Recently in Luigi Giussani Category

Ubisi Monastery. Ascension of Jesus detail

This is why the Ascension is the feast where all of Mystery gathers together and where all of the evidence of things is gathered together. It is an extraordinary and very strange feast, where all the faces of all things meet to cry out to unaware, inattentive, obscure, and unseeing man the light of which they are made, to give him back the meaning by which he entered into relationship with everything, to shout out to him the task he has in things, his role among things. Everything depends on him; all things were made for man.

Whoever tries to render witness to the Lord with his life is already part of the mystery of His Ascension, because Christ who ascended into heaven is Man for whom everything is made, Man who has begun to take possession of the things of the world.

Father Luigi Giussani

The Holy Rosary

Pope Francis commenting on Monsignor Giussani: 

"When people say to Fr. Giussani, "How brave one has to be to say 'Yes' to Christ!" or, "This objection comes to my mind: it is evident that Fr. Giussani loves Jesus and I don't love Him in the same way," Giussani answers, "Why do you oppose what you think you don't have to what you think I have? I have this yes, only this, and it would not cost you one iota more than it costs me.... Say "Yes" to Jesus. If I foresaw that tomorrow I would offend Him a thousand times, I would still say it." Thérèse of Lisieux says almost exactly the same thing: "I say it, because if I did not say 'Yes' to Jesus I could not say 'Yes' to the stars in the sky or to your hair, the hairs on your head..." Nothing could be simpler: "I don't know how it is, I don't know how it might be: I know that I have to say 'Yes.' I can't not say it," and reasonably; that is to say, at every moment in his reflections in this book, Giussani has recourse to the reasonableness of experience."

The President of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, Father Carrón's, said the following in tribute to Carlo Maria Cardinal Martini in a September 4th editorial in Corriere della Sera: 

"And like Archbishop Montini, who initially confessed that he did not understand Fr. Giussani's method, though he did see its fruits, Cardinal Martini also encouraged us to go forward. I am still moved by the words that he addressed to Fr. Giussani in 1995, during a meeting of priests, when he thanked 'the Lord, who gave Msgr. Giussani this gift for continually re-expressing the core of Christianity. 'Every time that you talk, you always return to this core, which is the Incarnation, and - in a thousand different ways - you propose it again.'"

The full text of the editorial: Julian Carron Letter on Carlo Martini's death.pdf

This text is a brief, honest and yet key reflection not only on the life and influence of Cardinal Martini, perhaps an excellent synthesis of Christian life and how it is extroverted in a human being. There are some very tiresome reviews of who the Cardinal was, and what he meant to the Church too often in political language. To my mind those authors who evaluate a man such as Martini in this manner does not abide with the Gospel and faith.

The letter of Father Carrón acknowledges the fact that Communion and Liberation has significantly neglected the various opportunities of collaboration with Cardinal Martini that presented themselves over the years. This admission to members of CL should help all of us to reassess how we live and breathe in our given ecclesial context. This is a serious point that we can't pass off to circumstance. That is to say, we who claim to be faithful members of CL need to work more diligently with the Diocesan Ordinary "in giving reasons for our hope" in concrete ways so that we are witnesses as the Servant of God Pope Paul VI said (cf. the letter).

This love affair with Christ, this love story which is the whole of Monsignor Giussani's life was however far from every superficial enthusiasm, from every vague romanticism. Really seeing Christ, he knew that 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."

Pope Benedict XVI

"One of the hallmarks of Pope Benedict XVI's papacy has been his emphasis on the need for an authentic encounter with Christ. Monsignor Giussani's principles help us understand just how that can happen."

Father Dwight Lonenecker

"On the 30th Anniversary of the Pope's recognition of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, we ask the Lord for the gratitude for the meeting with Father Giussani's charisma to become a renewed responsibility every day for our Destiny and that of all our human brothers, in our indomitable faithfulness to the Church in history's joyous and tragic events. So let us say a special prayer for the Holy Father, invoking upon him the comfort of the Holy Spirit in this moment of great chaos."

Mass intention for the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, 2012

The head of the Communion and Liberation Movement, Father Julián Carrón wrote an editorial for tomorrow's (July 14, 2011) edition of the L'Osservatore Romano about the forthcoming Day of Prayer in Assisi on October 27, recognizing the theme of peace and justice. 

The Day for Reflection, Dialogue and Prayer for Peace and Justice in the World, convoked in Assisi next October 27 by Benedict XVI is an audacious gesture, just as Blessed John Paul II's initiative was, 25 years ago.

"In the name of what can (Pope Wojtyla) call exponents of all religions together to pray in Assisi?" asked Don Luigi Giussani twenty-five years ago. He answered, "If one understands the nature of man, the heart of man, it is his religious sense, it is in the religious sense that all men find equality and identity. The most profound meaning in the human heart is religious sentiment, destiny on the one hand and the usefulness of the present on the other. If we want to use the right terms, a sense of religion is the only sense which is truly catholic, which means suitable for everyone and belonging to everyone."

Several things have surfaced for me recently that has me wondering about what we are doing as a Christian people living our faith in a parochial setting today. Two things to read are the notes from a recent Communion and Liberation retreat and the Pope's recent remarks in Croatia. Both go hand-in-hand: God is not a sentimental object and He remains an authority. But in order for me to say this with conviction I've got to accept that if I am in Christ I am a new creation (really!) and therefore a living presence. How many times during the Easter season did I understand that Christ was (is) the newness of life? The honest answer is: it is hard to tell.

Father Julián Carrón had the following to say in his introductory remarks for Communion & Liberation's Fraternity Spiritual Exercises given this spring that bear significant attention for whatever ministry we find ourselves in (or not):

"It seems I am hearing today the same identical question Fr. Giussani was asked by a student. He himself recounts it: "Now people no longer perceive the correspondence between the Christian proposal in its originality, the Christian event, and everyday life. When you try hard to make it understood, they say, 'But you're so complicated, you're so complicated!' In high school, when I dictated what you study in School of Community, I had in class the son of Manzù, who had a priest he always went to. This priest stirred him up against what he read in the notes from my lessons, and told him, 'See, this complicates, while, instead, religion is simple.' In other words, 'the reasons complicate'-and how many would say the same!--'the search for the reasons complicates.' Instead, it illuminates! This mindset is the reason Christ is no longer an authority, but a sentimental object, and God is a boogeyman and not a friend."