Nuova edizione, nella collana “Saggi” di BUR Rizzoli, di Generare tracce nella storia del mondo: Nuove tracce d’esperienza cristiana, volume edito per la prima volta da Rizzoli nel novembre 1998.

L’opera raccoglie interventi di Giussani che hanno avuto luogo in occasioni diverse, avvenuti spesso, ma non esclusivamente, nel corso di conversazioni con responsabili del Movimento. La redazione ha richiesto diversi anni di lavoro, dal 1992 al 1998, e ha visto coinvolti nella stesura anche Stefano Alberto e Javier Prades; per questo motivo, per volontà di Giussani, tutti e tre i nomi sono presenti in frontespizio (cfr. Alberto Savorana, Vita di don Giussani, Rizzoli, 2013, p. 1036). 

Come si evince dalla Nota di lettura (BUR, 2019, p. 5; Rizzoli, 1998, p. I), i testi, di varia natura e di diverso stile letterario, sono stati ordinati e redatti dagli Autori in modo da formare un insieme organico e un percorso di discorso unitario.
In essi sono proposte le linee fondamentali della riflessione sull’esperienza cristiana svolta da Giussani nel corso degli anni Novanta.   

“Nella semplicità del mio cuore lietamente Ti ho dato tutto” (pp. 7-11).
L’introduzione, fatta inserire dall’Autore quando il libro era già in bozza e prossimo ad andare in stampa (cfr. Alberto Savorana, Vita di don Giussani, Rizzoli, 2013, p. 1040), è la testimonianza di Giussani durante l’incontro di papa Giovanni Paolo II con i movimenti ecclesiali e le nuove comunità (Roma, piazza San Pietro, 30 maggio 1998). 
Il testo è stato pubblicato numerose volte in forma pressoché identica:
- il 31 maggio 1998, Il Giornale edita l’intervento con il titolo “L’uomo mendicante nel deserto della vita e della storia” (31 maggio 1998, p. 11);
- nel giugno seguente, esso è riproposto con il titolo “Nella semplicità del mio cuore lietamente Ti ho dato tutto” in Litterae Communionis-Tracce (6, 1998: pp. 18-20. Con successive traduzioni); aggiunti il cappello introduttivo e la frase: «Questo ora fonda la ricerca dell’unità espressa tra di noi» (p. 18), non riportati in Il Giornale. In questa forma lo scritto si trova nel volume Il Papa e i Movimenti: Testi e immagini dell’incontro del Santo Padre con i Movimenti Ecclesiali e le Nuove Comunità, Roma, 30 maggio 1998 con il titolo “Cristo mendicante del cuore dell’uomo” (Edizioni San Paolo, 1998, pp. 33-39);
- nel marzo 2005, è ripubblicato identico in “Don Luigi Giussani, 15 ottobre 1922 - 22 febbraio 2005” (Litterae Communionis-Tracce, 3, 2005: p. 76. Con successive traduzioni); si tratta del numero della rivista uscito subito dopo la morte di Giussani, a lui interamente dedicato;
- nel maggio 2006, è rieditato con lo stesso titolo in Litterae Communionis-Tracce (5, 2006: p. 103. Con successive traduzioni), in vista dell’incontro di papa Benedetto XVI con i movimenti ecclesiali e le comunità (Roma, 3 giugno 2006);
- nel febbraio 2012, il giorno successivo all’annuncio della richiesta di apertura della causa di beatificazione di Giussani, Avvenire ripropone parte dell’intervento con il titolo “Quella sua testimonianza davanti a Giovanni Paolo II: È il mendicante il vero protagonista della storia” (23 febbraio 2012, p. 3);
- infine, nel 2014, Edizioni Messaggero Padova riedita l’intervento dell’Autore nel capitolo “Cristo mendicante del cuore dell’uomo” della miscellanea Cristo compagnia di Dio all’uomo (“Nella semplicità del mio cuore lietamente Ti ho dato tutto”, in Edizioni Messaggero Padova, 2014, pp. 81-86). La versione proposta corrisponde a quella pubblicata nel presente volume.

