Christmas Greetings from Rome

Dear Family and Friends, Christmas Update 2008

On September 4th 2008, I officially began the novitiate year with the Fraternita di San Carlo –a priestly Fraternity that began in the mid 80’s through the experience of a group of diocesan priests who were living together and following the life of the ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation.

Don Massimo Camisasca is recognized as the founder of the community, and he was one of Msgr. Luigi Giussani’s first students at Berchet High School in the late 50’s, where the CL movement first originated. The Priestly Fraternity exists to bring the experience of the CL movement to the world, and the name Charles Borromeo was chosen because he was a great reformer of the Church following the Council of Trent, and from the close connection to Milan, where he was Bishop and Cardinal. The founder was ordained on his Feast date (Nov. 4), and grew up with a special devotion to this great saint.

The Fraternity has over 100 priests, and over 30 seminarians, mostly from Italy but others from Brazil, Chile, Mexico, USA, Canada, Germany, Spain and other European countries. We are all here to deepen and bear witness to the encounter and friendship we have met through following the CL movement. The Fraternity has houses in over 15 countries, including three in USA, one in Canada, Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Russia, Siberia, information can be found on their website www. sancarlo.org , make sure to click on the British flag for English.

I first met the CL movement while studying at St. FX, when the responsible for Canada was invited to visit the campus and meet with the Catholic students. At the time, I was not interested in getting involved. However, upon attending the John Paul II Institute in Washington, DC where the CL movement was more established I was invited to attend the weekly School of Community (an hour of catechesis reading a text of Giussani, or the Holy Father). It is here where the initial seed planted grew and took form, and a great flourishing of friendship and growth in my understanding of the Church, of Jesus Christ and what he reveals about the nature of man. Through the concreteness of the common life together, the incarnational nature of Christianity became a lived experience. After a couple of years of following the CL movement, I decided to come to Rome and check out the possibility of becoming a missionary priest.

Some of the highlights thus far have been attending the Rimini Meeting in August –I witnessed the grandeur of the CL movement and the cultural impact that the education the movement proposes; Hiking in the Mountains –back in October a group of the first year novitiates went hiking and celebrated Mass on top of the mountain which was great, and very JPII-ish; A Meeting with Fr. Julian Carron, who is the head of the CL movement -he came to our house to meet with the diocesan priests of Rome who follow the life of the movement and met with the seminarians and shared his experience of the recent Synod on the Word of God; Studying at the Pontifical Lateran University –every morning the seminarians get into large vans and make the forty-five minute commute into the city together, upon arrival we pray morning prayer at the Lateran Basilica, I was elected class representative for the philosophy students; Planting Trees –we live in a miniature Garden of Eden, a couple of weeks ago, we planted over 115 trees, 60 olive trees and 55 fruit trees, we are hoping to make a Way of the Cross with a canopy of olive trees. I am also the responsible for gathering the fruit from our trees, I have picked apples, figs, mandarins, lemons, and a couple other types of fruit. My dad teases me and says that I am really secretly in Rome getting an agriculture degree; Meeting with Marcus and Cleuza, the responsibles for the Landless Workers movement in Brazil, a group of over 50, 000 that entered CL in January, they came to the house on Sunday and later we toured the city together, it was a lot of fun and I got to know more about their life; The Common Life, we live a type of monastic culture at the house, lots of prayer and silence, ‘In Silence Sings the Mystery’, I feel as though I have been given a new heart and new eyes by which to view my life and history, this is the grandeur of the proposal of the CL movement, and I am enjoying it very much, it is great to learn to ask Christ to make himself present in all that we live, a continual Advent, a waiting and asking for Christ to make himself present, Maranatha, Come Lord Jesus, as the Spouse waits and cries out for the Bridegroom in the Book of Revelation.

