A pivotal session of the Meeting was held today at 5 pm, on the topic of faith, in light of Fr. Giussani\u2019s biography, \u201cVita di don Giussani\u201d, written by Alberto Savorana, an historian and spokeperson for CL. Among The panelists, introduced and moderated by Savorana, were Shodo Habukawa, a Buddhist Monk of Mount Koya, Japan; Mauro Magatti, Professor of Sociology at the Catholic University of Milan, and Massimo Borghesi, Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Perugia.
\nSavorana began by noting the key steps of Fr. Giussani\u2019s human and spiritual journey: \u201cEver since he became aware of himself, Fr. Giussani lived his life driven by questions. His life story is significant, because he walked his journey with an inexorable openness to reality.\u201d Describing Fr. Giussani\u2019s decisive encounter with his students at Berchet high school in 1954, Savorana recalled how Giussani realized that Christianity was totally irrelevant for their lives. This moved him to get involved with students, in order to communicate Christ to them. \u201cI\u2019m not here to force you to blindly accept my statements, but rather to pass along a method to you,\u201d he used to say. He also used to add: \u201cI was convinced that if faith cannot be found and confirmed by the experience of the present, and useful in responding to one\u2019s needs, it wouldn\u2019t be able to stand up to a world in which the opposite is held true.\u201d
\nToday, almost ten years after Fr. Giussani\u2019s death, Fr. Juli\u00e1n Carr\u00f3n, in the introduction to a recently re-issued book, titled \u201cThe Movement of Communion and Liberation. Conversations with Robi Ronza,\u201d writes: \u201cMany times, in past years, while reading Fr. Giussani\u2019s writings in the light of the most pressing questions in our lives, we noticed that his words were acquiring a new light for us and almost became more relevant now than when we read them the first time. There are moments in which we see that Fr. Giussani speaks more to our life today than when we first heard the same words spoken by him in person.\u201d The Pope\u2019s words in his message to the Rimini Meeting echo Carr\u00f3n\u2019s, when he says that the question nowadays is: \u201cHow can we communicate Christ today to a generation that is constantly changing?\u201d
\nHabukawa recounted his first encounter with Fr. Giussani and how he experienced truth unexpectedly: \u201cIt was June 28, 1987. I saw a person who seemed to me as though he came from the center of the Universe: it was as if he came out from the sun, at the beginning of summer. We were united by a long embrace.\u201d The monk then disclosed an anecdote: \u201cDuring a visit to the Reihokan, Fr. Giussani remained deeply struck by a Buddhist goddess, with thousand arms and thousand eyes, representing the present, past ,and future and the possibility of everyone being saved.\u201d He expressed his fascination with Fr. Giussani\u2019s teaching, and concluded: \u201cBy opening up your heart to all that exists, you will be able to hear the voice of the Absolute.\u201d
\n\u201cThe voice of the Absolute speaks to us through circumstances,\u201d said Savorana, (picking up the conversation) and raised a question to the other two panelists: \u201cWhat are the traits that make up reality today? Please help us see how Fr. Giussani\u2019s teaching is useful today. What does his method have to say to us today, as we pursue a new beginning?\u201d
\nMagatti was the first to address Savorana\u2019s provocation: \u201cMy encounter with you happened because of a curious discovery: at some point, I realized that many of the categories I was using in my work as a sociologist analysing our modern culture had already been proposed in Fr. Giussani\u2019s educative method. I then asked myself how a humble little priest like him could have possibly generated such a movement from scratch.\u201d
\nMagatti elaborated: \u201cFr. Giussani was able to deeply grasp and foresee the anthropological evolution that Italian society of the \u201850s was going through. Wealth, paired with democracy and the development of education facilitated a greater affirmation of the self: i.e., the experience of freedom available to millions of people.\u201d The man who eventually became the founder of CL truly lived the changes of his times without fleeing them, but \u201creinterpreting them so that young people could meet Christ .\u201d
\nMagatti then pointed out some categories of modern thought and the relevant critical reading Fr. Giussani provided. While \u2018reality\u2019 was seen as interpreted in terms of materialism, Giussani offered a sense of its depth. \u2018Experience\u2019 was reduced to emotion, but Fr Giussani speaks about it as \u201cthe opportunity to exit one\u2019s own cage and encounter the other, up to the point of making a judgment.\u201d Whereas \u2018encounter\u2019 was considered total freedom, Fr. Giussani connects it to over-abundance which leads to transcendence. The same goes for the category of \u2018desire\u2019: whereas the world proposed it as mere enjoyment, Fr. Giussani introduced the concept of transcendent attraction. \u2018Realization\u2019and \u2018fulfillment\u2019, which could end up in narcissism, Fr. Giussani were interpreted to mean vocation. \u201cFr. Giussani is the heir of a great human tradition, and through CL in the last fifty years, he has proposed a concrete response and a human context in which to meet the Christian experience.\u201d
\nWhere are we today? \u201cThat experience has thus taken root and faces new challenges, while individualism is experiencing a big crisis. The twenty-first century has begun and the economic crisis of 2008 marks its beginning. Fr. Giussani entrusts us with a method: before anything else, we need to enter into the depths of the experience of our contemporaries in order to be able to meet them. Everything is reduced to appearance in this world of smoke and mirrors which doesn\u2019t allow us to see it in its depth. I feel we need to reiterate that the \u2018I\u2019 is relationship.\u201d
\nBorghesi began by suggesting a method to read Savorana\u2019s book on Fr. Giussani\u2019s life and work: \u201cFr. Giussani\u2019s voice and gaze were very deep: his charm derived more from his personality than from what he was saying. For this reason, the video accompanying the public presentations of his biography is essential. One needs to become one with that gaze, otherwise one reads the book in a detached way.\u201d Borghesi continued by offering some milestones in the life of Fr. Giussani: his family; his sensitivity, emerging particularly in his discovery of Leopardi as a friend; his experience in the Venegono seminary; and finally, key moments in his personal life (such as when, in 1954, he left \u2018academia\u2019 and decided to be around young students), which became the history of the CL Movement.
\nBorghesi concluded by chronologically documenting the milestones in the deepening of the charism. After the break-up of 1968, where it became evident that \u201cthere is something that comes before\u201d our efforts; then a convention in Riccione in 1976, emphasized \u201cthe time of the I\u201d. After the Italian referendum on abortion, it was clear that the point was not so much \u201chuman values, but rather, experience.\u201d Another crucial moment is represented by the publication of the book \u201cUn avvenimento di vita, cio\u00e8 una storia-An Event of a Life, that is a History,\u201d published by the discontinued weekly magazine \u201cIl Sabato. Borghesi continued: \u201cThe word \u2018event\u2019 is pregnant with the content of the Gospel. This is the content of the word \u2018identification\u2019 that Fr. Giussani is talking about. He doesn\u2019t simply read the Gospels, he sees the events in them. He defines faith with new words: the loving recognition of a presence.\u201d He continued to recent years, when Fr. Giussani was really sick: at the age of 74, he spoke about what needs to last, the essential. What is the essential? During his last days, he used to ask his friends to sing him a song titled \u201cNoi non sappiamo chi era-We do not know who He was.\u201d It was not a particularly beautiful song, but it contained Jesus\u2019 name. \u201cHe wanted people to sing it, because he loved Jesus.\u201d
\n(G.L., C.R.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A pivotal session of the Meeting was held today at 5 pm, on the topic of faith, in light of Fr. Giussani\u2019s biography, \u201cVita di don Giussani\u201d, written by Alberto … <\/p>\n