close-up

Our Lady Respected God’s Freedom

Stanley Hauerwas
Protestant theologian and Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics Duke University Divinity School, Durham, North Carolina
Father Giussani’s letter on Mary is a profound and moving document. One of the deepest problems confronting Protestants is our loss of Mary as the firstborn of God’s new creation in Christ. I teach a course on Catholic Moral Theology taken primarily by Protestant seminarians. I end the course with Father Cantalamessa’s beautiful book, Mary, the Mirror of the Church. My students find that book at once the most attractive and the most challenging we read. They do so because they realize that the loss of Mary has been disastrous for our practice of Christianity. This is because when you lose Mary, you also lose the people of Israel as crucial to the economy of God’s salvation and as a result you’re always tempted toward docetic Christologies*. So I welcome Father Giussani’s profound reflections on Mary who–as he quite rightly notes–exemplifies the ecstasy of hope that makes being Christian Christian.
*Docetism: a heresy of early Christianity that denied the humanity of Jesus Christ.

Adriano Sofri
Italian journalist and writer (Inmate at Pisa prison)
I shall not pretend that reading Fr Giussani is easy for me–quite the contrary. Some of his writings, this Letter among them, seem to me to move in a loose, almost unpredictable manner, without feeling confined to pre-established boundaries or a logical economy. Naturally, Fr Giussani moves within a channel whose banks are sturdy by definition, those that come to him from faith and the texts of his faith. Nonetheless, his thoughts flow along so freely as to resemble more closely water pouring down from a mountaintop before being channeled into a riverbed, than a canal or even a river flowing across a plain. His predilection for poetry, whether it be Leopardi or, as here, Dante, fosters this freedom, open to digression and improvisation, albeit with a fixed point as his constant point of reference. This license of thought strikes me by its apparent contrast with the idea of Fr Giussani first as a school teacher, and then as the charismatic inspirer of a movement–a Fraternity, I see here that it is called. In other words, the contrast with one’s expectation of schematically transmittable thoughts and intentions, while this writing style–and even before that, I imagine, his style of speaking: Fr Giussani’s writing style sounds distinctly “spoken,” and I imagine too that whoever reads it can recognize the living voice of the author–is anything but scholastic. This distance from a scholastic intent is animated by a language of love. Another of the subjugations that Fr Giussani seems to want to shrug off, or even ignore completely so as not to waste time with things that do not matter, is the prudent distinction between sacred and profane love, between the love of God–and his Virgin Mother, daughter of Her Son–and love of the world and the people in it–Leopardi’s beloved woman. This too must be a way of accepting God’s love, by “not opposing our own method to it.” In other words, by recognizing it in every love. Maybe we could paraphrase Fr Giussani by saying that the supreme drama is that God’s love asks to be recognized by human beings. Naturally, the Dante of The Divine Comedy–“in whose warmth…”–is the best companion for this recognition. My difficulty does not depend only on the faith that I do not have. I had it, like a mother tongue, so I continue to feel its consequences, and I can speak a common language–although no longer exactly the same, but there are no two people in the world who speak exactly the same language–with those who do have it and let themselves be filled completely by it. I do not know why, but in my memory, Our Lady is disentangled by Dante’s wonderful knot, Virgin Mother, daughter of your Son. She appears more as a frightened young girl–like a Virgin Annunciate–the filial image and source of fatherly feelings, more than a mother’s. “Virgin” probably has something to do with this, with this intact and antecedent, unprejudiced state, in a world burdened everywhere by the accumulation of precedents, of faits accomplis that force freedom into narrow possibilities. And they make us perceive of infinity as an unreachable eventuality on the other side of the wall in front of us. Perhaps Fr Giussani makes Our Lady his hurdle and his passageway to the liberated gaze onto infinity. His method. “Our Lady is the method we need for familiarity with Christ.” (And from what did Our Lady derive her familiarity with Christ? Was it enough for her to be His mother? He was a Son who had to be watched from a respectful distance, many times, and with a sort of fear. Many mothers must have experienced something similar.) “She,” writes Fr Giussani, “is the instrument that God used in order to enter into man’s heart.” I wonder if the universal use of the noun “man”–for all human beings, men and women–may not blur a difference between the way followed by men, who find through Our Lady the access to the Father and the Son, just as through a mother’s tenderness we reach the power of the Father and the fraternity of the Son, and the way followed by women, who have a more immediate and familiar access to a love for Christ. I do not know how to pursue further the course of this reflection on the Spirit and the supreme method of God’s freedom, which in any case is accompanied by words like unreachable and ineffable. I pick up the thread again in the affable tone of the end of the first point: “You need to read these things humbly…”.
The second point is incendiary: the great promise (and you should know that the quote has been adopted also as the title of the oldest prison newspaper in Italy), the intrusiveness of the desire, the provocative challenge. The missionary power of the word, returning to the fields of its own land…. This is what seemed to me an unrestrained current, before it became a spring and a stream and a river and canals. Here the flood is not water, but fire.
The third point imagines that each one is everything: not pro quota, not as a minority shareholder, but as the sum and the cancellation of everything. In formulas like totus tuus, I have always wondered if wholeness yielded to total surrender: “The totality of the person’s commitment,” says this point of Fr Giussani. I would maintain a respectful distance, like someone who has been burned a little. You might reply that what matters is not the distance–neither too far in, nor too far away, in the prudence that mortifies–but the nature of the fire and the light in which one throws himself. Maybe. I tend to think that the question of distance has a reason for being, no matter what fire is involved. (Naturally, saying this does not change anything in real life, where it happens that we can alternatively sink or end up too far away, and suffer from too much heat or too much cold: the tortures of hells.)
I have the impression of understanding the fourth point, of knowing what it is about. “Love, this is the great revelation. Thus the whole moral law is totally defined by the word charity.” I am not so sure I understand “the Three who love each other,” but I have seen them, in Rublev’s icon of the Holy Trinity. And since I like languages that preserve the dual, I can imagine a more archaic language, and thus a richer one, that preserves also the triune number.
The fifth point deals with hope and grace. It does not seem at all hard to me–quite the contrary–to sell everything one owns and give the money to the poor; this has never seemed hard to me. What seems hard to me is for someone to have the right to utter this invitation again. The most beautiful word–if only one were to be left to say before the end–seems to me to be this one: “Thanks.” On the tombs in Norwegian cemeteries, where it is the buried who salute the living, and not vice versa, is written: Takk for alt, “Thanks for everything.”
The final points are a farewell and a revelation of the state of mind of the writer: joy concentrated as boundless light, the intimate explosion of the fact of Christ. I congratulate you, Fr Giussani, and I greet you as a brother.

