1984
Something Else That Comes into Play
In 1984, in CLU (University Students) communities you could see a positive ferment that had brought about a blossoming of the Christian presence in the university. Fr. Giussani noted in the assembly that this blossoming was due to the faithfulness with which the message proposed by the movement’s educational path had been experienced. The question then arose as to how this phenomenon of human change that had begun in the previous months could proceed, “How shall we move forward?”; this question often came up in Fr. Giussani’s talks and emphases. A continuous change cannot be ensured by a subject’s ethical resilience, but another source is involved, as then precisely indicated by the content of the second Easter Poster (Le Christ est ressuscité). The permanence of change is given by something objective that is already present in experience. “Risen Christ” is the name of this inexhaustible source from which the permanent newness of being flows. Moral effort becomes, then, participation in the fact of Christ present here and now. If Christ is not present now, in fact, the subject inevitably reverts to nothingness. So, this is, as Saint Paul remarked, “the victory that overcomes the world”—our faith, that is, acknowledging the contemporaneity of His presence. Change in the individual and thus in the community continuously comes from this acknowledgment and its permanence (memory). The rising place of this memory is the sign of Christ’s victory in history—a living Christian community. Attending and being faithful to this sign coincides with the method along the way to the promise of the hundredfold here below. Furthermore, the one who experiences this belonging is capable of risking a proposal before the whole world just because it identifies the fulfillment of true humanity.
In Time and Space
The provocation by a group of anarchists to some CL University Students, reported during the assembly, over the alleged abstraction of that year’s Easter Poster opened the question of what living the hic et nunc meant. Those who start from an ideological presumption of their own personal moral perfection must remove the most obvious fact from an existential point of view—the emergence of their own limitation. For a Christian, instead, a limit is the existential condition for a journey and, therefore, does not stand as an objection because it is the place where a Presence acts. However, you can run the risk of announcing the risen Christ while remaining in the heaviness that arises from the limitation experienced. That is, you communicate Christ, but you live feeling sad and weighed down like everyone else. This means that Christ is still a theoretical statement that has nothing to do with the present—He is a Presence that is not present. Conversely, only if He is present can He make limitation a “seed fermenting over time.” This difference is revealed by an indication that can be detected in life—gladness. Gladness represents the infallible test, the criterion for evaluating the true position of a Christian. Moreover, the provocation of the Easter Poster had shown how, among many University students, the question Jesus asked Martha “Do you believe this?” had become a personal question from which a new action had been released. From observing this phenomenon, the question had been raised as to what freedom really was as a “cultural fact,” that is, as a person’s position before the total reality. Fr. Giussani identified it as the affective capacity to adhere to the delectatio victrix, the fascination aroused by the present Truth. In this sense, freedom coincides with that original position that welcomes a presence that makes one’s humanity true. How can this freedom be perfected? You “move forward by belonging to what makes you move forward.” The more you belong to that presence that makes your experience true, the more you are able to walk. So here the Christian paradox is proven—the more you depend the freer you are. This presence is the risen Christ, the only One who is able to permeate time and reach out to the fragility of the hic et nunc in order to set it free and redeem it. The strength with which the risen Christ permeates time and space and makes man human, enabling him to walk securely, is called the Holy Spirit. Such energy dwells in the sign of that Presence which is the Christian community. This is why “testimony is the language of a community,” that is, facts and people documenting a Presence at work that makes one finally himself (“I live, no longer I, but an Other lives in me”).
The One Who Is Among Us
The challenge in the question Jesus asked Martha (“Do you believe this?”) was raised again by Fr. Giussani with another question—how can we answer “yes” to this question from Christ? The first tool, the first condition we should enact to answer is freedom, which is attachment to the good, the ability to adhere to what is true. However, an objection often arises—freedom so understood is complicated. Freedom’s first action, though, is called entreaty; therefore, not saying “come!” to Christ is the same as lying to ourselves, as not acknowledging the truth we have perceived. This entreaty describes the nature of freedom so well that it needs no special conditions to be fulfilled. The second factor for saying “yes” is a story, an encounter. Without the encounter with a specific companionship, in fact, freedom would not have perceived Christ as something good for itself, as what can heal it from its paradoxical longing for loss. The Christian companionship is the place where this personal “yes” to Christ becomes possible. Where can we find the intense and creative affectivity that describes the deepest roots of our being? The name of this affectivity is gift of the Spirit—the third factor. The Spirit is that energy with which the risen Christ intervenes in history to continuously recreate created things. It is thus the Spirit who suggests the affective impulse that makes us ask “come” and makes us answer “yes” to Christ’s question. For freedom as affection and adherence to what is true and one’s story as companionship do not arise from man but from the Holy Spirit. The life of a Christian who lives this “yes” to Christ, then, is described by three dimensions. Gratuitousness, as the fruit of a life lived in gratitude for what one has encountered; belonging to the event of Christ, which is His companionship, as a definition of one’s self; the acknowledgment that, within this belonging, everything, even evil, becomes good.
