More Necessary than Air

What do writers and artists, politicians and businessmen hope? Some of them read Fr Giussani’s address to the Meeting in Rimini, and recounted their impressions for Traces. Here is what Franco Loi, Giuseppe Pontiggia, Angelo Branduardi, Giorgio Gaber, Cesare Romiti, Giulio Andreotti, Franco Branciaroli, Thomas Howard, Marina Salamon, and Umberto Agnelli wrote us about Giussani’s comments on Dante’s Hymn to the Virgin. In addition, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, His Holiness Pope John Paul II’s Secretary of State, spoke about Our Lady, “the living fountain of hope,” in his home city of Asti.

GIUSSANI
AT THE MEETING
That I want to tell you is like a clearer and more profound vindication than can be imagined on the apparent uselessness of life, on the apparent negativity of plans. Whoever has not experienced it, whoever has not felt it, and thus has not done it continually, creates in his life things that are really ugly. The most beautiful poetry in the world is Dante’s “Hymn to Our Lady” in the Paradiso, in which no one has been interested for centuries and now is maybe remembered by some fan of Benigni: “Maiden yet a Mother, daughter of thy Son, high beyond all other, lowlier is none, fixed goal of the eternal counsel,” the inexorable indication of Him who planned all things, designed the entire cosmos which is His expression. For “Thou the consummation planned by God’s decree when our lost creation nobler rose in thee. Thus His place prepared He who all things made ’mid his creatures tarried in thy bosom laid”–this is the most fascinating aspect of Dante’s expression–“there His love He nourished, warmth that gave increase to the Root whence flourished our eternal peace”–in this warmth grew our eternal peace, without faint-heartedness, without the shame of lies, without deception of any sort. Warmth is the word that indicates all the deep ineffable fascination of this life of the cosmos that the spirit of the Eternal set into motion. Dante goes on: “Here you are for us the midday torch of charity,” you are the sure point of love, “and below among mortals you are the living fountain of hope.”

I chose to read these lines to you again, because my wish for you lies completely in this idea: “Here you are for us the midday torch of charity, and below among mortals you are the living fountain of hope.”

Among all the nations of the universe you are the living fountain of hope, an endless source of hope. Again and again, you offer hope as the meaning of everything: the light of lights, the color of colors, the other of others.

You are the living fountain of hope. Hope is the one station where the great train of eternity makes a brief stop. You are the living fountain of hope for, without hope, there is no chance for life. Man’s life is hope, it is hope that I invite your eyes to seek–your eyes that have been sharpened in these days by the many voices you have heard. Among mortals you are the living fountain of hope. The figure of Our Lady is truly the figure of hope, the certainty that in the pavilions of the universe (as medieval people would say) you are the spring of water that can be heard running day and night, night and day.

May this living fountain of hope be every morning the most gripping and tenacious meaning of life possible. This is why we are friends. Let us remain friends. How can we remain friends? We cannot help being friends, because of this. Even in my decrepit old age I wanted to say this to you: hope is one, one alone, having in its objectivity its only content in the imposition of herself that Our Lady gives to the world. You are the living fountain of hope. May this fountain be lively every morning. In the past few years these thoughts have become familiar to me, and spontaneously one is assailed by joy, even if it only lasts a short while. It is a short while, but is an emergence of the truth of all of life.

You are the living fountain of hope. I wish you all to be my companions on the road, feeling a deep friendship even though we don’t know one another directly. We know each other indirectly, but even better than if we knew each other directly. Living fountain, “Maiden yet a Mother… Thou the consummation planned by God’s decree.” Fantastic! Saying it seventy years later is truly impressive. It is evident that nothing in the world is sure except in this. Ciao, and forgive my impertinence.
(Rimini, August, 24, 2002)

Franco Loi
Writer and poet
Dante, when Peter asks him about his faith, quotes St Paul in his reply: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen.” His answer is precise and exhaustive. Why is it “substance”? Because there is not one moment in a man’s life that is not substantiated in hope, in the trust man puts in himself, others, circumstances, the unknown; it is a matter of trust in life. Its opposite is death.

It seems difficult today to accept this sentence pronounced by Dante. Often men confuse faith with fideism and hope with desire. Therefore, they think of faith as the wealth of a doctrine and oppose it as an ideological dogmatism. They set their hopes only on concrete aspirations, the longing for material things, or personal ambitions. In this way, people, in their disappointment, feel lonely and desperate.

“You are the living fountain of hope,” says Bernard’s prayer. Thus, hope is inexhaustibly brimming with life, and its source is the very womb that brings forth life. We get up in the morning and face the day. Nothing guarantees the day to us, except faith, and nothing sustains us during the day, except hope.

