Terzo volume della serie “Quasi Tischreden”, che riunisce conversazioni dell’Autore con un gruppo di Memores Domini. 
Le Tischreden, “dialoghi a tavola”, propongono oltre duecento incontri svoltisi con ritmo all’incirca settimanale a partire dal 1990 e raccolti per tematiche.
Nel presente volume, introdotto dalla Nota per la lettura (pp. V-VI) che approfondisce motivo e metodo di pubblicazione, sono raccolte alcune delle conversazioni tenutesi fra il 31 gennaio 1991 e il 27 giugno 1996.

L’introduzione dal titolo “Il “sì” di Pietro” (pp. VII-XIV) è parte di una conversazione con i novizi dei Memores Domini tenutasi a La Thuile il 3 Agosto 1995 già pubblicata in forma leggermente differente nel testo “L’origine della morale” (30 Giorni, 12 1995: pp. 40-43), che riporta integralmente la lezione di Giussani.

La Tischrede “A me pare che non cerchino Cristo” (pp. 147-160; T193) era già stata pubblicata integralmente con il titolo “Dare del tu a Cristo” in 30 Giorni (9 1998: pp. 45-56); la Tischrede “L’equilibrio è una unità” (pp. 321-335; T149) era già stata pubblicata con lo stesso titolo, ma in versione lievemente ridotta (senza le pagine iniziali 321-322), in 30 Giorni (3 1999: pp. 50-58).

I testi di riferimento utilizzati come spunto di riflessione per i dialoghi di questo volume sono “Moralità, memoria e desiderio” e “Decisione per l’esistenza”, in Alla ricerca del volto umano (Rizzoli, 1995; T11, T35), “Tracce d’esperienza cristiana” in Il cammino al vero è un’esperienza (SEI, 1995; nuova edizione: Rizzoli, 2006; T86), “Cristo, la compagnia di Dio all’uomo”, “Sulle tracce di Cristo” e “Dall’utopia una presenza” in Un avvenimento di vita, cioè una storia: Itinerario di quindici anni concepiti e vissuti: Interviste, conversazioni, interventi di monsignor Luigi Giussani a partire da registrazioni, non rivisti dall’autore (EDIT: Il Sabato, 1993; T91, T95), “Di che si tratta” in Litterae Communionis-Tracce (9 1993: inserto; BUR 1999, T105), Perché la Chiesa: Il segno efficace del divino nella storia (Tomo 2, Jaca Book, 1992; nuova edizione: Rizzoli, 2003; T113, T123, T149), “L’origine della morale” in 30 Giorni (12 1995; T172, T174), Il tempo e il tempio: Dio e l’uomo (BUR, 1995; T182, T185), Il senso religioso (Rizzoli, 1997; nuova edizione: BUR Rizzoli, 2023; T195), oltre ad alcuni pro manuscripto e scritti inediti (trascrizioni di appunti) relativi a eventi legati alla vita dei Memores Domini.
In particolare la Tischrede “Questo “sì” e basta” (T168, pp. 199-210) ha origine da un commento dell’Autore al capitolo 21 del vangelo di san Giovanni.

Il volume si chiude con la “Legenda” (pp. 337-339), l’“Elenco analitico” in ordine cronologico di tutte le Tischreden pubblicate (pp. 340-347) e gli indici (“Indice dei riferimenti biblici” pp. 351-356, “Indice dei nomi e delle cose notevoli” pp. 357-364, “Indice tematico” pp. 365-371). 

Nel marzo 2025, BUR Rizzoli riedita, nella collana “Saggi”, il volume del 1999, ormai fuori catalogo. Si tratta di una edizione conforme alla pubblicazione precedente, il testo di Giussani è invariato; aggiornata la biografia dell’Autore in quarta di copertina. [P. M.]

Introduction: Peter’s “yes.” The wonder of the apostles towards Jesus was a judgment that made them stick to Him with “handfuls of glue.” The decision for Christ, as for any other relationship, is not a voluntaristic act, but a sympathy full of rationality.

1. An Exceptional Encounter
1. An encounter, the form of all relationships. The encounter with Christ becomes the form of all relationships by determining the value judgment and, consequently, the affective mode towards everything we encounter. Therefore, the main matter is fidelity to the relationship born of the encounter, which can coexist with inconsistency of imagination and action.

