“Peace to Men, Whom He Loves” - Advent
Pierluigi Banna - Peace to Men, Whom He Loves We ask the Holy Spirit to give us that love for ourselves—for the truth of who we are, exactly as we are—which alone brings peace to our lives. We are not seeking the peace of the world, but the peace that only He who made us can give. He made us just as we are, without our consent, and He continues to make us at this very moment, waiting for us to recognize Him. May the Spirit grant us this passion for ourselves, which is the only source of peace in our lives.
[Song: Descend, Holy Spirit]
https://youtu.be/_VOalEbuoM8?si=_o3_e_l1GQY0t_Mf
1. “With their mouths they bless, but in their hearts they curse” (Ps 62:5)
I have heard Cardinal Pizzaballa say on several occasions that the word "peace" is truly provocative. Why? Because when people talk about peace, they usually have their own agenda in mind. In the name of this agenda, everyone is ready to wage war. They justify war—the elimination of the other—in the name of peace.
I find the verse from the Psalm descriptively accurate: “With their mouths they bless [they speak of peace], but in their hearts they curse.” That is, they are ready to eliminate the other, or a part of the other, to realize their own "peace project." This applies not only to the tragic wars dotting the globe but also to our everyday relationships, in the family and at work, where we constantly encounter conflict. We all have our reasons when dealing with someone else, but in the name of these reasons, we tear the other apart or, at least, try to edit them out of reality.
I don’t think anyone here wakes up in the morning thinking, “Today I’m going to wage war on that person; today I want a fight.” Each of us wakes up wanting to bring about our own justice. And, in fact, war is precisely the result of an idea of justice elevated to idolatry—at least, that is what Don Giussani taught us to call it in the conclusion of The Religious Sense. An idol is something right and true that we identify as all-encompassing. We could say: it is that object which, once obtained, will supposedly give us peace. But what is the problem? When two different ideas clash and “both are all-encompassing, they can only generate a total clash.”
But the time of ideologies is over. Today we are shrewd enough to no longer call our idols "ideologies," but rather “balanced and appropriate judgments,” or “true and just opinions.” In the name of these judgments, however, we are ready to go to war.
To describe what usually happens: we read two or three newspaper articles—naturally from our own echo chamber—or we read the opinion of someone we trust, and we think that is enough to form a judgment. But sooner or later, we clash with someone else who has done the exact same thing: they too have read, they know (or think they know). Two interpretations that only generate conflict between people who "think they know."
Ultimately, these opinions are nothing more than interpretations, however elaborate. Often, they are just immediate reactions that we elevate into a system, like an idol. With this perfect system, we try to harness the complexity and depth of Reality. A system so perfect that it eliminates anyone who does not think like us. For those of us in search of perfect systems, T.S. Eliot’s tombstone expression from Choruses from “The Rock” remains true: “They constantly try to escape / From the darkness outside and within / By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.”
This is the serpent's ploy in the wonderful story of the second chapter of Genesis. The serpent wants man to eat from the tree of judgment—the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. What’s wrong with that? The problem is that judgment cannot be "eaten." It cannot be conquered like fruit from a tree, something to be bought and repeated. We sometimes think: just one click, read an article, write a post, form an opinion, and you “acquire” the truth.
We, too, are tempted by the serpent to “eat” judgment. We want to find that one magic word that resolves everything, that explains everything, that makes our truth triumph and silences everyone else. But this never leads to truth or peace. On the contrary, it leads to war.
What does our idea of judgment eliminate? It eliminates our freedom. The truth that brings peace to life will never come by sparing us the arduous and patient journey of human freedom in encountering other human beings. This is why God prevented Adam and Eve from eating from that tree: not because He did not want them to judge, but because that is not how one judges! To judge, you need a journey of freedom, of self-knowledge, of all the paradise God has given you, of the other, of yourself with the other in that paradise, and of how God wants to become our friend. Only on a certain day would Adam and Eve discover the beauty of that judgment, of that tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Instead, like us, they lacked the patience of freedom and allowed themselves to be deceived. They fixated on one particular thing, that fruit. Salvation was supposed to come from it, and so war broke out: war with God, war between themselves, war between their children and their children's children... right down to us. It all began by giving in to this temptation: knowledge of the truth as an idol to be seized, as a winning interpretation that “silences” the other. A supposed judgment that resolves everything leads to only one thing: war between us.
