Seven years ago In What appealed to me about this Perhaps While riding on a train The conversion on the train reminded Eight years after Blessed Mother Teresa’s experience on Whether On September 10, 2004, It was an interesting discovery for me; I had never heard of this This same experience is relived Father This article was recently published in The Catholic key<\/i>, the Catholic newspaper of the Diocese of Kansas City-St Joseph, MO.<\/font><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Earlier today I was speaking with my friend, Father Meinrad Miller, a Benedictine monk of Saint Benedict’s Abbey (Atchison, KS) and he told me he wrote this article for the local Catholic diocesan newspaper on his experience with the movement we both closely follow, Communion and Liberation. What Father Meinrad says in his article is … Continue reading How Communion and Liberation moved me: Fr Meinrad Miller reflects<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[32089,1715],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24835"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24835\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nthis fall an event happened here at Benedictine College that would change my
\nlife. My college roommate, B.J. Adamson, had told me over the years about a
\nCatholic movement he had discovered back in Denver: Communion and Liberation<\/a>
\n(CL). B.J. would often tell me about the method of the movement’s dynamic
\nfounder, Monsignor Luigi Giussani (October 15, 1922-February 22, 2005), and of
\na friend of the movement here in the United States Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete.
\nCardinal Stafford, then the Archbishop of Denver, had spoken highly of CL.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n
\nSeptember 2002 we hosted a presentation here at Benedictine College on one of
\nGiussani’s key books, The Religious Sense<\/a><\/i>. The presentation included talks by Monsignor
\nLorenzo Albacete, a physicist,
\n<\/span>theologian and good personal friend of Pope John Paul II; Major David
\nJones, an army officer who had been attracted to the Catholic faith after
\nwatching a show on EWTN with Raymond Arroyo in which Monsignor Albacete was
\ninterviewed about Monsignor Giussani; Dr. Eduardo Echeverria, currently a
\nphilosopher at Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit; and Mike Eppler, the Youth
\nMinister for the Evansville, Indiana Diocese.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nfirst presentation was that everything said that evening deepened my own appreciation
\nof being a Benedictine monk. Giussani’s method affirms that the encounter with
\nChrist is possible to all people<\/span>. Over the coming years we would have further
\nbook presentations here at the college on the writings of Monsignor Giussani.
\nEach time I would grow in my fascination for the message of Christ as relevant
\nand part of life today<\/span>. It was only later that I learned that St. Benedict was
\nthe patron saint of the movement. At one time Monsignor Giussani had written to
\nsome Benedictine monks near Milan, Italy. In part he said: Christ present! The
\nChristian announcement is that God became one of us and is present here, and
\ngathers us together into one body, and through this unity, His presence is made
\nperceivable. This is the heart of the Benedictine message of the earliest
\ntimes. Well, this also defines the entire message of our Movement.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nMonsignor Giussani’s fascination with St. Benedict began as a young seminarian
\nfor the Archdiocese of Milan. The Archbishop during Monsignor Giussani’s
\nseminary training was Blessed Ildephonse Schuster, O.S.B., the saintly
\nBenedictine. The same year that Blessed Ildephonse Schuster died, 1954, would
\nmark a major change in the life of Giussani as well.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nfor vacation in 1954, Giussani noticed from the conversation of the youth on
\nthe train that there was little interest in Christianity. Much of the
\ndiscussion focused on the ideologies of the day, including Marxism. Giussani
\nasked the new Archbishop’s permission to leave his work as a seminary professor
\nand begin to teach high school students.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nme of Blessed Mother Teresa’s own conversion. This past year I gave a seminar
\nto the Missionaries of Charity in Washington, D.C. As I was reading about
\nBlessed Mother Teresa I could not help but notice a similarity with Monsignor
\nGiussani. Mother Teresa was also on a train on September 10, 1946, going for
\nher yearly retreat in the mountains of India. It was on the train that she had
\na mystical experience in which she would experience the great thirst God has
\nfor souls. Not just for water but for men and women to experience the real thirst
\nof God’s love for them.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nthe train in 1946, Monsignor Giussani would have his experience on the train in
\n1954. Years later he would also reveal the depth of this conviction when, in
\nfront of Pope John Paul II and hundreds of thousands of people gathered at St.
\nPeter’s square on Pentecost Sunday, 1998, he would say: Existence expresses
\nitself<\/span>, as ultimate ideal, in begging. The real protagonist of history is the
\nbeggar: Christ who begs for man’s heart, and man’s heart that begs for Christ<\/b>.<\/span><\/p>\n
\none looks at our humanity in terms of Christ thirsting for us in the words of
\nBlessed Mother Teresa, or Christ begging for man’s heart, in the words of
\nMonsignor Giussani, the same dynamic is present. Christ desires us to encounter
\nHim as a present reality, not just a distant myth.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n
\nCardinal Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, would describe his own
\nmeeting with Monsignor Giussani in the early 1970s, and Communion and
\nLiberation:<\/span><\/p>\n
\ngroup (Communion and Liberation) until that moment, and I saw young people full
\nof fervor for the faith, quite far from a sclerotic and weary Catholicism, and
\nwithout the mentality of “protest”-which considers all that was there before
\nthe Council as totally superseded-but a faith that was fresh, profound, open
\nand with the joy of being believers, of having found Jesus Christ and His
\nChurch. There, I understood that there was a new start, there was really a
\nrenewed faith that opens doors to the future.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n
\ntoday by groups in the region in Kansas City, Benedictine College, KU, and
\nWichita that meet weekly to follow the method of Monsignor Luigi Giussani.<\/span><\/p>\n
<\/font><\/p>\n
<\/font><\/p>\n
<\/font><\/p>\n<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n
\nMeinrad Miller, O.S.B. is the Subprior of Saint Benedict’s Abbey, and Chaplain of
\nBenedictine College in Atchison, KS<\/span><\/p>\n
<\/font><\/p>\n