CL

“So that Man May Be Fulfilled…”

by Giancarlo Cesana

The common experience is that we have to work because the world, life, was not made by us. You know the story: Adam and Eve had a great participation in creation and its enjoyment, but they wanted to “set up in business for themselves.” They kept the world, but they lost themselves.
To be happy, to take part in the creation of the world, to be protagonists in the world, we have to give life, restore life to the meaning that was refused, to Being that was refused. In other words, we have to toil.
What constitutes happiness, protagonism, participation in creation, the exaltation in the face of a continually re-created reality of which Fr Giussani speaks? When do we feel like protagonists? When do we grasp the meaning? When it is revealed to us; in other words, when we understand that we are in a relationship, because the meaning of things is the relationship that exists between things and Being. The Being of which Fr Giussani speaks is the positivity of a relationship: God is Trinity. Being is love. We feel happy, we feel like protagonists when we are surprised by a correspondence, when we are loved.
To make this correspondence emerge in life, we have to work; to make it come out (not that we create it ourselves, but to make it emerge), we have to work, we have to change ourselves and reality, we have to consume our life.

The most banal aspect of this correspondence opened up by work is salary, because a salary improves our life. But a salary does not pay for this search for meaning–which is the true content of work, the work of work, the work one does in his workplace–because this work of searching for meaning, since it concerns me, is totally my own. The work we do free of charge is the real work of life, and this is why no one pays us. Indeed, when we are paid a lot–above all when we are paid a lot–we always have to be careful, because they pay us a lot to make us forget what the real work of our life is, and to make us their slaves.
Thus, whoever thinks he has power through work, at bottom is the biggest slave of all, because freedom is won in the meaning, and the meaning is relationship, and Being is relationship. Positivity is relationship, because positivity means that I am made for you and you for me–to the point that the common experience is that work well done, with precision, with perseverance, work done with devotion, is the work we do for somebody we love.

In order to find the meaning of things, work is a necessary condition–not sufficient, but necessary. It is not sufficient because the meaning was not made by us, the world was not made by us. It will reveal itself to us, but work–engaging one’s life to try to bring out this Infinite, this Being, within the form, the concreteness of things–this work is necessary, because God only answers those who seek Him.
We understand, first of all, if we think that a large part of work is routine. It is always building and rebuilding, like washing dishes, which get dirty again and are washed again. What changes is the world’s esteem, and certainly we give in to the world because we give in to its esteem, but the question of work is something totally different. Just think of a woman who, washing the dishes, does it out of love for her husband and family–it is a gesture that changes history, fills the world; it is a gesture that affirms Being, i.e., affirms relationship. For what we want most out of work, what sustains work and we seek through work, is friendship.
I take the liberty of talking about an aspect of my work, which is in the CL headquarters, where I understand two things.

First, there is friendship there, beginning with the relationship with my secretary, elbow to elbow every day, so that I understand that I am working for you–not for you in the sense that I make you, but because it is work that develops my life and yours, and you work for me. Then there is the friendship with Martinelli, Savorana, and all the others who are there. We do the things of every day–talking, writing, etc.–always, always in order to look for happiness, so that happiness may come into life. We understand that we have to change, but also that we are not able to. We have to pray to change.
I once said to Fr Giussani, “Fr Gius, I do what I can.” And he replied, “Yes, but you know very well that doing what you can means doing everything you can, everything.” Working is the only way in which man offers himself to God. What is this offering?
In the CL headquarters, we understand that when there is no friendship, CL too is finished, as well as the taste for work, because in work what we are looking for is correspondence, friendship, because Being is friendship.
Christianity’s strength is that Being is friendship, He is for you, He is someone who embraces you and whom you embrace; He is not an Unmoved Mover up in heaven, who moves everything, not giving a hoot about you, but He is for you. In work, we try to bring this out. The work of life is this, whatever our occupation, and in this we have to support each other, like the method by which we can bring about a real experience of mutual education. For education is a presence. What does a presence mean? That I make you see what fulfills you, what makes your expectation come true. Work is life given so that this may manifest itself.
Fr Giussani said the other day at lunch, “The Christian vocation is a vocation for man, so that man may be fulfilled, so that man may find again the happiness to which he aspires.” This is the goal, the purpose, of work.