This is not a hope for something outside of us: it is the vivifying energy that enables us to traverse the earth, the light that accompanies us through the darkness.

This is why Bernard’s prayer is placed as the preparation for the encounter with God, the premonitory sign of his making light by the Light.

Giuseppe Pontiggia
Writer
Fr Giussani’s address struck me deeply. It is a powerful, clear message, and touches what seems to me to be the central point of all of Christianity: hope. From the very beginning, hope has been the element that radically distinguished Christianity from all the pagan religions. Only the Gnostics offered something similar to hope in eternal life, and this is why, I believe, Gnosticism was later linked with Christianity. To my mind, however, this was forcing things. The spes ultima dea flees from sepulchers, says Foscolo–but not Christian sepulchers.

Hope is therefore essential to salvation. Salvation is not, however, the immediate granting of forgiveness, which can be an alibi for avoiding one’s responsibility for guilt. On the contrary, Christianity is rooted in free will, and thus recognizes full responsibility for guilt and sin; therefore it provides for expiation and forgiveness at the same time, not just for forgiveness. And this is why it offers man hope. It is no coincidence that Dante himself defines hell as the loss of hope: “Abandon all hope, you who enter here.”

I consider very important, too, the emphasis on the happiness of an instant as a moment capable of redeeming, of giving meaning to an entire life. This is what makes Jesus say, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” But also in a secularist key, we can find this same theme right in the most apparently desperate death in all of literature, that of Ivan Ilyich, in Tolstoy’s story named after its main character. At first, he perceives death as a destiny of exclusion: he dies while others go on living. But toward the end, he takes pity on the others. He sees his young son, hopes in him and has pity on him, and then also on his wife. He begins to catch a glimpse of a destiny in others. Thus a form–an instantaneous one–of authentic faith takes shape.

Therefore, in a religious as in a secularist key, hope is the essence of faith.

Angelo Branduardi
Singer and songwriter
I am writing down in one go what Fr Giussani’s words suggest to me, without thinking too much about it. I hope what I say is not disconcerting, but his words make me think of Pope John Paul I who said, “God is a mother,” of the tenderness and positivity that alone can give hope. This same John Paul I once–I read somewhere–rebuked a painter for painting, in the apse of a new church, a fresco of yet another Christ dripping with blood and gloom. “The next time do something different,” it seems the Pope said to him, “Try to depict joy.” Fr Giussani, too, proposes a “living fountain” that goes beyond a certain kind of gloomy, punitive Catholicism: the fountain gives hope, i.e., the possibility of happiness; Jesus is not just pain. It is as though Fr Giussani said: Let’s take off our hair shirts; Christianity is something else. And today, while another war is on our horizon, hope is truly what we need.

Giorgio Gaber
Singer and songwriter
I have to confess that the impetus of Fr Giussani, his drawing, at the age of 80, on such a simple, crystalline hope–Our Lady, the “living fountain” of hope–leaves me disconcerted and unfortunately extraneous. This faith of his, which was taught to me too, as to everybody in this country of Catholic roots, is hard for me to comprehend at the age of 62. Hope for me lies in the force of life, in life that gives you the drive to do, to build, to go forward every morning. It develops by itself, without anybody having told you anything; you have it mysteriously inside you. In this regard, we are a Mystery, a mystery even to ourselves.

But perhaps for me the veil of maya has fallen away by now, and this drive, this hope is hard for me to find.

I am sorry for Fr Giussani, and send him my most affectionate good wishes, but today my words only go this far.

Cesare Romiti
President, RCS Editori
What the Hymn to the Virgin in Dante’s Paradiso expresses is a universal truth. Becoming aware of this again means reflecting on the absolute values, the few things that really matter. By referring to them, by quoting in particular the words on the living fountain of hope, Fr Luigi Giussani reminds us of the always current meaning of those lines, as a message of life (just as the Song of Songs is a message of love). He says it himself: thoughts which bring joy and bring out the truth of all of life. It does not matter if joy, like an enchantment, only lasts a few instants, because in reality it is the first answer to every possible disorientation. And if something today risks dominating the mind and shrinking the heart, it is precisely disenchantment, which by definition does not give life to anything, but feeds ever more negative plans. If it is deprived of hope, the world can no longer be a flowing wellspring, and it appears to us disappointed in its own horizons.

Giulio Andreotti
Life senator
It is certainly no surprise to find, in Fr Giussani’s writings, touching notes of spirituality that have literary value as well. His message for Rimini seems to me to have an important “extra” meaning, so to speak. The participation of politicians and men of government in the Meeting has always been important, and there is also the added value of a strong echo in the mass media.

