The Origin of a Cultural Initiative

Fr. Giussani wrote a brief statement describing the origin of the Meeting, just months after the very first session, in 1980.   What it is today was there from the beginning.  An excerpt:

This is the ideal that unites: it is a response to the need to live that unites people, that creates society. Friendship: a company guided toward destiny, as I always defined it with the youngsters. The perception of a situation as the absence of the ideal, and therefore a commitment, so that it would exist, so that the presence of the ideal happens.

Therefore the event of a new initiative, the generation of an adult begins, the adult starts generating. They have created a place where one encounters a subject. The presence is this: a place. The generation of an adult, which makes present one's own life beyond oneself, it is a place where one encounters a subject. A subject, a person, a humanity, who has something to say; a humanity with a message.

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

The Beginning of Culture

Culture is not a blank form to be filled in, when its beginning is something that has happened to us and that we can’t tear our eyes away from, a singular living reality.

Luigi Giussani

To Choose for Destiny

Last week I promised to write something on freedom, and the idea just got larger and larger and sent me to more books and places. If I don't stop and gather up what I have, it's going to get away like a hot air balloon.

But as a first installment, I have a concrete example of freedom which we saw last night. This is more interesting than my studies on the subject, because it's life. We will have our CL vacation in about a week, and one friend has been very hesitant about going. She has been coming for some years, and we always stay in the same cheap primitive camp, an ideal set-up for kids and families with options of camping or dorm-style housing (think Boy Scouts or Bible camp). The idea of spending four days sleeping on camp bunks, eating low-grade cafeteria food and playing silly field games held little attraction for her.

We've been reading the chapter on Freedom in Giussani's Is It Possible to Live This Way? and yesterday we studied the section on the Conditions for Freedom. So I jump ahead of the premise, which is that freedom is completed by destiny, to look at the problem we have with making a choice which is really for us. The community helps us choose for destiny instead of by the immediate attraction or repulsion we experience. Our friend was very open about her dilemma, and this shows her simplicity of heart. Others don't even consider the invitation to the vacation. She fairly easily applied this reading to her situation, recognizing that she has always found this vacation to be the strongest expression of what she has met in CL, the living presence of Christ in a companionship. And so she decided to stay with us next week, as a choice for her destiny.

If you expect your satisfaction from something that can be dust tomorrow, you'll have dust. But who calls your attention to this? No one can, none of us has the strength to do it for himself, only together can we do it. This is the way that the Church, in the world, calls the world's attention to this.... Only in the community is one helped to understand this, to be conscious of when one chooses evil, to recognize when one chooses evil, to have the strength of dominion over the self to wrench oneself from evil--for mortification, penitence or metanoia, change of mentality--to adhere to what brings us to destiny and to await destiny every day; to wait, every day, for it to come.

Is It Possible? - New Blog

Is It Possible?

The experience of the hundredfold. Now.
News, quotes, stories and events from the life and works of Don Giussani and the Communion and Liberation movement.

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.

Words and Meaning

Suzanne wrote a great post at her blog titled "Words, Words, Words". She describes her exasperation with words used as jargon and her understanding that we have to mouth these over and over to start to get them through our thick heads. Frustration over the meaning of words, used differently than we're used to, or just new words, is common at School of Community. She quoted Father Giussani:

We'll have you repeat words heard as discourse or words spoken as prayer that you don't understand. Not because we're fools and we make you do things that you don't understand. We know that you don't understand them. We didn't understand them either when we were young like you. Yet it's only by repeating them that you understand. What a two-year-old calls "mama" he'll refer to by the same word when he is fifty. That same word, not another word, will be profoundly different, understood more deeply, loved more deeply, judged more deeply ... but still one he has repeated his whole life long. The method we use to go to God is like this. This is how we come to terms with Christ.

I thought it might be an interesting challenge for us to pick up a word we use often in the movement, which is used differently from common parlance, and take a look at it. The word "freedom" is always a tough one for me, because it is such a big concept in the common mentality and very different from our Christian understanding. We have a lot of expressions about freedom which aren't. Besides, we're working on it now in School of Community. I will put something up this week on "freedom."

