August 2025
A FACE IN A HISTORY THAT KEEPS HAPPENING
Tuesday, August 26, 2025, at 3:00 PM
AUDITORIUM ISYBANK D3
SPEAKERS
Margaret Karram, President of the Focolare Movement; Davide Prosperi, President of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation; René Roux, Rector of the Faculty of Theology of Lugano; Silvia Guidi, journalist for L'Osservatore Romano.
SILVIA GUIDI
Good evening, and welcome. It's wonderful to be here together to discover another, yet another, gold nugget that has been handed to us. I say gold nugget because the logo image of this Meeting obviously makes me think of bricks, of a mosaic, but also of fragments of gold hidden in the everyday, in the daily life that sometimes seems so opaque, so heavy, so marked by an inexplicable evil, alas, even in the historical period we are in with wars raging and humanity that seems to have gone mad.
But let's move on to the beautiful things we can share tonight, to the discovery of a book whose title already makes us understand how it concerns each of us. Each of us has a face, but is called to have his or her true, unique, and unrepeatable face as God imagined it. "A Face in History": this is the book we will talk about tonight, and to help us better understand, to enter into this message that has been given to us, we have: René Roux, the rector of the Faculty of Theology of Lugano, Margaret Karram, president of the Focolare Movement, and Davide Prosperi, president of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, who tonight, however, is also here as the editor of the book, so he has a dual role.
I will be brief because time is precious, there is a great deal to say, and so I immediately pass the floor to the rector of the Faculty of Theology of Lugano to help us understand the value and preciousness of what Don Giussani filtered and distilled from his experience in the historical period in which he lived and in which he then wrote the lessons that are collected in this book, the post-Council Church, a church that had suffered the tsunami of '68, a church that was however also listening to the cry for authenticity, for truth that '68 represented.
I immediately give the floor to the professor. Thank you.
RENÉ ROUX
First of all, I thank you for being invited to this meeting. Reading Giussani is always an interesting experience. On the one hand, one breathes a greatness, extraordinary panoramas. On the other, one always feels very questioned, a little small, particularly also in our work as theologians.
Looking at this series of ten lessons that he gave between '69 and '70 at the Péguy Center, I asked myself what exactly Giussani wanted to do. My impression is that it is, to all effects, a sort of introduction to Christianity. Just as Ratzinger had written one in '68. Another famous theologian, Karl Rahner, would do another in '76. Giussani, in some way, facing the great crisis of '68, which had seen the exodus of very many young people from GS, but not only that, the FUCI had also gone in the same direction, not to mention the many religious orders and priests who had left their commitments, in front of the small group of the Péguy Cultural Center decides to return to the essence, to the basics, to the foundations. Hence the meaning of these lessons.
To grasp its originality, I believe it should perhaps be seen in the context of what had been the problematic and the evolution of theology in the 1960s, in the 20th century in general, but particularly in that period. If any of you pick up a theology manual with the last volume published in 1962, the *Summa Sacrae Theologiae* by a group of Spanish Jesuit professors, a theology still written in a clear, scientific Latin, *more geometrico* with definitions, consequences, proving quotations from Scripture and Tradition, you realize that a sort of revolution has taken place by comparing that model of manual, used until the Council, with what would emerge immediately after, the *Mysterium Salutis* initiated in Switzerland from a salvation history perspective. We have moved from a theology that was extremely argued, logical, rational, according to a generically Thomistic or neo-Thomistic model, to an attempt to rethink it in a historical key.
This change was intended to be a response to certain needs that were already felt during the 20th century. It is not that when changes arrive in the manuals it is because they have happened before, but they help us understand some problems and how the answers were not always simple.
A first great crisis for 20th-century Catholic theology was that of the relationship with the historical sciences, philology, the historical-critical exegesis of the New Testament and the Old Testament, which seemed to undermine the very foundations of the faith. At the same time, the very analytical reading that was done in the manuals of the texts of the Tradition was lacking in historical sense and therefore seemed not to grasp the true connection.
Hence the need to recover a dimension of authentic historicity, the method of the *nouvelle théologie*, within theological reasoning. But the risk, when theologians and priests raised in an analytical method without ever having learned the true technique of historical research, including its limits, was that of falling into an absolutization of those results that ended up undermining the very foundations of the faith. This was a problem.
