Il presente volume raccoglie le meditazioni dell’Autore in occasione degli Esercizi spirituali della Fraternità di Comunione e Liberazione, tenutisi a Rimini nel 1997 (16-18 maggio) e nel 1998 (24-26 aprile), e l’intervento a un raduno di responsabili internazionali (AIR) svoltosi a La Thuile nell’agosto 1997. 
Come si legge nella Nota di lettura (cfr. p. 6), gli scritti che costituiscono la miscellanea sono nati con una destinazione e uno scopo precisi: comunicare agli amici di Comunione e Liberazione il contenuto di coscienza maturato dall’Autore in quegli anni. Tuttavia, la novità della prospettiva aperta, l’originale analisi della religiosità moderna, la chiarezza e attualità della proposta avanzata ne fanno un testo per tutti coloro che intendano confrontarsi con l’esperienza cristiana oggi nel mondo.

Per la prima volta nel 1997, Giussani, pur partecipando dal vivo agli Esercizi, scelse di registrare le meditazioni nella sede del movimento a Milano, che vennero poi trasmesse durante il raduno. La cosa si ripeté anche per gli eventi successivi, i cui testi sono pubblicati nel presente volume (dati reperiti presso l’Archivio della Fraternità di Comunione e Liberazione; cfr. Alberto. Savorana, Vita di don Giussani, Rizzoli, 2013, p. 986 e p. 1020).
Si segnala che sono qui proposti esclusivamente i testi delle meditazioni di Giussani e che, per volontà dell’Autore, nel redigere gli scritti ne è stata conservata l’originaria forma orale (cfr. p. 6).

Lo scritto posto a “Introduzione” del volume (Marietti, 1999, pp. 7-8) e quelli che costituiscono la “Parte prima” (1999, pp. 9-60) sono tratti dalle meditazioni tenute agli Esercizi spirituali del 1997.
A breve distanza dall’evento, nel giugno di quell’anno, le lezioni furono integralmente pubblicate nel libretto dal titolo Tu o dell’amicizia: Esercizi della Fraternità di Comunione e Liberazione: Appunti dalle meditazioni di Luigi Giussani e Stefano Alberto (supplemento a Litterae Communionis-Tracce, 6 1997. Con successive traduzioni). 
L’“Introduzione” (1999, pp. 7-8) corrisponde al breve intervento iniziale in “Venerdì 16 maggio, sera: Introduzione” (1997: pp. 5-6). 
Il capitolo “«Dio tutto in tutto»” (1999, pp. 11-23) corrisponde a “Sabato 17 maggio, mattina: Prima meditazione: «Dio è tutto in tutto»” (1997: pp. 12-21).
Il capitolo “«Cristo tutto in tutti»” (1999, pp. 25-49) corrisponde a “Sabato 17 maggio, pomeriggio: Seconda meditazione: «Cristo tutto in tutti»” (1997: pp. 22-38).
Il capitolo “Cristo vita della vita” (1999, pp. 51-60) corrisponde alla sola sintesi (1997: pp. 46-53) della parte “Domenica 18 maggio, mattina: assemblea e sintesi”. 
Nella pubblicazione Marietti il testo è stato suddiviso in paragrafi titolati e sono state apportate alcune variazioni di carattere redazionale.

La “Parte seconda” (pp. 61-100) riporta l’intervento dell’Autore all’Assemblea internazionale responsabili (AIR), svoltasi a La Thuile il 17 agosto 1997. 
Nel mese di settembre il testo fu pubblicato nel libretto «Se non fossi tuo, mio Cristo, mi sentirei creatura finita»: Appunti dall’intervento di Luigi Giussani all’Assemblea Internazionale Responsabili di Comunione e Liberazione (supplemento a Litterae Communionis-Tracce, 8 1997. Con successive traduzioni).
Il primo capitolo, “Presa di coscienza di un cristiano oggi” (1999, pp. 63-96), raccoglie i primi quattro paragrafi del libretto edito nel 1997: “Influenza della Chiesa nella società: il dramma dei tempi moderni. La prevalenza dell’etica sulla ontologia”, “Tutto ricomincia dall’io”, “La permanenza della libertà: l’Avvenimento di un incontro” ed “Ecumenismo” (1997: pp. 3-37).
Il capitolo secondo, “Luci per il cammino” (1999, pp. 97-100), corrisponde all’ultimo paragrafo dal titolo “Tre spunti e una raccomandazione” (1997: pp. 38-42). 
Si segnalano lievi correzioni di carattere redazionale.