Peter and Judas: hope in facing our problems

«What man loves comes to the surface in the face of problems, questions, and difficulties» (Msgr. Giussani).

At Clairity Daily, Sharon has a post, What Man Loves. In it, she reflects on "The Long March to Maturity," a 1972 talk by Don Giussani on the happenings of 1968 and the bewilderment that engulfed many of the most promising people involved in Communion and Liberation. There's a sensibility here that even our problems (especially our problems?) can be opportunities for hope, for trusting in the mercy of God toward sinners.

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Pope Benedict XVI visited America yesterday. What I mean is that the printed words of the pope's homilies became flesh for me yesterday when I got together with some friends to read them.

I was moved first of all by the clarion boldness of Benedict's opening words at Washington Nationals Stadium:

«"Peace be with you!" (Jn 20:19). With these, the first words of the Risen Lord to his disciples, I great all of you in this Easter season.»

Jesus Christ risen from the dead speaks to us through Benedict. It is precisely this boldness in hope and faith in Jesus Christ which makes possible our hopes for a better day and gives us courage (a strengthening of the heart) to face our problems.

As apostolic witness, Benedict our father comes to us and witnesses to us about our history: our history as a Church — a people — born of the resurrection and Pentecost. In doing so, he reminds us that the origin, the spring, of all that is great about America, our promise, our hopes — is the same resurrection and Pentecost. «If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand wither. May my tongue stick to my palate if I do not remember you, If I do not exalt Jerusalem beyond all my delights» (Psalm 137).

«Dear friends, my visit to the United States is meant to be a witness to “Christ our Hope”. Americans have always been a people of hope: your ancestors came to this country with the expectation of finding new freedom and opportunity, while the vastness of the unexplored wilderness inspired in them the hope of being able to start completely anew, building a new nation on new foundations. To be sure, this promise was not experienced by all the inhabitants of this land; one thinks of the injustices endured by the native American peoples and by those brought here forcibly from Africa as slaves. Yet hope, hope for the future, is very much a part of the American character. And the Christian virtue of hope – the hope poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, the hope which supernaturally purifies and corrects our aspirations by focusing them on the Lord and his saving plan – that hope has also marked, and continues to mark, the life of the Catholic community in this country.

It is in the context of this hope born of God’s love and fidelity that I acknowledge the pain which the Church in America has experienced as a result of the sexual abuse of minors. No words of mine could describe the pain and harm inflicted by such abuse. It is important that those who have suffered be given loving pastoral attention. Nor can I adequately describe the damage that has occurred within the community of the Church. Great efforts have already been made to deal honestly and fairly with this tragic situation, and to ensure that children – whom our Lord loves so deeply (cf. Mk 10:14), and who are our greatest treasure – can grow up in a safe environment. These efforts to protect children must continue. Yesterday I spoke with your Bishops about this. Today I encourage each of you to do what you can to foster healing and reconciliation, and to assist those who have been hurt. Also, I ask you to love your priests, and to affirm them in the excellent work that they do. And above all, pray that the Holy Spirit will pour out his gifts upon the Church, the gifts that lead to conversion, forgiveness and growth in holiness.»

In "The Long March to Maturity," the one word that recurs along with bewilderment is betrayal: the betrayal of Christ — the betrayal of their very selves — by many in the movement. So, too, in the Church today there have been both bewilderment and betrayal. As sacramentally apostolic witnesses, the bishops bear the brunt of this bewilderment and betrayal (bewilderment for example due to the abdication of judgment to psychological experts; betrayal because they failed to be good fathers to children in the Church).

And yet the bishops are not our scapegoats: there is plenty of bewilderment and betrayal and shame for all Catholics in this country. What are we to make of the silence of Catholic journalists, writers, and lawyers before this story broke in the national media? Or maybe some of these died of poisoning like canaries in the mines? Were Bernanos, Andrew Greeley, J.F. Powers, Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy warning us while we stopped up our ears? It would be interesting to re-read everything, looking for the signs of bewilderment and betrayal.