2. Going back to the first encounter. The personal relationship with Christ precedes the companionship and is its source. Therefore, we do not need to dwell on the companionship, but to indulge its urge to look Christ in the face, to read and live the Gospel as present. Thus, we feel the need for sacrifice, that is to look at each other in the memory of Christ, so that our relationships inside the companionship can be true. What drives someone to sacrifice is not Jesus, but his or her desire for the relationship to be true, that is eternal—the more we love, the more we need sacrifice.

3. Like a movie. If the Gospel were a movie, its first scene would show John and Andrew at the house of Jesus, watching Him speak (Jn 1:35–39): the impact with an exceptionally corresponding human reality. The last scene would be Jesus asking Peter, “Simon, do you love me?” (Jn 21:15-19): the impact with a human reality that is so corresponding that it is stronger than error, mercy. Between the first and the last scene there is an ongoing thread of love for the One in whom what we feel as a need of our heart is fulfilled: and this love “is proved in its very essence right at the last moment, when all have betrayed”: mercy well exceeds our measure.

2. Existential Genesis of a Morality
4. A hundred murders. “Had he committed a hundred murders, Saint Peter could only answer ‘yes’” to Jesus’ question “Do you love me?”: it was not a decision, but an inexorable answer generated by the sympathy born in the three years he had spent with Him. “The relationship with the Other is defined by the word simplicity,” so that one could commit a hundred murders and still be moral, that is, simple: each time repenting of his sin and remaining open to the relationship with the One who saves him. The object of moral education is “that the heart be simple, much more than not sinning.” Simple is the person who neither introduces nor defends a factor extraneous to experience: this is the condition that allows one to enjoy the hundredfold.

5. Following a gaze. The dialogue, particularly rich in playful jokes, touches on various topics, including politics, hope, the figure of Saint Joseph. On dogma and morality: one cannot love without the purity of a reason that affirms with certainty the positivity of Being. Dogma is an expression of love, because the first love towards a person is that he or she knows and enacts what is true. Morality is a tension to what is true, “it is the consequence of Christ saying to Simon, ‘Simon, do you love me?’” Following this gaze of Christ over time, moral values emerge describing the tension for what is true.

6. Acknowledgment, not decision. Peter’s “yes” to Jesus’ question “Do you love me?” clarifies the dynamic of freedom: it is the unavoidable acknowledgment of His human truth, not a choice. Personal responsibility lies in the simplicity of being amazed at a presence that shows its own exceptionality in mercy. By belonging to Him we can love everything as He loves it, that is, we can be fathers.

7. To listen is longing. “‘He is if He changes’: Jesus is [...] if He becomes the content of our begging; and I am if I make Jesus the content of my begging.” In fact, to listen is to beg and follow, as a child listens to his father with his mouth wide open and longing to imitate him. Peter’s “yes” is a paradigm of this attitude, which becomes evident in the “I-You” relationship lived out in virginity.

8. “Gladly I offered you everything.” Peter’s “yes” springs from a story which is present in a belonging: because of Jesus’ love for him, Peter became attached to Him. Therefore, the new morality invests the whole person; it is not restricted to the fact of recognizing what is right and acting in accordance with it. The simplest expression of an act that is all-embracing, and not just an expression of willpower, is the offering. Belonging to Christ, who is totality and truth, can never mean an abandoning—it is a greater possession, which nevertheless implies a greater cross.

3. Saying “You” to Christ
9. “It seems to me they are not seeking Christ.” The title brings up a remark about Memores Domini that was addressed to Fr. Giussani by one of them, dealing with the topic of dialogue. If the companionship is not experienced as a sign, if it is an unsatisfied analogical approximation to Christ, it will not be enough for the self, nor will it be possible to love truly. The more one loves, the more the companionship feels an exasperated tension to shout the name of Christ. Without tending to Christ, instead, there is no way to understand preference, morality, and pain of sin, that generates love for Him.

10. “You are like a father.” This dialogue is based on an episode that happened to Fr. Giussani: as he was walking home, he was stopped for seven times by people who thanked him saying, “You are like a father to me.” He told everyone, “A few minutes ago we were nothing to each other. Now you would be willing to give your life for me, as I would for you.” “This is Jesus: a presence that, through me, becomes presence.” If a Christian does not understand and remember this, he is “the harmless pretext for something huge”; but with the presence of Jesus, and by offering Him the circumstance, he is a protagonist.

