EDITED BY PAOLA BERGAMINI
pberga@tracce.it

Taking Risks
We first met Communion and Liberation almost two years ago through Fr Michael, who led us to the New Bedford School of Community with Fr Vincent. In this short time, our lives and our attitudes have dramatically changed. The certainty with which we say “yes” to proposals made to us, and our willingness to risk and sacrifice amazes us every day. Some of the risks we have taken have been more dramatic than others, but all are important because they open us up to the possibility of an encounter with Christ.
In January, my husband was invited to attend the National Diaconia in Washington, DC. This was the first time in almost 15 years of marriage we had been separated. There would be people he didn’t know, and it was only the second time he had flown. Yet, from the beginning, he was certain he was going. He could have thought of a million reasons not to go, but he realized the greatness of the gesture, and had the support of a true friendship. Fr Vincent said we should take every proposal seriously, and my husband said, “If this movement is going to be a part of my life, I need to go to see more and to understand it.” When he came home he said the people whom he met that were a part of the Movement for years struck him because they were still excited by the encounter they experienced. He also felt that the way he looked at life had changed. Everything was opened up for him because he knew he could do things he was unable to do before. He also said, “Living life, taking risks–that’s when you stand in front of the Mystery the most,” and he knew that something beyond himself was helping him to do this because he could never have done it on his own.
My husband has also been talking about CL with friends at his workplace. He works in a machine shop as a lead programmer and has been passing out copies of Traces there. Some of them have shown a growing interest in CL and he brought this up at dinner one night with our School of Community. It was suggested that he begin a School of Community at work. He decided to pursue this, knowing that he desired the same friendship among his co-workers as he had experienced in our own group. He said, “Here is where I see the face of Christ on a daily basis and I cannot separate my life at work from the rest of my life. I know I belong to something greater and I want to share it with others; not sharing it would be like keeping something away from them.”
For myself, the risks and challenges are present in many ways. I have found a certainty and confidence that makes it easier for me to share the way I encounter Christ through the Movement with friends both within and outside of my workplace. I have recently gone back to school after many years of uncertainty. I know it is the education and companionship in the Movement that has helped me to choose a certain path for my life. I have flown twice in my life, both times to the CL Fraternity Retreat, and although I was fearful, it has been an experience of complete abandonment that has taught me to trust someone “Other” than myself.
Our work at the Fraternity Retreat this year, especially regarding the encounter of John and Andrew with Jesus, has challenged me to look at the relationships in my life. Fr Vincent said the encounter should become “the form of all relationships.” What we have learned through the Movement has taught me that tolerating someone is not enough. Only my response of love will satisfy the desire for happiness I have. This is what I continually strive for but the risk is great and it is not always easy. Yet, it has already changed our relationships with friends we have known for a long time. We have been able to make time for them more consistently, sometimes talking about the Movement, sometimes being there for one another in difficult moments, and sometimes just having fun. Everything takes on a meaning when it is centered on Christ.
I once heard someone say, “When you are where you least expected to be, you are exactly where God wants you.” I see how Christ has led us to this place of belonging we were searching for. We tried to find a place for ourselves, but we were never really satisfied. We realize now that Christ was saving something much more beautiful for us. I can’t imagine our lives now without the friends that we have met through this movement. I see that we risk every day, but it is worth it because it teaches us to see the face of Christ in our companionship with each other. Our desire to adhere arises from a certainty that there is an “Other” that desires our happiness more than we can imagine. And He reveals His love for us through a group of friends we journey with to a common destiny–communion with Christ.
Bob and Sharon Sampson, New Bedford

Belonging to a People
Dear Fr Giussani,
The “I” is born in vocation and develops in a continuing newness, in an unceasing change, in the awareness of wonder at the relationship with this fatherly Presence to whom we belong. In living the sonship to our charism, to your person, we learn to look at everything in the same way as God-made-man: Christ. Just as with Abraham, so too the promise that God started with you is beginning to become a people as numerous as the stars in the sky. Grateful to belong to this people, and by the path of Veni Sancte Spiritus. Veni per Mariam, we pray to Our Lady that she may grant us the grace of faithfulness to the vocation that her Son has given us. Like you, we too want, in simplicity, to offer everything. A grateful, “adhesive,” and undying hug.
Giò and your children in Paraguay

Little Big Vacation
Three and a half days with 20-25 people–adults, young people, and children. “It can’t get any simpler than this,” we said to each other before the vacation of our community here in Hungary. Although there were no Italians with us and not even our priest, and Pepe (our visitor) was only able to come for the second part of the vacation, we were sure to manage in some way. Then, within two days, there were two car wrecks, leaving Pepe in the hospital and us running about between police, insurance companies, the hospital, and going on with the vacation, where half of our little group were people who had come more out of curiosity than a mature commitment. And if we add that it rained a lot and that the accommodations, so promising in the beginning, turned out to be a rundown former-Communist camping complex, then there were all the factors to make us rebel and go home, or argue with each other, or put our heads in our hands and cry. Instead, there is only one word to describe what happened: miracle. Only an Other was able to make us capable of welcoming what happened literally hour by hour and of using our time well, giving up our own comfort and organizing games and singing. Only an Other was able to give us the generosity, the patience, the jokes and quips. It is the working of an Other that persons who were new to or normally not seriously committed to what we offer stayed there without complaining, and in fact promptly lent us a hand. Even the children were very attentive to each other. It is the gift of an Other that these circumstances became the occasion for growth for all of us, because they were the occasion for entreaty. To search for meaning is to stand in front of what happens, beseeching, “Come, Lord Jesus.”
Nemeth, Hungary