Letizia Moratti
Italian Minister of Education
This letter by Msgr Giussani is a great testimony of humanity. I liked in particular how he describes certain words: freedom, desire, hope, love. These themes are by now considered by most people to be desirable but distant “values,” forcing reality into a horizon that has no meaning, and thus one to be escaped whenever possible. Msgr Giussani, on the other hand, not only in this letter but also in his whole life as a great educator of young people, shows that these ideals can become concrete foundations for the identity of individuals and their attempts to build a better society. He calls these attempts–evocatively–“human music” and the “choir of the Infinite.” Our task as adults, as parents, and as educators is to help young people transform these distant “values” into daily lived reality.

Darío Castrillón Hoyos
Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy
To Professor Jesús Carrascosa, Director of the International Center of Communion and Liberation, Rome
Dear Professor Carrascosa: Upon my return from vacation, I found your letter of June 30th, with which you sent me a reflection Fr Giussani shared with all the members of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation. Really, reading Fr Giussani’s reflections, one is touched by the “beauty” and “charity” that fill them. To be sure, all of you are the primary, privileged recipients, and I am grateful to you for sharing it with me. My dear professor, I hope that this “treasure,” certainly no longer secret, of Fr Giussani’s charism, can be communicated more and more–and you will understand me when I say–especially to priests, so that they may feel themselves increasingly to be the protagonists of this fascinating Mystery of God’s love for man. I thank you for your sensitive thoughtfulness and your union; I too feel you close to me and I feel close to all of you, in prayer and in the impetus to testify to the world the Truth of Christ the Lord, just as his Virgin Mother did and continues to do! Yours always in Christ.