I am very grateful that God has brought you into my life, you are all a light and sign of His presence for me. Have a Blessed Christmas and Holiday Season,
For those who would like to write, and I promise to respond:

Fraternita San Carlo,
C/O John Roderick
761 Via Boccea
Roma, Italia
00166

Christmas and Hope -Julian Carron

Christmas and Hope

Letter to the editor of the Italian Daily La Repubblica,
published December 23, 2008

Dear Sir,

I was struck by the readings that the Ambrosian Liturgy proposes for Monday if the third week of Advent. How must the members of the ancient people of Israel been disconcerted at the words of the prophet Jeremiah: “It will devour your harvests and your bread; it will devour your sons and daughters; it will devour your flocks and herds; it will devour the fortified cities in which you placed your trust” (Jer 5:17). He was telling them that another nation was going to conquer the kingdom in which they had put their trust. “Then, if they say: ‘Why has the Lord our God done these things?’, you will answer: ‘Just as you have abandoned the Lord and served foreign gods in your country, so will you serve foreigners in a country that is not yours’” (Jer 5:19).

It is as if this were said for us; today we see signs that make everyone afraid, it seems that what has supported our history is unable to withstand the test of our times: one day the economy, finance and work, the next day politics and the judiciary, then the family, the beginning of life and its natural end. So, like ancient Israel before a frightening situation, we, too, ask ourselves: “Why is all this happening?” It is because we, too, have been so presumptuous as to think that we can still get along after cutting the roots that supported the foundations of our civilization. In recent centuries, our culture has believed it could build a future for itself while abandoning God. Now we see where this presumption is leading us.

Now, what does the Lord do in the face of all we have brought upon ourselves? The prophet Zechariah tells us, speaking to his people Israel: “Look, I am going to send you my servant Branch” (Zc 3:8.). Notice the name. It is as if before the crisis of a world, our world – the prophets would describe it with an image dear to them, that of a dried-up trunk – a sign of hope were springing up. The enormity of a dried up trunk cannot prevent the sprouting of a humble, fragile branch in which lies the hope for the future.

But there is one drawback: we, too, when we see this branch appearing –like those before that child in Nazareth—can be scandalized and say: “How can something so ephemeral be the answer to our need for liberation?” Can salvation come from something so small as faith in Jesus? It seems impossible that all our hope can rest on belonging to this frail sign. The promise that only from this can everything be rebuilt seems scandalous. Yet men like St. Benedict and St. Francis started from that. They began to live while belonging to that branch that had grown through time and space—the Church, and in this way became protagonists of a people and of history.
Benedict did not face the end of the Roman Empire with anger, pointing the finger at the immorality of his contemporaries, but rather witnessed to the people of his time a fullness of life, a satisfaction and a fullness that became an attraction for many. This became the dawn of a new world, small as it was (almost a nonentity compared with the whole, a whole that was in total collapse), but a real world. That new beginning was so concrete that the work of Benedict and Francis has lasted through the centuries, has transformed Europe, and humanized it.
“He has revealed himself. He personally,” said Benedict XVI, speaking of the God-with-us. Fr. Giussani told us, “That man of two thousand years ago is hidden under the tent, under the appearance of a new humanity,” in a real sign that arouses the inkling of that life that we are all waiting for so as not to succumb to the evil in us and to the signs of the nothingness which is advancing. This is the hope that Christmas announces to us, and that makes us cry out: “Come, Lord Jesus!”

Julián Carrón

Pope meets with Julian Carron

The Holy Father received in audience Fr. Julián Carrón, President of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation.

Copied from the Communion and Liberation International Website.

To view the photo, please click on the following web address:

http://www.clonline.org/FirstPage.htm

In the photograph are those who accompanied Fr. Julián Carrón to the audience: Cleuza Ramos and Marcos Zerbini (founders and leaders of the “Trabalhadores Sem Terra” association of Sa? Paulo, Brazil), Marco Montrasi (responsible for the CL community in Brazil) and Davide Prosperi (responsible for the Movement of Communion and Liberation in Lombardy).