«What man loves comes to the surface in the face of problems, questions, and difficulties» (Msgr. Giussani).

What do we love? What comes to the surface in the face of these problems, these questions, these difficulties?

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!

Easter Poster 2008

See it at the Communion and Liberation page.

Man is worth so much to God that he himself became man in order to suffer with man in an utterly real way, in flesh and blood, as is revealed to us in the account of Jesus' Passion [...] and so the star of hope rises.

Benedict XVI

God was moved by our nothingness, by our betrayal, by our crude, forgetful and treacherous poverty, by our pettiness. For what reason? "I have loved you with an eternal love, therefore I have made you part of me, having pity on your nothingness." The beat of the heart is pity on your nothingness but the reason why is that you might participate in being.

Luigi Giussani

Fr. Giussani and Lourdes

Lourdes is not the place of the perfect; it is a place of the sick, of those in need of grace, of those who ask that through their weak and infirm humanity, a ray of Christ’s divinity might pass, for themselves, for the men of the world, for their brothers. I would like to recall just one expression of Fr. Giussani’s then: “For the pilgrimage of life towards destiny, the human personality needs only something very elementary: a great simplicity of heart, a poverty of soul and spirit. Our Lady is the ‘type’ of this man traveling towards his destiny, of this new protagonist of time.”

From "Fr. Giussani and Lourdes: That Candle Is a Sign of our Faith", by Fr. Massimo Camisasca

Homily on the Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter

Archbishop Joseph Naumann, Kansas City in Kansas
Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter
Memorial Mass for Monsignor Luigi Giussani
Benedictine College
February 22, 2008

I
What Does Atchison Have in Common with New York?
It is a privilege to celebrate with you this afternoon this Feast of the Chair of St. Peter as we also prayerfully remember on the third anniversary of his death Monsignor Luigi Giussani. What do New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, D.C., Rochester, Minnesota and Atchison, Kansas have in common? Each of these great metro areas is blest to have Memores Domini community – the lay branch of Communion and Liberation – the movement which Father Giussani was the Holy Spirit’s instrument in giving birth.

II
Communion with Peter and His Successors
Today, in the liturgical calendar we celebrate the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter. We remember the great apostle upon which Jesus chose to build his Church. The fact that the great Basilica of St. Peter in Rome is built upon the tomb of Peter provides a striking metaphor on how the Lord has built his Church on the Rock of Peter and his successors.

I wear the Pallium that was given to me on the Solemnity of St. Peter and St. Paul the same year of Monsignor Giussani’s death, by the current Successor of St. Peter, Pope Benedict XVI. The lambs, who gave the wool for this Pallium, had been blest by the late Pope John Paul II on the Feast of St. Agnes and the finished product was laid on the tomb of Peter, blest and bestowed by Pope Benedict XVI.

Monsignor Giussani was a dear personal friend to both of these Popes. Yet, in addition to his personal relationship with Karol Wojtyla and Joseph Ratzinger, he was a friend of the Successors of St. Peter because he was a friend to their Lord and his Lord. This Pallium, in part,symbolizes my communion and the communion of my ministry as the Metropolitan Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Kansas City and the Province of Kansas with the ministry of the Successor of Peter on behalf of the universal church.

It is also a reminder of the truths: 1) I do not carry this responsibility alone but Jesus bears this yoke with me – making it light and 2) I am not charged to teach my own philosophy or theology, thank God, but to teach Jesus and the fullness of the Faith entrusted to Peter and the Apostles and their Successors. This Feast is a reminder of the great blessing that Jesus gave to His Church by entrusting the keys to Peter and His successors, giving the Church a magisterium – a teaching authority in the person of Peter in communion with the other Apostles and their successors who under the guidance of the Holy Spirit were charged to guard the integrity of the Gospel of Jesus and make its application to the unique circumstances and challenges presented by each age.