2. “The truth sprouts from the earth” (cf. Ps 85:12)
Despite our temptation to conquer, steal, and “eat” the judgment of good and evil—and then wage war on others—God has not deviated from His method: the patient path of freedom. A path that favors the journey of human freedom in every way.
The other day, I was chatting with a friend who said: “In recent months, I have met some people who, despite my many mistakes, have loved me dearly.” All of us, if we pay attention, have found such people on our journey. “People who made me discover the truth about myself, who made me look at myself in a different way,” he said. “But when I wake up in the morning, it’s easier to start from my past mistakes, from negative judgments about myself, rather than from the gaze of these people.”
I realized how right he was. How much good has happened in our lives! How many gifts we have been given! Why isn't it automatic, habitual, to start from there every morning? Why do we start every time from our wounds, from what is wrong, from those who treated us badly? We start from that fruit we cannot grasp, from that judgment we still lack, and not from the fabric of goodness that has enveloped our lives. Why do we still fall into the temptation of waiting for the magical solution to our problems?
When he asked me this, it hit me. I said, “Look, we make this effort—and I make it too—because God wants it that way.”
God wants it that way? Yes, because He, like a great lover, never wants you to love Him automatically, out of habit. He always wants you to be conscious, fresh in your awareness of His love. Evil, vice, Satan—let’s use that name, too—wants us to be automatic and, therefore, makes us repeat the same mistakes over and over again. The devil is sadly repetitive; only God is faithfully creative. God does not tolerate our love for Him being automatic. He does not accept us following Him out of habit. For this reason, He would rather tolerate us abandoning Him, betraying Him, or stealing the fruit, than accept a mechanical love. He tolerates our evil and our forgetfulness, waiting for the beautiful fruit: a freedom that finally realizes and, full of consciousness, meets Him with all its heart, with all its soul, with all its strength.
This is the challenge for us every morning: do not make our relationship with God habitual, repetitive, automatic.
What is "the morning"? Even this morning: doing that work—whether long or quick—of recovering awareness. With all our freedom, we realize what we need to live, and Who truly loved us.
There is a beautiful passage by Giussani on the sheet provided, where he speaks of the morning. I recommend you go back and reread the whole thing; it’s ten spectacular pages. He says: “May our days, from the very beginning, be touched by this perspective... this is the opening that we must expand within the pettiness that tries to box us in every morning. In short, every morning there is this appointment. But morning is not just a time of day... morning is when you regain awareness of living. This appointment is for every morning.” It is that moment when we finally emerge from the slime of habit, of pettiness, and realize who we really are.
[Silence]
Am I mistaken, or would we give our lives to avoid this morning struggle? And yet, the Lord gives His life so that there may be a woman who—as we heard in the song—places herself in His hands with all her consciousness.
This is what we celebrate every year in the mystery of Christmas: God did not fail in His method. He allowed all sin, all betrayal in a history of forgetfulness—even of the people with whom He made the covenant—until He found a conscience as pure as Mary's. She was a woman who, unlike Eve, did not treat Him as a thing, a machine that dispensed judgment. She treated Him as a father, as a spouse, as a son. In her, in the fullness of her conscience, God’s promise to the prophet Isaiah was fulfilled: “As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.”
This is God's joy: to see a conscience like Mary's light up in man, opening the door of his life wide and letting Him in. It may take five minutes after getting out of bed, it may take thirty years—it does not matter to Him.
