Our Focus on the Heart

A key point of Luigi Giussani’s on the spiritual life is the heart. In several places Giussani calls us to focus on our singularity of heart’s focus, the intention of the heart, or as traditional spiritual theology calls purity of heart. Having just finished what the Eastern Church calls Pure Week at the start of Great Lent (the Fast) we ought to continue to go deeper into the heart. The goal of the lenten Fast is to develop a transcendence of egocentrism closes down the heart from reality. The Church as teacher and mother shows us that the period of fasting we engage in at this time of the year is seen as a time of “showering of mercy,” with prayer, good deeds and philanthropy. This perspective of mercy evidences the surpassing self-love.

Great Lent is always a journey in which the Church calls us to an ever-deepening purity of heart. The external observances that are a part of it have significance only insofar as they help us live a more authentic expression of this. Above all, purity of heart means continually directing our intention to fulfilling the will of God as faithfully as we understand it. This is where true reconciliation with God occurs. (NS)

I was reading a bit of Giussani on the heart and the author/editor of the text placed the reality of the heart (and the heart’s needs) with the Christian idea of friendship.

Charity [says St Bernard] generates friendship, it is like its mother [charity is love for the other as affirmation of his good destiny, as a desire to affirm that his right destiny should be fulfilled, for Christ is the Mystery of which He is a part, and in which He participates]. It is God’s gift, it comes from Him, for we are carnal. He causes our desire and our love to begin from the flesh. In our hearts God inscribes for our friends a love that they cannot read, but that we can show to them. The outcome is an affection, more often an affectus, a profound, inexpressible attachment, which is in the order of experience and which fixes rights and duties for friendship.

Daily we pray, as Giussani directs, the Angelus to keep our hearts focused on the Mystery of the Incarnation. The gift we ask for is “Thy grace into our hearts.” But that grace is only present if the heart is pure –singularly focussed.

Where and how are we educated?

This post was written for the Order of the Holy Sepulchre for January 8, 2022.

“The place where the educational process unfolds must be a place where all of reality is presented” (Luigi Giussani, The Risk of Education, 133).

This blog post is less about an educational theory of two well-known theologians than about staying in front of the reality we are presented as a place where grace operates in our life, that is, the inner Life of the Holy Trinity. Grace is relational not a bag of good things given by God to make us feel good.

As we move into 2022 I think we are faced with some serious questions regarding our life and work as members of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. Being in realtionship with the Holy Trinity requires us to face life squarely and with certainty. How do the real events of life of the human person affect us personally or the Church at large? What or who responds to our human questions? Do we place our constructed utopias in the path as an answer to the thirst within the heart of man?

“What does your Lord require of you, but to look at all things as they really are, to account them merely as His instruments, but to believe that good is good because He wills it, that He can bless as easily by hard stone as by bread, in the desert as in the fruitful field, if we have faith in Him who gives us the true bread from heaven?… Doubt not, then, His power to bring you through any difficulties, who gives you the command to encounter them” (St. John Henry Newman, CO).

As 2022 progresses I hope that we find the reason and hope for living: Jesus Christ here and now. Intellectually many of us know that only Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, is the answer and response to reality as it is. But does this fact impact us deep in our sinews? Nicodemus knew this when Jesus challenged him to question to whom did he belong. The same challenge remains for us when we consider our Noble Ideal: teach the faith, feed the poor, educate children, visit the elderly, or live in relation with our enemies.

May Our Lady of Palestine, pray for us.

St. John Henry Newman, pray for us.

May Blessed Bartolo Longo, intercede for us.

New Giussani Book: The Meaning of Birth

Brand new.

The 1980 conversation now turned into a book, The Meaning of Birth, is due out on December 7, and available for pre-order from Slant Books.

The reviewers of the book which can be read from the link above will draw you into reading not only for information but with regard for human and spiritual formation.

Those who are familiar with Bill Congdon’s artwork will note that the cover bears his piece on the Incarnation.

Thanks to Greg Wolfe!

Jesus dies upon the Cross

“From noon until the third hour in the afternoon there was darkness over all the earth. At the third hour, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Hearing this, some of those who were present said,“He is calling upon Elijah.” And suddenly one of them ran to fetch a sponge and, soaking it in vinegar, he stuck it on a reed and gave him to drink. The others said, “Let be; let us see if Elijah comes to save him!” And Jesus, with a loud groan, gave up the spirit.”