“L’avvenimento cristiano come incontro” (pp. 15-54).
Il testo è frutto di alcune conversazioni svoltesi in Spagna il 28 e 29 dicembre 1992, rifluite ampiamente nel primo capitolo del presente volume (cfr. Alberto Savorana, Vita di don Giussani, Rizzoli, 2013, pp. 863-866). 

“La permanenza dell’avvenimento nella storia (Il tempio nel tempo)” (pp. 55-136).
Nel novembre 1998, in concomitanza con l’uscita del volume Rizzoli (1998), i paragrafi “Simone, mi ami tu?”, “La ragione ultima del «sì»” e “L’inizio della moralità umana è un atto d’amore” (pp. 82-92) sono pubblicati in Litterae Communionis-Tracce con il titolo “Simone, mi ami tu: Inizio di una morale nuova” (11, 1998: inserto. Con successive traduzioni). 
Nel 2005, il paragrafo “Simone, mi ami tu?” (pp. 82-85) è riproposto nel numero di Litterae Communionis-Tracce dedicato a don Giussani (3, 2005: pp. 73-74. Con successive traduzioni) e, nel 2014, è ripubblicato, insieme a parte del paragrafo successivo “La ragione ultima del «sì»” (pp. 86-87), nel volume miscellaneo Cristo compagnia di Dio all’uomo nel capitolo dal titolo “Simone, mi ami tu?: La nascita della moralità nuova” (Edizioni Messaggero Padova, 2014, pp. 91-98).

“Un popolo nuovo nella storia per la gloria umana di Cristo” (pp. 137-206).
Nel 2005, il paragrafo “Ecumenismo” (pp. 181-186), parte del terzo capitolo, è parzialmente editato con lo stesso titolo in Litterae Communionis-Tracce (3, 2005: pp. 93-95. Con successive traduzioni). 

Chiude il volume il capitolo “Il giorno di Cristo, il giorno della misericordia” (pp. 207-219).

Seguono gli indici (“Indici dei riferimenti biblici”, pp. 221-225; “Indice tematico”, pp. 227-231; “Indice dei nomi”, pp. 233-234) e il “Sommario” (pp. 235-238).

Nel 2012, l’opera è proposta nella collana economica “BUR Saggi”. Il testo di Giussani è invariato rispetto all’edizione Rizzoli (1998), ma la numerazione delle pagine è differente.

Il 2 aprile 2016, per iniziativa editoriale di RCS: Corriere della Sera, il volume esce in abbinamento al quotidiano nella collana “I manuali del Corriere della Sera” con il titolo Generare tracce nella storia del mondo. L’opera è presentata da Pierbattista Pizzaballa, presbitero, teologo e biblista dell’ordine dei Frati Minori, dal 2004 al 2016 custode di Terrasanta e Guardiano del Monte Sion (pp. I-VII). Il testo è una ristampa conforme all’originale dell’edizione BUR, 2012.

Nel presente volume (BUR, 2019) sono state mantenute struttura del testo, numerazione delle pagine e isbn dell’edizione BUR, 2012. Il testo di Giussani non ha subito modifiche, sono state aggiornate le note a piè di pagina e corretti i refusi. [C. C.]

In the Simplicity of my Heart I have gladly given You everything
The Introduction to the volume, which conforms with Luigi Giussani’s testimony on the occasion of the meeting of the Holy Father John Paul II with the ecclesial movements in Rome in 1998, begins with the question from Psalm 8, “What is man that you should keep him in mind, mortal man that you care for him?” According to Fr. Giussani, only one Man, Christ, could answer this question of the psalmist, by asking another equally decisive question—“What would it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and then lose himself?”—which reveals that only Christ can affirm the individual person in the totality of his humanity. This exceptionality of Christ is “intercepted” by those who experience a willingness and simplicity of heart; when recognized, it invests the totality of life while changing it. The truth of such recognition, then, has an infallible test: an ultimate, tenacious capacity for gladness that dominates existence. This gladness, a sign of the human glory of Christ, documents the redeeming power with which He works in history. From this initiative of His, within the Church, a people took shape—the movement of Communion and Liberation—, a protagonist in the history of the mission of the one People of God, the Church. In this companionship, the personal experience of infidelity that always arises in each heart, revealing the imperfection of every human action, makes the memory of Christ more urgent. For this reason, man’s freedom expresses itself, as ultimate ideal, in begging; the infinite mercy of the Mystery responds to this begging and shatters any possible human image. For the real protagonist of history is the beggar: Christ who begs for man’s heart, and man’s heart that begs for Christ.