I was struck by a passage from Augustine's De Magistro. He states that we are always quick to call someone a "great teacher" because we leave their class saying, “What a great teacher!” and we repeat his words. But parroting the teacher’s words is useless: you forget them, and they are of no use in life. Instead, Augustine says the true teacher is the one who leaves you plenty of time to see that what he told you is true for your life. When you discover it to be true within yourself, you carry it with you forever. I quote:
“Then [after they have heard the true teacher] the so-called disciples consider within themselves whether true things have been said, looking at the inner truth, as far as possible to their strength. It is then that they learn, discovering in their inner selves that the things said are true.”
God, as the Great Teacher, leaves us plenty of time to discover the truth of what He has given us. He gives us all the time we need to compare, recognize, and respond. This is His boundless charity toward us. God does not allow Himself to be reduced to a good teacher whose formulas we repeat immediately without changing from within. He allows Himself to be forgotten, abandoned, and betrayed, in order to awaken a conscience like that of Mary, who says: “Here I am, I am yours; if I do what you tell me, I will be happy.”
This is the charity that cheers for the truth. It is God's charity that does not hesitate to win our immediate consent but leaves plenty of time for freedom to be free. It is from the awareness of this charity, by immersing ourselves in it, that peace in the world can be born.
3. “Justice will look down from heaven” (Ps 85:12)
At Christmas, we contemplate God's announcement that He submits Himself to human freedom, becoming a factor in human experience. We often disconnect from this amazing evidence. Even if we say, “How wonderful that God treats us this way!”, this liberating encounter does not become a way of looking at ourselves—the origin of all our judgments.
Or rather, as good Christians, we sometimes deduce opinions, views, and judgments from what we have experienced—from that right thing that happened to us with God. But we do not let that liberating encounter judge us, in the sense that it shapes, takes hold of, and gives form to our lives. That is, even with Christ, we can do what Adam and Eve did with the fruit: we reduce Him to an ideology. And in fact, as our own fantastic history of Christianity testifies, in the name of Christ we also clash among ourselves.
For this reason, I invite you to look at Lorenzo Lotto's masterpiece in the Diocesan Museum, depicting Mary and the incredulous midwife bathing the baby Jesus. The midwife has a withered hand and will be healed by Jesus. At that moment, she is not looking at her withered hand—which could be the thing she asks Jesus to heal. Paradoxically, she is not looking at Jesus either, because she has not yet understood who this child is. She is looking at the point that reveals Jesus most clearly in her life: the beautiful face of Mary.
Sometimes our judgment does not come from immersing our face in our idea of Jesus, but in that living face, in that moment of our history, in that experience in which Jesus, today, comes to take us, to conquer us. Thus, the experience described by John Paul II when speaking of Veronica can happen: “Your name was born from what you were gazing at.”
Judgment does not become ideology when it arises not from an interpretation or a reaction—even in the name of Christ—but from an experience. Judgment is not an intelligent strategy to affirm Christian thought. Judgment is not ideology when, faced with the difficulties of life (the withered hand), you focus on an experience rather than on your analysis. Judgment is submitting reason to experience. What experience? That unique experience of Correspondence that made you reborn and set you free. A present, living experience that loves you.
So in this third point, let’s try to gather the characteristics of a judgment that arises from a comparison with experience, from contemplation of the living truth that encounters our life.
a. The war for the truth of oneself
Let us think of another scene where a man gazed into the eyes of God who visited him. After a night of work that went terribly—as happens to everyone—Jesus meets Peter and tells him: “Cast your nets on the other side.” The catch is abundant. At that moment, Jesus looks at Peter. And what is Peter’s judgment? “Lord, depart from me, for I am a sinful man.”
It is shocking. The first judgment we make about ourselves, when we encounter a unique experience of Correspondence, is realizing that we are fragile. We are unfaithful, we are miserable. But the greatest thing is that we are not ashamed to confess it. Finally, someone to whom I can say, “I am a sinner,” without having to defend myself.
