LETTERS

LETTERS

The Job of Jobs
Dearest Fr Giorgio: I am about to start my last year of high school. I wanted to tell you about my work experience at Tivigest. With a little group of friends, I started working in the hotel in Borca di Cadore right after the short vacation. We did not want to let the beautiful things we had just seen [during our vacation] slip away from us, and at Fr Antonio’s suggestion we began doing School of Community. During the first meeting, I said that I needed for us to meet together because I did not want work to be a drag, because I want always to be happy. You have told us many times that Christ is my happiness now or else He is a fairy tale. I did not want to have to work hard for 55 days in view of an imaginary future happiness; I wanted to enjoy my work, without having to wait for the evening beer to make me finally feel satisfied for ten minutes. We then started saying the Angelus all together in the morning, after the guests’ breakfast. I was amazed, and am still amazed now, thinking back over it again, how a simple, but tenacious, faithfulness to the Angelus and to School of Community once a week was able to change radically our way of working and to change the people who shared this labor with us. At the third School of Community, the whole staff was there, including the hotel manager and assistant manager, measuring themselves against the concept of work taught us by Fr Giussani. One evening, while I was in the cold store getting some vegetables, a cook’s aid came in and said, “I saw the sign you put up in the lunchroom inviting everybody to School of Community. What is it? They explained it to me, but I didn’t understand anything…. I would like to come. Can you change the time? Because I work then.” From the next day on, he always came to the Angelus and to School of Community. A week later, a cook came with him. “He said you pray in the morning. May I?” Fifty years old, she has never missed a time, more than once inviting those who wanted to help her learn the prayer to go take a walk! She did not miss a word, because she wanted to learn it on her own. Once she came to me and said, “You see, you’re saying it wrong. He says it one sentence shorter!” Not content, she asked if “something like this” exists also in Belluno, so she can continue once the season is over. My last night there, a group of us friends went to look at the stars from a field below the hotel. After half an hour, cold and sleepy, we decided to go back to bed. Along the way, a cook’s aid stopped me and said, “After such a beautiful evening, you have to do me a favor: make us say the Angelus.” Brilliant. He had never understood anything at School of Community, at least that’s what he said; but all he needed to do was what we were doing and he understood everything, more than we did! It is impressive how some very simple gestures were sufficient to move our gaze away from our navels to what is, what happens every instant. I learned that we do not have to change what we have around us in order to change ourselves. We shall never have perfect schoolmates, perfect teachers, perfect friends, the perfect girlfriend, or school subjects that we always like. If we wait for the world to change in order to grant us the luxury of changing, we shall always be utopians. Working was fabulous because I had the grace to meet people to whom, when you greet them, you cannot help saying, “Thank you,” and the other answers with a smile, “What for?” and both of you understand that you have to thank an Other. Now, luckily, we start again. Yes, luckily, because I feel that if I wanted to separate what I have lived from what my life is like the other 310 days of the year, relegating it into my memory chest, I would be like someone alienated, someone who wants to live what is not there. I don’t want to be sentimental; I want to be always new, always glad. In short, I want to look at what is there, not at my good intentions. I have certainly not become a saint; I only know a bit more to whom I should look, and this does not seem to me such a bad result.
Marco, Brescia

