Il presente volume è la riedizione del testo omonimo pubblicato per la prima volta da BUR nel 1994 nella collana “I libri dello spirito cristiano”. Vi sono raccolte lezioni e assemblee tenute da Giussani nel corso di un anno ad alcuni giovani decisi a iniziare il cammino verso una vita di dedizione totale a Cristo in quella forma che la Chiesa chiama verginità.

Apre il volume una breve nota editoriale (Nota introduttiva, pp. 5-6).

L’“Introduzione” dal titolo “La ragionevolezza del cominciare” (pp. 11-17) è invece parte integrante del testo, si tratta infatti del primo incontro durante il quale Giussani fa emergere le ragioni per iniziare il cammino di verifica.

Nel novembre 1994 il capitolo “Carità: dono di sé commosso” (Rizzoli, 2007, pp. 325-335) fu pubblicato anticipatamente, con lo stesso titolo, per pubblicizzare l’imminente uscita del volume BUR (in 30 Giorni, 11, 1994: pp. 73-77).

In appendice Alcune note per la lettura (pp. 443-444) e Dallo statuto della Associazione ecclesiale Memores Domini (pp. 445-446).

Rispetto alla precedente edizione (BUR, 1994) i pochi interventi effettuati riguardano l’uniformazione e l’aggiornamento di note, citazioni bibliografiche e indici (aggiunti “Indice dei riferimenti biblici”, pp. 447-450; “Indice dei nomi”, pp. 451-452; “Indice tematico”, pp. 453-462) e la correzione dei refusi.

Il testo “L’obbedienza. Assemblea” che conclude il capitolo terzo “L’obbedienza” della parte prima “Fede” (Rizzoli, 2007, pp. 154-156) è stato oggetto di riflessione in conversazioni fra l’Autore e alcuni membri dell’associazione Memores Domini (Tischreden), raccolte nel primo volume della collana “Quasi Tischreden” intitolato «Tu» (o dell’amicizia) (BUR, 1997, T152-153; T156). [P. M.]

This book is a transcript of the Author’s meetings with about one hundred young people who had decided to commit their lives to Christ through total dedication. In a passionate journey of lessons and assemblies, the principal contents of faith are addressed, witnessing a deeply human approach to Christianity. Divided into three parts, the book describes the fundamental characteristics of our Christian personality, corresponding to the theological virtues—faith, hope and charity. Every part explores the conditions of each virtue (freedom as a condition of faith, poverty as a condition of hope, sacrifice as a condition of charity) and the consequent attitudes (from faith, obedience; from hope, trust; from charity, virginity).

Introduction
You reasonably start on a journey you do not yet know because something happened that is worth starting on. This way, the start does not have a purely hypothetical value (“let’s see if...”) but is reasonable and persuasive, because of the deep intuition that there is something right, something beautiful, something that fulfills the needs of your heart in the journey you are taking.

Part One—Faith
1. Faith
Before even being applicable to religious subjects, faith is a natural method of knowledge where reason comes into relationship, through a witness, with a reality that it cannot directly know. The reliability of this method is based on the credibility of the witness, that is, whether he or she knows what he or she is saying and does not want to mislead the interlocutor. Faith is the method of knowledge upon which culture, history and human coexistence are built; in fact, man always begins with what other people before him have discovered. Through the method of knowledge by faith we can come to know Christ and achieve certainty about Him. 
The dynamic of Christian faith, that is the way the recognition of the presence of Christ arises and develops, consists of five points—faith comes from a fact that happens with the form of an encounter; this encounter presents itself as exceptional—it is the encounter with a man who corresponds to the original needs of truth, justice, happiness, love; this exceptionality creates wonder, which necessarily brings a secret question with it, “Who is this man?” At this point, man’s responsibility comes into play, his free response, capable of either accepting and adhering, or denying and rejecting.

2. Freedom
Freedom, therefore, is a condition of faith. Man perceives that he is free when he can fulfill his own desires, but since he has an infinite desire, freedom is a relationship with the infinite. It is imperfect, it’s on a path, because it is an attempt to approach that infinity which human beings, in their lifetime, cannot reach. This is why freedom manifests itself in the choices that man makes from time to time—he chooses because he is not yet facing the object of his desire in a complete way. To let freedom choose what corresponds most to the heart, we need a clear awareness of the ultimate purpose for which we were created, and a self-governance that can mortify what most strongly and immediately appeals to us. Because of original sin, these two conditions cannot be fully experienced by an isolated person; from here comes the most obvious value of human companionship born of Christ, the function of calling you back to destiny and supporting your self-governance.