José Andrés-Gallego
Professor of Contemporary History and researcher at the Consejo Superior de Investigación Científica in Madrid
We are struck by Fr Giussani’s pedagogy. He has taken it upon himself to do three things. First, to express himself using a new language that does not lead his listeners to think, “We have heard this before.” Second, to say things as proposals that compel whoever is reading or listening to him to reflect and thus to discover freely what step he should take. Third, not to hide the difficulty of understanding the part of Christian truth that goes infinitely beyond the human being’s powers of comprehension. To simplify things, at the expense of their profundity and, at times, of the truth itself, has been one of the main temptations in which certain Catholic pastors have fallen during the centuries of the life of the Church. What Huellas [the Spanish Traces] offers us in the July-August issue is part of this assignment, so hard to understand but of primary importance. It is a question of clarifying the connection between metaphysics and the Christian fact. The early Fathers of the Church began this task when, in order to understand Being as the sum of perfection and purity, they adopted the method of the neo-Platonists, starting with Plotinus. In the past fifty years, not a few Catholic theologians and pastors have defended (and defend) the idea of disengaging Christianity from philosophy (and from metaphysics), in their eagerness to allow Christianity in this way to be “inculturated” anew in any culture at all. The result is a regression to pure fideism, if not even the proposal of a Christianity that is not dogmatic and thus is, in essence, relative. We forget that the original incarnation of Christianity in Hellenistic culture is part of the pedagogy of the Incarnation, in the sense that it was the concrete reality in which God chose to embody the summit of His revelation and the understanding of the Christian fact. Thus, the crucial fact of this hybridization between metaphysics and Christianity lies in expressing very clearly what constitutes the core of the Christian Mystery: the Infinite made concrete. Or, if one will, the “growing” of metaphysics into physics, of the eternal into the most concrete temporal; because precisely this is what happened when the Word was made flesh, and precisely this makes our very existence possible again–after the introduction of sin into the world–as absolutely finite beings destined to be infinitely eternal. The fact that this happened–began–with the Blessed Virgin has to do also with the relationship between metaphysics and Christianity. Here we find Plotinus’ idea of the supreme being as a perfect and pure being by definition. This is why Being is virginity and, at the same time, is maternal, because it invades and permeates all of finite reality. Mary’s womb is the concrete place in space and history where this happens, where the infinite becomes finite, since it possesses a concrete, precise moment in time and location in space, and because of this is bound up with all of us and all of created reality, which is finite, and can redeem it. Thus, virginity generates maternity. And this is not imposed on me, but proposed to me. The mediation between Being and my finiteness, for me not to be canceled out in front of Him, lies in the dialectic between desire, mediation, freedom, and love. Finiteness–the finite open to the infinite–implies a desire and, in effect, desire is part of my nature; and this pushes me all the time to seek. If desire did not exist, there would only be physiological satisfaction or dissatisfaction, without an “I” that became aware of this satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Thus, citing the “I,” desire, and awareness is the equivalent of talking about freedom. Being cannot answer me by manifesting Himself fully. If He did that, He would annihilate me. The very virginal-maternal dialectic of Being that Fr Giussani talks about is already a mediation. Being uses mediators; He manifested Himself to me for the first time, as it were, shining with a light of His own. Normally, He does it by incarnating Himself in something other, and we are attracted by the personality of this other, but, on very special occasions, He shines personally with that Light. And, when we find Him, He does not impose Himself on us, but offers Himself to our freedom. This does not come about by chance, but because it cannot happen any other way, given that He calls me by name–“you”–and arouses a desire and seeks a mediator. In Christianity, freedom is essential. This is why it is dramatic when Christianity is reduced to dogmatism or cheap morality, to a code of constrictions on the intellect and the will. Freedom is essential not in the sense that it is declared and that’s all there is to it, but because it is the only possibility of responding to the mediation between desire and infinity. If this were not the case, not even desire would exist; desire entails freedom. But freedom is so much a part of myself that, if I say, “Yes,” I do not manage so much to verify that I am in a state of certainty, as that I am infinitely loved. The old metaphysical equation between being, truth, good, and beauty imposes itself in all its practical, everyday, concrete efficacy. All this dynamic is not the progress of a solitary seeker. We finite beings are, every one of us, reciprocally, mediators between doubt and certainty. We are this, even if we do not want to be. Thus, it is better to want it, for ourselves and for others. It is not an imposition, but part of the identification between being and goodness. It is a mediation to which I am led by love, by the loving character of Being and therefore by any relationship with Him. But it is a mediation. I have the responsibility of mediating, not in the sense of imposing my discovery of Being, but of making myself simply transparent; I cannot reasonably require anything else. But it is very important–perhaps crucial–for others, as well as for myself. Have I understood rightly, Fr Giussani? The next time, make things easier for me.