We are sinners and the death of Christ saves us. The death of Christ makes good whatever our past may be, but our past is full of that shadow we call sin. And it is the death of Christ that saves us. We cannot recognize Christ upon the cross without immediately understanding and feeling that this cross must touch us too, that no longer may we make any objection to sacrifice; no more objection to sacrifice, now that Lord has died.

Through that same gaze of ours fixed upon the cross – where He looks upon us with the constant eye of eternity, constant in pity and the will to save us, having pity upon us and our nothingness – through that gaze fixed constantly upon the cross, what would otherwise be something so strange as to seem to us detached from reality, arbitrary, senseless, becomes an experience of redemption. It is by keeping our gaze fixed upon the cross that we learn to perceive, by direct experience, the penetrating Presence and the ineluctable necessity of grace for the perfecting of our lives, for the joy of our lives. In Our Lady our heart’s adoration finds its exemplar and form. In fact the cross is not just for Christ: the death of Christ upon the cross saves the world, but not merely as an isolated event, in itself. Not by Himself alone does Christ save the world, but also by the cleaving of each one of us to suffering and the cross. Saint Paul says so: “I make up in my human flesh what is lacking in the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross – in the passion of Christ.

With you, O Mary, we see that the renunciation of our lives that is required of us is not punishment, but is necessary for their salvation, their exaltation, their growth. Mary, let our offering, the offering of our lives, be of help to the poor world, this poor world, to enrich itself with the knowledge of Christ and to rejoice in the love of Christ.

~Meditation of the Servant of God Father Luigi Giussani on the Rosary

Faithful without becoming fanatic

What this Romanian Orthodox theologian says is very similar to what Fr Luigi Giussani and Fr Julian Carrón said regarding dialogue and the life of Christian faith and identity.

“In this sense, the Orthodox Church considers that in the dialogue with other Christians it brings exactly the witness of the One Church of Christ, from which they separated over time by deviation from Orthodox faith. Of course, no Orthodox Christian is ever obliged to carry dialogues or to cooperate with other Christians if he or she is afraid of losing the Orthodox faith. At the same time, it is unfair to consider that all Orthodox Christians who carry theological dialogues and cooperate in practical matters in society with Christians of other confessions are traitors of Orthodoxy. A peacemaker Orthodox Christian can remain faithful to Orthodoxy without becoming fanatic, if he or she confesses Orthodox faith in dialogue with other Christians, provided he or she makes no compromise.”

~for more read the article here.

Pope Francis to Communion and Liberation: the Lord alone is at the center

Pope Francis with CL 7 Mar 2015On Saturday, March 7, 2015, His Holiness Pope Francis with the Communion and Liberation to honor the 60thanniversary of the birth of the Movement and the 10th anniversary of the death of, the Servant of God Father Luigi Giussani. Conservatively there were 8oK people in Saint Peter’s Square. Here is Zenit’s translation.

Dear Brothers and Sisters, good morning!

I welcome you all and thank you for your warm affection! I give my cordial greeting to the Cardinals and Bishops. I greet Don Julián Carrón, President ofyour Fraternity and I thank him for the words he addressed to me on your behalf.I also thank don Julian for the beautiful letter he wrote to all, inviting you to come. Thank you so much!

My first thought goes to your Founder, Monsignor Luigi Giussani, remembering the 10thanniversary of his birth into Heaven. I am grateful to Don Giussani for several reasons. The first, more personal, is the good this man did to me and to my priestly life, through the reading of his books and his articles. The other reason is that his thought is profoundly human and reaches man’s profoundest longing. You know how important the experience of encounter was for Don Giussani: encounter not with an idea but with a Person, with Jesus Christ. Thus he educated to freedom, guiding the encounter with Christ, because Christ gives us true freedom. Speaking of encounter there comes to my mind Caravaggio’s “The Calling of Matthew,” before which I paused at length in the church of Saint Louis of the French, every time I came to Rome. None of those who were there, including Matthew avid for money, could believe the message of that finger that pointed at him, the message of those eyes that looked at him with mercy and chose him for his following. He felt that wonder of the encounter. Thus is the encounter with Christ, who comes and invites us.

