Giussani, Luigi. Una presenza che cambia: Volume settimo. I libri dello spirito cristiano: Quasi Tischreden. Milano: Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli, 2004.
Settimo 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. 1-2) che approfondisce motivo e metodo di pubblicazione, sono raccolte alcune delle conversazioni tenutesi fra il 12 marzo 1992 e il 24 novembre 1994, che hanno preso le mosse dal testo Perché la Chiesa (Rizzoli, 2003).
Altri testi di riferimento utilizzati come spunto di riflessione per i dialoghi di questo volume sono “Una premessa di metodo” in Tracce d’esperienza cristiana e altri scritti (Jaca Book, 1991, ripubblicato in Il cammino al vero è un’esperienza, SEI, 1996; nuova edizione: Rizzoli, 2006; T48) e “Per un inizio” in CL-Litterae Communionis (11 1992: inserto; T60), oltre ad alcuni pro manuscripto e scritti inediti (trascrizioni di appunti) relativi a eventi legati alla vita dei Memores Domini.
L’introduzione dal titolo “Unità e fraternità: la sintesi di ogni giorno” (pp. 3-4) è la riedizione degli appunti di un intervento dell’Autore all’Equipe del CLU del 7 settembre 2003 (La Thuile), già pubblicati in Litterae Communionis-Tracce (9 2003: pp. 1-2). Nel 2014, lo scritto diviene parte di In Cammino: (1992-1998), ottavo volume della serie “L’Equipe” (BUR, 2014, pp. 347-348).
Il paragrafo “L’atteggiamento di Edimar” (parte della Tischrede “Santità, la cosa più semplice della vita”, pp. 356-357; T146) è pubblicato quasi integralmente a introduzione del libretto Edimar: Un incontro di grazia nella rossa terra del Brasile, uscito nel 2004 come supplemento a Litterae Communionis-Tracce (7 2004: pp. 1-2).
Il volume si chiude con la “Legenda” (pp. 379-381), l’“Elenco analitico” in ordine cronologico di tutte le Tischreden pubblicate (pp. 383-390) e gli indici (“Indice dei riferimenti biblici”, pp. 393-395; “Indice dei nomi e delle cose notevoli”, pp. 396-404; “Indice tematico”, pp. 405-413). [P. M.]
Introduction. Unity and fraternity—the synthesis of every day. Christianity brings about in the world a taste for life, a beauty, a truth, and a capacity for love that are undeniable. If the Christian adheres to his faith, he becomes its bearer. There are two conditions that must be met for this to happen: an attention on unity, expressed in authority, and fraternity.
1. Method or Utopia?
I wouldn’t care. “Christ is not primarily the truth, but He is primarily the method through which truth communicated itself” (p. 11). From this profound persuasion comes the awareness the Church has of itself. The deliberately provocative title refers to a certain concept of the Church, understood not so much as a companionship aimed at recognizing the presence of God, but as a utopian “being together” intended only to create friendship. This precise way of conceiving Christian companionship is the result of a disengagement, rather widespread today, according to which “being together” becomes everything. Thus, even in a Christian community we can run the risk of doing many things and let the real reason for being together remain pure abstraction. Only the surprise of a Presence changes—if we took for granted the reason why we are being together, we would conceive companionship in a naturalistic way. Quite the contrary, becoming aware of our origin changes, stirs, moves.
A reality of salvation. A Christian community is a reality of salvation that is documented by the gift of the Spirit and lived communion. Although immersed in a reality that is ontologically different, the Christian must become aware of the origin it has so that this diversity can be fruitful. He or she does not create the Presence, but recognizes what there is and freely adheres to it. A Christian community is the place where human and divine meet; in the figure of the baptized, ontology itself changes and they become a new man or woman. This can be seen from the fact that this person has a different relationship with reality. The culmination of this diversity is called offering.
