A Grace that Changed My Life
Corrado Sanguineti * - A Grace That Changed My Life
On the twentieth anniversary of the death of Don Luigi Giussani, I was asked to share what this great priest, an educator of generations of young people and adults, meant to my life.
I did not have the grace of knowing Don Giussani personally. I only met him briefly a few times and heard him speak on many occasions. Since my high school years in Gioventù Studentesca (Student Youth), I have been nourished by his texts in the School of Community and in my personal meditation.
He became a friendly presence through witnesses—both living ones, who transmitted the impact of their encounters with him, and written and oral ones in the texts I’ve read and the words I’ve heard that have marked my life’s path. In my priestly life, I came into contact with people and communities who did not share the experience of Communion and Liberation (CL), and with fellow priests who drew inspiration from other sources. This is even more true now that I am a bishop. In these last nine years, I have formed countless relationships and precious friendships with young people and families, the vast majority of whom do not belong to the movement.
Yet, the charism the Spirit gave to Fr. Giussani, which generated a history, is a gift that accompanies me in my ministry and the responsibilities the Church entrusts to me. Don Giussani is truly a grace that touches and regenerates the lives of many, even through my own priesthood and episcopate. I would not live out my service this way had I not encountered him, even indirectly. From him, and from the grace I witness today, I learned that Christianity is an event—a newness of life and humanity that happens and amazes, moves, and leads us to gratefully and joyfully recognize Christ as a “present presence.” He “is, if he changes”—that is, he is to the extent that he changes the hearts and faces of those who live by him, love him, and follow him.
The breadth and depth with which Don Giussani lived and communicated the Christian faith—embodied with his intense, passionate humanity and his reason-filled, affectionate faith in the living Christ—made me, first of all, open to reality, eager and curious to learn, understand, and see. I can learn from everyone, because in every person there is a grain of truth and goodness, a suggestion for my human journey, and sometimes a provocation or a question for my faith that prevents me from reducing it to an ideology or something already known.
This positive openness means entering each day available to whatever happens, to the encounters I will have, and to the events I will be given, because the path to truth is found in intensely living reality. It is in reality that the Lord makes himself known, and I can learn even from those who are smaller than me, from the last to arrive, from those who knock on my door. I was so impressed to see how Fr. Giussani really learned from everyone. When he preached retreats, he always had letters alongside his Bible. He would read passages from them, amazed at what he saw happening in the lives of his people—the men and women he met or with whom he had a relationship.
A second trait Fr. Giussani taught me is the ability to value every authentic Christian experience. From him I learned: to love the history of the Church, so fascinating and rich in humanity, despite all the limitations, sins, and shadows that have marked it and continue to mark it; to discover the gift of the saints as friends to look up to; and above all, to have a cordial openness to every authentic witness of faith and to all the human presences of witnesses, even simple and hidden ones, whom I have met and continue to meet. I have therefore always felt a deep kinship with those who live the Christian life with passion and beauty, including experiences, communities, and movements generated by other charisms, which show a powerful fruitfulness in the lives of individuals and families. In this sense, I have always felt that Fr. Giussani’s charism was authentically Catholic—not at all sectarian, but entirely directed toward building up the Church as new life in the experience of men and women chosen by God.
In particular, my journey since my years in GS has been marked by the figure and witness of the Pope of my youth: St. John Paul II. In this regard, too, it was Fr. Giussani who taught me how to truly follow and identify with the Pope. This began with the extraordinary humanity and luminous faith of Karol Wojtyła, as Giussani immediately recognized a total harmony between the movement's charism and the words and person of John Paul II. So much so that after the first private audience the Pope granted to Fr. Giussani a few months after his election, Giussani wrote a letter to the whole movement inviting us to “follow Christ in this great man.”
Furthermore, Fr. Giussani always taught me to grasp the objective value of authority in the Church, represented by the Pope and the bishops in communion with him. Consequently, as a priest, it was easy for me to live in intelligent and humble obedience to my bishops and to look to the successors of John Paul II—first Benedict XVI and now Francis—learning from their witness and teaching, regardless of the different sensibilities with which I might feel more or less in tune.
A third and final trait so powerfully present in Fr. Giussani’s life and educational proposal, which accompanies me as a persistent reminder in my daily life, is the appreciation of the moment—the recognition that no moment is trivial. It is within the materiality of our circumstances, by embracing what we are asked to live, that we adhere to the Mystery of God and participate in the realization of his plan.
Christ is the substance and meaning of every moment and circumstance, whether joyful or difficult. If I live recognizing this and asking Him to manifest Himself, a new intensity enters my experience of everything. Nothing is irrelevant, nothing is to be thrown away; every moment is a step on the path toward eternity, a positive factor for my holiness and for the building up of the Church in the world.
When I try to live this way daily, with this awareness, embracing the reality I am given and responding with freedom and intelligence to what is asked of me by circumstances and my vocation, I experience a new intensity, a breath of fresh air. What changes are not the circumstances, but the way one lives through them, and everything becomes great, as it does for a child for whom whatever he does becomes important if he lives it under the gaze of his mother or father.
These are just brief hints of what Don Giussani continues to communicate to me and of the grace that his witness continues to be for the whole Church and for the lives of so many people and families. The heart of his witness, as it echoes in me, seems to be summed up in these words of his: "As we mature, we are a spectacle to ourselves and, God willing, to others as well. A spectacle, that is, of limitation and betrayal, and therefore of humiliation, and at the same time of inexhaustible security in the Grace that is given to us and renewed every morning. From this comes the naive boldness that characterizes us, whereby 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."
* Corrado Sanguineti is an Italian Catholic bishop, born in Milan and has served as the Bishop of Pavia since November 16, 2015.
The author has not revised the notes and its translation.