Intervista con don Julian Carron

Il Papa riceve don Julián Carrón. Intervista con il presidente di CL

Benedetto XVI ha ricevuto stamani, in Vaticano, don Julián Carrón, presidente della Fraternità di Comunione e Liberazione. Al termine dell’udienza, il successore di don Giussani si è soffermato con Alessandro Gisotti sul significato di questo incontro con il Santo Padre:

R. – Un anno dopo l’incontro di Piazza San Pietro di tutto il movimento di Comunione e Liberazione con il Papa, abbiamo chiesto di poterlo rivedere per raccontargli quello che è successo e condividere con lui i frutti di quell’incontro.


D. – Sappiamo quanto Joseph Ratzinger prima e Benedetto XVI poi sia legato a CL e alla figura di don Giussani. Basti pensare alla rivista “Communio”... Questo, chiaramente è importante per voi…


R. – Assolutamente! Per la nostra storia è stato molto significativo per il rapporto che don Giussani ha sempre mantenuto con l’allora cardinale Ratzinger. Noi, soprattutto adesso, sentiamo il suo Magistero decisivo per la nostra vita di movimento, per la nostra storia. Siamo sempre molto attenti a quello che il Papa ci dice, per orientarci nella nostra strada.


D. – Sappiamo quanto Comunione e Liberazione sia impegnata nell’evangelizzazione nel mondo della cultura…


R. – Noi siamo attenti a tutto quanto il Papa dice riguardo alla presenza culturale della fede. Per esempio, noi abbiamo apprezzato tantissimo, oltre il grande discorso di Regensburg, il recente discorso fatto a Parigi, agli uomini di cultura, che noi abbiamo distribuito a tutto il movimento. Ci siamo impegnati a presentarlo ovunque. Diffondere questa perfezione della cultura che nasce dall’appartenenza all’esperienza cristiana, che è in grado di generare un’umanità con una razionalità tutta aperta, come il Papa ci testimonia in continuazione.


D. – Il tema dell’ultimo meeting di Rimini era “Protagonisti o nessuno”. Ecco, questo tema è particolarmente significativo in un periodo come l’Avvento, in cui aspettiamo Qualcuno, quel Qualcuno che cambia la vita di ogni uomo…


R. – Assolutamente! Per noi questo è decisivo perché è l’incontro con l’unico protagonista della storia a rendere gli uomini protagonisti, altrimenti siamo sazi, travolti dal torrente delle circostanze, dell’ideologia, dei nostri pensieri, dei nostri sentimenti, e soltanto l’incontro con Lui che - per usare una parola grata a don Giussani - “calamita” tutto l’essere, tutta l’affezione, tutta la ragione, che può veramente far sì che un uomo sia un protagonista della vita, e perciò dia un contributo reale al rinnovamento della società, un contributo per una umanità diversa.

Pope Is "Decisive" for CL

President Notes Commitment to Faith-Culture Dialogue

- The current pontificate is decisive for the life and history of the Catholic lay Communion and Liberation movement, says its president.

Father Julián Carrón said this today after he was received in audience by Benedict XVI.

"We are always very attentive to what the Pope tells us to orient us along our way," Father Carrón said. The priest is the successor of Monsignor Luigi Giussani, the founder of Communion and Liberation.

Father Carrón told Vatican Radio that he wanted to meet with the Holy Father to "tell him all that has happened and to share the fruits of the encounter" the group had with him a year ago.

"For our history, the relationship of Monsignor Giussani with then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has been very significant," Father Carrón added. "We, above all now, consider his magisterium to be decisive for our life as a movement, for our history.

"We are attentive to everything that the Pope says about the cultural presence of the faith."

The president emphasized that the movement "very much appreciated" the "great discourse at Regensburg [and] the recent address that the [Holy Father] gave in Paris to the men of culture," which was distributed to all movement members.

The fraternity, Father Carrón said, has committed itself to "spreading this perfection of culture that is born from belonging to the Christian experience, which is capable of engendering a humanity with a totally open rationality, as the Pope continually gives us witness."