The work of Resurrection. Maturity consists in becoming aware of the content of Christian experience, in making personal the relationship with its deep root. Natural experience does not carry with it the meaning of life. In the Christian experience, instead, a meaning of life is involved, which manifests itself as an initial change in the person, as a visible and tangible diversity. Change reaches its apex in offering, which is the supreme form of questioning—the recognition of the ultimate substance of reality. What would be inconceivable from a natural point of view becomes a stable dynamic in the life of the Church—forgiveness. In Christ’s Resurrection, God enters everyone’s experience, making everything new and true. With His Resurrection, Christ’s possession of the world as limited in space and time becomes absolute. John Paul II said the two works of God in history are the redemption and the birth of the new people, the new humanity. The event of the Resurrection was not just a moment in history, but coincides with the very life of the Christian people. Being part of this new people enables an ongoing newness of life, which is manifested through the newness experienced in relationships.
Through a carnal reality. The condition for experiencing gladness in life is determined by the asking and the love for the vocational companionship through which Christ can reach us. All reality is a sign, referring to something else. The reality of the Church is also a historical sign of the Presence of Christ in the world; to belong to it humanly—that is consciously—we need to recognize its value, listen to its message, love it. The alternative is played out between being in the Church with a lively desire for truth or with a claim that brings only to recrimination and dissatisfaction.
Educating you, not making you cunning. The commitment of life is to aim at keeping a correct attitude toward one’s destiny, that is to say at remaining consistent with the tension that defines every human awakening. The Church educates to an attitude of questioning, of tension, in the confidence of an answer. This fact implies a desire to understand. Thus, the educator has the task of helping his learners to ask God and take seriously their human contingencies. He must first and foremost urge the use of freedom. The opposite of this is called clericalism, that is, the amputation of freedom. To be truly such, the educator must first of all personally live this tension: nemo dat quod non habet (no one can give what they do not have).
2. The Divine in Our Lives
Being intent on memory. What needs to be focused in conversations is nothing but experience, in an attempt to exemplify the content of Christian life. Faith has nothing to do with moral irreproachability, it does not coincide with its moral consequences; in fact, faith can be communicated even by those who, paradoxically, are less morally correct than the one they communicate it to. Becoming aware of ourselves is our first duty of the day, becoming aware of what we are intent on, preserving the memory of what we have encountered, and being aware of that need for “something else” we are feeling. If the dialogues and the conversations we have do not actually lead to a change in our life, we are then wasting our time. When we lose evidence during the day, this is due to the fact we let our frame of mind, our fatigue, and skepticism prevail. Our daily task is not to let all else prevail and to be constantly asking questions. Memory, from which silence flows, is what sustains all of our life; it is what discovers and acknowledges the depth of reality.
By osmotic pressure. Christian truth reaches us by the very fact of remaining within the Church. It reaches and penetrates us to the extent that we do not close the doors of our freedom to the very pressure of truth. If our freedom does not actively participate, nothing happens anymore and we become impervious to anything. This happens when we are not aware of the purpose for which we are together. The work that needs to be done, then, is that of memory, of intensifying our memory, whereby offering is the expression that gives meaning to the whole of our day.
The dramatic aspect of freedom. Freedom as the instrument we have to adhere to reality, to say “yes” to evidence, carries with it a deeply dramatic aspect. To adhere to reality, to say “yes”, we need a sacrifice, a “penance”—in other words, we do not need to defend ourselves. To receive, we need to commit all of ourselves, all of our affective energy in asking and accepting.
Making it a celebration. Grace is God’s free gift to man; when recognized, it brings joy, it brings a real “celebration” our human soul should be filled with. For this awareness to become a daily experience, right from the morning, we need to recapture ourselves. Grace creates a new humanity we must become aware of, we must experience. In order to be able to recognize grace, and thus for every moment to be a celebration, we need to be educated by the one who always points to destiny.
3. Grasped by Christ
The sacraments and humanity. Baptism creates a new man, a different man, ontologically different. The sacraments cause a change, and the Church is the place where sacraments work. The sacraments embrace the most important moments in human life. Among them, Baptism is the fundamental one, while Eucharist is the greatest because it sustains the journey. Living the sacraments makes life different, causes a change in knowledge, affectivity and creativity; therefore, those who happen to meet a Christian perceive a challenge. For example, to experience confession with awareness and desire means having the same experience as Magdalene or Zacchaeus had: forgiveness. Living the sacraments, especially Baptism, causes a change in relationships with things and people, makes every relationship truer, that is, “verifies” every relationship.