A Family parrilla
“The Church is a great theater made up of terrible actors.” These were Mr Francesco’s opening words when we met him for the first time almost two years ago here in Caracas, when we arrived in Venezuela for an AVSI emergency project. Francesco, our landlord, is one of the many Italians who immigrated to Venezuela forty years ago. We go to his house every month to pay the rent, and we take advantage of the occasion to talk about the most diverse topics, always “religiously” accompanied by a bottle of the famous Cacique Venezuelan rum. The most immediately amazing aspect of Francesco is his great humanity and incredible capacity for observation. After a few months, we were considered a part of the family and unfailingly invited to the famous parrillas (barbecues) organized by Mr Francesco for his closest relatives. In May, Francesco invited us to his house for a family parrilla, and when at 8 p.m. all the guests went home, Francesco said to us, “Oh, now let’s talk a little amongst ourselves…” and opening a bottle of Chilean wine we sat back down at the table. We started talking about the music of the Joti (an indigenous tribe of the Amazon forest), but immediately the talk widened to much more interesting subjects. We began discussing the desire for happiness that we all have… Francesco dropped one of his wife’s crystal glasses on the floor to show that, just as the fact that a glass breaks is evidenced, so too must we admit that the desire for happiness is evidenced. We then touched on the other great topic of the relationship between faith and reason. We said to Francesco that faith is not a “blind” act of trust, but that we can begin to experience already now an incipient answer to our desires. Francesco lit up and said, “Where, how?” We answered by telling him to come with us to a place six hours drive from Caracas. Without hesitating an instant, he agreed. And so, several weeks later, we organized a visit to the monastery of the Trappist nuns at Humocaro. There Francesco met Paola, Chiara, and Cristiana (cloistered nuns who left the mother house of Vitorchiano almost twenty years ago), and he saw some of the works created by these nuns (like the home for the elderly). After we returned to Caracas, Francesco’s daughter said to us, “What did you do to my father, who when he got back was as excited as a teenager?”
Cico and Ezzi, Venezuela

August 2nd
Dearest friends: Yesterday, on our way back from Zinal, from the Movement vacation, we stopped at Trivolzio to pay a visit to St Riccardo Pampuri. After praying together with my friends, I bought a 2002 calendar and read, to my surprise, “In Trivolzio… on August 2, 1897, Erminio Filippo Pampuri was born…” My heart jumped for an instant: a few days earlier, on August 2nd to be exact, my nephew Marcello Riccardo was born. We were already convinced we had received a miracle, but this fact made even more evident to us the benevolent presence of the saints. In the fourth month of my sister’s pregnancy, Marcello Riccardo had been diagnosed with two large cysts on his brain. The first gynecologist assumed he would be born hydroencephalic. In Milan, at a specialized center, they were more cautious and said that it would become clearer over the months. So an army formed to pray and ask for grace. My sister and her husband and their daughter Vittoria went to visit St Riccardo Pampuri. We all prayed and offered. After a couple of weeks they took another sonogram. To everyone’s great surprise, the cysts were completely gone. On August 2nd, Marcello Riccardo was born and now, looking at this baby, it is easier to think of the Mystery present among us. I ask for the miracle of looking at all of reality in this way, with this gaze, because it is really true that the Mystery coincides with reality.
Daniela, Pesaro

In the Hands of the Mystery
Dearest Fr Giussani: Margaret and I want to thank you for the message you sent on my father’s death. I remember that when my father met you before our wedding, the only thing he could think of and wanted to say to you was, “Thank you.” He lived this “thank you” especially in the last years of his life, despite the fact that his brain tumor reduced his ability to move and to speak more and more. My father was grateful above all for your fatherhood, to which he had entrusted us children with ever greater and conscious joy. He enjoyed the benefits of your fatherhood also through the Movement persons who were close to him, from Fr Ciccio to the friends at the Istituto dei Tumori (Tumor Institute) in Milan and the hospitality house. They helped him to live his illness not as resignation, but as obedience. A few days before he died he said, “I am serene because Jesus is here.” I lived with him the final hours of his life to the event of his death in the consciousness of and total abandonment to the Event on which you untiringly invite us to train our gaze. Dear Fr Giussani, I thank you again because you have taught us to live everything in gladness, that is to say, in the certitude that we are in the hands and the heart of the Mystery, even in the death of our own father.
Mauro, Dublin

Dearest Fr Giussani: Many thanks for the wonderful gift. I returned to Italy with my father for the Meeting, where I met so many true friends. I am filled with emotion, because our friendship is everlasting. We are walking together in search of the truth toward the Mystery. Best greetings from my family. We pray always for your happiness and for my Christian friends in the world, because “All of life asks for eternity.”
Wakako, Rimini

Dearest Fr Gius:
I want to thank God through you for this miraculous journey that we are on. The mystery of God who chooses nothingness… In front of this, one can only say “yes”–it is not a problem of capacity, but of the emotion that out of nothingness someone makes you be, chooses you as a cornerstone. Thank you, Fr Gius; I thank you for this.
I am leaving for Uganda tomorrow morning. And I take you with me on the journey.
Rose, La Thuile