In the Middle of the Blackout
In the mischievous mid-August of New York’s hot summer, the epic blackout enlivened the humid air in the canyons formed by the giant skyscrapers of Manhattan. Here is the bare-bones account of what happened. I was working at the computer on the 17th floor of the Physician’s and Surgeon’s Building of Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, when my Chinese colleague Heesun arrived with her backpack over her shoulder and said, “There is a blackout in the hospital. The announcement over the loudspeaker said we should go home at once.” I had not realized anything because the computer on which I was working was hooked up to a generator. Light was pouring in through the windows and the room was very well lit. It was 4:30 p.m. After a few minutes, I got up and went out of the lab: the hall was totally dark. People were meandering anxiously through the big hospital. I went back into the lab: there wasn’t a soul there. I called Elvira, who works in the next building, and asked her if she knew anything. She told me there was a blackout on the whole East Coast, from Toronto to New York to Detroit, and it was not a terrorist attack (for the first time, I thought of September 11th). Then she said that the subway was not running. So I tried to call Angelo, who works in midtown, to see if I could get a ride to Brooklyn from him, but the cell phones in the city were totally freaked out. While I was doing this, Kaufman called: “Everything all right?” Some fridges and incubators were off (thousands of dollars were melting away). I called a German friend and together we started moving the big monsters to attach them to the generators that were still working. I thought about Elvira working in the pediatric hospital, and those sick children hooked up to tubes. I tried again to phone Angelo and Ezio, but no contact. I called Elvira back and we arranged for her to take me to her house in the Bronx. The traffic was in total chaos. I started thinking about the proportions of the disaster: three New York skyscrapers are the entire population of Carate, my hometown in Italy; 4.6 million people take the subway every day…. While I was at Elvira’s house, the phone rang. It was Angelo, saying that he was without a car because the elevator in the midtown parking garage where he had parked was not working. To make a long story short, we decided in the end that I would take the women’s van and go pick up the people scattered through the streets of the city. The problem was that we could not manage to make contact. We succeeded in contacting Jonathan, who was at Horowitz’s office, all worried about the people of the community, thinking, I imagine, about September 11th. We made a plan: we would meet between 1st Avenue and 42nd Street, in front of the UN building. I set out in the van from the Bronx and took the Joe DiMaggio Highway, which was unencumbered and moving along. At a certain point, I saw on either side of the road streams of people walking north. At the 56th Street exit was the first traffic jam. So I turned into the city. By now it was 8 p.m. The sun was setting and the city of a thousand lights was dark. You could see the spires of the dark skyscrapers looming against the red sky. It was a fascinating sight that I think (hope) I’ll never see again. People were outside on the sidewalks conferring. Some were passing out glasses of cool water for the thirsty; there were also psychologists for the most freaked out. Think of the people who during the blackout were in the subway, two, three, or four levels underground, in the dark and with no air conditioning. Eventually, they had them come out through the doors between the subway carts and walk along the tunnels among rats as big as Rin Tin Tin. And every so often you could see someone emerging from a manhole. Obviously, the traffic lights were not working, but at every intersection there was a policeman or a fireman or a National Guardsman. Wherever there was not someone official, there were ordinary citizens. I reached our meeting point around 8:40 p.m., where I found only Jonathan and a Chinese woman who works in the Horowitz studio, with no trace of the others. Seeing the monstrous traffic and thinking I would never get there, they had set out walking to Queens across the Queensborough Bridge. We climbed in the car and headed for the ramp to the bridge. Jonathan got out and started walking toward the missing persons. I was left alone with the Chinese woman. She asked me how I happened to know Jonathan. “Because of CL,” I told her. Silence. “You know what CL is, don’t you?” “Sure,” she answered, “Christians and Liberation.” “No,” said I, “Communion and Liberation. It’s a Catholic movement.” “What’s the meaning of Catholic movement?” “Well, first of all, that we are Catholics.” She interrupted me, “What’s the meaning of Catholic?” “Well, it means that we believe that God was made Man in Jesus Christ.” She looked at me in shock and said, “Do you believe that God was made Man?” “Yes, I do.” “What does it mean that you are a movement?” “It means we live our life together, we face problems together, we help each other to make memory of the fact that Christ is my and your salvation.” “Ah,” she said, “so you and Jonathan live together?” “No. Jonathan is married, then there are others who are married and others not…” Next she asked, “What difference is there from the other Catholics? Do you have one idea and the others another?” “No, it’s not an idea, but an experience. The Christian announcement reached us through a man called Giussani…” I was getting into the very complicated topic of the spirit and charism, when, thank God, Jonathan arrived with all of the missing. Sarah was crying, Angelo and Ezio were worn out, Ronzo was wearing his jacket that he had never taken off because he didn’t want to mess it up (we were dying of the heat), Rino was furious because he had lost his glasses, torn his linen shirt climbing over a chain-link fence, and ruined his brand-new Mauri alligator shoes. In short, we set out again, everybody in the car, toward Brooklyn. We said the Angelus to thank Our Lady, because truly the fact that we had found each other in the midst of millions of people is something miraculous. We continued chatting with the Chinese lady. It came out that she has two jobs: “I work day and night because I have to pay the rent.” Jonathan said to her, “Holy cow, how much rent do you pay, $ 7,000 a month?” “No, but I also have to pay tuition for my old boyfriend and my roommate’s room rent.” Rino said, “Look, I’m in college too and I have money problems. If you want to pay my tuition, too…” Jonathan asked, “Does your roommate have a job?” She said, “Yes, she is a dominatrix.” In other words, somebody you pay to whip you. You can imagine the comments. We passed in front of the Watch Tower, the Jehovah’s Witness headquarters, and the Chinese woman said, “My parents are Jehovah’s Witnesses.” A moment of silence…. We finally got home at 1 a.m., tired and famished. We ate an epic candlelight dinner.
Giovanni, New York