3. Obedience
Obedience, affective attachment to Christ, is an attitude that comes as a reasonable consequence of faith. The apostles kept following Jesus even when they could not immediately understand what He was saying—otherwise they would have had to deny all the previous months they had spent together with Him, when the exceptionality of that man had become evident. Just as Christ became obedient to the Father unto death, so the life of the one who obeys becomes greater, is fulfilled. Obeying, following, watching those who are in front of you, involves understanding what they say and imitating the way they act. Thus, the word obedience, indicating the steps by which man attains his destiny, is identical to the word friendship—a guided companionship to destiny.

Part Two—Hope
4. Hope
Hope is the second factor describing our Christian personality; if faith is to recognize the presence of Christ with certainty, hope is certainty in a future that is based on the certainty of this Presence. Man is impelled towards the future by the desire that his own needs be fulfilled, but amidst the trials and contradictions of life, he is unable to sustain by himself the certainty of such fulfillment. Destiny becomes certainty only to the degree to which man’s desire is based on the presence of Christ—without faith, hope could not be reasonable, and the dream, a desire for happiness defined by an imagined form, would take the place of the ideal. 
The object of hope is an “arduous” good. In fact, man is inevitably uncertain regarding a future he cannot imagine, and the path of hope involves an effort, continually sustained by the Spirit of Christ. This effort consists of faithfulness to belonging to Christ, expressed as begging, and asking for forgiveness after the mistake. 

5. Poverty
Hope is based only on the certainty of the presence of Christ, so it is hindered when man places the security of his own future happiness in a possession he himself has established. Instead, poverty, which means not hoping for our happiness from a self-determined possession but from the certainty that only God fulfills our desires, makes us free from all things, happy and certain that we lack nothing, for everything is ours. Poverty is a detachment from things that allows us to see them and use them while enjoying them more.

6. Trust
The result of hope that is born from hope is called trust—entrusting yourself to someone who sustains all of life’s weight according to a trajectory that reaches the ultimate destiny. Trust is carried out as abandonment to Christ, from which an ingenuous boldness comes, a profound optimism in front of existence and history. Pride disappears, and confidence arises even in front of one’s own weaknesses. The source of being moral, then, is no longer observing certain laws, but loving Christ. Trust is a “feast” that turns everything upside down, a state of mind that makes man a protagonist of a new history, the generator of a people.

Part Three—Charity
7. Charity
Charity—from the Greek word caris, gratuitousness—indicates the deeper nature of that Presence that faith recognizes. Charity acts out of pure love; it abolishes every recompense and is fulfilled in wanting the good of another, the destiny of another and thus his relationship with Christ. God’s very nature is charity, a gift of self—God gives Himself by creating, giving being, and then by becoming man and dying for man. God’s charity for man is being moved by him, by his nothingness and his betrayal; and it is a judgment, as it carries its reason within it—for man to save himself, to participate in being and achieve the happiness for which he is made.
For man, being moved up to the gift of self originates in imitating and following Christ and participating in His love. Only when the first object of love is Christ does man become capable of charity, that is, able to look at and treat people and things as God looks at them and treats them. The application of the law of love—the measure of which is totality, the gift of self, moved—determines a new kind of life. The fundamental aspects of this different kind of life are—the affirmation of another only because he is; sharing needs; capacity for forgiveness; and affection for everyone. To the degree to which these attitudes are at work in man, a change of mentality also comes about in him, the apex of which is the offering of one’s own life.

8. Sacrifice
Sacrifice, from the natural point of view, is something inconceivable because it seems contrary to human nature, made for happiness. From the time that God became a man and died on the cross, sacrifice became a value. In dying, in fact, Jesus not only made us understand that sacrifice was interesting for the destiny of man—He died so that men could reach their destiny and save themselves from death—but also revealed that all of human life is dominated by the need to sacrifice. In offering your own life to Christ, as a conscious participation in His death by accepting the circumstances of life, sacrifice becomes a value. Because of original sin, man adores something as “god” that is not God—an idol—and so sacrifice is to go against falsehood, to affirm the other—any object or person—for what it is, for its own destiny, without changing it, without bending it in your direction (and this applies to your own child, woman or friend).
The truest sacrifice is faith, recognizing a presence—recognizing Christ as present, in the historical, temperamental and environmental circumstances that are not established by man but by the Holy Spirit (this is called “charism”). And yet the existential reverberation of this sacrifice is the greatest joy that can be conceived.

9. Virginity
Virginity is life bearing witness to the presence of Christ in the world, imitating His boundless affection and tenderness. He chooses specific people who will bear witness to Him by living with Him and like Him, conceiving of life for the world, for God’s plan in the world, for the destiny of men and women. To truly love the destiny of the other a detachment is needed, sacrificing one’s immediate reaction—it is sacrifice that allows the unveiling of the truth of the “thing” or “person” that is present. Thus, virginity is the truth in the method of loving which Christ and those called to live like Him possessed. This truth of the relationship is the “hundredfold here below”—a foretaste of eternal tenderness, a foreshadowing in your relationship with the other as you will see him or her forever in the clarity and transfiguration of the eternal.