Another problem was perhaps the disconnection that was perceived between theological and spiritual formation and concrete life. There too, that theoretical knowledge seemed to have no hold on life. So it was that the search for this contact sometimes occurred in those years precisely through the prevalence of a leftist Marxist ideology that seemed better able to build the bridge between the ideal of justice, of authenticity, and life, with the risk of sidelining the experience of faith itself or of transforming it into a sort of intimist moment, of an entirely internal well-being, but unable to say something in the world.
A third problem was that of apostolicity, the need for the proclamation of the Gospel transformed into a need for inculturation, a need to speak the language of those to whom we bring the Gospel. However, if done uncritically, it risked assuming the categories attributed to the recipient, without questioning whether those categories, from an anthropological point of view, were truly adequate to receive the Christian message, with the risk of losing it along the way.
Giussani reacts in fact with this teaching of his, of which we have a testimony in these ten lessons. It was not the totality of his activity, but it is nonetheless very representative.
Allow me then, in my humble opinion, to give a few brushstrokes of those characteristics of newness that would make his teaching effectively fruitful, fertile from a spiritual and social point of view, for the growth of the Church.
First of all, he addresses the people in front of him: he addresses that group of young people who were at the Péguy, who were probably, excuse the expression, a handful of people. He doesn't worry about how to go and get all those who have run away, what those who have other mental categories will think. Those I have in front of me, they are as important as all the others, indeed if it doesn't pass through here perhaps it won't even reach the others. This initial realism, which is a form of humility, but also of realism in the calling, seems extremely significant to me.
We also note that with this he was questioning the overly abstract attempts at models of inculturation that imagined a perfect, intellectual human being, but who was not the concrete one you have before your eyes.
The second point that seems extremely interesting to me is the return to Christology: Christ, our hope. This return to hope is certainly a brilliant aspect of his emphasis at that historical moment. To believe in faith. Faith is an important thing, we know that, but to think that Jesus is truly the Son of God, who arrived and then there was the nativity scene with the ox and the donkey, is an aspect that already requires an extra step.
But at a time when all young people were searching for an ideal world, for a fantastic future, Christ presents himself as hope and becomes an authentic model to choose, which has, as it happens, the same level of credibility, if not even superior to that of political projects.
In some way, this choice of hope seems to me a very concrete response to the historical context and reminds me of that poem by Péguy that Giussani liked so much, but also the group at the Center where Péguy speaks of faith, hope, and charity as three sisters. The older and more important ones are faith and charity, hope is the little sister, but she is the one who takes them by the hand and pulls them forward.
That said, his way of reading Scripture and also the Tradition of the Church is very particular. For him, the historical aspect is central, the realism of these facts is authentic, but what he seeks in them is the depth, the authenticity of the religious sense. It is this that gives the truth of those testimonies and it is this that allows, if you will, the contemporaneity with us of the texts of the Bible, from the great prophets to the apostles, to Jesus, to all those of the Tradition. In this way, he managed to put the true historical science to use in the service of what is a knowledge of a human experience that transmits to us, bears witness to us of the presence of the divine through this aspect of the religious sense.
Faith conceived in this way is transformed into a criterion of judgment. Let us realize what that meant in those years, but perhaps the problem is not over, in an Italian culture and beyond, which for many years conceived of Catholicism and faith as something good for children. But as one moves up in school, one becomes a philosopher, perhaps liberal, "liberal chic," Marxist; then the denomination can choose.
And here instead Giussani has the courage, the pride to put faith back at the center as a criterion for judging the things of the world. And from this comes clearly what the task of the Christian is: to build the Church. This is what gives his mission. This becomes his contribution. What strikes me very much in this construction – every now and then he repeats himself between lessons, obviously also the things he said on the side – is that in this vision of Christianity it is a vision capable of taking in all aspects: from the intellectual experience to the spiritual one and to that of the concreteness of life.
And in this way, he also manages to recover the importance of Tradition, because the Church becomes the place where I can experience the historical presence of Christ, of Christ in the community that he founded, in his mystical body, in his spiritual body that continues.
Precisely through this presence of Christ in the Church, I can have a direct experience and evaluate whether this aspect is also valid for me, and at that point, I enter into this great communion. Giussani somehow manages, in this approach of his, to provide an answer to what had been the problems of pre-conciliar theology. He is not ashamed to do so for a group of university students or young people. He could have easily addressed the great theologians as well, but his affection, his friendship went first and foremost to the people in front of him, because this concreteness of the life of the Church is the very path of the incarnation that Jesus chose. I will stop here with these considerations of mine.