It is necessary, however, to avoid letting this “temporal” component take on prevalent or even exclusive proportions. Last year, for example, two important talks (by Dr Monti and Dr Baldassarre) were practically ignored outside the Meeting, because attention was concentrated on the government ministers.

With regard to this year’s Meeting, the political importance of the Prime Minister’s brilliant, solid speech is incontrovertible, but was this the right place for it, stealing the role of the opening day of the Bari Fair in the traditional calendar of the return to government activity after the vacation? Fr Luigi, by calling us back to the theme, prevented a melancholy negative judgment.

Franco Branciaroli
Actor
“Without hope, there is no chance for life. Man’s life is hope” (L Giussani).

Can a twentieth-century man hear these words without staring at the ground in anguish? He knows that ever since those days and those “camps,” men can be treated like things; this has been the result of the annihilation of our Jewish brothers. And things cannot have hope. Who can hope, given that we are the splendid future that was hoped for yesterday? An act is needed that will pull us out of this condition of stones. Love is the act that transforms its object from a thing to a person. There is little love around, and this is why there is little hope; there are few persons.

Thomas Howard
Tolkien scholar
“Daughter of thy Son.” This is a deep mystery that remains totally impenetrable to our age. “Impossible!” the cynics would exclaim. “It makes no sense!” the philosophers would shout. “Nonsense!” the artists would reply. But this is the Mystery of Love that entered our time and our space from the central mystery of the Holy Trinity, where the “exchange” of love burns eternally with a heat that warms the whole universe. It is this heat that warms us mortals, especially every womb of woman since Eve conceived Cain. The womb that was warmed above all others is naturally the womb where dwelled the Son who had Himself created the Theotokos, the Mother of God. She is the “midday torch of charity” and the “living fountain of hope.” Here is what has escaped the attention of our age. Once Charity and Hope are lost, we are at the prey of Irony. It is irony that saturates and shapes all the discourses of our times and grips all the arts (painting, music, dance, theater, sculpture, poetry, and literature) in its mortal vise. There is no escape from irony; it is a bottomless whirlpool. There is no way out–no, there is one: the “fountain of hope” which draws us toward that “midday torch of charity,” thus indicating a way out of the mortal vortex of modernity. For the Catholic, for each person, the challenge is to become a vox clamantis in deserto, a voice crying in the wilderness, invoking an exit, not only from the slavery of irony, but an escape route toward Joy.

Marina Salamon
Entrepreneur
For many years, I had trouble “entrusting myself to,” i.e., identifying with, the figure of Mary. I used my reason to convince myself that she was an antique female model, far distant from the life that I was living. Only after I became a mother myself did I begin not to be afraid of her any more, and I recognized the profound value of her humility and tenderness. Now, Fr Giussani’s words, “Our Lady is truly the figure of hope,” struck me deeply, because they made me think about the time when I located the idea of joy in “doing,” whereas Mary lived completely by “trusting/ letting herself be done to/ being an instrument of…” (all things that, years ago, would have seemed dangerous to me, and that now I too believe are the roots of the “fountain of hope”).

Umberto Agnelli
President and CEO of IFIL
I too, writing about Fr Giussani, can repeat his words at Rimini 2002, “even if we don’t know one another directly.” But I would only like to write, simply, that I admire what he has been able to build. I add, equally sincerely, that when, years ago, the phenomenon of “Communion and Liberation” appeared on the scene, I followed it with interest, but also with some fear. My fear was that it might be a movement not open to confrontation and one that did not believe in the values–which to me are fundamental–of toleration, dialogue, and progress. I have no trouble now acknowledging the importance that Fr Giussani has had in the Church in Italy and in civilian society, especially in the part of civilian society that identifies itself with the faith and values of the Catholic Church.

Those by now long–ago years were the period of protest and post–protest, a period in which the associations historically tied to the ecclesial world had entered a crisis.

Above all, it was a time when also in the Catholic world, even among generous, well-educated people, it was no longer possible to understand where the line between God and Marx lay. The period after 1968 was lively and terrible at the same time. Without a doubt, it was very confused.

It became evident, later, especially with the Company of Works, how social commitment could become more concrete than ever, even when one gives to God what is God’s.

I have been to the Meeting in Rimini in recent years. I have personally seen the enthusiasm, serious commitment, and openness to dialogue of the thousands of citizens who in some way look to and have as their point of reference the teaching of Fr Giussani. I have felt liking and esteem for them. My earlier fears have been dispelled.

I still see maybe one risk: that of being closed in some way to those “who are not one of us”–especially when it is not a question of debating, but of planning and carrying out concrete initiatives.

If one day my meeting with Fr Giussani does take place, we shall talk about this. And he will probably convince me that this too is an unfounded fear.