1985
Through a Change
Life is constant change. It must be noted that, in nature, things are inevitably bound to a downward trajectory. The human heart, however, is the expectation of something truly new, of a “miracle.” The first real change is that of self-awareness. In fact, we must realize that the essence of our own self is to belong to a You who continuously creates it. To step across the threshold of the event of belonging, therefore, is to start entering the event of the “I.” The fragility we often experience when we are alone shows a lack of personality, that is, a lack of self-awareness as belonging. Self-awareness as belonging implies two observations. First of all, “following” is the method of this discovery—only the encounter with God present, in fact, enables the human person to understand and live out her “being” as a creature. “Following,” in fact, always implies a reality of relationship. Therefore, belonging as a definition of one’s self is to Christ present, who is His companionship. Second, relying on the movement always results in a missionary impulse that is a life (the event of a presence) proposed to all people.
From Group Logic to Personal Awareness
The Fact that Christ exists is the one decision to be made in life. In that historical moment, what was imperative for communities of CL University Students was a shift from a group logic to a dimension of personal awareness. The content of such awareness can be identified with the word “belonging”—an Other is what defines the nature of the subject. A disproportion between the content of this word and one’s degree of experience is often experienced. What fills this distance? First of all, entreaty, that is, that active and creative openness of heart before Being. In the second place, the School of Community, or that experience of searching we are involved in with others as we attempt to fulfill a more human position. However, moving to a dimension of personal awareness does not imply a decrease in the value of the community. Conversely, what really affects history is community as friendship, that is, that communion among people who acknowledge Christ, destiny, as the meaning of everything they do. In fact, the community so intended is the place that supports you when you perceive the disproportion that has been previously mentioned, because it allows you to pursue in your personal entreaty and helps you take the work of the School of Community seriously. The outcome of this friendship, when it is experienced to the fullest, is called metànoia, or change of mentality. This conversion indicates the beginning of a true belonging to the Fact of Christ. This change of nous, mentality, has a threefold implication— it makes the subject flourish in a new attitude to all circumstances of life, making it more beautiful and full of taste; it makes you understand that the only logic of impacting circumstances is to learn to love more of the Fact encountered, that is, that historical way in which Christ showed Himself (the alternative to this is to succumb to the logic of power); it makes you live that ascesis called the “drama of affectivity” by the School of Community, that is, recognizing—in the face of any personal circumstance, and especially difficult ones—that there is something greater that comes first. Belonging to Christ, therefore, makes you accept the sacrifice involved in living. This conversion of mentality makes the personality of a Christian a creative factor in a new culture.
The Grace of an Encounter
“And who do you say that I am?” This provocation Christ made to the apostles forced them to move from a group logic to a responsibility of personal awareness. The content of this personal awareness was the grace of the encounter that took place. This dynamic is just the same for Christians today. God became a man—this is the fundamental question of life. Therefore, the first task we need to accomplish is called “memory,” that is, acknowledging a presence that began two thousand years ago but is present here and now. There is a hindrance to the Christian journey, and that is the widespread idea of perfection and consistency. In fact, the current mentality often identifies “perfection” as a capacity for personal achievement, and so people are forced to waver between two attitudes—conceit or despair. For the Christian message, instead, perfection is not the final outcome of the human journey because, intended as true satisfaction, as happiness, it is the relationship with a You already present in the journey. Therefore, it is existentially accomplished as a recognized and accepted relationship with Christ present. For a Christian, in fact, consistency is an event of grace in which Christ demonstrates His power in time and space. The active outcome of memory is documented as a responsibility that is a plea (“Come, Lord Jesus!”). Christians, therefore, are not indifferent to good and evil but, in perceiving their own nothingness, they beg. Those who experience this intensity of memory cannot fail to rediscover the value of community as a place of Christ’s continuity. For He makes Himself present through “casual” relationships. This rediscovery leads to three corollaries. First, gratuitousness as a moral characteristic of a life in community. The fact that a Christian community exists is indeed a grace. The most descriptive aspects of this gratuitousness are an unconfined unity and a fecundity capable of regenerating everything. Second, community understood either as a continuous event or as a continuous betrayal. However, this factor is not up to the community but to the gaze of an individual as the result of a lived-out memory. Third, life as following. Community, in fact, is the logic by which an individual acts. Therefore, for those who have been touched by Christ, the content of their memory is released in their relationship with reality. As a matter of fact, the area in which personal creativity develops is the impact with circumstances, which form the fabric of personal vocation. Seriousness and loyalty in the impact with reality are then firstly required from the subject. Secondly, such seriousness involves a responsibility, that is, a response to the issues posed by reality itself. Such a response has one’s personal awareness as its tool, an awareness determined by the Christian encounter that has been made. This way everything becomes experience. The systematic unfolding of experience is called “culture,” and it is all the more powerful in its outcome the more it is accomplished from within an awareness of belonging. This exercise provides two proving grounds, indicated by Fr. Giussani as particularly important—our relationship with people and the content of our work.