SILVIA GUIDI
To Margaret Karram we ask something concerning a guiding word of the Focolare: unity. Unity means living the communitarian dimension as constitutive of oneself, not superfluous, not an optional extra, something that founds the identity of the individual. In your experience, how does this aspect relate to the themes we are working on this afternoon?
MARGARET KARRAM
Good afternoon everyone, I greet you all. I am very happy and honored to be here and I especially thank Davide who invited me. It's my first time here at the Meeting. I remember when he called me I was surprised because I didn't expect him to invite me to participate, but I am very grateful, very happy for this invitation and I have been able to savor and see some things yesterday and today that are here in all the exhibitions. I am especially grateful for the friendship that binds us personally, but also as ecclesial communities.
To answer your question in summary, I would like to start with one of the passages from Don Giussani's book that struck me the most, because it is of extraordinary relevance for all of us and for the Church today. He states that for every person – we heard it from the rector – the most important relationship is the one with God, and I quote: "The criterion of my choices is God, it is his work, his operating, his acting." Christian communion is established in proportion to this initial conversion. To the extent that this spirit of communion exists, I collaborate in valuing what you do, and thus the beneficial reverberation on the world becomes ever more powerful and the Church is built.
That struck me: "I collaborate in valuing what you do and together we can build the Church." It might seem truly obvious to underline the relevance of Don Giussani's message, but this was the first strong impression that I continue to cherish in my heart after reading this volume. This is not a book to be read in one sitting, at least it wasn't for me. From the very first chapter, I felt that these words written over 50 years ago asked me to reflect and to question myself. Don Giussani gave these eleven lessons in a fervent season, in an era of cultural and ecclesial turning point. One understands how he felt strongly challenged as a Christian by the times in which, in a historical moment of strong ideological contrasts, he was not afraid to challenge young people above all.
Indeed, with courage, he showed them the path that starts from God and reaches all places in the world, in every situation in which humanity is immersed. Don Giussani's mission continues because he has always spoken to the divine present in each person. And this is a journey that does not expire. The conversion to God that grafts us into Christian communion does not go out of fashion. It is our eternal present. The entire thematic journey that Don Giussani covered leads us to have a new experience of a place of which perhaps we need to rediscover the powerful evangelical prophecy, and this place is the community, to savor friendship with God and with our brothers and sisters, a community open to the world for its transformation in Christ.
I too, like you, Davide, was very impressed and, as you also say in the first pages of the preface, by Giussani's constant reference to Sacred Scripture. This is the first authentic reason for the relevance of his thought: there is almost no page in this book in which he does not draw from this source of wisdom. From it continues to spring the freshness of his solicitations. The Word of God is the center that he knew how to give, explain, and find again in everything that the Father created that is good and beautiful. A second reason for the energy still transmitted today by these lessons I recognize in the gift of the Spirit that Giussani received, a charism for the benefit of the ecclesial body and of humanity.
On page 39 we read, in fact, that for the Christian to fulfill his purpose, he must have his own face in the world. And this is an expression that I liked very much. Giussani explains what it means: "One's own face is that of the lived community, it is the face of the lived Church." Christ, made hope of the world, is the foundation of Don Giussani's proclamation. I could not help but notice the harmony with the ecclesial moment we are going through, particularly in this jubilee year in which we are all called to put Christ, our hope, back at the center of our lives, and to come out of our worlds to meet each other, to experience communion in our communities, but well beyond.
And since we are Christians, Giussani continues, we are called to live in the world, to enter the deepest abysses of bewilderment, of loneliness, of pain, of wars and terrible violence, and we will bear more fruit if we do it in communion, living communion in the most authentic and universal sense that only the Church can represent. The many jubilee events that the world has also watched with amazement, like the recent one for young people, are a strong presence of God today, a testimony of a Church-community that attracts and makes this presence manifest in this difficult time.
You can imagine how much I was challenged by the centrality that Giussani places on the communitarian dimension for the purpose of the Christian's mission in the world. I was gladdened by reading some pages in which I found great harmony between our charisms, that of Communion and Liberation and the Focolare, around the life of communion. In one of these, Giussani says: "It is the Christian communion that is the true subject of being inside a situation: neighborhood, school, university, city, nation, world. The true Christian subject is the person who lives and carries with them and creates, builds the Church where they are. It is the lived communion, it is the Christian communion."
