Antecedent
From 1973, university students of Communion and Liberation started to become an increasingly lively presence throughout Italy. Through university elections, to the battle over divorce and general elections, they would show themselves as an alternative to bourgeois or revolutionary hegemony. The harshness of the confrontation, however, made the reason for that action unclear over time. Therefore, in the mid-1970s, some students from the Catholic University who were feeling this unease became more closely connected to Fr. Giussani and asked for his help. In September 1975, at a meeting with university students from various universities, Fr. Giussani pointed out that the problem was not CLU but the “I.” Actions are not what generates unity in life but Christ, and unity with others comes only from unity with Him. The way Christ makes Himself present is through the community, so the method for increasing one’s relationship with Him is through following Him, which is first and foremost about authority and the School of Community. Only out of one’s relationship with Him can there arise a conscious identity, then a new judgment and ultimately a new way of acting.
1975
The Person and Basic Communion
The public activity carried out at university during those years generated a weariness that had a need for maturity inside. The problem was that the method for achieving such maturity was unknown. A taste for living, therefore, was lacking. People often look for this taste in contingent actions while the only source from which it can arise is affection for Christ. And so, the problem with CLU, yesterday as today, is not its activities but individual people with their own desire. From one’s identification with Christ, thus, a new subject is born, expressing itself as belonging to an Other. This belonging generates a unity that is expressed not as a political unity but as communion. “Basic communion” is what communities lack, not as a structure, but as feelings of the human heart, as a way of being together. The Movement’s “cultural identity” is a new way of possessing reality in Christ.
What Have We Thought, Said and Done More?
Normally life is experienced as negativity. The only way for it to be transformed is to become an instrument of love. Positivity springs from the value judgment that enables us to recognize Christ as the foundation of all life. If all things consist in Him, those who follow Him become one; a unity—that is the only true communion—arises between them. The unity of the community, the mysterious body of Christ, is the subject that drags history toward its destiny. For this reason, everyone’s life is based on their relationship with others, concretely, in the place where they live. Such unity is the real new event in history. From this unity comes the change of the three fundamental dimensions of human personality. Culture is no longer ideological but is the critical development of this taste for living. Charity is not an artificial concern for others but the reverberation of the unity of the community. And finally, the most bitter symptom of the aridity of a community is the absence of mission.
1976
In Faith, Man and People
The one question to which it is crucial to find an answer is, “What is faith?” Communion and Liberation has no role other than to be a call to faith, and to understand what it is we must go back to John and Andrew. For them, faith was recognizing in that man, Christ, a divine presence that was freeing them. This is what conquers the world and generates unity; thus, belonging to the people He generated is the true identity of the subject.
From Utopia to Presence
The destiny of a community depends on the choice one makes between utopia and presence. A presence is determined by the consciousness of one’s own identity. A Christian’s identity is to be one with Christ who, by choosing him, made him a new man. From his affection for this identity comes his love for the Church and the concrete community in which he lives; and only from such an experience is personal change possible, which otherwise would be reduced to moralism. The method to reach such maturity is to follow authority, which basically coincides with true friendship. Yet, the temptation of utopia can often emerge, that is, the attempt to realize in the future an image we created ourselves. Utopia is expressed in a speech that anxiously seeks to realize its project, while the only real novelty is presence, which finds its expression in an operative friendship. When you strive for something that does not exist, you are disappointed, whereas the problem is to plant the seed of a presence. The real job is to bring this identity inside the materialness of life because the passion for the ideal lives inside the ephemeral. The demand is for an important turning point, the beginning of a new work that is based on presence, not understood in an abstract sense, but embodied in the context one is in, that is the context of university. Every university community draws from a larger sphere to which it belongs, the Movement, and these places foster and support the questions that arise in the impact with the real.
1977
In the Context of University
Presence is not a project, but a vocational choice, the choice Christ made in His calling us and which we must become aware of. Without this, Communion and Liberation would coincide with cultural or political positions, while the key point is an encounter that sparked a hope for life. This provocation remains alive and does not slide into intellectualism; and this does not happen through some kind of techniques but by following an authoritative companionship. It allows us to hold on to the event that happened without wishing to impose our opinion over unity.
A Presence of Life
The community is not the solution to a problem of social coexistence for those who mean to run away from their circumstances. On the contrary, circumstances are the concrete way in which our Father educates each one of us. The problem is not to give good speeches, but to bear witness to a new life, and this task primarily concerns community leaders. For this reason, leaders cannot act as simple officers, but are called to live this presence. Unity among them cannot be formal, but must arise from obedience to the Movement. If no obedience is experienced inside them, they will never communicate it to others. Only from this unity can mission and culture be born again.
