Fraternity

The Life I Now Live in the Flesh I Live by Faith in the Son of God

Fifty countries connected, 18 of them by direct satellite hook-up. In the new fairground pavilions in Rimini, 26,000 people followed the Fraternity Retreat, including the homily by Cardinal Sepe. Fr Giussani’s closing words: “Man, woman, boy, girl, you, all of you, do not weep! Do not weep! There is a gaze and a heart that penetrates to your very marrow and loves you all the way to your destiny”

By PAOLO BIONDI

The telegram from the Pope
His Eminence Cardinal
Crescenzio Sepe,
Prefect of the Congregation
for the Evangelization of Peoples
Vatican City

On the occasion of the Spiritual Retreat of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation in Rimini on the theme “The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God,” the Supreme Pontiff charges Your Eminence with transmitting to the organizers and participants his warm good wishes and greetings, expressing his pleasure at the timely initiative, and in hopes that this may arouse renewed adherence to Christ and a growing commitment to witnessing the Gospel, invokes abundant heavenly grace and gladly sends to Your Eminence who presides over the Eucharistic celebration and all those present the desired apostolic blessing.

Cardinal Angelo Sodano,
Secretary of State

Dearest Fr Gius:
The wounds in the body of the Risen Christ into which Thomas put his hand, the time and space that no longer confine Him, the food that Jesus could but did not “have to” eat, represent the manner of expression of his accomplished existence; they are the powerful signs of the “flesh” of Him who rose again in His real body and is really present in our midst.

In faith, from this moment on, our “flesh,” in a burgeoning way, already participates in the gift of the Risen One. The body, time, and space no longer have the face of an enemy, but are the road that leads to the fulfillment of our freedom: the Father’s embrace.

Thank you, because you have made us touch with our own hands the fact that such an unheard-of humanity is possible and is really happening.

May Our Lady of Victory, who is venerated in San Marco, bring the victory of this faith to all the Christian people through the dedication of the many members of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation.
With an affectionate hug,
Angelo Scola, Patriarch of Venice

This year the auditoriums were new, the roads were new, everything was new. But the faces, so many faces, were the ones you already know: Sandro Chierici reading, Terenzio watching over the auditoriums, Fr Manuel preparing the cruets for Mass, Pippo Molino leading the singing, Fr Luigi Negri celebrating. Fr Luigi Giussani was missing, but we knew that he was supposed to talk to us again this year, by a videoconference call, on Sunday morning.

Thus began the expectation, a vigilant expectation to seize something that might change your life. This year’s School of Community calls it “the intelligence of the slightest clue.” Fr Lorenzo reminded me that Paolo Conte, in his song Lemon Ice Cream, calls it “the intelligence of electricians.” In English, clues are called “evidence”–you don’t have to look very hard, all you have to do is keep your eyes open.

This year at the Retreat, there were 26,000 times 2 eyes, and a further 50 countries hooked up, 18 of them by direct satellite connection.

Red evening
Saturday morning, classical music resounded through the great halls. It was the same music that moved a little girl in the favelas of Belo Horizonte. Fr Pino told us about it, quoting a letter sent to Fr Gius. Who knows about the eyes of this girl? Where are they? Rossa sera (Red Evening) in Belo Horizonte; the only red thing I remember in that far-away city is the earth of an immense building site where Pigi, many years ago, tried to start over again, a new beginning, among numerous problems, distances, and toils. I still have my notes of that conversation, on yellowing sheets of notebook paper. And now, where are the eyes of that girl? I looked around me, seeking eyes that may know nothing about these twenty years but can reveal the resonance of the twenty seconds, or rather the twenty microseconds that are enough to respond to the gesture of love of God putting His hand on our shoulder.

Saturday they taught us a new song, among the many (although this year there were fewer; we have to treasure these notes as well) very beautiful ones; it speaks of war and Our Lady of Fatima. Giancarlo Cesana, Sunday morning, reminded us that we have many friends in Bethlehem who are victims of the war. These friends were asked to say rosaries for the pilgrimage to Loreto in October. Every bead is a sign of martyrdom, like the many Christian martyrs of the twentieth century discussed in Antonio Socci’s book, I nuovi perseguitati. Indagine sull’intolleranza anticristiana nel nuovo secolo del martirio [The Newly Persecuted. An investigation of anti-Christian intolerance in the new century of martyrdom]. Fr Pino mentioned “Socci’s fine book,” and at the book tables in the entrance halls of the pavilions, among mountains of books, music CDs, booklets, and children’s books, it sold out in ten minutes.