As I was saying, I found a great consonance, despite the diversity of the respective gifts, with the spirituality of unity of Chiara Lubich, our foundress. If I may also say something personal, it was precisely the quality of the friendship between a group of young people and their testimony of living the words of the Gospel that, when I was 14, touched me in the depths and set me on the path of the Focolare.
Chiara Lubich spoke countless times about communion, transmitting the passion to thousands of people. In '89 she defined the expression of communion as the sacrament of the laity. She said: "I have the impression that Jesus in this era, through us laity, wants to come out of the tabernacles, wants to go into the midst of the world, wants to come among us. Indeed, this Jesus in our midst, in my opinion, is the sacrament of the laity."
If we do not enter into society, into humanity, we remain a movement that is too spiritualistic, which is not what God wants, because Jesus became incarnate, he became man. But the confirmations that life in communion is central for the Church and for the many situations that humanity lives through certainly do not end here. A further important example that I experienced was the Synod on Synodality in which I participated. I would define it as a training ground for communion, certainly not an easy one, and still a path to be learned and practiced, because in order to live it, it requires time, deep listening, inculturation, continuous conversion of the heart to look at others in their true nature, that of children of God. But I am certain, the experience remains. It is a seed that has been sown throughout the Church at every latitude and in time it will bear its fruit.
I cannot fail to recall the extraordinary words that Pope Leo XIV addressed precisely to CL on July 21st last in his autograph letter on the occasion of the spiritual exercises of the Memores Domini. He said: "I urge you to be fraternal relations and to build bridges, to dialogue openly and with frankness within your association, to walk together, to be in harmony with each other and in the Church. This is necessary so that the charism inspired by Don Giussani may continue to generate fruits of good and particularly help the new generations to encounter the Lord in order to become a prophetic sign of his beauty."
A very important confirmation for the movement, for the community of CL, but also for the Focolare and for all the ecclesial realities in which the Pope encourages us to recognize the evangelical value of human and social transformation of our charisms and to open spaces for mutual exchange and enrichment at a cultural, spiritual, and experiential level. I conclude by offering a final reflection: to speak of a cultural dimension, of a communitarian and ecclesial dimension in a world characterized by individualism, by loneliness, by isolation, by secularism, but also a world marked by violence, would seem truly absurd.
And yet the message of Don Giussani resonates more strongly than ever because it invites us not to give in to the easy path of resignation and not to abandon ourselves to despair by closing ourselves off in our own comfort zones. It invites us to have an experience of salvation that flows from friendship with Jesus in the unshakable faith of his death and resurrection, and this grafts us into the life of the Church, inviting us to a deeper and truer communion with all. Only in this way will we not let ourselves be defeated, but we will have the courage to continue with patience where everything seems to be collapsing, to weave threads of peace and dialogue.
Patience is a virtue that Giussani defines thus: the fundamental characteristic of the Christian's attitude in history, the energy that creates and lives history. Don Giussani invites us today to live our historical present with this same energy and calls us to draw even closer together in communion to build up the Church, to make it overflow into the world, allowing ourselves to be inspired and surprised by the creativity of the Spirit. Thank you.
SILVIA GUIDI
Thank you for this sharing. This book is truly full of hope. Communicating hope is an element, something even more significant because the author, in that period, Don Giussani, had just gone through a period of existential desert, a heavy trial, from which new, unpredictable bricks would be born, of a fruitfulness totally impossible to imagine before.
Every page is imbued with this educational passion, with this very strong desire to communicate his hope, always keeping the bar of the Christian claim very high, as Don Giussani says, which is an answer to all of man's questions, not to the religious part of himself, but to the self, to the entirety of the self. The editor of the book anticipated this for us in the preface. It is a theme that is truly worth exploring because the temptation to think of ourselves in compartments – there is the religious part, there is the work part, there is the fun part – and instead Don Giussani has always educated us to perceive ourselves as something global, with a global desire that asks for an equally global response.
DAVIDE PROSPERI
Thank you. Good afternoon everyone. I thank the Meeting very much for this invitation and for the opportunity to be here in large numbers to encounter Don Giussani once again. Among other things, I must say that I thank Margaret and René in a particularly warm way both for their presence, for having accepted this invitation, but also for the words we have heard, because they have largely anticipated me, as this identifies the purpose for which the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation has developed all this work in recent years of recovering some of Don Giussani's unpublished texts. I remember last year the publication of the first volume, from the same years and in the same context of the Péguy: "A Revolution of the Self". This year, "A Face in History," also with Rizzoli.