Everything in your life, today as in the time of Jesus, begins with an encounter. An encounter with this Man, the carpenter of Nazareth, a man like all others, but, at the same time, different. We think of John’s Gospel, where he recounts the disciples first encounter with Jesus (Cf. 35-42). Andrew, John, Simon: felt that they had been looked at in their depth, known intimately, and this generated surprise in them, a wonder that made them feel immediately bound to Him … Or when, after the Resurrection, Jesus asks Peter: “Do you love Me?” (John 21:15), and Peter answers: “Yes”; that yes was not the result of will power, it did not come solely from the decision of the man Simon: it came first from Grace, it was that “primerear,” the preceding of Grace. This was the decisive discovery for Saint Paul, for Saint Augustine, and so many other Saints: Jesus Christ is always first He “primereas” us; He awaits us. Jesus Christ precedes us always, and when we arrive, He is already there awaiting us. He is like the flower of the almond tree: it is the one that flowers first and announces spring.

And this dynamic, which arouses wonder and adherence, cannot be understood without mercy. Only one who has been caressed by the tenderness of mercy really knows the Lord. The privileged place of encounter is the caress of mercy of Jesus Christ on my sin. And it is because of this that you have heard me say sometimes that the post, the privileged place of the encounter with Jesus Christ is my sin. It is thanks to this embrace of mercy that one feels like answering and changing, and from which a different life can flow. Christian morality is not the titanic, willful effort of one who decides to be coherent and who succeeds, a sort of solitary challenge in face of the world. No, this isn’t Christian morality; it’s something else. Christian morality is an answer, it is a moved answer in face of astonishing mercy, unforeseeable, in fact, “unjust” according to human criteria, of One who knows me, knows my betrayals and loves me anyway, esteems me, embraces me, calls me again, hopes in me, expects from me. Christian morality is not ever to fall, but to get up always, thanks to his hand, which takes us. And the way of the Church is also this: to let God’s great mercy manifest itself. In past days I said to the new Cardinals: “The way of the Church is that of not condemning any one eternally; to spread God’s mercy to all persons who ask for it with a sincere heart: the way of the Church is, in fact, that of going out of her enclosure to go and seek those far away on the “peripheries” of existence; that of adopting integrally the logic of God,” which is that of mercy (Homily, February 15, 2015). The Church must also feel the joyful impulse of becoming a flower of the almond tree, that is spring, as Jesus was or the whole of humanity.

Today you also remember the 60 years of the beginning of your Movement, “born in the Church – as Benedict XVI said – not from an organizational will of the Hierarchy, but originating from a renewed encounter with Jesus and thus, we can say, from an impulse stemming ultimately from the Holy Spirit” (Address to the Communion and Liberation pilgrimage, March 24, 2007: Insegnamenti III, 1 [2007], 557).

After sixty years, the original charism has not lost its freshness and vitality. However, remember that the center is not the charism; the center is only one, it is Jesus, Jesus Christ! When I put my spiritual method at the center, my spiritual journey, my way of acting it, I leave the way. The whole spirituality, all the charisms in the Church must be “decentralized”: the Lord alone is at the center! Therefore, when in the First Letter to the Corinthians Paul speaks of charisms, of this very beautiful reality of the Church, of the Mystical Body, he ends by talking about love, that is, about what comes form God, what is proper to God, and which enables us to imitate Him. Never forget this, be decentralized.

And then the charism is not kept in a bottle of distilled water! Fidelity to the charism does not mean to “petrify it” – it is the devil who “petrifies,” don’t forget this! Fidelity to the charism does not mean to write it on a parchment and put it in a frame. The reference to the legacy that Don Giussani left cannot be reduced to a museum of memories, of decisions taken, of norms of conduct. It certainly entails fidelity to the tradition, but fidelity to the tradition – Mahler said – “means to keep alive the fire and not adore the ashes.” Don Giussani would never forgive your losing the freedom and being transformed into museum guides and adorers of ashes. Keep the fire alive of the memory of that first encounter and be free!

Thus, centered on Christ and on the Gospel, you can be arms, hands, feet, mind and heart of an “outgoing” Church. The way of the Church is to go forth to seek those that are far in the peripheries, to serve Jesus in every marginalized, abandoned person, without faith, disappointed by the Church, prisoner of his own egoism.

To go forth” also means to reject self-reference in all its forms; it means to be able to listen to one who is not like us, learning from everyone, with sincere humility. When we are slaves to self-reference, we end up by cultivating a “brand spirituality”: “I am CL.” This is the brand. And then we fall into the thousand snares that self-referent satisfaction offers us, that looking at ourselves in the mirror, which leads to disorienting us and transforming us into mere managers of an NGO.

Dear friends, I would like to end with two very significant quotes of Don Giussani, one of the beginning and one of the end of his life.

The first: “Christianity is never realized in history as fixity of positions to defend, which refer to the new as pure antithesis; Christianity is principle of redemption, which assumes the new, saving it” (Bears Hope. First Writings, Genoa,1967, 119).This was around 1967.