We thus pray in a very special way for Pope Benedict XVI today that the Lord may continue to bless and make fruitful his ministry as Shepherd of the universal Church. How could we not be reminded of our Holy Father when we listened to the first reading today from the First Epistle of St. Peter exhorting priests to be humble and faithful shepherds of the flock of Jesus?

III
You are the Christ the Son of the Living God

The Gospel today presents us with Peter’s great profession of faith at Caesarea Philippi. When Jesus asks the Apostles the pointed and personal question: “Who do you say that I am?”, it is Peter who answers: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Peter’s great strength was not his superior intelligence, not his personal strength of character, not his leadership skills. Peter’s strength was his relationship with Jesus. Whatever his personal weaknesses and flaws, which the Gospel documents were many, Peter knew who Jesus was, and Peter knew of the love of Jesus for him!

From Peter’s realization of his own unworthiness to be in the company of Jesus after the great catch when Jesus first invited Peter to put out into the deep to Peter’s desire to have his feet and hands and head washed when Jesus instructs Peter: “Unless I wash you, you will have no inheritance with me.”, the Father had given Peter special insight into the true identity of Jesus. It was the power of the depth of Peter’s love for Jesus that, despite his sinking in the water, his attempts to dissuade Jesus from the cross, and even his cowardly denial of Jesus in the Courtyard of the High Priest, made Peter indeed a rock upon which Jesus could build his church.

IV
Begging for Jesus

Monsignor Giussani understood the primacy of the relationship with Jesus for every Christian. It was because he sought this in his own life and formed this constant yearning for Jesus in the formation of those who became part of Communion and Liberation that the Holy Spirit was able to make his ministry so remarkably fruitful.

Monsignor Giussani understood prayer to be first and foremost this seeking of communion with Jesus, this begging for Jesus to enter his heart. He wrote: “…Christ reveals Himself to me, He reveals His presence to me and comes into my life the more I ask for Him, because He does not come in where He is not awaited. The essence of prayer is begging for Christ: `Come, Lord Jesus,’ it is the last word in the Bible and first word of the early Christians. … Prayer is the only phenomenon in which man engages his whole stature. Whoever follows the life of the Movement can testify that I personally do not talk about anything else, in comparison, more than this. Because man is aspiration, he is a search; he is neither aspiration nor search if he is not an entreaty.”

Page Three

V
From the One Who is Truth Comes Freedom

Monsignor Giussani understood that it is in this seeking of Jesus, seeking the one who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, that true liberation and freedom is to be found. Monsignor Giussani believed not just in his mind but in his heart the instruction of Jesus: “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the Gospel will save it.”

The future Pope Benedict XVI described this abandonment of himself in the pursuit of Jesus in a homily he gave at Monsignor Giussani’s funeral Mass:

This love affair with Christ, this love story which is the whole of his life was however far from every superficial enthusiasm, from every vague romanticism. Really seeing Christ, he knew to encounter Christ means to follow Christ. This encounter is a road, a journey, a journey that passes also – as we heard in the psalm – through the ‘valley of darkness.’ In the Gospel, we heard of the last darkness of Christ’s suffering, of the apparent absence of God, when the world’s sun was eclipsed. He knew that to follow is to pass through a valley of darkness,’ to take the way of the cross, and to live all the same in true joy.

“Why is it so? The Lord himself translated this mystery on the cross, which is really the mystery of love, with a formula in which the whole reality of our life is explained. The Lord says, ‘Whoever seeks his life, will lose it and whoever lose his life, will find it.

VI
Seek Communion with Jesus above all Else

On this Feast of Peter, let us pray for the gift to recognize Jesus for who He is: “…the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” As we come forward to receive the Eucharist, let us beg that the Holy Spirit might open us to receive the one who desires to reside in the tabernacle of our hearts. May we seek communion with Jesus above all else! May we seek to lose our own ambitions and desires and thus find life, freedom and joy in He who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life!

Traces 1, 2008

It is Possible to Live this Way by Luigi Giussani

A Jolt with Reality by Lorenzo Albacete

But I always read the letters first: our letters of communion.