The Power of a Proposal
The most serious problem CLU has to face is presence. If you are not aware of it, you can lose everything. But what is a presence? It is the power of a proposal in the present that derives its strength from an event of the past—Christ. The appearance this proposal takes on in the environment is authority; presence is an authoritative place where the human person is fulfilled. To be able to verify this fact, we need to follow. An alternative to presence is to rely upon a particular project, carried out not by an authority but by a “character.” However, this only generates associationism, that is, it does not help us live but makes us all succumb to the leader. Why has this temptation been creeping into the Movement? Because we have been devoting ourselves to liberation while taking communion for granted. Instead, the event happens in the person and the Movement is the instrument through which Christ affects life. It is from following this event that communion is born.
What Is the Movement?
There is now a profound lack of meaning of the Movement. This is manifested in an absolute impermeability and remoteness from the content of its word, because people think they already know. Without our taste for experiencing the Movement, all we are left is the disciplinary aspect of obedience to the leader. We need to start again from the nature of Christianity, from the need for beauty that is inherent in our human heart and to which Christ responds through the Incarnation.
1978
The Personal Origin of Culture—Verifying as a Starting Point
The fundamental word that has been worked on is “presence,” but a presence is such if it takes consistency as judgment. The basis for this judgment is the humanity we are given so that it can act under the possible circumstances. We need to start our journey of judgment, which becomes culture as it continues in time. The alternative for each person’s life is radical—either we live as a bundle of instincts and reactions or we live the event that was announced to us. The risk we may run is to keep on living like anyone else, but to avoid this we need to verify. For this to happen, however, faith cannot be taken for granted. Culture does not coincide with a series of initiatives, but is generated by an event, a new life. Culture is a personal thing, based on that Presence that has taken hold of each person’s humanity, penetrating our reason and heart. It is not a dogmatic judgment but a new knowledge that everyone’s heart and freedom are called to embrace. To verify is to become aware of this event, and the criterion of verification is our own original experience, provoked in our encounter with Christ. Tradition is the continuation of this event as it comes down to us; thus, authority is the genetic factor of culture, and communion in following authority is the method for verifying it. In this sense, authority is not a role but a dimension of the person. It is an event through which the initial encounter continues to be an objective proposition for the person.
A Desire for Change
Inside the community, many difficulties emerge in experiencing communion, School of Community, in following the directions of the Movement. A radical change is needed—the first sign of being reliable to yourself is to perceive the urgency of this change. Change happens only by following, and a first place where we can follow in a community is the Diaconia. It is not an organizational function or aspect, but the objective locus of unity. If not arising from a true communion, it withdraws into itself and will never be authoritative. The Diaconia will be followed only if in turn it follows the core of the Movement. We must empathize with the sensibilities of those leading the Movement, otherwise there will be no change. The factor upon which all this is based is presence. Over the past few years, everything has been focused on a project of political and cultural change that has had no impact, and we have been assimilated again to the mentality of the world. Instead, the only possible plan for change is called Christ, and making this a presence introduces a new way of approaching the things that have always been done. Presence is bringing a new meaning of reality, which is Christ. From here, all this—one’s life in university, one’s relationship with fellow students, studying, environment—is reborn. If we do not challenge the environment we are in through the strength of the presence we encounter, we shall stay in the Movement in a formal way. For Christ reveals Himself in His difference from the world, by challenging the world. The main instrument of presence is School of Community, which allows us to keep reaching sound judgment and support it.
What Is Christianity?
The original theme of this assembly was supposed to be the situation of the Movement, but on changing it, a question arose—what is Christianity? All this is taken for granted within the Movement, and so the real object of our experience can be missed. Humanism has reduced Christianity to a form of wisdom or morality because these phenomena can be controlled, while its true nature cannot be controlled. It is a fact, the fact of a man who said He was God. Two corollaries arise from this—the first is that getting in contact with this fact requires an encounter that makes that original event present; the second corollary is unity. For, if each person’s destiny is what is most important, and if we have the same destiny, we experience just one thing and communion is born. Without this, the life of the Movement becomes formalism and inertia. Whereas the starting point is always the encounter with a fulfilled humanity that reawakens our human nature and transforms our relationship with everything, because our relationship with Christ is the truth of all that we experience. Faith is a subversive and surprising way of experiencing our usual things, and to see this in action is to witness a miracle. It is not about being visionary—what we experience is the real change in our humanity. From then on, we start following, which implies the overall risk of ourselves and not just obedience to directives. Not just anyone is followed, but someone whose interlocutor is our humanity, our own person.