La “Parte terza” (pp. 101-154) riporta i testi delle meditazioni agli Esercizi spirituali della Fraternità del 1998. Come per l’anno precedente, pur essendo presente per tutta la durata del raduno, Giussani scelse di videoregistrare le lezioni di sabato 25 aprile (cfr. Alberto. Savorana, Vita di don Giussani, Rizzoli, 2013, p. 1020). 
Nel mese di luglio 1998, gli interventi furono pubblicati integralmente nel libretto Il miracolo del cambiamento: Esercizi spirituali della Fraternità di Comunione e Liberazione: Appunti dalle meditazioni di Luigi Giussani (supplemento a Litterae Communionis-Tracce, 7 1998. Con successive traduzioni). 
Il capitolo “Dio e l’esistenza” (1999, pp. 103-125) corrisponde a “Sabato 25 aprile, mattina: prima meditazione: Dio e l’esistenza” (1998: pp. 10-26).
Il capitolo “ Fede in Dio è fede in Cristo” (1999, pp. 127-150) corrisponde a “Sabato 25 aprile, pomeriggio: seconda meditazione: Fede in Dio è fede in Cristo” (1998: pp. 127-150). 
La sintesi degli Esercizi, qui pubblicata con il titolo “«Solo lo stupore conosce»” (1999, pp. 151-154), corrisponde a parte del capitolo “Domenica 26 aprile, mattina: assemblea e sintesi” (1998: pp. 56-58). 
Nella pubblicazione Marietti il testo è stato suddiviso in paragrafi.

Chiudono il volume l’“Indice dei riferimenti biblici” (pp. 155-157), l’“Indice dei nomi e dei luoghi” (pp. 158-159) e l’“Indice tematico” (pp. 160-163).

Nel 2002 l’editore ristampa il volume senza apportare variazioni.

2021 BUR
I testi delle meditazioni dell’Autore agli Esercizi del 1997 e 1998 sono pubblicati, rispettivamente con i titoli “Tu o dell’amicizia: 1997” e “Il miracolo del cambiamento: 1998”, in Dare la vita per l’opera di un Altro, sesto e ultimo volume della serie “Cristianesimo alla prova” (BUR, 2021, pp. 7-66, 67-131). L’opera, che riporta le lezioni, i dialoghi e gli interventi di Giussani durante gli Esercizi spirituali della Fraternità dal 1997 al 2004, è stata redatta a partire da testi già pubblicati e da trascrizioni di registrazioni conservate presso l’Archivio della Fraternità di Comunione e Liberazione a Milano. [C. C.] 

Introduction
Modernity is characterized by a rationalistic rebellion against the living God, and reason claims to freely dispose of man. In the face of this attack, the Church has reacted by drawing back its forces at the pastoral level in order to defend the people’s morality, taking for granted that the dogmatic content was self-evident. Thus, faith has been deprived of defense and nourishment. We need to deepen the awareness of our faith. Who is God for man? “God is all in all.” And how can we know Him as this? Only through the Son, “Christ is all and in all.”

Part 1
1. “God Is All in All”
Human existence is ephemeral, passing, yet the I feels within itself a thirst for eternity, for Infinity, for a reality beyond every limit. The I is thirsty for Being, for God who is all in all.
But if God is all in all, what am I? What are things? Reality as it appears to man is made by God, it is made “of” God. It is the perception that reality is contingent on the fact that “reality is not self-made.”
From this vertiginous perception of the ephemeral appearance of things, there develops, as a giving-in and as deceptive negation, the temptation of saying that things are nothingness (nihilism), or are indistinct parts of Being (pantheism). But if you are merely an appearance of being, if your I is nothing more than the outcome of physical and biological forebears, then the only criterion that guides you is that of adapting yourself to the mechanic impact of circumstances as well as the search for the power that illusorily increases your personal consistency which remains appearance.
Pantheism and nihilism, however, are a reductive simplification as they deny the I, they deny what in man appears paradoxically independent of the Being from which everything derives: freedom. Freedom is revealed in experience as the need for a total satisfaction, as to acknowledge that God is all.

2. “Christ Is All and in All”
“Christ is all and in all” indicates the ontological link between the mystery of Christ and the nature and destiny of each man. For man’s self-awareness, this means that Christ is the ultimate and adequate example for conceiving and living one’s relationship with God and with the other, with history and society. “Morality” is to imitate Christ who goes on in history within the Church. For man, morality is born as a prevalent liking (friendship), irresistible for a person who is present: Jesus.
The meaning of history is the human glory of Christ, just as for Him it was the fulfillment of the Father’s will. Witnessing is living for the human glory of Christ: a phenomenon by which men acknowledge that the consistency of reality is Christ and shout it to everybody, they prove it by the transformed mode of their own existence.
Hence the commitment to serve the human community in all its aspects, and ecumenism and peace are the outcome in all this.

3. Christ the Life of Life
From the ontological discovery that God is all and that man is participated being comes a matter of ethical conscience, that is, of behavior. But here is a qualitative jump: the Mystery wanted to reveal itself to man in history by becoming incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. Christ is the life of life: in Him is summed up all that every man looks for.