This is the judgment Don Giussani gave regarding the war in Iraq in 2003, during the clash between Bush and Saddam Hussein. A friend found this article Giussani wrote in La Repubblica. He begins by saying:
"It is impossible for us to make a judgment based on a psychological or natural analysis... A judgment is possible if we admit that just as it is certain that the blame lies on one side and the other... it is equally clear that the origin of it lies in neither one nor the other. Original sin, and therefore the possibility of despotism, is a poison that has its habitat, its genesis, in a Mystery."
This is what a man with his eyes fixed on Christ can say. We are all sinners. It is not that he is better than me or I am better than him; we are all capable of evil. But that does not make me keep quiet; no, I am not afraid to admit it. There is an evil that is not only "the other" and not only "me," but it is an evil that hurts us both. And we cannot put an end to this evil with our own strength. This is the realism of La Nuova Auschwitz, which we will now sing.
[Song: The New Auschwitz]
https://youtu.be/FYrSML2Nm4M?si=Flu-WpN0VRdD2R9_
What realism in crying out one's sense of injustice while simultaneously displaying tenderness toward oneself, recognizing that I, too, can do the evil I suffer. But who can have this “tender, attentive, and passionate observation of oneself”? Only those who, like Peter—like Joseph—discover that they are loved. Therefore, he does not have the problem of claiming the injustice he has suffered, or accusing Mary (“how can you accuse her?”), or worrying about the judgment of the world. He has only one problem: to place his smallness before Him.
This is the first judgment to be conquered every morning: recognizing that the first battle is not with others, but with ourselves, because we do not look at ourselves with “this tender, attentive, and passionate observation.” We must recognize that this weakness, this fragility, is not something to hide or fix, but it is our strength.
As a friend wrote: "The first and even greater conflict in my life today is with myself. I am definitely the person who angers me the most... The first war is within me." But your self, as it is, is not something to fight. It is not a problem to be solved: it is loved, precisely in its sinfulness. And this allows us a final judgment on ourselves: we are structurally beggars. We are needy. And this is our strength.
A friend gave me a book by Ernest Hello. I confess I haven't read it, but she gave me a quote that is worth the whole book: "Ego, if we think about it, gives rise to remarkable reflections... What is the meaning of the word ego, I? Ego is a Latin word, contracted... from the verb egere, to need. To say 'I' is, despite oneself, to say 'I need'."
This is the first battle: to recognize that The I is structurally begging.
I am impressed by how a twelve-year-old boy, Marco Gallo, recognized this. We read this passage during the pilgrimage made for him every year in Montallegro. At twelve years old, he writes: "All these questions will remain unanswered until my earthly life is over... after 12 years of no progress on this subject, I feel the need to know, I want an answer to my ‘why’... I want an answer." That a young man should look at himself in this way is the mature fruit of the education we received from Fr. Giussani, who fought every battle possible to help us discover the decisiveness and value of this I. So powerless. So capable of evil. And yet, structurally needy—the only one who can recognize his Lord.
Giussani identified the victory of Christianity here: in a man who was not ashamed of his need. Thus he echoed Kierkegaard: “Christianity has been abolished because personality has been pushed back everywhere... It seems that people fear that the ego must be a kind of tyranny.” This is how you do away with Christianity: by doing away with the ego.
Instead, the most beautiful fruit of Christianity is a man like St. Paul, who says: "If I must boast of something, do you know what I boast of? My sins." Because the more I talk about the neediness of my I, the more I give glory to the superabundance of grace. Who says such a thing today? Very few. And in fact, we are at war.
The origin of war comes from people who have never made peace with this aspect of themselves—that you will always be a beggar. As long as you are angry about this fact, you will always be at war with yourself and with others, trying to "improve" yourself and change the world.
b. The other is like me
When a man discovers he is needy, he realizes something unheard of: even the other who has hurt you is like you—a beggar. But you do not notice the other if you have not noticed your own poverty.
I was struck by Ruth Shammah's latest play, Who Is Like Me. The protagonists are teenagers in a psychiatric ward. At one point, they ask the audience questions: “Who, like me, has cried at least once this week?” “Who, like me, has hated someone?” I saw people in the audience crying because they recognized that those characters were not "crazy"—even in them, there is a piece of you. You are like them.