Something you can see, touch, feel. God makes Himself visible and tangible in a human companionship. According to Catholicism, God reveals Himself through something you can see, touch, feel. Everything you can see and touch has ultimate consistency. If man looks at reality, and particularly at the Christian companionship, without this openness to the Beyond, then he forgets something, he cannot grasp all the factors of what is before him. The Christian event continues to be physically present in history, and its contemporaneity is the most eminent testimony to its truth.
Communionality–The awakening of the “I.” A Christian community is the condition for freedom to be realized. Without a community, in fact, there is no freedom, or in any case it is completely withered. This is because without communion there is no proposal to freedom, no ground on which freedom can be truly played out. The choice of freedom arises only in the face of a proposal; without it, freedom is undermined. Baptism, therefore, is given and may remain without effect. A change is possible only if we are available to experience this change; Baptism really becomes incident as a potential for change in human life only if freedom adheres to a present fact that questions and provokes it.
To be present before a presence. People often live in a situation of deep aridity, not even feeling the sentimental impact of things. The older we get the more we realize that this tenderness, this intensity of feeling, are not essential factors in the Christian journey. The sacrament is the simplest form of prayer because it is pure demand; it needs nothing, no particular feeling, but to stand before a Presence. To be present before a Presence, likely to involve every action of one’s life—this is the task of a Christian.
Baptism and belonging. Through Baptism, human beings begin to be possessed by Christ in a profound way, and to bring within themselves the germ of a different capacity for knowledge and affection. However, this difference must be developed, educated, allowed to emerge. From here comes the dramatic nature of Christian life—a constant struggle (ascesis) for one’s own fulfillment. Only Christianity offers the ontological change of a person as a possibility—not a moral change, but a change deep into one’s own personality. This is the fruit of Christ’s Resurrection. For this reason, it casts a light of positivity on all human reality, it changes the pessimism that would originate from the situation of sin, into a profound positivity about human destiny.
4. A Message Entrusted to Experience
Jesus is not a Hegelian. The testimony of life to Christ is the most important fruit of the Church’s life. The Church itself places human beings in the most appropriate conditions to judge the experience they have. It reminds them of the fundamental criteria by which they can judge and promises them a hundredfold, that is, a greater, more intense and true possession of things.
Realizing. The locus of verification of faith is human experience: by verifying the proposal of the Church, our heart finds a correspondence to its own needs that it would not find on another path. “Realizing,” that is grasping the connection between a particular element and totality, is the fundamental human activity. Praying and realizing the origin—that is everything we do or say—is the way by which the particular element we are relating to does not become an idol, but the instrument of a human journey.
Where is He? “What we hold most dear is Christ Himself.” Christ is not an abstract idea, a theory; He is a living presence that can be seen, touched and felt in the Christian companionship. If the only reason for being together is Christ, then we need to become aware of this by following the rule, maintaining silence and carefully reading the breviary. Habit is the main enemy of memory, of self-awareness. In fact, it demands no effort, no initiative, but it is pure reactive passivity.
Convincing unity. “The tree can be told by its fruits.” This expression originating in the Gospels explicitly states the method the Church adopts and proposes for judging reality. Unity is the first fruit of the presence of the divine in the Church—unity of body and conscience, that is, of the totality of man. Unity emerges in man primarily as the unity of the “I,” of an adequate explanation of reality. An intelligent person cannot resist without affirming this unity, which is to say that he or she cannot bear to look at the world without having found the key to it, the reasonable and comprehensive explanation.
Holiness, the simplest thing in life. Man is always immersed in a context, in a “humus” that is almost always anti-ecclesial, anti-Christian, and most recently anti-religious. Holiness is a continuous tension to become children, to imitate Christ. To imitate Christ we must follow Christ, following the charism to which we have been delivered. God created man for holiness, so it should be simple to attain it. Becoming children is simple—we just need to follow the one is a father to us.
A companionship that is destined to fertility. There are two types of authority in the Church, the institutional one and the one that is an expression of the experience being fulfilled—the former is as necessary as the latter. By its very nature the Church tends to dilate, to become missionary, to form a different, ontologically different people, in which everyone can bear witness to the newness of life by which they have been invested. This fact implies a serious responsibility for Christians, considering the particular historical moment we are currently in—the need for a solidity of the Christian subject. This solidity is given by the recognition of the objectivity of one’s own heart and the recognition of Christ present.
