Luigi Giussani – Page 2

Lord, increase our faith –educate us to see

The Church hears in the gospel for the 27th Sunday Through the Year Lord’s reference to the parable of the Mustard Seed (Luke 17:5-10). The teaching of the Mustard Seed also appears in Mark 4:30-32 and Matthew 17:20.

When the apostles say to Jesus, “Increase our faith,” He responds, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”

Today, we could easily hear in the desire of the apostles: educate us to see, to know, to experience this Kingdom you are talking about. Perhaps we can relate the concern the apostles present to what Saint Anselm famously said, ours is a “Fides quaerens intellectum” (a faith seeking understanding; or, faith is a trust in God, a love for God, the lens by which we we seek to know what a deep trust in God means in a concrete way connecting the dots of life).

The holy bishop of Hippo tells us,

A mustard seed looks small. Nothing is less noteworthy to the sight, but nothing is stronger to the taste. What does that signify but the very great fervor and inner strength of faith in the Church?

Sofia Cavalletti taught us, “The person who at a certain point becomes aware of the dynamic nature of the Kingdom of God, which is like a mustard seed, will gradually come to see this dynamism filling the universe and empowering man and his history” (Religious Potential of the Child, 165). Hence, the teaching is a recognition that faith as a gift of God is enclosed within our hearts, “like the pearl of great value and the mustard seed.”

This education in the faith may be connected with a reflection Father Luigi Giussani has,

“As a result of the education I received at home, my seminary training, and my reflections later in life, I came to believe deeply that only a faith arising from life experience and confirmed by it (and, therefore, relevant to life’s needs) could be sufficiently strong to survive in a world where everything pointed in the opposite direction, so much so that even theology for a long time had given in to a faith separated from life. Showing the relevance of faith to life’s needs, and therefore – and this ‘therefore’ is important –showing that faith is rational, implies a specific concept of rationality. When we say that faith exalts rationality, we mean that faith corresponds to some fundamental, original need that all men and women feel in their hearts.” (Luigi Giussani, The Risk of Education, pp. 11-12).

Indeed, Lord, increase in us the desire to be with you.

Jesus’ Ascent into Heaven

Ubisi Monastery. Ascension of Jesus detail

The Ascension is the feast of the human. With Jesus, physical, carnal humanity enters into the total dominion with which God makes all things. It is Christ who goes to the root of everything. It is the feast of the miracle, an event which by its strength recalls the mystery of God.

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

Giussani helps us to understand the struggle for meaning, purpose and beauty

In a recent article for the Our Sunday Visitor newspaper, Father Robert takes up the concept of the religious sense that Father Giussani taught, and that Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio –now Pope Francis spoke about. Shortly after the papal election I posted the chapter that Father Barron references in his article noted below, from A Generative Thought: An Introduction to the Works of Luigi Giussani (2003), where Bergoglio writes about our need to educate our religious sense and how Giussani influenced him in his method of dealing with ultimate questions.

You may read that chapter here that’s noted in a previous post on Communio.

Here is a paragraph of Barron’s OSV article. The full text is accessed here.

Part of Msgr. Giussani’s genius, Cardinal Bergoglio argued, was that he did not often commence his discourse with explicitly dogmatic or doctrinal language, but rather with an awakening of the often implicit religious sensibility that every person possesses. This sensibility expresses itself in terms of the most fundamental questions: What is my ultimate origin? What is my final destiny? Is there a meaning or logic that runs through the universe? Why, precisely, is there something rather than nothing? These interrogations lead ineluctably to God, for God alone can answer them.

Father Robert Barron
OSV Newsweekly, 5 May 2013

Doing School of Community

“How does School of Community become a point of comparison? First of all, it must be read by clarifying the meaning of the words together –not an interpretation of the words, but the literal sequence […] Secondly, space must be given to the exemplification of a comparison between what one lives and what one has read. One must ask himself how what he read and tried to understand literally judges life.”

Fr Giussani (published in Traces, 1992) and quoted in Fr Julián Carrón’s notes for his March 20, 2013 School of Community

Communion and Liberation’s prayer on St Benedict’s feast

This day blessed Benedict in the presence of his brethren ascended directly from his cell toward the East into heaven; this day, his hands raised, he breathed forth his soul in prayer; this day he was received by the Angels into glory. (Vespers Mag. Ant.)

Our prayer today is for all who follow the Rule of Saint Benedict and the gifts given to the Church and world by the Benedictines. Most especially our prayer today is with the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation who counts Saint Benedict as one of the co-patrons of the movement. May we who live the path given by the Servant of God Father Luigi Giussani to “incline our heart” unto the Lord’s.

Father Giussani once said to the Benedictine monks of Cascinazza (Milan), “Christ is present! The Christ announcement is that God became one of us and is present here, and gathers us together into one body, and through unity, His presence is made perceivable. This is heart of the Benedictine message of the earliest times. Well, this also defines the entire message of our Movement, and this is why feel Benedictine history to be the history to which we are the closest.”

Continue reading Communion and Liberation’s prayer on St Benedict’s feast

Francis comments Giussani: on saying Yes to Christ

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.”