It is impressive when, compared to those we thought were enemies, we realize that we are faced with people in need, beggars, like us. You realize that the other person has within them the truest thing that is also within you. It can hurt you, of course; but more than their hurt, they are like you. They desire the good.
Discovering that the other person is as poor as you would save us a lot of time. We often expect justice from the other person's change, or their elimination. But any change or elimination will never satisfy that need. As Carrón acutely said: “It is useless to insist on blaming the other for not being able to satisfy me. He cannot be infinite in order to fill me!”
Changing the other's limit will not compensate for the harm received. But then, where does this judgment find peace?
The other's limitation is the most objective sign God gives us that there will never be ultimate justice in this world. Our need for justice is so infinite that it will never be fulfilled by the other or by ourselves. Ultimately, the limitations of others are the greatest sign of charity that God gives to your reason thirsting for justice.
c. I am You who make me
The more you see yourself as a beggar, and the more you recognize others as yourself, the more you notice the difference of a Presence among others. Judgment is recognizing the difference of this Presence. It is not about developing strategies to convince the other. Judgment means facing the difficulty the other poses and recognizing the experience that continues to generate you—that keeps you standing.
It is a Presence that manages to speak to the irreducible need that is you. The more we are beaten and afflicted, the more the difference of a Presence emerges—the evidence of a God who makes Himself present as justice in this world and imposes Himself through His attractiveness.
This is what Battiato expresses in his wonderful song, E ti vengo a cercare (And I come looking for you).
[Song: E ti vengo a cercare]
https://youtu.be/8TyRHj4Ag34?si=vZpVb4TLsM4F7g3_
This song expresses a judgment that arises from immersing our eyes in what we beg for most. I dare say these were the words Joseph could have said on that night of struggle described by St. Matthew. Joseph was torn. How disproportionate the request was! And what about the opinions of the world? Yet he leaves strategy aside and starts from the peace the angel gave him: “Do not be afraid.” He could rest completely in Him. Only one thing needed to be done: to remain attached to them—Mary and her child.
A judgment is true if it makes us recognize the irreducibility of our humanity—begging. It is true if it makes us realistically recognize in the other someone like us, without pretending to change them. And it is true if it makes us return to that origin that gives us birth, if it revives the affection for that You who makes us moment by moment.
4. A free love, according to destiny
But we can't stop there. Even in this judgment of Joseph, or of Battiato, there is something unfinished. God does not want us to stop at the nativity scene, enchanted. God wants us to be free and active lovers—restless, not static.
Even Battiato's song risks being "enchanted" before the sublimity of the ideal, choosing to remain incomplete. When he says, “I should change the object of my desires... emancipate myself from the nightmare of passions,” he risks taking that Good in a somewhat Neoplatonic way. Like a beautiful statue we admire before returning to "real life."
But life goes on. And the "good" news is that tomorrow we will all be at work. We might feel sorry for ourselves: “Damn, once again I'm anxious, and I can't stay as I was before the song...” We get caught up in moralistic dualism: “If God is everything, shouldn't I just leave it to Him?”
Fr. Giussani experienced this struggle firsthand in the seminary. He writes about the phrase “Christ alone”: “This repelled me... as a formulation.” Why? Because a Christ hanging on the wall cannot affect our lives as much as the concreteness of our daily concerns.
There is a passage in Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath that illustrates this:
“I love people so much that sometimes I feel like I'm going to burst... I don't know anyone named Jesus. I know a lot of stories, but I only love those in the flesh.”
But this is not the Jesus we celebrate at Christmas. We do not celebrate a Jesus who is a static ideal. The Jesus we have encountered is God who became man, God who loved the flesh of men. He cares about the cold of the shepherds, the tears of Mary. He wants us to encounter Him in everyday things, not outside of Reality. Christ is the light that illuminates every person. He is not a light that blinds you to the little things, but the One who makes you see what you didn't see before.
