fr PINO

The Steps on the Journey

What are the steps of this education? They are not things to be done, not mechanical gestures that passively follow a tradition, without awareness, without freedom. This encounter reveals itself not as “a” road among many, even if it were the most important, but as “the” road: the one where destiny reaches me, touches me, changes me. For the renewal of this certainty of the “I,” a locus is needed, an embrace. This locus, on the road that is Christ as I have encountered Him, which is the Movement, has a definite form. This friendship, as help in recognizing and bringing hope for oneself and for everybody, has a form and a name, and the name itself indicates the nature of this experience: Fraternity. This is Christ’s friendship lived in persuasive terms, that most help us on our way. The great work of our Fraternity is the Movement, it is remaking the Movement every day, within the materialness of our existence. The first help in this sense, for the person, comes from School of Community. It is Christian truth apprehended in its applicability within man’s commitment, within the ways in which man tries to give expression to his needs for justice, truth, affection, contentment. It is not just words. One of the things that struck me most this year, going to see Fr Giussani, is when he stopped our conversation short and said to me, “Do you know that I am doing School of Community? It is a course dense with meaning. It isn’t easy, but what greatness, what originality, what profundity, what openness!” Do you understand? He is not someone who says to you, “It’s hard, but I wrote it and I’ll explain to you what it means.” And together with School of Community, precisely for this new gaze on things, I call your attention to our publishing ventures: the books, CDs, and Traces. And then, there is a gaze to Being, as passion for man’s life, as charity. Charitable work as education, by sharing others’ needs, to look at reality with openness, compassion, and decisiveness. From this constant education the adventure of the work can blossom forth in personal responsibility. The final point I touch on is mission as expression of what I am, of the certainty that I have encountered. The expression of this belonging starts from me, but has the world as its boundaries. My reminder of the Common Fund is made in this sense, in connection with the thrust of the mission, precisely in that it is educative to the missionary dimension, in order to realize that what you have and what you are is for an Other. All of this is within the taste, the passion for freedom. And the first freedom, that in which everything is synthesized, is the entreaty, begging, begging this Presence that what has died may live, what is frail may be strengthened, what is tepid may become vibrant and boiling. This is why for our last reminder for getting to the bottom of what hope is–of what Our Lady, “the living fountain of hope,” is–we return to Fr Giussani’s address to us in Rimini, precisely as the first step, the first stone on which to base, with certainty, strength, and hope, our journey this year.