Letter to the CL Movement by Fr. Julian Carron

Dear friends,

Taking part in the Synod of Bishops, which, as you well know, had as its theme
“TheWord of God in the Life and Mission of the Church” gave me a keener grasp of our responsibility in the Church and in the world. First of all, through what emerged during the work of the Synod: that the word of God is an “event”–Jesus Christ–who goes on being present in history through the Church’s life. Therefore the relationship with the living tradition of the Church assimilates us with the novelty witnessed by the Biblical text and makes us share the same experience as those who met Jesus himself. So, as the Pope said at the beginning of the Synod, all our fellow men can discover “the present in the past, the Holy Spirit who speaks to us today in the words of the past.” The Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation will point the way for our faith and as such we are all waiting for it.

Precisely in virtue of the Spirit’s action in his Holy Church, we all need a
greater awareness. I lived the fact of being appointed by Benedict XVI as a Synod Father as a sign of esteem for our Movement, but above all as a call to give our contribution to the Church’s life. This call was then confirmed by my election as a relator: this meant being the spokesman for the Spanish language group and it implied above all greater involvement in the work of the Synod, collaborating directly with the relator general in giving form to the final Propositions. Many came to me during the days spent together, moved by an interest in or by fondness for our experience. All this aroused in me the desire to write to you so as to share the experience I had with you—because it concerns you, too—, since it has made me look back over our history to discover the step that I believe we are asked to take. I identify very concisely three phases in our history:

1st phase: the beginning. The birth of the Movement can be characterized by
the same dynamics that occur whenever the Spirit breaks into history and arouses a charism for the good of the Church. Like every initiative of the Spirit, our charism, too, was welcomed not without misunderstandings and even hostility, because it could not in any way be confined within preconceived schemes. Not all the suffering of those years was, however, due to the natural resistance that the Spirit’s novelty always meets. It was also due to our immaturity, which only Fr. Giussani’s educative force enabled us to correct and overcome. The Church’s patience in our regard was a sign of her motherhood.

2nd phase: the recognition. The end of Paul VI’s pontificate and the pontificate
of John Paul II meant for our Movement authoritative recognition and full acceptance in the life of the Church. The unforgettable expression of this was the meeting in St. Peter’s Square with Benedict XVI, on March 24, 2007. We find an ulterior confirmation in the esteem and interest shown by many at the Synod. So we are called to deepen further our own awareness of our experience.

3rd phase: the charism for the Church and for the world. Today we are called
to become more aware of the aim for which the Spirit gave a charism to Fr. Giussani: to contribute along with all the baptized to the building up and renewal of the Church for the good of the world. Following His usual method, God gives grace to one person so that through him it may reach everyone.We shall be unfaithful to the nature of our charism if the gift we have received is not shared with everyone, inside and outside the Church. So each one of us must find out in his own circumstances how best he can contribute to the good of the Church. There are many ambits in which many of us are making Christ present with astonishing freedom and boldness. This presence of ours in real places where man’s life goes on must not fall short. At the same time, though, we are asked at times to collaborate inside the Church, too. Many of you have been giving this contribution for some time—as catechists in the parish, by charity work and other forms of collaboration— and we must be found more and more available where our presence is asked for and welcomed. This contribution cannot but be in accordance with the nature of our charism, which finds its complete expression in witness.

I am convinced that this step that the Spirit is asking of us will bring us closer
and closer to the heart of the mystery of Christ, in such a way as to be able to witness anywhere at all, even through our frailty.

Together in the adventure,
Fr. Julián Carrón

Letter from Fr. Carron to CL Movement

FRATERNITÀ DI COMUNIONE E LIBERAZIONE

Milan, January 28, 2008

Dear friends,

On Sunday, January 20, in a spontaneous gesture which rose up, as it were,
from the depths of our hearts, many of us went to Saint Peter’s Square as a sign of communion with the Bishop of Rome, who, because of well-known events, declined to participate in the inauguration of the new academic year at the Sapienza University to which he had been invited. No doubt this gesture of yours was the fruit of being educated by the Movement to respond to reality’s provocations.

We must thank God for the readiness of your response, because it is the sign
of our having been penetrated by “that form of teaching to which we have been
committed” (J. Ratzinger). Indeed there is no other explanation for this spontaneous mobilization than the awareness of the value of the figure of the Pope for our lives. In him the risen Lord communicates His victory in the time and space of human history. Without the authoritative testimony of Peter’s Successor we would be lost like so many of our contemporaries. Last year’s March 24 audience was the imposing proof of this and it will forever mark our history. To follow the Pope thus means following the repercussions of His presence. And it demands that we engage reason and freedom.


