The text is a conversation between writer Giovanni Testori and Fr. Luigi Giussani.
The dialogue begins with Testori suggesting various names for the upcoming series. Fr. Giussani chooses the title “The Books of Hope” because the word hope catches a primordial human expectation, opens our attention, as well as the road to an answer.
The subject of the meaning of birth is introduced by an observation by Testori—in a man and woman who love each other there is a moment of “abandonment” and liberation. For Fr. Giussani, the word “abandonment” indicates that in that instant another power is at work, the power of the mystery of God participating in the generation of a new being. The meaning of birth, then, is the awareness of our dependence, the perception of having been wanted by the love of God who has called each of us to life.
Our time is marked by the absence of the feeling of birth. Young people strongly long for something that is lacking, for a presence that is missing, which is precisely the presence of birth; you can see they lack the feeling of having been wanted.
This is because fathers and mothers have forgotten that they themselves are children and have claimed to be fathers and mothers. They have forgotten that “abandonment,” the mysterious abyss that drew them into the very gesture that united them, as if that gesture and the fruit of generation was theirs, something born of them. Thus, children were brought into the world without being told the meaning of destiny and the joy of being children—this is a religious absence, the absence of a father.
The awareness of this original implication, the dependence on a Father who called us into being—this is precisely what the society in which we live has willingly expelled from the normal awareness with which man feels himself and sees things. Since they could not eliminate the original reality of being made, they tried to act as if it didn’t exist, with the stated purpose of freeing the “I” from all ties. But then the superman has become the opposite of itself—instead of the freedom sought after, only greater servitude has been achieved.
This forgetfulness of being loved—for which one substitutes the presumption of wanting ourselves by ourselves—is what original sin specifically consists of. The negation of the Father is the negation of one’s proper consistency in being a child, that is, in being loved and wanted. It is a forgetfulness, a loss of memory, which has as its practical outcome the violence and instrumentalization of the other, which is the true curse of estrangement from the Father. All evil is born from this lie, by which man tries to define himself as though he forgot or cancelled the memory of his birth.
In this regard, Testori notes that in modern culture the truest expressions are those that sound the alarm, that bear witness to a cry and a desperation, to the impossibility of proceeding on this path.
But—as Fr. Giussani goes on to say—the moment when the absence of the Father, the absence of the feeling of birth is perceived with greater intensity and pain is also the moment when the presence can be rediscovered with new force and intensity. The unparalleled expectant waiting in today’s youth is greater than that of young people in preceding generations. The burden of these young people, their task—and the task of those who accompany them—is to fill the void between their father and mother in the moment of their birth, to become aware again that they have been loved, that they were made by God. For we cannot be persuaded that we are loved if we do not come to perceive the work of the mystery of God within the carnal will of man and woman. Only this way can gratitude to our father and mother become pure and be the beginning of a support, a sign of certainty and thus of hope.
So this becomes necessary—a recovery of the memory that reconstitutes the person and gives space to freedom. This is the time of the rebirth of personal awareness, of the reawakening of the person. Because it is precisely the person who, in front of the violent mechanism of society and power, is the most ridiculous and insignificant thing that can be—precisely this person is the point of redemption. It would seem a losing battle but on this fragility the power of God inserts itself with its promise.
The main problem is to reignite the mastery that the person has over himself, to go back to the evidence that our life is not born from ourselves, but belongs to something greater, and it is this something greater that constitutes us. It is the discovery of the paradox that I am an Other. I cannot say “I” if I do not say “you,” if I do not say “you who make me.”
And yet, how does this recovery happen now? The only response is that you encounter a different presence—the reawakening of memory happens in the company of one who already lives this memory. There is no other solution. It is from the multiplication of these atoms that a movement arises; and a movement can offer an answer to the mechanism of power.
We cannot forget the fact that the origin—that of which we are made and on which we depend—has become a human companionship. The Father who lovingly called us into being reaches man through a physical sign, which is the companionship of his followers—this is what makes His body visible.
Then it becomes clear that memory is a good for history, because the recognition of our original dependence enables us to possess the world, to perceive ourselves as part of a story full of meaning and goodness.