A Problem of Attention

If we are attentive to how the things we learn happen, life is easy. What Giussani says is always striking to me: “The problem of life is not a problem of intelligence; it is a problem of attention.” Attention is openness to reality that is so complete that it becomes true intelligence: the capacity to become aware of reality according to all its factors, excluding nothing, always discovering new things and still more things happening. And so you see that we can be ransomed from our form, thrown wide open to totality. And if we grasp this, then the activity of the cultural center forms a part of the great educational purpose which is the reality of the movement, because we collaborate with this openness to totality. We have nothing else more interesting, more important to do.

Fr. Juliàn Carrón

Christmas and Hope, Julian Carron

Christmas and Hope
Letter to the editor of the Italian Daily La Repubblica,
published December 23, 2008

Dear Sir,

I was struck by the readings that the Ambrosian Liturgy proposes for Monday if the third week of Advent. How must the members of the ancient people of Israel been disconcerted at the words of the prophet Jeremiah: “It will devour your harvests and your bread; it will devour your sons and daughters; it will devour your flocks and herds; it will devour the fortified cities in which you placed your trust” (Jer 5:17). He was telling them that another nation was going to conquer the kingdom in which they had put their trust. “Then, if they say: ‘Why has the Lord our God done these things?’, you will answer: ‘Just as you have abandoned the Lord and served foreign gods in your country, so will you serve foreigners in a country that is not yours’” (Jer 5:19).

It is as if this were said for us; today we see signs that make everyone afraid, it seems that what has supported our history is unable to withstand the test of our times: one day the economy, finance and work, the next day politics and the judiciary, then the family, the beginning of life and its natural end. So, like ancient Israel before a frightening situation, we, too, ask ourselves: “Why is all this happening?” It is because we, too, have been so presumptuous as to think that we can still get along after cutting the roots that supported the foundations of our civilization. In recent centuries, our culture has believed it could build a future for itself while abandoning God. Now we see where this presumption is leading us.

Now, what does the Lord do in the face of all we have brought upon ourselves? The prophet Zechariah tells us, speaking to his people Israel: “Look, I am going to send you my servant Branch” (Zc 3:8.). Notice the name. It is as if before the crisis of a world, our world – the prophets would describe it with an image dear to them, that of a dried-up trunk – a sign of hope were springing up. The enormity of a dried up trunk cannot prevent the sprouting of a humble, fragile branch in which lies the hope for the future.

But there is one drawback: we, too, when we see this branch appearing –like those before that child in Nazareth—can be scandalized and say: “How can something so ephemeral be the answer to our need for liberation?” Can salvation come from something so small as faith in Jesus? It seems impossible that all our hope can rest on belonging to this frail sign. The promise that only from this can everything be rebuilt seems scandalous. Yet men like St. Benedict and St. Francis started from that. They began to live while belonging to that branch that had grown through time and space—the Church, and in this way became protagonists of a people and of history.

Benedict did not face the end of the Roman Empire with anger, pointing the finger at the immorality of his contemporaries, but rather witnessed to the people of his time a fullness of life, a satisfaction and a fullness that became an attraction for many. This became the dawn of a new world, small as it was (almost a nonentity compared with the whole, a whole that was in total collapse), but a real world. That new beginning was so concrete that the work of Benedict and Francis has lasted through the centuries, has transformed Europe, and humanized it.

“He has revealed himself. He personally,” said Benedict XVI, speaking of the God-with-us. Fr. Giussani told us, “That man of two thousand years ago is hidden under the tent, under the appearance of a new humanity,” in a real sign that arouses the inkling of that life that we are all waiting for so as not to succumb to the evil in us and to the signs of the nothingness which is advancing. This is the hope that Christmas announces to us, and that makes us cry out: “Come, Lord Jesus!”

Julián Carrón

From Easter to Mission

Happy Easter! (We're having a white Easter here in Duluth.)

Fr. Carron's recent interview with Alfa y Omega, "An Original Presence", opens up a path to mission, I believe.

First, he speaks of the recent encounter with the Senza Terra movement (what's that called again? :) ), which we have all followed with interest.

The Mystery put us in front of this new event, but I am not afraid, because He who started this good work among us will complete it. Our duty is to say yes to this new and mysterious form in which God presents Himself in our life.

There is much in this interview, but I am particularly struck by this section about our public presence as Christians, which is what we do here and everywhere. When he says, "reacting to others' provocations is not enough, we are pushed to rediscover the originality of Christianity", I see how much I react to the reactions.

In the present situation where, as we have seen, reacting to others’ provocations is not enough, we are pushed to rediscover the originality of Christianity. A non-reactive, original presence is required. “A presence is original when it comes from the consciousness of its own identity and from the attachment to it. In this, it finds its consistency” (Father Giussani). As Christians, we have not been chosen to prove our dialectic or strategic skills, but just to testify to the news that faith has introduced into the world and that “conquered” us, changing our look toward people and reality. In this context, I believe that the challenge we are faced with is the usual one, since the beginning of the Movement: the educational challenge; educating adults in the faith, according to a method that makes the attachment to Christ reasonable. As Father Giussani said at the 1987 Synod, “What is missing is not the verbal or cultural repetition of the announcement. Today’s man is waiting, probably without knowing it, to experience a meeting with people in whom the fact of Christ is such a present reality that their lives have changed. It is a human impact that can upset today’s man”— that is, the meeting with something that matches our heart’s needs, that shakes reason of its torpor and that can be the answer no moralism could ever dream up.