The second of 2004: “Not only did I not ever intend ‘to found’ anything, but I hold that the genius of the Movement that I have seen born is of having felt the urgency to proclaim the need to return to the elementary aspects of Christianity, that is to say, the passion of the Christian event as such in its original elements, and that’s all” (Letter to John Paul II, January 26, 2004, on the occasion of the 50thanniversary of Communion and Liberation).

May the Lord bless you and Our Lady protect you. And, please, don’t forget to pray for me!

Thank you.

The plan of God

“The plan of God is absolutely beyond us, always; it cannot be narrowed or imprisoned within the limits of our imagination. But one who is always willing to change everything according to what God wants–and mark these words, what God wants through the circumstances, because, for Our Lady, three minutes, a minute before, it wasn’t even imaginable that the Annunciation could happen–circumstances, especially those that vex us the most, that are inevitable circumstances, these are precisely the ones that mark the road of God; the person who is open to this is not attached to anything of his own, and he’s free. So the first consequence is that he is attentive, extremely attentive to the needs of others. In fact, as soon as the Angel left, Our Lady decided right away, a girl of fourteen or fifteen years, to travel that very long journey–one that when you go to Palestine you usually do by bus or by car–of over 60 miles in the midst of that stony land, to go visit her cousin Elizabeth, because the Angel had told her that she was six months along with the child in her womb. The first thing she did was to share the need and the toil of her cousin Elizabeth, at very great sacrifice. When are you free? You’re free when you’re willing to do what God wants. Before the Infinite, only before the Infinite is man free, detached from himself. When you’re like this, you’re immediately ready to feel and meet the needs of others. What a lesson for us! These are the first characteristics of a man who lives life as a pilgrimage.”

Luigi Giussani, from “Mary: Faith and Faithfulness”

Annunciation to Mary

Today is the beginning of our salvation. Indeed, we rejoice in Mary’s “yes” to being the Mother of the Redeemer, and respond with our own “yes” today to God’s will in our lives.

In the Servant of God Father Luigi Giussani’s Meditations on the Holy Rosary, he writes about the Annunciation:

The Angel’s words could have astounded with wonder and humility the young woman to whom they were addressed. But they were not so astounding as to be totally unintelligible; they contained something that made them intelligible to the heart of that young girl who was living her religious duties. The Virgin embraced them to herself: “I am the handmaiden of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to Your word.” Not because she understood but, in the confusion that had become boundless because of the Mystery that announced itself by vibrating in her flesh, the Virgin opened her arms wide, the arms of her freedom, and said, “Yes.” And she stayed alert every day, every hour, every minute of her life. The Virgin Mary’s state of mind, that state of mind which determines an attitude and decides for it in the face of the occasion and the moment, how can we better describe the Virgin’s state of mind than with the word “silence”? Silence as memory filled to overflowing. Two things contributed to this memory, two things determined this silence. The first was remembering what had happened. What had happened preserved its marvelousness, its true mystery, its mystery of truth intact because — and this is the second thing — it had something that was present: that Child, that present young Man, that Son who was present.

Going to the Church Fathers is always a good thing: Saint Ireneus of Lyons teaches us that “For as Eve was seduced by an angel’s voice to turn from God betraying His word, so Mary was given the good news by an angel’s voice that she would bear God, and the latter was persuaded to obey God, so that Mary should become the advocate of Eve. And as the human race was bound to death by a virgin, by a virgin it was delivered.”

Leading with the Passion of Christ, Regis Martin reminds

Luigi GiussaniRegis Martin wrote a superb article on Father Luigi Giussani for Crisis Magazine today (13 Feb 2014) in “Recalling Luigi Giussani’s Passion for Christ.” Martin certainly captured not only the essence of Giussani, but the entire life of the ecclesial movement of Communion and Liberation and the work of conversion to Christ Jesus.

To note, Father Luigi Giussani is being considered for sainthood by the Catholic Church, and thus bears the title title of Servant of God at stage of the process. Giussani died on 22 February 2005, with a funeral Mass offered and preached by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.

Dr. Martin is a Professor of Theology and Faculty Associate with the Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. Among his academic interests is the thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar. He was educated by the Dominican friars at Rome’s Angelicum and has authored several books and articles. His recent book is Still Point: Loss, Longing, and Our Search for God (Ave Maria Press, 2012). Martin is a very well-regarded as a Catholic lay theologian.