The Christian Event as an Encounter
According to the three authors of the volume, the problem of Christ in the world emerged when, at a fixed time, God made Himself known by taking the initiative of becoming a decisive factor in human experience. The features of the encounter with Christ can be traced in the experience of the first ones who followed Him: the exceptionality of a human event that makes it easy to recognize Him, and a deep human sympathy that makes it easy to live in a relationship with Him. This first encounter documents the very simple method by which Mystery has decided to relate with man: the event of an encounter. No word or law or speech describes Christianity better than “event.” In this encounter man is saved, that is, he definitely recognizes his destiny and knows how to direct his steps towards it. After all, the term “event” describes the supreme method of every type of knowledge. It is defined as the emergence into experience of something that cannot be analyzed in all its factors because it contains a vanishing point in the direction of Mystery. When an event happens, something enters our life, something that cannot be foreseen but can be experienced: in this sense, Incarnation is an event because, although man did not or could not foresee it, it reveals itself to be totally correspondent. Recognizing reality as deriving from the Mystery should be familiar to human reason: in fact, it reaches its apex when it recognizes the ultimate meaning of all existing things. However, reason alone cannot permanently experience the intensity of the relationship with reality and it succumbs, fixing its attention on particular things. The hostility of the modern mentality towards the word “event” is reflected, then, in the confusion between “religious sense” and “faith”. In fact, while “religious sense” shows the level of those irreducible needs that constitute human reason’s demand for totality (hence the attempts of religions by which man has intended to imagine his relationship with Mystery), in the dynamic of faith, however, reason no longer tries to explain reality but opens up to God’s self-revelation.
This appearing of the Mystery in history occurs in the phenomenon of an encounter in which man’s imagination and affectivity are magnetized by His presence. What marks such an encounter is its irreducible diversity from every other human phenomenon (“impossible correspondence”) and its all-embracing claim (the form of every relationship). The one who is struck by Christ, who recognizes Him and adheres to Him, experiences faith: the loving acknowledgment of an exceptional presence. Faith is thus part of the Event of Christ that happens. When faced with the superabundance of God’s initiative, man’s contribution is then resolved in the entreaty to be able to respond to His request. Finally, it is possible to describe the Christian event according to two dimensions: a) an event in the past that can be found in the experience of a present event, and that claims a meaning for one’s life (apologetic value); b) a present event that can be explained only in virtue of an event in the past, in which this claim began and which we reach through a memory of the content of that time that is fulfilled now (educative value).