[Song: Luce (Light) by Fiorella Mannoia]
https://youtu.be/BRX-BmsmKQ4?si=erLkBJ3UEZdh2Rr0
By becoming man, God does not want us to flee from reality, but to illuminate it. Only by looking at details with this light can we be surprised by the peace of Christ.
Those who encounter Christ are filled with a restless peace, which is the capacity for relationship and work. Here are the characteristics of this active peace:
a) A love for totality Those caught up in this light do not claim to exhaust reality in their analyses. We often treat reality like a boxing ring, where we demonstrate the strength of our opinions. But reality is not a boxing ring: it is a stage God recreates every morning.
Reality is a place to be welcomed, from which to learn—not to colonize. This is why Don Giussani wrote in The Religious Sense: “Attention must above all take into account the totality of factors.” How many things escape us when we think we already know everything!
St. Jerome describes the rich man in the parable as being so satiated that he does not notice Lazarus. The rich man thinks he sees everything, but he is never surprised; he is only concerned with asserting himself.
I have always been impressed by the passion of Fr. Giussani and his friends to let themselves be surprised by the newness in reality. With a simple question, they make you look at things differently. This attention comes only from those who have found the love that does everything. As Guardini reminded us, only in the experience of a great love can even a daisy become an Event.
b) The criterion of greater satisfaction How do you orient yourself when you face reality? Starting with the beautiful sunsets of these days—or a message you receive. If one allows oneself to be surprised by everything, how can one not get distracted?
You need to see what satisfies you most.
You don't have to give anything up. In Ciò che abbiamo di più caro (What We Hold Most Dear), Don Giussani states that we are called to see what corresponds to us most. This is the criterion Christ followed: “What do you give in exchange for yourself?”; “What satisfies you most?”
It is not first a matter of giving up. Renunciation comes later. First, you need to discover the value of possessing things. The comparison with what satisfies you most is not the renunciation of the visible for the invisible God, but discovering how the light of the Eternal already begins to appear in the satisfaction that everything gives you: a job well done, a fair salary, eating with friends. It is a foretaste of the greater satisfaction God brings.
The psychoanalyst Giacomo Contri said of Giussani: "In an era of cultural ego-cide... he became a defender of the self." He learned not to distinguish between ‘macro’ and ‘micro’.
c) A new ability to relate and to work From this satisfaction arises a new ability to work. The small meets the great. When you find this meeting point, you understand that the problem is not giving things up, but loving everything in the eternal perspective.
Don Giussani writes in Si può (veramente?!?) vivere così: "A flower looked at without the perspective of the Mystery that fills it from within... is a poor thing. But a flower looked at... in the perspective of the Mystery... is a possession of the flower without any greater comparison."
So you love the woman, the work—not because it will satisfy you totally, but because you discover within it how the Mystery is the only thing that can satisfy you.
Recently, a friend told me about helping a migrant who was soaked from the rain. She found him a change of clothes. He told her, “Thank you for looking at me.” She was moved because she realized: “I would never have looked at you like that if I hadn't been looked at myself.”
Imagine what it would be like if our eyes were opened to possess everything from within, recognizing the emotion of God for us! There would be peace in the world. It would, in fact, be the end of the world—when He makes us recognize: “You loved me, in everything you loved.”
But if Christ does not happen as a living Presence for me, for you—as He was for the shepherds who returned to work—then in His name we could be agents of war tomorrow morning.
For this reason, at the origin of all our judgments and actions, we need to discover that we are loved. Let us ask for this Advent that the experience of standing before the gaze of God, who does everything to make us loved, may happen again for us.
Let’s sing Verbum caro factum est
https://youtu.be/gedZ1w22Ayk?si=G7R_Uix0TB6kehza
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1 Discendi, Santo Spirito, music by A. Schweitzer; lyrics (Italian version) by Mons. E. Galbiati.