In this our medium is limited, but it is evident that another way than the typical is needed to display the reasonableness of attachment to Christ. The Holy Father gives us an example in his dialogue with Muslim leaders and scholars. Also, the Vatican is initiating alliances with secular and other politicians for causes of human dignity. By affirming human dignity in all its aspects (e.g. moratoriums on the death penalty as well as abortion), the Church is offering a more persuasive view of the person which can move the heart.

Another interesting perspective on dialogue as presence can be found in the Godspy recap of the recent political discussion sponsored by Crossroads.

The motive for bringing Olasky and Hertzberg together was not to conduct an argument between left and right. As one of the event organizers, Carlo Lancellotti explained to me, “Reality is an event, not an idea.” The point was to have an encounter where the role of faith and reason in public life could be explored in friendship. “There is a cultural vacuum” in our society, Lancellotti added. “Politics alone cannot sustain the life of a people. By raising the question of human desire, we can make a contribution.”

In this same context, Fr. Giussani said something to those first GS kids who went to Brazil which clarifies this serene openness we are called to:

Just as you have to be faithful to our community and to the values and the directives given for your spiritual life and for educating your persons, so for the activity and behaviour with others and the environment the rule is a deep adaptation: Do not have any pretensions and don't pass a negative judgement on anything.

Immediately I see, that's different! This helps me understand how to communicate, whether online or with family, friends, community. It's something other than my instinctive and well-practiced mode. But then, everything about Christ is new. Fr. Carron, on receiving the mandate to guide the Movement for these next years with a more acute awareness of disproportion, quoted Soloviev: "What is dearest to us in Christianity is Christ Himself."

Christ Is Risen!

The Adventure of Knowledge - Letter from Fr. Carron

FRATERNITÀ DI COMUNIONE E LIBERAZIONE

Milan, January 28, 2008

Dear friends,

On Sunday, January 20, in a spontaneous gesture which rose up, as it were, from the depths of our hearts, many of us went to Saint Peter’s Square as a sign of communion with the Bishop of Rome, who, because of well-known events, declined to participate in the inauguration of the new academic year at the Sapienza University to which he had been invited. No doubt this gesture of yours was the fruit of being educated by the Movement to respond to reality’s provocations.

We must thank God for the readiness of your response, because it is the sign of our having been penetrated by “that form of teaching to which we have been committed” (J. Ratzinger). Indeed there is no other explanation for this spontaneous mobilization than the awareness of the value of the figure of the Pope for our lives. In him the risen Lord communicates His victory in the time and space of human history. Without the authoritative testimony of Peter’s Successor we would be lost like so many of our contemporaries. Last year’s March 24 audience was the imposing proof of this and it will forever mark our history. To follow the Pope thus means following the repercussions of His presence. And it demands that we engage reason and freedom.

We were able to touch this with our own hands when the speech that Benedict XVI was to have delivered at the university was made public. In him that “task to safeguard sensibility to the truth” shines forth. It is his unshakeable testimony which constitutes for us the hope of not succumbing to the danger of the Western world against which he warned, the danger of giving up on “the question of the truth,” for we know well that “if reason...becomes deaf to the great message that comes to it from Christian faith and wisdom, then it withers like a tree whose roots can no longer reach the waters that give it life,” and it surrenders.

This great witness of the Holy Father constitutes an exceptional appeal to each of us to use reason this way. He has offered it to us just as we begin the new School of Community on Msgr. Giussani’s book, Is it Possible to Live this Way?, a book whose first pages deal with faith as a “method of knowledge.” We are the first to sense the need for an education that allows us to know reality in-depth, that allows us to recognize the urgency of beginning a journey of knowledge that makes the Mystery familiar to us. Three years after his death, we ask Fr. Giussani to continue to accompany us on the path that he marked out for us.

By following the proposal made to us by the School of Community the gaze which we admire in the Pope, one that is completely open upon reality, can become ours more and more. Only by traveling down the same path can we truly know, by means of witness, the reality of which the Christian faith speaks.

This passion for the reasonableness of the faith is so familiar to us because Fr.
Giussani never cheated us; he encouraged us to go towards truth so that our adhesion to the faith dignified for our nature as men.

United more than ever in this adventure,

Fr. Julián Carrón

Communicating Oneself

Suzanne, thanks for posting so many notes from the diaconia. It was great meeting and you and Scott, and others I'd never met; along with all the old friends that I don't see as often as I'd like.

The meeting with educators was particularly helpful for me. Two weeks ago I wouldn't have thought to go, but for the past few weeks my new parish (the one in my neighborhood) has been begging for catechists. I began to get the distinct feeling that they were talking to me... so I sent the parish an email offering to help out. The director of religious education sent me back an email saying "Jim, I came to the CL Beginning Day at your house in October!" So I had an immediate verification that I was doing what I needed to do.

But as I sat in the meeting with educators at the diaconia, I really began to feel a profound sense of gratitude... gratitude for having met the Movement, and gratitude for having been shown where I was needed the most in my own circumstances. I didn't have to push the Movement, or worry about how many people were coming to School of Community. I just have to follow for myself and my own needs, then let Christ show me where he needs me to be.

Don't get me wrong... I'm really nervous about my first class with the 5th graders at my parish. But I know that I'm not there to give them the answers, or to be The Perfect Catholic. I'm there to witness to what has happened to me, to the fact that I've met Christ.

God's Initiative

We must not play the part of God. Our responsibility is to be ready for what He does. This is what puts us at ease, because I cannot stop myself from constantly decaying, I cannot avoid it; it is useless to fight against it. The question is that I be true when the Mystery grabs me by the hair again, when He reawakens me, when He comes to meet me.

Fr. Carron, International Assembly of Responsibles 2007