To Follow Him
Dearest friends: This morning I began with the Hours as I have attempted for several months, but something was very different. The difference was you! For the first time, I did not feel as if I was praying alone, but somehow with all of you. Our time together has given me new awareness of
what it means to follow, a little insight on how to follow, and more desire to follow than before. But even more, this time allowed me an understanding of what true Friendship means. I have many choices to make at this time of my life–where to go, what to do, but no longer who to follow. I follow Him, because of you! I have been thinking about why I decided to join the Fraternity. I don’t just join things. I have spent my whole life avoiding memberships in organizations. With this there was no need for a choice. I didn’t have to rationalize or analyze. I don’t feel the need to know all about the structure, and I know that there may be imperfections. To join the Fraternity, I just let my heart say “yes.” Meeting Barry confirms that I did the right thing.
Your brother, Bruce, Indiana

A New Family in Christ
I was born a “cradle Catholic” and raised with rich tradition. My parents planted a seed of faith that was growing inside of me. I embraced and accepted the traditions of Catholicism. If challenged about my faith, I could retort. However, as I grew up saying a daily rosary, I often mumbled the prayers by sheer memorization. Even if I did not always want to pray or go to church, I still appreciated the beauty of tradition and the beauty of the Catholic churches. However, even though I did not quite understand it, I always felt an inner longing to fulfill my spiritual life. As I grew into adulthood, I struggled to find meaning. While I dated my future husband, he would tell me that mumbling prayers was useless if I was just speaking words and not listening to myself or the prayers. When we had disagreements and power struggles over what I believed in, I was able to respond, but I was still unsure. He challenged me to understand what I believe in instead of just accepting what I had been taught and told all my life. And so my journey began…. My parents and sister moved to another state. I was extremely lonely and saddened because I felt that the traditional ways they had taught me and the foundation for my religious beliefs were gone. Shortly after they moved, I married happily, in a traditional way, in a beautiful Catholic church with exquisite stain glass windows and a carved altar. My husband and I “church hopped” among the different Roman Catholic churches in our city, in order for me to find a sense of community that I felt in my heart we needed. I joined a religion study group at one of the churches, and even though it helped, it was not enough for me. I did not feel complete, and I still felt lonely. A while later, we found out that we were expecting our first child; the happiness of all it entailed swarmed my senses. I knew that starting a family was what I always wanted, but I did not know how much it would change my life. My husband and I began birthing classes. In that class was another couple expecting a first child, Neil and Serena. At the time, I did not know how divine it was that we were expecting a child and attending birthing classes at the same time. Meetings after meetings occurred, and the couples in our class would make small talk. We soon found out that Neil and Serena attended the very church we got married in. We then started to share stories. Over childbirth we became friends. Serena introduced me to a reading group that she was involved with. At the reading group, I met Stacey and Elisabetta. We shared experiences and thoughts over Msgr Giussani’s words. I heard talk about “CL” between them. When I inquired, they explained how Communion and Liberation (CL) was difficult to explain but when you are involved in it, beautiful things happen. My husband and I met Elisabetta’s husband, Paolo. We have also become good friends. Easter came and I met more CL “groupies.” The singing and the friendship I witnessed intoxicated me. My husband and I got together with many of the couples on holidays and at CL meetings. My fondness grew for those around. The commonality of religious beliefs and the normalcy of the people involved intrigued me.
My husband, son, and I recently attended a CL retreat. My feelings and thoughts of having found a community were confirmed at this retreat. All the people in attendance showed inner beauty, which seemed to flow through their veins. At the end of the retreat, we took turns sharing what the retreat weekend meant to us. When it was my turn to speak, all I could do was to cry out of happiness, that I had found a home away from home. I was truly saddened the weekend was over. At the retreat, Father Jose Medina spoke in his homily about how the Jews and apostles must have felt so alone and isolated, yet they found togetherness and happiness when they were together in Christ. This is how I feel. As I was away from my family, I found an additional family in Christ.
Kristina, Houston