The Event Goes on in History (the temple in Time)
The Event of Christ goes on in history through the companionship of the believers that become part of His Body through Baptism. The identity between Christians and Christ Himself is well expressed by the question He addressed to Saul, who was a persecutor of Christians, on the road to Damascus, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” The relationship of unity that is established between the believer and Christ shapes the relationship of unity among all believers. This humanly tangible unity occurs, therefore, by the grace of an event and is called “communion.”
The generative and developmental dynamic of Christ’s Body, the Church, can be identified by the law of choice or election. The history of the Hebrew people stands as a foretelling of what was to happen to the whole of mankind with the coming of Christ. In fact, the great election that God has made in history is the election of Christ, the “one sent,” because in His person the Mystery revealed itself as the meaning of human history and of reality as a whole. This dynamic had in Mary the first generative point: she was chosen to be the first temple of God in the world. This human dwelling place of the Mystery spreads in time and space through the choice of men constituted together as a single reality, the Church. For the summit and meaning of the Spirit’s creation is the spread of His Church, which is the instrument through which Christ communicates Himself in time and space. God’s day-to-day familiarity with us is achieved through events and persons that refer directly to Him: miracle and holiness. Indeed, He does not remain an isolated presence far back in history, but He is a “Presence” today, two thousand years after His death, through the exceptional humanity of the saints, an unimaginable human presence.
Christ takes man through an objective fact—Baptism. Baptism implies the participation of a person in the Mystery of Christ’s person. From this fragile but real sign a new personality begins. However, this gesture of choosing usually yields to forgetfulness and becomes an extraneous factor in our daily life. Therefore, to perceive the Mystery in the instant we need an encounter in which what we have been called to in Baptism grows and becomes great. Through this encounter, the memory—that is the awareness of Christ’s Presence—begins to live in those who have been baptized. “This is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith.”
The companionship where this encounter takes place becomes the place of belonging of our self. It is a sphere from which a different way of perceiving and adhering to reality begins: saying “I” no longer coincides with what I think and feel about myself, but with “what this Man thinks and wants of me.” From here springs the moral formula that summarizes the way of our Christian life, “The greatest sacrifice is to give your life for the work of an Other.”
A new capacity for looking at reality is born of the adherence (affectus) to this event. A Christian is thus introduced to a comparison with the events of present life on the basis of his belonging to what he has encountered. The new knowledge implies, therefore, being contemporary with the event that generates it and continually sustains it. The way in which the criterion for judging is born is indicated by the word “gaze.” Indeed, it is sincerity in looking at the encountered event that gives us this new criterion of judgment. And so we can say with Saint Paul, “though living in the flesh, I live in the faith of the Son of God.” Everything is recognized in a relationship with the Mystery become flesh, Jesus: He, in fact, is the ultimate consistency of reality.
Christian morality has the same origin as new knowledge, as it entered the world with Christ and is continuously generated by belonging to the event of His presence. In analogy to the dynamism of reason, an act is moral when it maintains its original openness to reality with which God continuously creates us. Such moral capacity draws its energy from the awareness of being sinners and from our faithfulness to the Christian companionship, as support and correction on the journey. In Jesus reaching out to man today through the Church, God’s relationship with His creature is revealed as love and therefore as mercy. Therefore, our imitation of Christ is in the margin of the awareness that God loves us within our evil. The good is thus not an abstract category, but it coincides with an attachment to Him and with the desire to witness His presence everywhere so that this Presence may dominate the world.
So, if the subject is because he is loved by the presence of God, what makes it possible for him to become the protagonist of a new world—that is, his “responsibility”—coincides then with his responding to the presence of the divine. The decision, however, cannot be understood in a voluntary or sentimental sense, for it springs from a deep sympathy toward that presence. As was the case with the apostles, who said to Him, “If we go away from You where shall we go? You have the words that explain life.”
The new self is born in Christ’s gesture of choosing, which places it into the Church according to a concrete historical form: the companionship in which Christ has become a companion for his life and draws close to him on the journey. A basic parameter for building the structure of this companionship in a real, day-to-day dimension is the “home,” the “temple.” This dwelling place can take two forms: family and the monastery.
The Event happens today according to a specific form that enables us to face it in a certain way and makes it more understandable, more persuasive, and more educationally effective. A charism is the mode of time, of space, of character, of temperament, and the psychological, affective, intellectual way with which the Lord becomes event for the individual, and, through Him, for others in this same way. Everyone bears responsibility for the charism he has encountered, which takes up diverse and approximate inflections according to each one’s generosity. This is the law of generosity, to give one’s life for the work of an Other, which always implies a link between the word “Other” and a precise reference, with a name and a surname.