João César das Neves
Professor on the Faculty of Economics at the Catholic University in Lisbon
In front of Dante’s Hymn to the Virgin, I have always thought that the most suitable response was silence. Wondering silence, so much wonder as to border on incredulity. The God who commits the unheard-of folly of becoming the Son of one He created; the Lady who at the same time is more humble and more exalted than any other creature–these are realities that merit no other response than silence. Wondering silence. But Msgr Giussani has broken this silence and has commented on these sublime verses. In the face of his response, I think that the most suitable response is silence. Wondering silence, almost incredulous silence, because he goes more deeply into what amazed me and left me almost incredulous with wonder. Being who asks to be recognized by His creature, the Lady who was the only one to know how to respond fully to that request, are realities that do not merit comments, but silence. The silence of joy–the joy of knowing that, at least once, Being has found someone who corresponds to His creation. At least in her, our race was able to respond to Being. Then, just as with Giussani’s response, I too was unable to remain silent, because the request was addressed right to me. Not only to the Virgin Mary, to Dante, to Giussani, did Being address His request to be recognized, but also to my freedom. Being and all Creation are impatient with my silence in the face of this request. What is my response? Charity, the only form of morality, as Giussani says, is the response. It is precisely this. But how do we get there? Silence, once again silence. This is why my response must be, as in Dante:
Lady, you are so great and so worthy/that whoever desires grace and does not turn to you,/ tries to fly his desire without wings.

Paul J. Griffiths
Schmitt Professor of Catholic Studies University of Illinois, Chicago
Fr Giussani’s letter of last June, “Moved by the Infinite,” is, like so much of his work, bursting with barely containable urgency. It overflows with love for those to whom it is written, and in this it mirrors the love of God overflowing to and into the Blessed Virgin. Fr Giussani writes about the Theotokos, the Mother of Jesus Christ. He depicts her as establishing the Christian personality, as being the type and archetype of what it is to respond, as a Christian, to God. And indeed she does. The Church remembers this in many ways, not least by reciting at each Vespers the Magnificat, a hymn that surges beneath the surface of Fr Giussani’s words. But as I read his letter, I found coming to my mind also St Paul’s words in his first letter to the Corinthians: “What do you have that you have not received? And if you have received it, why do you boast in it as though you had not received it?” (1 Cor 4:7) Everything is gift, unmerited, excessive, superabundant…. Our sole purpose as Christians is to adore the giver, and we do that only by receiving the gift–of life, of intelligence, of love, of beauty–and returning it to its Creator. Dante’s description of Mary as the fixed term of the eternal counsel threads its way through Fr Giussani’s letter and beautifully encapsulates what it means fully to acknowledge the gift. Dante’s poem can properly be supplemented by Augustine’s aphorism, “Non solum non peccemus adorando, sed peccemus non adorando” (cf. Ps 98:9; PL 37:1264) –not only do we avoid sin by adoring, but whenever we fail to adore, we sin. Fr Giussani constantly reminds us of this truth, and in so doing offers a true and beautiful–there’s no difference, of course; truth and beauty are interchangeable–restatement of the very essence of Christianity. I’m grateful for it.