CL

Work, or Being that Is Communicated
A captain in the US Army, an entrepreneur in Kenya, an astrophysicist. Problems to solve, results to achieve. Three stories of how man’s energy, when reached by Christ, gives form to things, in charity

by Riccardo Piol

What does the work of a US Army captain whose job is recruiting have in common with that of an entrepreneur thrown into Kenya to help young people learn a trade and that of an astrophysicist who studies the origins of the universe? Three such different professions have little to do with each other. And yet, hearing David Jones, Stefano Montaccini, and Marco Bersanelli speak, we intuit that there is a point in common; it emerges as a question, but also as the beginning of a lived experience. Work is not merely “doing things,” applying a learned professional skill, but it is a sincere engagement with reality, with oneself and the meaning of everything. The problems to be solved, results to be achieved, the salary to be taken home–in short, what gives shape to the workday world of everyone–in their stories becomes concrete as the necessary condition for discovering the ultimate purpose and the real savor of every action, whether routine or out of the ordinary.

As Captain David Jones recounts, “For me, terrorism, the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and all the various conflicts are not abstract geopolitical events. I have actually recruited men and women who have been sent to these war zones, and many of them have been seriously injured or even killed in combat.” In situations like this, asking oneself why one does a certain job, the value of what one is doing, becomes inevitable. And the problem is not to find a surface consistency, but to answer a question about the meaning of one’s actions. “Every day I ask myself if my being a Catholic and being a soldier can fit together. And the conclusion I have reached is that the two things can fit together: my job is being a soldier, but my vocation is to become a saint.” And this is how it becomes possible to have a human relationship with the soldiers, to share the grief of families who lose children in the war, even to “be glad while serving in the military.”

What is possible in the States for a restless personality like Captain Jones happens also in Nairobi, Kenya, where Stefano Montaccini has worked for six years. A little more than a year ago he was about to leave Africa. “I didn’t see any more developments in my job and so I had started thinking about boundless prairies, about America,” where it seemed that the desire to build, to give a form to creativity, could find proper space. Then came a phone call, an exchange of e-mail messages, and Stefano remained in Nairobi, at the St Kizito School where more than 400 young Kenyans learn a trade. No “boundless prairies”? Not at all. Without having to cross the Ocean, the prairies opened up in a succession of opportunities, resulting in an employment agency for youth, initiatives and groups to help small businesses get started, contacts with firms, and even projects with Kenyan government ministries, municipal administrations, and institutions. In short, the boundless prairies were right there at home; all it took was knowing how to look for them. And to make this discovery, all Montaccini did was ask and obey friends who pushed him to take seriously the desire to build something that corresponded to the stature of his desire. “I was not looking for the confirmation of an idea of my own, but the truth about myself,” the chance to work, with the zest of someone who knows that by building works he is discovering his life together with someone.

While Montaccini wanted a change of scene in order to find a new job, this idea must never have entered Marco Bersanelli’s mind. Better known as “Binocolo”–“Spyglass”– Bersanelli says, “I am doing the job I always dreamed of as a child, because I have always felt a fascination for the vastness of reality.” His career as a physicist and his study of the universe were the normal fulfillment of a desire that still continues today. But the method that enabled this desire to be fulfilled was anything but normal. A dinner with friends and the proposal dropped as if by chance to go to America for post-graduate study, then the encounter with a professor as complicated as he was a genius, research at the South Pole, and now involvement in a project with NASA and the European Space Agency… Year after year, the work increases and demands greater and greater commitment, but the family is growing too–now there are three children and they too demand time, space, and energy, just as do the Movement responsibilities. How to fit it all together? “I went to see Fr Giussani, because it seemed to me I needed help in this situation,” says Binocolo, “a balance point among all these things,” so as to live them “in the most correct way.” But the answer threw him off-balance and moved the question onto another plane. The problem is not the balance point, but realizing that “when you are dealing with your wife and children, with your friends in the Movement, when you are studying the universe, when you do each of these things, you are dealing with Christ.” This is a discovery–one that changes your consciousness of work and of life, as Giancarlo Cesana said, bringing the evening to a close.