Destiny

Fr. Giussani was always listening to how people used words and would correct them if they used words in a careless or forgetful way. He always said that simplicity is to call a spade a spade.

Here's an example from the book Is it Possible To Live this Way? A girl mentions that her boyfriend's tumor is a "destiny" that contradicts his desire to live. Fr. Giussani insists that destiny is more than the circumstances that confront us:

«To say "I am sick; I have to die, nevertheless I'd like to live, my destiny would be to live." To say "My destiny would be to live, but I have to die because I have tuberculosis; I have cancer and I have to die" isn't reasoning: it's a psychological giving in, a giving in to weakness. If your destiny tells you "I am made for life," this means that this is stronger and will prevail, prevail over the fact that you, in the circumstances that you are in, must die. It means that there is something else or another position; if there weren't another position, something else for which destiny triumphs, then all is destined to become nothing. Everything is destined to become nothing: dust inside a tomb, a mummy dried inside a prison for thirty thousand years.

If Christ called us to this path, it's so that we, in the midst of people, may have the ability to carry out this task: shout to everyone the true reason (the true reason is the destiny inherent in our nature) and therefore, to help people's hope, without which people become violent toward others, lazy in their work (they no longer want to work), and untruthful in front of true things.»

(Is It Possible To Live This Way? 112-113).

Destiny is the promise of eternal life. Now this destiny, to be sure, comes to meet us even in our circumstances - no circumstances may prevent it from arriving - but the difference is that a man may live fully every moment in the shadow of death and die in the hope of the resurrection and eternal life.