Clues, just clues. For something to happen, Fr Pino says, it is not enough to say it, you have to wait for it, and to overcome the impending abstraction.

Motherly Church
Lunch was a chance to talk to friends. Maria told me that The Gates of November, a book by Chaim Potok I haven’t read yet, filled her heart with gratitude to the Movement, which has brought us into contact with whatever of interest was happening in the world, even if no one was talking about it at the time. The reference was to the various samizdat in pre-1989 Eastern Europe. We took the opportunity to talk about Potok; besides the beauty of his books, this Jewish writer teaches us to come to terms with ourselves and with the bond with our own history.

Saturday Mass ended with an entertaining little vignette between Cardinal Sepe, who was celebrating, and Bishop Danzi, who was concelebrating. Danzi tried to put Sepe’s miter on his head before the final blessing, but Sepe did not want him to and eluded him twice. Then he took the miter from him and put it on by himself, amused. The Church, besides being fatherly authority, is capable also of motherly smiles. It is the same motherhood which John Paul II glimpsed on the face of God.

In the evening, after the day was over, we met to get ice cream with friends who live far away, whom we only see a few times a year. Luca kept us in high spirits, as usual, by telling us that Jesus is the gourmet of our lives, and underlying his joke was nostalgia for that evening when the Apostles found, waiting for them on the lake shore, the fish the Risen One had roasted for them. This evening, Giuseppe and Angela, Lucio, Pina, Riccardo, Giovanni, and Nora were not there… a pity. We will have to see each other this summer, on vacation. This is our little confraternity of our vacation times, which accompanies us through the year with a thousand messages and signals, small and large acts of solidarity in everyday life, long distance, as the rhythms of modern life impose on us.

The note on our chairs
Sunday morning, in the auditorium, we found on our seats a sheet of paper with these words by Fr Giussani: “You are adults. Just as you have the responsibility for human things, to increase human things, so should you have the responsibility for your journey toward destiny.” And too, “I propose that your life be characterized by this phenomenon: that you freely join together.” Last year, he entrusted us with a simple ejaculatory prayer; this year it was advice for simplifying our life and making tenderness (a word that Sepe said was “so very yours”) concrete.

The choir’s last song was Russian and said, “On the boundless steppe, don’t fly, eagle, close to the ground, and don’t stay, Cossack, close to the shore.” Consciousness of one’s destiny. Consciousness… that’s a big word; it would be enough just to be able to glimpse it, to know how to ask to be able to glimpse it.

Cesana and Carrón answered the questions raised by the assemblies of the preceding evening. Giorgio Feliciani gave the usual year-end report of the Fraternity (in numbers). Everyone craned their necks to see which was the best and which the worst region in payment of tithes, and then it was already time for the last Mass. Those who were in a hurry to return home rushed out of the auditoriums, and the first farewells began.

Ciao!
When we least expected it, indeed, when even the most optimistic had by this point given up hope, Gius’ face appeared on the screen, and we realized that everything still had to happen. The Retreat had a title, borrowed from St Paul: “The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God.”

“Woman, do not weep!” Giussani repeated these words countless times, because “weeping is your destiny, it seems to be your unavoidable destiny; man, do not weep! You, do not weep!” And again, “We have never seen each other, but this is what we see among us, what we feel among us. Ciao.”

Some had already left. Giussani arrived at the last minute, as had happened at the Meeting last summer. Maybe we have to learn to be always ready with our lamps lit, in the darkness of today’s world.

Rossella had already left, and she asked me for my notes of Giussani’s talk. (Readers of Traces, as you can see, there is not much in my notes.) Give us all–those of us who listened with difficulty, those of us who were no longer there–the gift of Giussani’s words, so that we may read again that consolation for our lives and recognize the love of this hand laid on our shoulders, on my shoulder.

Time to go, to say goodbye in front of the hotels. Alessandro told me, “That ‘Ciao!’ which we have read so many times at the end of the reports of so many conversations related in Giussani’s books, when you hear it said to you is something completely different.” It is a thrill that stays with you, like a clue tattooed on your skin.