Cl in the world

“The” Road in the World

Notes from the introductory talks by Giorgio Vittadini and Giancarlo Cesana at the International Assembly, in which 800 Responsibles of the Movement participated, coming from all over the world. La Thuile, August 25, 2002

Vittadini
1 The context: the Movement in the world is part of society, it is not isolated from the mainstream, it lives in contact with the problems of all, in a devastated world. The Chernobyl of the human, of which Fr Giussani spoke years ago, is the reality with which we have to deal.

a) There is a progressive physical and moral dehumanization, and the first aspect of this is the dehumanization of life.

Examples: War in Colombia; illness and poverty in Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda, Brazil, Bolivia; lack of work in Argentina, Kazakhstan.

b) Even worse than this is the destruction of man in his very nature. The consequences of seeking salvation in a project based on man can be seen in this disintegration, evidenced in the lack of a proper upbringing; the shattered family; less freedom in the life of our society; and an ideology that attempts to separate the “I” from its experience.

Lack of upbringing in Argentina, Albania; the crisis of the family in the United States, Nigeria; less freedom in social life in Spain.

c) The Church, too, often appears to be absent from society, or to be reduced to some established gestures extraneous to the needs and interests of life.

The Church is practically identified with the sects in Cameroon and Kenya; identified with moralism in Ireland and the United States; marginalized in the Holy Land.

2 How does the Movement appear in this context? How does it posit itself? This does not come about through an analysis, it does not react by complaining, it does not offer pastoral plans or projects for changing the world.

a) It is born out of a gratuitous encounter, as something that cannot be deduced. To be sure, someone’s presence is necessary, but it is a gratuitous, apparently chance encounter, rich in response to man, any man.

The encounters after the tragedy of the Twin Towers recounted in Traces; other beginnings in Russia, Australia, and Great Britain.

But what is this encounter? It is, for those who describe it, a total and immediate correspondence with their desire for happiness; you perceive a total, unconditional embrace, a reconstruction of the human in an instant, what you have always sought. This is the beginning of the Movement, the continuous beginning, the contemporaneous beginning, of someone who comes to meet us.

Growth at the university in Nigeria; sharing needs in Croatia, Albania, Kosovo; a companionship in Belgium, Ecuador, Australia, San Francisco and Los Angeles, in Ireland, Mexico, Chile, and Switzerland.

b) The encounter continues in a friendship, a guided companionship that follows the charism. This friendship is not generic, but takes on substance from personal friendship, from a preference that opens up to everything. It is a preference that opens one up to communional unity.

Testimonies from Peru and Spain.

This companionship is in the environment.

Examples from Austria, Poland, Romania, the United States, Chile, and Kenya. What does this companionship do in the environment? It educates by means of gestures, the gestures of our tradition: culture, charitable work, prayer, song, vacations, special places and times that light up the consciousness.

Singing together in Poland; biweekly meetings in Russia; charitable work in Cameroon, Taiwan, and Paraguay; the Psalterium musical group in Spain.

c) What is the outcome of the encounter that continues in this guided companionship? The realization of the three dimensions of the Movement [culture, charity, and mission], starting with culture, as a critical, systematic reflection on experience, of which the greatest expression is the spread of Giussani’s books through the whole world. The ripest point is that, in the societies where we live, the books and their presentation become the face of a different, systematic judgment, the way in which the Church offers her prophetic presence.

Myriad encounters in the United States, as well as in Hungary, Romania, Great Britain, Brazil, Spain, Mexico, Russia; again, the distribution of the foreign-language editions of Traces; the Way of the Cross in New York.

“Something always happens that does not leave us indifferent” (Poland); liveliness and curiosity in Mexico; “There is a connection between School of Community and protagonism in life” (Argentina); importance of identifying with the reasons (United States); “A gaze on reality grows” (Austria); “It is the point of view on life” (Russia); “The Movement has held up because of this possibility” (Colombia); “A more mature and responsible consciousness is growing” (Spain).

3 From what is this face of the Movement born?

a) Everything is born out of a reflection on experience, the instrument for a personalization: School of Community as, ultimately, the fundamental locus of our life. We begin to conceive that faith and belonging constitute a different personal mode of the daily attempt.

b) What is the content of this personalization? It is Jesus who manifests Himself in every circumstance, and His presence corresponds to the heart. This is a consciousness that grows.