11. The heart of Jesus. Security in any struggle is somewhere outside of it, Jesus as a factor of present history. But if Jesus is conceived in an abstract and artificial way, the thought of Him makes you gloomy rather than glad (for example, the Sacred Heart may be grotesquely imagined as a pectoral muscle or understood as a metaphor for His feeling). “What would make us less of a man, that is, what would make us abstract or even grotesque [...] in the experience that man makes of the context he is in, is not the way we represent Christ’s presence”: the natural laws of intelligence, morality and imagination must also dictate how we conceive of Him.

12. This “yes” and that’s it. The heart of the dialogue is summed up in this challenge from Fr. Giussani to those present, “Why do you oppose what you would not have with what you would have? […] I have this ‘yes’ and that’s it, and it would cost nothing more for you than it costs for me.” Saint Peter’s “yes” did not cost him courage: it was an expression of his simplicity. “Morality begins with the fact you realize you can only say ‘Yes, I love you, I am with you, I understand that I belong to you.’”

13. “Come!” We would like to be loved because we are worthy, but this way “Christ becomes like a prize to a game that has already been won.” Conversely, holiness is saying “Come!” to the Lord even in the burning sensation of one’s own failings. Originally, freedom is expressed as a demand to accept being loved. And the demand itself is already a miracle.

14. The affection that mainly sustains. When corrected, one should not be thinking of oneself, but of the “You” who has revealed Himself as mercy, and invoke His help. Trying to protect some capacity of your own is like saying “You, however...,” whereas “You” has a totalizing value, and only through it is a new conception of things possible.

4. The Historical Name for Mercy
15. Mystery becomes a face. To change is to recognize the Mystery that forgives. But “the Mystery cannot be taken into consideration unless it becomes a face”—Jesus Christ. To look at Him is to look, to belong “to the people with whom He has identified Himself. [...] It is then, it is by participating and living our unity that one changes.”

16. Misericordia Domini plena est terra. “God, for us, is mercy, otherwise He is not”; as a matter of fact, a sinful man has two options: either he is scandalized by his own mistake, and ends up forgetting it and justifying it; or he recognizes that God is everything, to the extent of being mercy. It is from the gratitude for this recognition that comes the desire for change and, more so, the passion that the world know Christ, the historical name for mercy. “This is the value of virginity as a form of life,” maintained despite all the mistakes: to witness that Christ is truth and mercy.

17. Ironic attempts. “The relationship with Jesus is the only phenomenon where there is no mathematics,” that is to say the measurement of the outcome of one’s actions. Commitment does not pursue one’s own project, but derives from a love that is expressed in ironic attempts, that is, entrusted in their imperfection to the mercy of the other. This irony about oneself—which is the opposite of making fun of oneself—allows you both not to despair of one’s own inability and to forgive others who make mistakes, without suffering scandal.

5. The Usefulness of Christ to the World
18. A starting point. Jesus, who is man’s destiny, proposes Himself to his freedom by provoking it not to a striking gesture, but to the simplicity of acknowledging Him in the act of asking for Him. When this acknowledgment occurs, man’s relationship with the world is made more human: easier, more joyful, more capable of forgiveness. Through His usefulness to the world, what seemed more abstract is thus revealed to be truer and more real. In contrast, a proposal of Christ and the Church that had no human incidence would be useless.

19. Christ saves reason. Christ is the ideal of life because He always answered “yes” to the Father’s will, even under those circumstances when He was dominated by fear and sadness. Imitating Christ consists of saying “yes” to His love and asking for Him even in the midst of temptation and inconsistency. To acknowledge Christ corresponds with the essence of freedom and saves reason. In experience, in fact, man recognizes the presence of a mysterious factor, which he cannot know, just as one cannot know the “you” of the other without his revealing himself. Thus, faith saves reason because it affirms the existence of that factor (instead of obliterating it) and begins to reveal its content.

20. Balance is a unity. Balance is a characteristic peculiar to the Christian experience: it is a richness of forgiveness that saves man’s misery, a pursuit of eternal goods that does not forget but makes use of earthly ones; it is loving Christ in all that one loves as a man, abandoning oneself like a child in the arms of his father. Balance is thus a unity: a characteristic of the Christian face, not of this or that particular thing.