The roots of dialogue

«What we have in common with the other is not to be sought so much in ideology as in the other's native structure, in those human needs, in those original criteria, in which he or she is human like us. Openness to dialogue, therefore, means the ability to take as a starting point those problems to which the other's ideology or our Christianity proposes solutions, because what is common to different ideologies is the humanity of the men and women who carry these ideologies as banners of hope or as an answer.»

~ Fr. Giussani, The Journey to Truth Is an Experience, p 132

"Moving beyond the parochial vision"

My pastor told us about a meeting in my diocese looking forward to changes over the next few years. One thing on the horizon is a certain consolidation of services between parishes. This consolidation is a point of anxiety for many folks who fear the loss of parish identity. On the other hand, the bishop reminded us recently that 'we are not congregationalists.' Rather, we are Catholics, and our catholicity requires awareness of how everything is directed 'according to the whole' (kata- holos). And so my pastor appealed to the parish to move beyond the parochial.

I was interested to learn from Fr. Giussani about the development of parishes in the Church:

«The most recent studies show that first the apostles and then their successors, the bishops, long resisted the tendency to multiply local communities out of their desire to preserve true unity in the Church. Thus at first many cities, or dioceses if we can call them such, remained linked to an apostle; then for a long time the dioceses remained centered around the bishop, and the "parishes" - in the modern sense - were few at first. It was only in feudal times that the number of parishes increased; and the clergy remained bound to their own Church, and to their own piece of land ("benefice") rather than to the bishop. One of the spiritual consequences of this was a weakened sense of ecclesial communion and contact with the life of the universal Church. This in turn led to a decadence of the clergy, who tended to isolate themselves and settle for the very limited religious needs of the people.»

(The Journey to Truth Is an Experience, p 110-111)

When I read this passage, it's clear to me why the bishops now reassign priests periodically. It's so that the pastors will continue to be a sign of catholicity to the parishes. And the people, even if they don't move around, need to adhere to the bishop so that they too, will announce the presence of Christ who draws us ever deeper into communion with the totality of the Church.

During Advent I had the opportunity to experience this catholicity during a reconciliation service at a parish other than my own. There were 15 priests there including an auxiliary or emeritus bishop. During this service this parish went beyond the parochial vision - it became the locus for the universal Church. One could see then that it was no longer the church of Corinth but the Church herself in Corinth.

As I lean into Lent, I want to remember those instruments that cultivate in me an ever greater awareness of the totality of the Church. Fr. Giussani reminds us that the early Church used letters of communion (Litterae Communionis) to bind each place in the Church with the whole. And so, I want to be more faithful to Traces - the magazine whose particular mission it is to build up this communion among all. And also, I want the Good Friday Way of the Cross to be a more public sign of communion in Christ.

Open Christianity by Msgr. Luigi Giussani

This article by Don Giussani was published in Logos, but I see now that it's available at the CL site also: "Open Christianity."

"He, Jesus, is the prominent figure, not I with my faults. His face is at stage centre and not the features of my poverty. Gazing upon Him I will realize that He alone can resolve all problems, all of my problems and those of others." (p 5)

Adhering to Community

I found this section very interesting in reading School of Community (p.93) in light of our revived venture of this common blog.

We can have ideas and opinions that originate in Christian truth, but they are still not the redeeming Christian life. We are called to adhere to and participate in a reality that comes from outside ourselves: the community in which Christ places us.

I am really glad to blog here within a friendship that acknowledges first this life that we are invited to. Our smart judgments will not save the world, but instead "the instrument of the world's conversion is the visible unity of the Christian community." Thus we are back to Fred's insistence on presence as taught by Fr. Giussani.

I was struck by the recent defection of a cloning researcher away from stem-cell research. It can appear that we are not making a dent in such outrages to life, but the consistent witness to the dignity of the human being called by God is undeniable. This tenacity is evidently a fruit of the adherence of the community to Christ living with us.