Examples: “It is evident that the beginning is He, that He manifests Himself in unexpected and unforeseeable ways, that He corresponds to the heart” (United States); “Jesus appearing in reality is the exhaustive meaning of my person” (Taiwan); “Within the sign of our friendship, the face of the Mystery” (Argentina).

c) This consciousness of Christ as protagonist of the “I” and the companionship is not just one thing among others, it is not a thought outside of reality, but the all-embracing Presence which opens us up to everything.

“Enthusiasm for Christ present is the origin of the freedom that is so greatly lacking” (Spain); “The relationship between faith and life is born out of the recognition of Christ as an all-embracing Presence, not just as a spiritual moment” (France).

cesana
We have to learn to look at reality, because if we look at reality only through our own concerns, we do not see reality, we only see ourselves, and our eyes do not serve to see ourselves, they serve for us to see reality.

1 In this reality that is so terrible, described by Giorgio, the Pope–writing to Fr Giussani on the occasion of the Fraternity’s twentieth anniversary–thanked him because he said Fr Giussani did not indicate “a” road, but “the” road, the road that is Christ.

a) The road that is Christ–to what and for what? Why does it interest us? It is the road to destiny, the road to self-fulfillment, the road to what we were made for, what all men were made for: the road to happiness, the road to the understanding of truth, the road to the realization of desire.

b) If Fr Giussani indicates “the” road and not “a” road, this means that the Movement, ie, our experience, is the road because its content and its method coincide. We should not emphasize above all the specificity, the spirituality of the Movement, but its substantial aspect, which is that the One who for us was dead… that Christ, who for us was dead, has come alive. We should emphasize that the desire for happiness, which for us was dead, has come alive, not because the contradictions have been removed, but because we can live them with hope.

Yesterday, in his concluding message to the Meeting, Fr Giussani cited Dante’s Hymn to the Virgin and the figure of Our Lady–as he said, using a typically Giussanian term–as an “imposition,” the imposition of hope on the world, the hope of the flesh, ie, of hope within contradiction. Then let us invoke Christ as the name and presence that this happiness makes possible–makes possible not because it removes sadness and not because it removes toil.

2 In Fr Giussani’s response to the Pope, he implored a new beginning, and this term–“new beginning”–struck us all. It struck us all because the journey toward the infinite is always an initial journey. If someone thinks he has definitively covered a part of it, it means he is already lost, because it is the infinite; it is not a journey toward your house, for which you know where it is and have measured the distance. Here there is no distance, and all the road you cover takes you more deeply into the origin, not more forward in the presumption. This is it: we, in front of the infinite, are already inside this dramatic experience in which we understand that everything is always a beginning, and this is why it is resplendent. It is in the origin, especially in a Movement, ie, in an experience by which we are in motion, one that “has to”–in quotation marks–be an event, because it is only the event that moves, it is only the being struck by a preference, ie, by a love, that moves. It is something that happens and grabs you, so that you become a part of it, that is to say, you are a very part of the event.

Thus, we do not engage in gestures in order to bring about the new beginning, because the new beginning does not derive from an initiative that you take, but we make gestures, even the biggest ones, because we have an experience of a new beginning. The initiative arises from the enthusiasm, ie, from the experience of the event, which is the given on which life is built up.

3 The other point that was particularly striking in Fr Giussani’s letter is the one on responsibility. Just as he implores a new beginning, Fr Giussani implores a new and greater responsibility that goes so far as the consequences of civil service. What does this service to man realize?

a) First of all education: Fr Giussani says that the Movement has the educative genius–i.e., the communication of what we are, not of what has been or of another who is not here, but of what I am. This means that the first factor of education is the communication of what I am, of what I am as experience. Educating is the ultimate way we have to recall ourselves.

b) Then there is mission, which is not an effort, but is the expression of a belonging. Otherwise, it easily becomes sociology. There is no need for sociology, there is a need for witness, for recounting, because–precisely–today too there is a need for Good News just like two thousand years ago, the need for a history of life in which to take part.