Part 2
I. A Christian’s Awareness Today
In the early centuries, the communication of the Christian Event took place through “facts”: from the original Event thus derived the Tradition, which constitutes the repetition every day of the first Event. The instrument of Tradition is memory.
A rationalistic influence (man is the measure of all things) asserts itself in the modern age, producing a twofold dynamic: on the one hand it makes the State autarchic, absolute; on the other it replaces the whole way of existence of the Christian religious fact. No longer a day-to-day flow of the original Fact, but its reduction to an abstract a priori, projected onto existence.
There is an affirmation of ideology in the relationship with reality: the criterion is no longer Tradition—memory—but the logical development of an idea. The State—and no longer the Church—weaves the fabric of the common mentality.
Before a modern world that is becoming more and more rigid, the Church has expressed a formal fidelity to dogma, while all privilege has been increasingly given to moral values conceived according to the views of the dominant culture.
In this dramatic moment, in which power has launched a violent attack on freedom, the person remains the source of real freedom, the acknowledgment of belonging to an Other.
But man alone cannot last as freedom and friendship with Being: this is why God has come to us in the event of an encounter, in the form of a human companionship. The Church is this new human reality in which the Mystery of Christ is present.

2. Lights for the Journey
The supreme reason of the Church for existing is witnessing. In Christianity, ethics is the witnessing to a Fact that proves itself through the attitude of the changed individual, but also in every social aspect that is born of the changed individual, of the witness: this is the concept of work. The event of belonging is a generator of culture and charity, and prayer is the expression of the self-awareness of the “I.”

Part 3
1. God and Existence
“God is all in all” is the striking consequence that reason leads to, at least when reason is understood according to its nature, that is as openness to reality according to the totality of its factors.
We need to become aware of a way of thinking that, apparently exalting a religious re-birth, in point of fact wants to censure the fact that “God is all in all,” feeling it abstractly, or forgetting it, or going as far as denying it. This denial stems from a separation of the meaning of life (God) from experience and also implies the emergence of moralism: a separation between morality and man’s action.
The heart of the matter is how to read and analyze the relationship between reason and experience. Experience is the emergence of reality to man’s consciousness; but if reason is used wrongly, if it is used as the measure of things, this brings about three possible reductions that affect all our behavior.  
The first reduction is to put ideology in place of the Event: the logic of a discourse that starts off from a preconception and wants to support and impose it.
Secondly, the reduction of sign to appearance occurs: your human capacity to search for meaning is thus blocked, going beyond the perceptively immediate aspect up to the acknowledgment of the Mystery.
Finally, the reduction of the heart to feelings: taken on their own, feelings act as a reactivity, while the heart indicates the unity of feelings and reason.
Faithfulness to Christ and to Tradition have to be sustained by an ecclesial ambit that is truly aware of this necessary fidelity. The participation to an ecclesial movement is a belonging to an ambit in which the gift of the Spirit that comes from baptism becomes concrete in forms that are demonstrative and persuasive (charism).

2. Faith in God Is Faith in Christ
“Christ is all in all” so that “God may be all in all.” Jesus is the Man through whom the Mystery has revealed itself, but the presumption of the dominant mentality is that one can talk of God without involving Christ.
In the modern era, rationalism makes confusion between religious sense and faith quite habitual, thus emptying faith of its true nature, that is a judgment of reason that involves freedom. The contemporary collapse of faith as recognition of “Christ all in all” has given rise to the present-day bewilderment, which reveals itself in various, identifiable aspects.
The first consequence can be identified in the formula: God without Christ. It is the denial of the fact that it is only through Christ that God be revealed to us for what He is, that the Mystery reveal itself for what He is. This is fideism: the reasonability of faith is eliminated and God is defined as the idolatry of a particular.
The second consequence is Christ without the Church. This is Gnosticism, or the denial of the carnal dimension of the Christian experience, without which the experience that man has of Christ lacks the possibility of verification of Christ’s contemporaneity. Rationalism “dogmatically” sustains that we cannot speak of a God who becomes man. 
The third consequence is a Church without the world, where spiritualism and clericalism come from, as a twofold reduction of the value of the Church as the Body of Christ. Christian ethics is flattened on the observance of rules conceived in a legalistic way; the fact of Christ is reduced to pure memory, to be devoutly kept, while salvation is conceived eschatologically, kept back for the last day. The reasonability of the faith—that is, the concreteness of the relationship with Christ and the very reason for the Church in the world—is thus effectively destroyed.
From a “Church without world,” a world without “I”: this is the phenomenon of alienation. The world becomes the ambit of existence defined by the power and its laws; the ultimate consequence is the abolition of freedom.
The alienated I is an I without God. As the I without God cannot avoid boredom and nausea, we let ourselves go on living, either feeling ourselves part of a whole (pantheism) or falling prey to desperation (nihilism). 
These five aspects outline the situation in which modernity finds itself, a situation that originated in the collapse of faith in its true nature.

3. “Only Wonder Leads to Knowing”
“Ideas create idols, only wonder leads to knowing”: this phrase of Saint Gregory of Nyssa is the same as our conception of getting to know Christ, of acknowledging Christ. The motivation for saying “Yes” to something that comes into our life defeating all preconceptions is beauty, a beauty that we may well not manage to define, but that we can feel as the content of our reason for the gravest decision that our reason has to take: faith.