These are texts through which Don Giussani continues to offer us in a fascinating way. I allow myself to use this term because the very testimony we have heard today from our friends shows us how they are not internal texts, but texts that are a contribution to the whole Church and to the world.
Therefore, he continues to offer us his testimony of faith and from this point of view I believe that, in particular, this latest text has great merit. In a moment so important in some respects, such a delicate passage for the life of charisms, of the laity, of movements and associations in the Church, in many of which, after the death of the founder, we inevitably have a period of deepening and reflection on the very nature of the charism that was delivered to the Church through these figures, and of which the human reality, the movement that was born from it, bear witness to its continuity. So, what is the great merit?
The great merit is that of offering the reader, in a very clear way, the incandescent core of Giussani's charism, and this has impassioned many people for Christ and his Church in a period, as we have heard, that was particular for the life of our country, but not only of our country, but of the Church. I was particularly struck by the surprising relevance of his proposal, because here he denounces those reductions that distance the Christian proclamation from the real life of people, from their problems, from their interests.
To answer the question, I would like to focus on what Giussani indicates as the central point – I quote his words – of the entire Christian discourse, which can be summarized in this statement. He says: "Christ is our hope," but he adds: "The difficulty is to understand its radicality." Giussani continues: "It is in fact a statement that presents itself as charged with a global meaning for my life, for myself, for existence, for history and for the world." In other words, it has a global meaning that leaves nothing out. Therefore, Christ is our hope not only for this or that aspect of life, for the purity of the soul or for the thought of death, but for our entire existence. When we pray and when we work, when we establish bonds, when we face the problems of society and politics. All this falls within the Christian's horizon of interest.
The statement "our hope," as Margaret was saying, is not at all obvious, it is not a given, not even for those who are Christian. Its scope is very often reduced either because it is placed only in the afterlife, outside the concrete life experienced by each of us, or because it is confined to a psychological introspection. It then appears as a hope that has nothing to do with life, has nothing to do with society, with the world, with its urgencies, with its contradictions before which we are placed every day.
This is a way of understanding and proposing Christianity that is unfortunately very widespread today. This is the point that Giussani helps us to understand and that I personally consider decisive for our human adventure. There is – I use Giussani's words again – a spiritualistic, emotional, intellectualistic conception of the Christian fact. And this conception empties it of its meaning, disincarnates it, throws it out of reality, separating it from life and its needs, and makes hope an abstract escape from things. One cannot be surprised if a Christianity, reduced to a feeling, has no strong hold on young people.
It is in this context that Don Giussani's proposal is situated. He used to repeat often, even in convivial contexts, but we remember it publicly, that the ideal for a Christian is to be "kneaded" – he used this term – "kneaded with Christ." What does this mean? It means that when God looks at man, what does He see? This is the question we all ask ourselves. But when God looks at man, what He sees is Christ. Christ is the man, that is, a fully human gaze, a companionship to man. It is not just a theological discourse, a theory, a morality, but a companionship to man. And this gaze expressed a judgment that was no longer just a law as it had been from the beginning of salvation history up to that moment, but a presence that walked the streets of Palestine, that encountered, was moved, became fond, that explained everything, that did extraordinary things, miracles.
In his book *Jesus of Nazareth*, Benedict XVI makes this analogy by indicating Jesus as the new prophet. He is not only the new David, but he is above all the new Moses. The prophets, in fact, are those who make us enter into God's gaze on man, on the world. It is to be able to know this gaze that we move, and it is knowing this gaze that gives hope in the face of all our tribulations, in the face of the things we do not understand, the injustices we suffer or that we commit. Moses is the only one among the prophets who has seen God, so he speaks of what he has seen of God. Jesus is the one who comes to share not only what he has seen, but the relationship he lives with the Father.
Day after day his presence becomes an opportunity to know and understand, and to enter into the mystery of the relationship that he lives with the Father. Jesus not only has seen God, Jesus sees God and sees Him in himself, in a living unity. It is understandable that the most desirable thing from that moment on is to become part of that unity, of that deep communion between Christ and the Father. Giussani observes, outlining this face in history more and more and making it ever closer to us: "Look, please, that Christ, Christ as total hope, this Christ is a historical event," René said earlier, "he has a date, he was born of a woman, he is made of flesh, so much so that they did away with him." This man is everything. He is the fulcrum of hope, of existence, of history and of the world, of the cosmos.