A New People in History for the Human Glory of Christ
The companionship of those whom Christ has assimilated to Himself in the Church, His Body, lives and reveals itself as a new people chosen by God. The life of those who belong to it is determined by three factors: first, a common ideal that makes it worthwhile living and even dying for; second, the identification of the suitable instruments and methods for attaining the ideal; and third, the mutual fidelity in which one helps the other on the journey towards the realization of the ideal. The connection between a person’s vocation and God’s universal plan is expressed by Simon’s “yes” and the task Christ gives him, “Feed my sheep.” It is the beginning of a new way that invests the relationship not only between the individual person and Jesus, but also with the whole of reality.
At the root of it is the triumph of the pity that Christ had on man and that continues to take place through forgiveness, in an untiring activity to start over and over again, a thousand times a day. The people of God that is born is a communion that has an ontological foundation (“You are all one in Christ Jesus”): a unity that is not a homogenization but, on the contrary, an exaltation of singularity. Moreover, the people of God is a protagonist that is capable of having its effect on history, society and politics to the extent of creating a proper civilization. The foundation of this new civilization is embodied in the realization of subsidiarity, as mutual help in making up for what the other lacks. Therefore, the Christians’ responsibility is above all that of being what they have known.
The human glory of Christ, as the aim of the Mystery of the Father, belongs to this world. It is, in fact, the realization of God’s plan within the terms of time and space. A man who died two thousand years ago cannot be present here. If He is present here then He is God. This is the glorification of Christ—acknowledging a Presence that is dominant. Nothing can fill one’s heart like the passion for the glory of Christ. This judgment has been a type of daily program of the movement of Communion and Liberation since its very beginnings.
From the beginning of the world until the end, the people of God has an enemy: Satan. Hatred of Christ is the mysterious wound of original sin in human history; it articulates and becomes concrete day by day through all the powers that do not draw their origin from obedience to the supreme power of the Father. The last capillary of this hatred for Christ is our self, forgetful and indifferent. The refusal begins there, in a hatred we clearly live more and more estranged from Him. The absence of Christ is the absence of His life, so that it tends to produce an “amorality,” or a lack of responsibility for your own personal and collective existence. In this state of affairs, which would be the norm without God’s intervention, the initiative of Christ present continually makes His people live and renews it.
Christians share in Christ’s mission and they, too, are “sent” by the Father. This new awareness of living for an Other judges all the relationships of life and makes us able to love every bit of truth left in anyone. The new culture that is born of lived Christianity, well expressed by the term “ecumenism,” consists of a different awareness of walking the common path and implies a true reality of communion that begins and is realized as a whole subject of society, of the world, of human history, of universal history—the Church as the Body of Christ.
This human unity, in which Christ is the foundation, has two characteristics: it is all-embracing and Catholic because it tends to determine all relationships in reaching out tirelessly to the discovery of the truth and to the affirmation of the good in everything. 
This conception of culture and ecumenism requires a new approach to education. Christian companionship, understood as the dwelling place of the human, must encourage the person persuasively, pedagogically, and systematically to compare himself with reality up to its furthest frontiers, reawakening and sustaining the set of questions and original points that constitute our heart. So, in his life, man is educated to verify all the implications of the Infinite, in terms of the fullness that this presence suggests to his heart. You cannot educate someone unless you appeal to his freedom—that is to say to that level of nature in which nature becomes capable of relationship with the Infinite—by calling it to action and responsibility. Education in perfect freedom expresses itself as education in social life according to four basic points: education in labour and works, freedom of education, education in justice and education in political life. A gratuitousness that seeks to bear witness to the truth of the event of Christ present becomes then their common feature.

The Day of Christ. The Day of Mercy
Only “mercy” permits a people to journey forward, because only in mercy is it possible for a people to be continuously built, especially when it can no longer imagine the true road. For only God can look at the totality of man. Mercy is not a human word; it is identical to the word Mystery. Humanly, it appears to man’s reason almost as an injustice or something irrational, because it is not within his ability to measure, he does not see any reasons for it. For mercy is proper to Being, to the infinite Mystery. Man can only imitate this attitude of God: this is possible only through the revelation of mercy itself, which awakens in man an astonishment—that is filled with sorrow at himself—at the Mystery of Being and a desire to be like Him. The point in which God manifests Himself as mercy is Christ Himself. That God is love in Him means that the aim of everything that exists is absolutely positive. God thus reveals Himself as a positive hypothesis in everything man experiences. A Christian’s vocation is to accept this victory and to be disposed to His will.