We were able to touch this with our own hands when the speech that Benedict
XVI was to have delivered at the university was made public. In him that “task to safeguard sensibility to the truth” shines forth. It is his unshakeable testimony which constitutes for us the hope of not succumbing to the danger of the Western world against which he warned, the danger of giving up on “the question of the truth,” for we know well that “if reason...becomes deaf to the great message that comes to it from Christian faith and wisdom, then it withers like a tree whose roots can no longer reach the waters that give it life,” and it surrenders.


This great witness of the Holy Father constitutes an exceptional appeal to each
of us to use reason this way. He has offered it to us just as we begin the new School of Community on Msgr. Giussani’s book, Is it Possible to Live this Way?, a book whose first pages deal with faith as a “method of knowledge.” We are the first to sense the need for an education that allows us to know reality in-depth, that allows us to recognize the urgency of beginning a journey of knowledge that makes the Mystery familiar to us. Three years after his death, we ask Fr. Giussani to continue to accompany us on the path that
he marked out for us.


By following the proposal made to us by the School of Community the gaze
which we admire in the Pope, one that is completely open upon reality, can become ours more and more. Only by traveling down the same path can we truly know, by means of witness, the reality of which the Christian faith speaks.
This passion for the reasonableness of the faith is so familiar to us because Fr.
Giussani never cheated us; he encouraged us to go towards truth so that our adhesion to the faith dignified for our nature as men.

United more than ever in this adventure,

Fr. Julián Carrón

Audience with His Holiness Benedict XVI on the occasion of the XXV Anniversary of the Pontifical Recognition of the Fraternity of Communion and Libera

Saturday, March 24, 2007. St. Peter's Square, Rome.

Dear brothers and sisters,

It is a great pleasure for me to welcome you here today, in St Peter's Square on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the pontifical recognition of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation. [Perhaps we expected the sun, but even water is a sign of grace and the gift of the Holy Spirit.] I address my cordial greetings to each one of you, particularly to the Prelates, the priests and the leaders here present. In a special way I greet Father Julián Carrón, President of your Fraternity, and I thank him for the beautiful and profound words addressed to me on behalf of all of you.

My first thought goes [ obviously] to your founder Monsignor Luigi Giussani, to whom so many memories bind me, and who had become a true friend to me. Our last meeting, as Msgr. Carrón mentioned, took place in Milan Cathedral two years ago, when our beloved Pope John Paul II sent me to preside at his solemn funeral. Through him the Holy Spirit aroused in the Church a movement, yours, that would witness the beauty of being Christians in an era in which the opinion was spreading that Christianity was something tiresome and oppressive to live. Father Giussani at that time set himself to reawaken in the youth the love for Christ “the Way, the Truth and the Life,” repeating that only He is the road toward the fulfillment of the deepest desires of man's heart, and that Christ saves us not despite our humanity, but through it. As I recalled in the homily at his funeral, this courageous priest, who grew up in a home poor in bread but rich in music, as he himself liked to say, from the very beginning was touched, or rather wounded, by the desire for beauty, and not any kind of beauty. He was searching for Beauty itself, the infinite Beauty that he found in Christ. How can we not recall Father Giussani's many meetings and contacts with my venerated predecessor John Paul II? On an anniversary dear to you, the Pope once again confirmed that the original pedagogical innovation of Communion and Liberation lies in re-proposing in a fascinating way, in tune with contemporary culture, the Christian event, perceived as the source of new values and capable of orienting all of existence.

The event that changed the life of the Founder also “wounded” the lives of a great many of his spiritual children, and gave rise to the many religious and ecclesial experiences that form the history of your vast and articulated spiritual family. Communion and Liberation is a communitarian experience of faith, born in the Church not from a will to organize of the Hierarchy, but originating from a renewed encounter with Christ and thus, we can say, from an impulse that derives ultimately from the Holy Spirit. It still offers itself today as an opportunity to live the Christian faith in a profound and up-to-date way, on one hand with a total fidelity and communion with the Successor of Peter and with the Pastors who ensure the government of the Church, and on the other hand with a spontaneity and a freedom that permit new and prophetic apostolic and missionary endeavors.