In what way do these observations, so radical, so scandalous for the common mentality of his time and of our time, apply to my existence today, two thousand years later? The answer to this question is of the utmost importance. If Christ is the factor of our hope, he must be here, he must be within the present, otherwise the factor of hope would be my or your interpretation of his life and his words. We would inevitably be handed back to our finiteness and therefore to our impotence.
Instead Jesus Christ, who was born, who died and who has historically risen at a precise time, is present now. He is present within our historical present, within our existence – I quote again – without any interpretation having to interpose itself. He is objectively present with a physically precise physiognomy, a face in history like yours that I see here before me, and it is his mystical body, the Church. This is the integrity of the Christian proclamation, as Don Giussani presents it to us: a presence made of the flesh and bones of those who have been grasped by him and have known him and have accepted him. Therefore, the encounter with Christ happens today precisely through the flesh, the faces and the voices of his witnesses, of a human company charged with attractiveness, with promise, with proposal.
Certainly, this also involves risks, because it is human. Men, as we know, individually are full of limits and errors. Let us look at ourselves, but it is possible to accept, indeed it is right to accept even running these risks, because without this path the face of God and the voice of God would become for us very distant again. Pure, unfathomable mystery. To say Christian company, Christian community, therefore Church, is to say the way in which the risen Christ has chosen to remain concretely present in history to make the Father known to us. I realize that many times we do not look at our company this way, which is why we do not have towards the Christian company the respect, the affection and the attachment that comes from the recognition that Christ is objectively present. This is why Giussani insists in the book on the fact that "Christ, our hope," means that "the Church is our hope," because the Church is the prolongation in history of Christ who from the Church receives his entire and universal complement, as St. Paul says, this is the point. Only a real presence here and now changes life in all its aspects, personal, social, and founds hope.
Christ, by entering the world, by continuing his presence in the mystery of the Church, sets himself as a principle of disturbance of the human condition. Whoever knew Giussani must recognize that he certainly found this aspect "kneaded with Christ." Disturbance of the human condition.
What advantage would there be otherwise in being Christians? We would be like everyone else. But this also establishes our task in the world: to build the Church. We have already heard from those who preceded me, to build the Church, because by building the Church, says Giussani, we have hope of contributing to creating that disturbance of human affairs that mobilizes their progress towards an improvement: not to be a nuisance, but to move towards a more just, truer goal.
The construction of the Church begins within the relationship with the people who have been placed beside us, precisely because they have been touched like us by the same announcement, living that new, more human way of relating that Christ introduced into history. Therefore, it is something to which we are called not as an acquired fact, but a becoming, a continuous conversion.
Giussani says that the Christian community is nothing other than a piece of the world in which relationships and structures are modified, little or much, by faith in Christ. This conversion is communicated to the surrounding world, infecting it even when one is in situations of almost total powerlessness. I often think, in these times, like each of you, of the small community of the parish in Gaza. We know what is happening in these very dramatic hours. The Christians present there, but all the persecuted Christians in the world, their very presence is a testimony to another possible way of relating among men. It is a small seed that works and, in time, mysteriously bears and will always bear more fruit.
Among other things, today's joint communiqué from Cardinal Pizzaballa together with the Orthodox Patriarchate states that the priests, men and women religious present there in Gaza have decided not to leave, they have decided to stay. This is their duty, but they do not do it – moreover, regardless of how things will end, I find a similarity, I would say a total identification, with those who have seen the exhibition of the martyrs in Algeria – it is born this way, because martyrdom is not sought, but, as we also heard at the meeting from Cardinal Vesco, it is to be close to the faithful who are there, to make them feel the warmth of one's company, because we are one body and through this to all the people, even to those who are not Christians, because we look at everyone as children of the one on whom we depend. We today, here and now, are proud to belong to this people, to these people.
I would like to quote Cardinal Pizzaballa, excuse me, when he says that the Church, indeed he refers to the presence of the Christian community as a single point of truth and light. A single point of truth and light within this situation of which the whole world, faced with opposing logics of power, of promises, is in need. It needs a real presence. Giussani observes again: "The Church is precisely the place of those who participate in faith in the judgment of Christ and therefore tend in time towards the expression of this judgment." And what is the greatest expression other than to offer one's own life to affirm Christ? Christ as the answer to the need of man. I have returned to the point from which I began. The living Christ, this Christ who can be encountered today, is God's judgment on the world. What is the consequence of this? That the lived Christian community becomes the subject of a new action in the environments of life, in all environments, not only in the extreme ones: one's own home, school, university, workplaces, neighborhoods.
