretical goal, but is an event. The word “event” is what gives concreteness to the whole space of our desire, the desire for humanity, the desire for a peaceful and good humanity, the desire for a humanity that is a premise to the eternal future for which we were made. It is the word around which all the effort of our lives toward goodness coagulates, has to coagulate.

Morality is a way in which our being companions in the world is enacted. What the Lord gives me to reveal to our companionship with all my heart and all my soul’s desire, I offer to you. And so it becomes prayer.

Morality can be sustained only in prayer, because it is in the love for Christ that our love for our woman, our love for our children, our love for our friends finds its path-a road stretching to a journey as far at the utmost reaches of the earth.

I thank you for the example you give me, I thank you for the friendship you offer me, I thank you because we are all together, we feel united in saying to Christ, “Lord, just as You wept over Jerusalem, Your homeland, so do we weep over the great toil and pain You allow to enter into the veins of our human existence. But if You allow it, You lived it! You lived this pain of ours that as a promise of life–even as a promise of life–You have allowed to enter into our existence.”

I thank you, and I hope that you understand what my heart wants to say.

Ciao, thank you.