Pope Francis writes about Fr Luigi Giussani: he “helped me to pray”

Research is running on steroids in the hours since Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected to be our new Roman Pontiff, Francis. This is especially true with members of Communion and Liberation who are eager to see what connection they can make with the new Pope. Who could blame us?

In the first paragraph Bergoglio writes about a lecture he gave on the Religious Sense where he says, “…I was not simply performing a formal act of protocol … I was expressing the gratitude that is due to Msgr Giussani. For many years now, his writings have inspired me to reflect and have helped me to pray. They have taught me to be a better Christian, and I spoke at the presentation to bear witness to this.”

Pope Francis on the Religious Sense.pdf

(From, Eliza Buzzi, A Generative Thought: An Introduction to the Works Luigi Giussani, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003).

Yesterday afternoon I posted here on Communio a Traces article, “The Attraction of the Cardinal.”

Formal Apology or reconciliation

One of the things I did this week was to available myself to the sacrament of Confession. As a spiritual disciple I try to get to the sacrament every month; regrettably it was more than a month since the last time I received the sacrament. Let me also recognize that Father Luigi Giussani encouraged the Memores Domini and other followers in Communion and Liberation to go to confession every 15 days. It was great to go to confession: a refreshed sense of life in Christ, especially in my relations with others, in the reception of Holy Communion, but I had the distinct feeling of having a “new humanity.” Going to confession is a recognition of Someone greater in my life, that the living of my is not merely about me and my selfish interests, and that sin is corrosive, but the sacrament of confession (aka penance, or reconciliation), helps me recognize the truth about me: that I am truly loved by God, whose other name is Mercy.

Continue reading Formal Apology or reconciliation

Luigi Giussani’s 8th anniversary of death

Today is the 8th anniversary of the death of Father Luigi Giussani. A perfect day, the feast of the Chair of Saint Peter. Perfect because of Giussani’s and our total affection for and following of the magisterium of the Vicar of Christ. Giussani taught us to follow Jesus, and his ministers.

We pray with the Church,

Grant, we pray, O Lord, that the soul of Luigi Giussani, your servant and Priest, whom you honored with sacred office while he lived in this world, may exult for ever in the glorious home of heaven.

In the last year Archdiocese of Milan and Communion and Liberation has launched an ecclesial study of the possibility of beatifying Luigi Giussani. He is now referred to as the Servant of God Father Luigi Giussani.

Pope speaks to the Fraternity of Saint Charles Borromeo, Fr Paolo Sottopietra elected new superior

At the end of the Pope’s General Audience on Wednesday, 6 February, Benedict XVI received in the Paul VI Hall the participants of the 12th General Assembly of the Fraternity of Saint Charles Borromeo. They had just elected a new Superior General, Father Paolo Sottopietra, 45. Father Sottopietra is the second Superior General following the founder and Superior General the Most Reverend Massimo Camisasca who was ordained bishop for the Diocese of Reggio Emilia on 7 December. Camisasca served as the leader for 27 years. The Fraternity developed from the charism of the Servant of God Father Luigi Giussani and the ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation.

Present at the papal audience were Bishop Massimo Camisasca, FSCB and Father Julián Carrón.

The Holy Father’s address

It gives me great joy to be with you. I remember well my visits to Palazzo Borromeo, next to St. Mary’s Major Basilica, where I personally met Fr. Giussani; I have known his faith, his joy, his strength and the richness of his ideas, the creativity of his faith. A true friendship developed between us; and so, through him I got to know even better the community of Communion and Liberation.

And I am glad that his successor is with us, who continues this great work and inspires so many people, so many lay people, men and women, priests and laity, to collaborate in spreading the Gospel and the growth of the Kingdom of God. And among you I have also had the opportunity to get to know Massimo Camisasca; we have talked about different things; I have gotten to know his creativity in art, his ability to see, to interpret the signs of the times, his great gift as a teacher, a priest. I once even had the honor to ordain some priests in Porto Santa Rufina, and it was nice to know that here a new Priestly Fraternity is arising in the spirit of St. Charles Borromeo, who always remains the great model of a Pastor who is truly stimulated by the love of Christ, who seeks out the small, who loves them and so truly creates faith and builds up the Church.

Now your Fraternity is large, and it is a sign that there are vocations. But there is also a need to be open to finding, accompanying, guiding and helping vocations mature. This is the thing for which I thank Don Camisasca, who has been a great educator. And today, education is always important to the growth of the truth, for us to grow in our status as children of God and brothers of Jesus Christ.

Now, thanks be to God, I have also known for a long time your new Superior General, who has also been in touch somewhat with my theology. So, I am glad that I can be spiritually and intellectually with you and that we can offer fruitful help to each other through our work.

May the Lord bless you all. I thank the Lord for this gift of your Fraternity: may it grow and deepen always, even more in the love of Christ, in the love of men for Christ. The Lord accompanies you.

Pictures of the meeting with Pope Benedict

Continue reading Pope speaks to the Fraternity of Saint Charles Borromeo, Fr Paolo Sottopietra elected new superior