Dear friends, your movement thus inserts itself in that vast flourishing of associations, movements and new ecclesial realities providentially aroused in the Church by the Holy Spirit after the Second Vatican Council. Each gift of the Spirit finds itself in its origin and necessarily at the service of the building up of the Body of Christ, offering a witness of the immense charity of God for the life of each man. The reality of the ecclesial Movements is therefore a sign of the fecundity of the Spirit of the Lord, so that the victory of the risen Christ be manifested in the world, and the missionary mandate entrusted to the whole Church be carried out. In the message to the World Congress of Ecclesial Movements, May 27, 1998, the Servant of God John Paul II repeated that in the Church there is no contrast or opposition between the institutional dimension and the charismatic dimension, of which the Movements are a meaningful expression, because both are co-essential to the divine constitution of the People of God. In the Church even the essential institutions are charismatic, and, on the other hand, the charisms, in one way or another, have to institutionalize themselves in order to have cohesion and continuity. Thus both dimensions, originated by the same Holy Spirit for the same Body of Christ contribute to make present the Mystery and the salvific work of Christ in the world. This explains the attention with which the Pope and the Pastors look at the wealth of the charismatic gifts in the present day. In this regard, during a recent meeting with the clergy and parish priests of Rome, recalling St. Paul's invitation in the First Letter to the Thessalonians not to extinguish the charisms, I said that if the Lord gives us new gifts we ought to be grateful, even if at times they are awkward. At the same time, since the Church is one, if the movements are really gifts of the Holy Spirit, they must naturally insert themselves into the community of the Church and serve it, so that in patient dialogue with the Pastors they can constitute constructive elements for the Church of today and tomorrow.

Dear brothers and sisters, on another very meaningful occasion for you, the late John Paul II entrusted you with this mandate, "Go out into the whole world to bring the truth, the beauty and the peace that are met in the encounter with Christ the redeemer." Father Giussani made those words the program of the whole Movement, and for Communion and Liberation it was the start of a missionary period that took you to 80 countries. Today I invite you to continue on this path with a deep, personalized faith, solidly rooted in the living Body of Christ, the Church which guarantees Jesus' presence with us in this moment. Let us conclude this meeting by directing our thought to Our Lady, with the recitation of the Angelus. Father Giussani nurtured a great devotion to her, nourished by the invocation Veni Sancte Spiritus, Veni per Mariam, and by the recitation of Dante Alighieri's Hymn to the Virgin, that you repeated earlier this morning. May the Holy Virgin accompany you and help you to generously pronounce your “yes” to the will of God in every circumstance. You can count, dear friends, on my constant remembrance in prayer, while with affection I bless all of you here present and your entire spiritual family.

Greeting to Holy Father Benedict XVI by Fr. Julián Carrón

President of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation

Your Holiness:

The feeling that invades each of us is one of immense joy, and we are so happy to be able to meet You and to share this moment with You. Permit me to thank You with all my heart on behalf of my friends for this priceless gift.

The last time that we met You, on the occasion of the funeral of Fr. Giussani, is still very alive in our memory. We will never be able to forget how moving was Your willingness to come to celebrate and Your words which were so full of affection and profound comprehension of him. Since then, often we have found ourselves speaking of Fr. Giussani with the same words you used to described his personality to us that day: a man wounded by beauty, who led people not to himself, but to Christ, and thus conquered hearts!