First of all as a sharing of the needs of the entire human reality that one encounters in the places of daily life and as a tireless attempt to respond to them at all levels. Of course, there we have seen how our friends are living, but also in culture the Meeting is an example of this attempt at a social and political level, through initiatives, educational works, works of charity, gestures of presence, like the Meeting. But if we want to share as Christians the whole human reality full of need, we must be vigilant about who we are and what we find. It is not enough to think of ourselves as better. Giussani observes: "The true Christian subject is the man who lives and carries with him and creates, builds the Church where he is. It is the Christian communion." I am coming to a conclusion.
This means that we are not authentically, from a Christian point of view, inside the university, the workplace, the environments, and therefore truly useful to the world, if we do not bring and express that new reality that generates us, if we do not bring our communion, where Christ is present, to where we are. This is our task, says Giussani. Any other starting point is not ours. The Christian personality is defined by the term mission. The whole meaning of our life, so I conclude, lies in being ourselves mission: in bringing Christ, the hope that is Christ, the hope that is the Church through our free belonging to it. I believe that this freedom, which is a personal freedom, which every instant says yes to Christ, and the joy that derives from this, are the signs of that radicality that, for Don Giussani, can truly bring to the world, at least as a proclamation, the hope and peace that everyone seeks. Thank you.
SILVIA GUIDI
"To be vigilant about who we are" made me think of one of the many phrases in the book, the classic phrases of Don Giussani that one can keep on one's desk to remember them, not to lose them – he says with his usual synthesis and frankness.
"If one moves away from the reality of Christ, one risks slipping into an ideology that judges without liberating. A judgment without love, a judgment without true realism that liberates no one."
Another phrase, which alas seems prophetic about what we are experiencing now, quotes his beloved Reinhold Niebuhr. And he says that the lived Christian experience creates a citadel of hope built on the edge of despair, as in a siege in which the world tries to suffocate this spark of good.
Another phrase that I leave with you to make you want to buy the book, which is full of pearls: "The newness that we are called to bring is something that has been given to us. Is there a poverty more radical than this?" If there were time it would be wonderful to be able to do another round of the table, as they say. There is no time for that, I ask the speakers if they would like to deliver a very brief comment to the people of the Meeting. Not everyone because there is no time, but whoever wants to can speak now.
MARGARET KARRAM
I just wanted to add, because it was linked to the question you asked me at the beginning, that Chiara Lubich and Don Giussani were bound by a deep friendship. It's not because they met many times, but there was a unity of souls; they were each bound by a charism given by God which they were able to make fruitful in their lives and transmit to many people in order to truly proclaim Jesus, to be able to announce his Kingdom and work for his Kingdom in the world by bringing love. A special moment for them was Pentecost '98 in St. Peter's Square, which marked an important stage of this communion among all the movements and new communities. Someone told me yesterday: it wasn't a point of arrival, but a point of departure. I hope that this communion, this unity among all our ecclesial realities can truly be a moment of departure, because at that moment Pope John Paul II had said: "The Church expects mature fruits from you." I think the time has come for us to be able to give these mature fruits together for the Church, but also for humanity. Don Giussani said after this that he had a very deep experience, never had in his life, of unity also among the founders, and he said: "How can we not cry out this unity!" Therefore I feel that we have this task, this charge that our founders give us, we who are of the second or third generation, to be able to cry out our unity today. This is my wish.
RENÉ ROUX
An invitation: take on page 80 of the book the definition of prayer that Giussani gives and the definition of friendship that he gives there. He will develop it elsewhere as well, but there they are written in an extremely synthetic way and I believe that in these two definitions one finds the root of the spiritual fruitfulness of this message and of everything that came after, including this Meeting. Thank you.
SILVIA GUIDI
Thank you to the speakers, thank you to each of you who is here tonight, because each of us is a small brick in this great mosaic. I conclude and bid you farewell with a beautiful phrase from Pope Leo XIV – and also my current employer – taken from the message: "We can no longer afford to resist the Kingdom of God." There is no more time, we have lost too much time. Thank you for your attention, thank you for your presence. This is a place that generates dialogue.