In Search of True Humanity
Dear Mike:
I have had some things that I have been thinking about tonight. I was over at a friend’s apartment with my best friend. We were talking, and during our conversation he threw this scenario at me: Supposedly in Fort Branch (Indiana), there is a place that is a barbecue restaurant. The place burned down and the owner was trying to figure out a way to make back his money. Well, he decided to open up the same restaurant with a Strip Club. Obviously, it is being attacked by the Bible Thumpers (either Baptists or Pentecostals). Anyway, I stopped him and asked him, “How do you think a Catholic priest would view this situation?” He explained to me that a Catholic priest would not be for it at all. But a priest would respect the person’s freedom to make a choice like that as a means for their income. A Baptist would say, “No! We have to shut it down despite the fact that we are infringing on rights.” Me, personally, I would never go to a strip club. I have never been. It doesn’t make me a better person that I have not been. It doesn’t make me holier than the people that do go. I exercise my freedom not to go. This is because I believe that when I look at a girl, especially one that I am so in love with, I am in actuality staring into the Infinite, I am staring at a Mystery. And I don’t want to compromise that with something I believe would be less. I want to possess without possessing as Father Giussani says. Virginity is more than strip club examples. It is about how my freedom works. Mike, whether that story is true or not, it made me think. I thought that I am doing my best to be the best human being that I can be. I really try in my faith. As an Evangelical I really try. But I want what is human. Communion and Liberation has really changed my perception on life and how I view it. The liberation in CL is really about freedom, and how we view it. I was looking at issues through different points of view and questioning everything… judging things. I looked at the issue of murder. What is it? In reality, what is it? Evangelical Protestants (Baptists, Pentecostals, etc.) have the view that murder is wrong (no disagreement there with Catholics), but for them it boils down to the point that killing a person is bad–but only because the Bible says so. The secular world supposedly disagrees with it because it is not profitable, it is not civilized, etc. Remember, I used the word “supposed” for our world. From what I can tell, from being with my friends in Communion and Liberation, from studying what I have on my own and with you, Mike, about the Church, and with the influence of the charism of CL, a Catholic would say: “A person committing the act of murder is denying that person’s freedom to live. Freedom to life. Now, I know that there are some Evangelicals who think like that. I do not doubt that there are Evangelicals who have a better understanding than me. Abortion is to me the most detestable form of murder in this respect. Denying one’s freedom to live before birth, before they have the chance to become “You Who Changes Me.” That is so horrible. It really is a threat to a real humanity.
I’ll never forget some of the things that you have said, Mike. Christ did not come down here to teach us how to become gods, he came down here to teach us how to be human, especially in suffering. He came down here to teach us how to fulfill the purpose for which we were intended. The act of murder on a human being is an attack on God because we were made in His image. We bear that image. Everything in Creation was created by God and He saw that it was Good. I’ve come to this conclusion based on what I have learned and what I know: an attack on humanity is an attack on God.
Rob, Indiana

The Pope’s Gaze
If someone had told me a week ago that I was going to meet Pope John Paul II, I would have dismissed it as a dream. But even dreams become reality sometimes. I left Uganda for Italy on August 15th to attend the International Assembly of Responsibles in La Thuile, and the Meeting of Friendship Among Peoples in Rimini. Ugandan Vice President Gilbert Bukenya was invited to Rimini to speak about fighting hunger in the globalized world. As AVSI staff from Uganda, we –Ciantia, Gina, and myself– were members of the Vice President’s delegation. While in Rome, Bukenya was scheduled to have a private audience with the Pope, presenting an opportunity for me to do so as well. So it was that on the morning of August 27th, as the fiery sun of an Italian summer began striking the well-carved stones that pave Roman roads, we found our way to front-row seats in Nervi Hall, where the Pope meets pilgrims. It was soon time for me to get up from my seat in the hall. With my eyes fixed on the Pope, I floated to him. When I reached his chair, he looked up and smiled at me. He held up shaking hands and spoke a soft “come my child.” I knelt down, taking his trembling hand in my own, and kissed the cross of Christ. While in front of the Pope, I witnessed the great love he has for Christians and all humans. How else could one explain such a strong desire to meet pilgrims in spite of uncontrollable tremors, visible fatigue, and physical frailty? I wanted to remain at the Pope’s feet forever–to stay there, held by that gaze from loving eyes, with that sweet smile embracing me. I understood how Peter could have said, “Lord, let us build three tents, one for you, one for Elijah and one for Moses.”
Julie, Kampala