From him, from his tireless witness, we learned what You have never tired of repeating to everyone since the day you assumed the Papal Throne: the beauty of Christianity. We are fascinated by the beauty of Christ made persuasive by the contagious intensity of Fr. Giussani, to the point of repeating the words of Jacopone da Todi: “Christ in His beauty draws me to Him.” We have discovered this beauty of Christianity without abandoning anything that is authentically human. Instead, for us, living the faith coincides with the exaltation of what is human. Fr. Giussani’s entire educational endeavor aimed to show the correspondence between Christ and all authentic human needs. Fr. Giussani was convinced that only a proposal addressed to reason and freedom, and verified in experience, was capable of interesting man, because it is the only one able to making him perceive its truth, that is, its human usefulness. In this way he showed us how it is possible to live the faith as men, in full use of reason, freedom and affection. We want to follow in his footsteps.

When faced with so much grace it is impossible not to tremble at our own disproportion. We have therefore often revisited, particularly in preparing for the meeting with You, the words Fr. Giussani spoke to us in 1984 in honor of the thirtieth anniversary of the birth of the Movement:

“As we mature, we are a spectacle to ourselves and, God willing, to others. A spectacle, that is, of limits and betrayals, and therefore of humiliation, but at the same time of an inexhaustible surety in the grace that has been given to us and renewed every morning. This is the source of the naïve boldness that characterizes us, through which every day of our lives is conceived as an offering to God, so that the Church may exist within our bodies and souls, through the materiality of our existence.”

Aware of our nothingness, we beg each day for the ability to say “yes” to the grace that is given us in order to give witness without pretence, but also without fear, to our fellow men. In this moment of confusion that the world is living, we are certain that man’s heart, though wounded, remains capable of recognizing truth and beauty, if he finds them along life’s path. We desire to live the new event that has happened to us in all the situations and environments where our existence unfolds, with confidence in being able to give witness in our smallness to all the beauty that has invaded our life, so that it may be encountered.

God has always used the same method for becoming a companion to every man, one which we hope will be carried out in us: God gives grace to one person so that through him it may reach everyone. Just as God gave grace to Fr. Giussani so that it could reach us, so it has been given to us in order to reach others. And this makes possible that encounter which results in Christian faith, as Your Holiness reminded us in Your encyclical Deus caritas est: “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction” (1).

Throughout these years we have sought to take seriously the invitation to be missionaries which the Servant of God John Paul II made to us on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the Movement: “Go into the whole world and bring the truth, the beauty and the peace that are found in Christ the Redeemer” (September 29, 1984). The spread of the charism and the growth of communities of the Movement throughout the whole world are signs of the mercy of God who made our endeavor bear fruit. In my travels all over the world I have seen that Christianity lived in its essential elements can find so much acceptance in the heart of man, beyond any culture or religion.

We have the same desire that always moved Fr. Giussani’s heart: that in all and for all the persuasive strength of the Movement may be an “instrument for the mission of the one People of God” (Witness of Fr. Luigi Giussani during the meeting of the Holy Father John Paul II with ecclesial movements and new communities. St. Peter’s Square, Rome, May 30 1998, 2); in other words, that the fascination of the charism we have encountered may serve the good of the Holy Church throughout the whole world and present in every particular Church.

That is why we have asked to meet with You, Your Holiness. As You well know, the history of our Movement has always been marked by this close relationship with the Apostolic See. From the very beginning Fr. Giussani sought to live the grace he received in full communion with the successor of Peter, the only one capable of assuring the authenticity of any endeavor: from Paul VI to John Paul II. We are witnesses to the immense gratitude of Fr. Giussani’s when John Paul II recognized the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation. And we are fully aware of how he expressed his devotion in front of everyone by kneeling at the feet of the Pope on May 30, 1998.

With the same devotion we come to You today, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Pontifical recognition of the Fraternity and two years after the death of Fr. Giussani, well aware of the value of Peter’s successor for our faith. Without his testimony, assured by the power of the Spirit, Christianity would decay into one of the many ideological variants that dominate the world.

We are here, Holy Father, completely poised to welcome your indications, and even corrections, for the journey we have ahead of us, convinced that, in following them, we will make the gift of the charism that fascinated us useful to the whole Church and the world. We will treasure your words, and I am sure that I speak on behalf of each of my friends, when I say that we will commit ourselves to living them with all of our strength, certain of Fr. Giussani’s impassioned companionship to our lives.

Julián Carrón