Three Witnesses from America
Evansville, Indiana
Mike Eppler, Diocesan Youth Director
In 1993, at the World Youth Day in Denver, Colorado, I sat next to Cardinal Martini at lunch, and he spoke affectionately of the presence of CL in his diocese. This was an occasion, not a real encounter; I thought about it a little, but the episode did not take hold of my heart.
Two years ago, while I was preparing for some classes at the university, I went into a big bookstore and there, next to the works of Martin Luther, was The Religious Sense. I looked at The Religious Sense because it was more attractive than Martin Luther; there was a picture by Paul Klee on the cover, so I bought it. I fell in love with it.
Then I went to see my Bishop, who gave me a copy of the little book on CL. But by then I had already been touched, I had profoundly encountered something. So I gathered together 25 young people from the Diocese of Evansville, and we met at the Pizzeria “Terroni”–if you want to give birth to a movement that started in Italy, you have to start out with a pizza! I asked them if they were willing to give their whole life for the Gospel, and they said, “Yes!” So then I said, “I have found something that has touched me deeply; do you all want to join in?,” because in the Movement I had found something that synthesized and recovered the tradition but that also embraced all of my experience and personality.
So we started doing School of Community without having the faintest idea what we were doing. We met for three or four weeks, then I said to myself, “Maybe I’d better call New York.” The question–I told them on the telephone–is how to find the truth and belonging that my young friends from southwest Indiana are looking for. This is precisely what the Movement offers. So we were invited to Notre Dame to the presentation of The Religious Sense, and there I was introduced to Msgr Albacete, who spoke of “wingless hens”! He asked me, “Who are you people?” It was the first time, in the Church, that someone asked me something like this, that someone addressed a question like this to me, and so I told him everything. He added that every friend of ours is a friend of the Movement, and from that moment we have grown. Now there are about seventy of us in our School of Community group.
At the event at Notre Dame, the kids from Evansville were so happy to have encountered the Movement! In the car, on the way back, we were listening to the Bay Ridge Band when a tire blew out. We were standing there, having fun–laughing and joking among ourselves–when a policeman drove up. The temperature was below freezing, in the middle of the snow, and we, with a flat tire, were joking around; so the policeman asked us if we were drunk. And we said, “No, we’re in love!”
Our young people who have encountered this charism go into the bars and invite their friends to join them, and they do.
This summer, the seminarians got curious too and wanted to know what was happening. So they came to School of Community with notes and a lot of theology. And a little group of Studium Christi got started; there are two priests and nine seminarians who seriously seek Christ in their studies and in everything they do.
We know that we have found a pearl of great price, and we have given everything away because we want to be part of this. We shall see what happens.
Raleigh, North Carolina
Rob Jones, in charge of Adult Catechism
For more than ten years, I have carried a question around inside me: as the person in charge of adult education in my diocese, I saw that people did not respond any more if faith was presented as a past tradition. The forms (even the Catechism) seemed to have no content, and even when the content was still there, comprehension on the part of the people was certainly diminished, both on the level of learning and of experience. So I asked myself, “How can I make a proposal of faith in this post-modern world that seems so uninterested?”
One fine day I went to the dentist, and in the waiting room by chance I found a copy of Traces. I didn’t know what I was about to discover. When I read it, it was like a “Big Bang”–all I could do was say, “Yes! Yes!” When I read Fr Giussani, “I am You who make me,” what happened to me was like when God made the world, a new creation, and I could only answer as Mary did, “Be it done to me according to Your word.”
I wanted to know who these people were, what this was about. In Traces I saw the e-mail addresses of Rome, Milan, New York: was there someone in North Carolina?
Somebody from the International Center in Rome sent me a copy of The Religious Sense, and in that book I found the answers to what I was looking for, because I found a method that anyone, whether inside or outside the Church, could use. I was able to see that Christianity is a relevant and realistic proposal for living in the world.
Then I started reading the book by myself, until I discovered that there was a woman who lived about a five hours’ drive from me, in Charlotte, and we exchanged e-mail addresses. I did the same thing with the New York office, and with Washington. But only two months ago, when I went to the Fraternity Retreat in Washington, did I meet for the first time other CL people in the United States. What I took away with me from the Retreat was a description of the Church: the Church is the family of the people, of persons who live in the Lord’s presence, who live this memory and are generated by Christ–not only as something that happened, but something that is present now, and the now, the present, never stops, it continues. It is like a universe that expands inside me; it is an awareness that continues to grow, step by step.
When I received the invitation to come to La Thuile, there were a lot of things standing in my way. I didn’t think it would be possible, but thanks to you I am here, and I realize that, even with my faults and my limitations, in a company of persons, through the Holy Spirit, you never know what can happen. I had the chance to be in Rimini for the Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples last week, and I saw that the fruits of the charism are incredible, astounding.
When I thought I would not be able to come, my wife said to me, “I would be angry if you didn’t go, because God is in this,” and this struck me because she doesn’t know anything about Fr Giussani, she doesn’t know us, she has never read the books or Traces, but she told me that I have a responsibility to the world. Thus, seeing that here the theme is “Event is vocation,” I realized that the Christian vocation is to show the world who we are, what is the nature of our “I,” that “I” that says, “I am You who make me.” And for me, this means loving everything in everybody, rendering glory to Christ.
After Rimini and after coming here, I thought about what I would like to say to Fr Giussani and to my wife, to all my friends in America and to you, and I want to conclude with this, that becomes a prayer, an entreaty to Christ: I am amazed at your desire to keep me company; I am astounded at seeing how your love has found me and chosen me, because I had practically given up all hope. I even have a different sense of myself, due to the fact that you chose me: I am learning to appreciate myself, I see my value and what I can give when I look at myself the way you look at me.
Rochester, Minnesota
Patrick Luther, neuroradiologist at the Mayo Clinic
I encountered the Movement in the spring of 1998 in Rochester, through Fr Jerry, who was already my friend and parish priest. He had proposed that I buy this book entitled The Religious Sense, and to meet in the parish hall to read and discuss it. My wife Lisa and I accepted because we were looking for something; we were already active in the parish, but faith was not managing to penetrate into the details, the particulars of my work and my daily life.
I am a neuroradiologist at the Mayo Clinic. You can understand what a clinic like that has to offer in terms of research, education, and training; I am proud to be a part of it. It took me a while to reach the position I have now, but I kept asking myself all the time: how do I judge this work, what does this job mean to me?
The culture and mentality of the academic world in the United States gives me a partial answer: my CV, my academic position, and the quality of the service that I manage to offer. But is this the same thing as the meaning of my life, does it give meaning to my life? And concerning my family, my wife and children?
When I began to frequent CL, very close and strong friendships were born. I acknowledged them; I was not the one to create them, and these friends are serious about life’s questions. In the past two and a half years, I have begun looking at my life in a new way: the unit of measurement now is this relationship that I have encountered. I still have to do the same job as before, and I have the same family as before, but now I see them in a different way. I still have to be technically capable in what I am called to do, but now I look at how I do my job and who I am compared to the persons with whom I am called to work. They are the persons with whom I spend my life: how do I take care of my patients? Last Friday, before leaving the States, I examined an eighty-year-old woman with osteoporosis. Her husband died six years ago, she has a son she hasn’t seen in eight years, and she is alone. She hoped that we could do something for her to alleviate her suffering, but we were not able to. While I was with her, I thought about what I have now, hoping that, even if I could not do anything for her from the technical point of view, I could be there for her. I have encountered a friendship that is true, that is a joy for my life and a challenge for me, even if I continue to stumble along the way.