It is hard to find a more precise description of what we have lived together in these days than the passage from the prophet Ezekiel that we have just recited together: “I will take you from the nations, and gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be cleansed of all your uncleanness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone, and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you, and make you live. You shall be my people and I will be your God.”

If we look around us, what do we see? We cannot but look, because the first loyalty to what has happened to us is to look; the first change of heart is to look, to see, to see what has happened, to see what He who has brought us together here from all over the world has done and is doing in our midst, to the point of grasping the ultimate origin of what we see: Him, Him at work in our midst. If we look around us, we see a group of persons like you, like me, with limitations and faults just like us, nothing more. But–I don’t know how, you don’t know how–being here, in this place, with these persons, in these days, something makes us become more ourselves. This being here, this staying here makes us become more ourselves, more than all our attempts, more than all our efforts. Why? Why ever does this happen? We do not know how to explain it and we cannot help acknowledging this mystery: it is at the same time something that we do not know how to explain, but it is there–is there–and we, you as well as I, know that it’s there, we know what happened, we know (to say it with Ezekiel) that a new heart has come about, an “I.” A heart of stone–a mechanism, Cesana was saying in these days–becomes a heart of flesh, awake, launched, open… a person. It is as though these words took on a different weight: “person,” “I.”

What are we seeing at work? The Mystery, the Mystery that enters a precise place, into a group of persons like us, and calls our lives, as each one of us knows (we cannot explain why these things happen, but they do happen): an Event that is vocation, that calls, that awakens the “I.” Belonging to this people, to this place, something new mysteriously and really happens, and it is much greater than the sum of all of us. We understand clearly that the “I” is truly “I” because of this relationship with the Mystery, with the present Mystery. Already its nature, its ontology, is relationship with the Mystery; but it is only in a locus like this, in a people like the Hebrew people, in a people like the people of the Church, in a people like ours, that it becomes possible and familiar for each of us to live this “I” as relationship with the Mystery. Because without the Mystery being present–we all know very well–the “I” becomes like stone, a mechanism, as it were, a rock tumbled about by the torrent of circumstances and relationships.

This is what Christianity is. It is not another ideology, not more words; it is this event of the person, made possible by this mysterious presence of the Mystery, of something we cannot define, but is there, we know very well that it is there.

Why, in front of this presence, do we so often feel something like resistance, like an attempt to defend ourselves, an inability to adhere? A mysterious incapacity, which Fr Giussani always reminds us of when he speaks (it always impresses me that there is never an occasion when he skips this; not even when he had to speak before the whole Church did he forget it: “Infidelity always arises in our hearts, even before the most beautiful and true things, in which, before God’s humanity and man’s original simplicity, man can fall short, out of weakness or worldly preconceptions, like Judas and Peter”), which reveals the imperfection of every human gesture. This is realism, the realism of the Church, the realism of Fr Giussani, who never skips this factor that jeopardizes our adherence, this adherence to this work of the Lord which makes us become truly ourselves!

What is this inability, this impossibility that we experience so often, this infidelity that always arises? It is not a psychological or moral incapacity; it is an inability which historically defines us. Therefore, Jesus says, “Without me, you can do nothing.” We must not get angry because of this; it is a “given” of our historical “I,” which we cannot overcome by ourselves, and which jeopardizes life’s becoming a journey. Time after time, one has to come to terms with this given. It is like a paralysis: the hand is made for grasping a glass, for holding it, but has something like an illness; it can’t do it, and the glass falls to the ground. There is an inability, a lack of ultimate energy, a paralysis that places the journey at risk. Think of how many times we say, “But I am like this or like that,” like one who is crushed by his inability, his evil. This mysterious condition confuses us so many times, introduces confusion again. Who among us has never thought, “This is wonderful, really wonderful, but I can’t… This business is wonderful, but…”? (The image comes to me of when I am behind the speaker’s table and I say to myself, “What am I supposed to talk about here?”). Faced with this inability, the Mystery does not stop, ever, and He reveals Himself again (the Mistery) as the most mysterious thing–what can be more mysterious than the fact that, faced with my evil, faced with my inability, faced with my errors, someone comes to me and says, “I am with you. I am counting on you. This cannot be done without you. I know, I know, I know everything, but do you love me?”

Without this historic presence among us, without a gaze like this on oneself, one gets blocked. Instead, this is the point for starting again, one gets started again every time. Life can be a journey only if someone looks at me again and gets me going again. And this is truly mysterious. That someone loves you in the beginning is understandable, but that someone loves you when he knows everything, that someone feels unconditional affection for you despite everything, is the thing that most corresponds, is what we want most, and at the same time is the most mysterious thing. But it is this that reveals the ultimate nature of the Mystery. It ought to be like this always, since we are an ultimate, profound need for this embrace, but normally this does not happen; therefore when it happens, it is truly exceptional, so much so that one is surprised, to the point that he forgets about his incapacity, even about his sins, as though struck by the fact that there is someone who looks at his life like this. He is irresistibly moved by it.

This is why mercy is the height of Revelation and, at the same time, is the height of the Mystery. We see what the Mystery is, but it is not any clearer because of this, in the sense that we possess it better; it is, in fact, more mysterious. The wonder at forgiveness, at mercy, is even greater than the wonder of the beginning.

Faced with mercy, one has no reason to defend himself. It is this event that is vocation. Nothing challenges our life like this event of His mercy; not even our limitations are an objection. It is a gesture of mercy that conquers, that conquers even my incapacity: I do not know how, but all my human sympathy is for You, Christ; I do not know how, but all my being is for You. It is an experience of adherence, of freedom that (as we said also during Lauds) can only be the working of the Spirit: “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” No one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the working of the Holy Spirit. This is why Fr Giussani says, quoting St Therese of the Child Jesus, “When I am charitable it is only Jesus acting in me;” or, as he told us the other day at the International Council, “Everything, everything in life is the work of the Lord, and should thus be lived to the praise of God in the world; that is, to the praise of Christ, because Christ is the Lord, just as the Spirit is the Lord.”

Out of this, out of this gratitude, out of this mysterious change that comes about in us without our knowing how, arises a work that is not the fruit of our generosity, but of that ultimate gratuitousness which is the work of an Other (“When I am charitable it is only Jesus acting in me”).

This work coincides with mission. We have heard this in these days: for instance, Cesana spoke of the journalist who grew sad because the Meeting was over; Most Rev. Twal spoke of those who ask in amazement, “Why ever do these people come here to take care of our people who are suffering?” It is a gratuitousness that becomes a work and thus mission.

The event is vocation; the great revelation of this event, mercy, is vocation, and thus life is prayer. What we have lived together, the change that we have experienced, we do not give to ourselves, therefore we have to ask for it. There has not been any occasion in recent times when Fr Giussani, speaking to everyone, has not given us this instruction: “Pray, pray always, pray when the Lord chooses you to make Himself heard, pray Veni Sancte Spiritus. Veni per Mariam.” We can hear this either as something that we will then drop and forget, or as a precise charge from someone who knows that it is God who makes everything, from someone who has understood that it is an event that awakens our “I.” And since we cannot produce this event ourselves, we always have to ask for it. Someone who truly has his “I” at heart, the “I” of his children, the “I” of his friends, the “I” of his co-workers, either prays or lies. It is a lie because it is not he who gives himself this event that awakens and changes him; if we do not ask, we lie. The Pope said to us, “We believe in Christ, in the Risen Christ who is present here and now, who can change, and in fact does change, the world and history.” As the CL Easter poster says, “From the mystery of Christ’s resurrection a new light floods the world, fighting for territory, inch by inch, pushing back the night.”