2 See, for example, M. Calabresi, Pizzaballa: “Cercare segni di salvezza nella disumanità di Gaza”, in Sei e Trenta. Larassegna stampa di Chora Media, podcast episode, Spotify, October 2,
2025, https://open.spotify.com/episode/7uDtrsFAjvhwtsYedHY68o.
3 “Ideology built on idols is by its very nature totalizing, otherwise it could not attempt a winning policy. If both ideologies are totalizing, they cannot fail to generate a total clash. This explains why, according to the Bible, the origin of violence as a system of relations, that is, of war, is the idol.” (L. Giussani, Il senso religioso, Rizzoli, Milan 2023, p. 194).
4 T.S. Eliot, Cori da “La Rocca”, BUR Rizzoli, Milan 1994, vv. 30-33.
5 Cf. Gen 2:17.
6 “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength” (Deut. 6:5); “Jesus said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind’” (Matt. 22:37).
7 L. Giussani, Ciò che abbiamo di più caro (1988-1989), BUR Rizzoli, Milan 2011, pp. 279-
280.
8 C. Guarnaccia, Il silenzio, 2025.
9 Is 62:5.
10 Augustine, De Magistro 13:45.
11 Cf. Lk 1:38.
12 L. Lotto, La Natività, Oil on panel, 1525, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena.
13 Cf. “In the crowd walking toward the place of execution— / did you suddenly open a path for yourself, or did you open it from the beginning? / And since when? – tell me, Veronica. / Your name was born from what you
stared at. / So intense was your desire to see, sister, / so intense your desire to feel that your gaze arrived, / so intense your desire to know that the image / is in the heart" (K. Wojtyla, Il nome, in Tutte le opere letterarie. Poesie, drammi e scrittisul teatro, Bompiani, Milan 2001, p. 155).
14 Lk 5:8.
15 L. Giussani, Corriere della Sera, April 8, 2003.
16 C. Chieffo, La Nuova Auschwitz, performed by Claudio Chieffo, first recording published in the album Claudio Chieffo (1974), Edizioni Paoline / Jaca Book, 1967.
17 Cf. “Christ in fact presents himself as the answer to what ‘I’ am, and only an attentive, tender, and passionate awareness of myself can open me up and dispose me to recognize,
admire, thank, and live Christ. Without this awareness, even Jesus Christ becomes a mere name” (L. Giussani, All’originedella pretesa cristiana, BUR Rizzoli, Milan 2025, p. 3).
18 E. Hello, Le parole di Dio, Rinascimento del libro, Florence 1933, pp. 59-61.
19 M. Gallo, Anche i sassi si sarebbero messi a saltare, Itaca, Castel Bolognese 2016, p. 33.
20 S. Kierkegaard, Diario, edited by Cornelio Fabro, Morcelliana, Brescia, 1980–1983, 12 vols.
Papirer X² A 2608.
21 Cf. 2 Cor 12:9.
22 R. Chen. Chi come me. Directed by Andrée Ruth Shammah. Teatro Franco Parenti, September 23–October 26, 2025, Milan.
23 "That's why I didn't waste time blaming others, because it's not the drop's fault if it can't fill the glass! It's useless to insist on blaming the other person for not being able to satisfy me. They can't be infinite in order to fill me! And this is the tenderness with which you can look at your boyfriend and say, ‘I can't satisfy him, I can't attract him enough’. That's why I say
that if we don't lay a solid foundation for the relationship, everything will blow up" (J. Carrón, Notes from a conversationbetween Julián Carrón and a group of friends in Sanxenxo [summer 2025], p. 5).
24 “But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. For we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies” (2 Cor 4:7-10).
25 F. Battiato, E ti vengo a cercare, performed by Franco Battiato, in Fisiognomica, EMI Italiana, 1988.
26 Cf. Mt 1:18-25.
27 In L. Giussani, L’incontro che accende la speranza, LEV, Vatican City 2025, p. 65, Giussani reminds us of the truth about ourselves: “There is nothing more evident, more grandiose than the fact that at this moment I am made by Another; if there is one thing that is evident at this moment, it is that I do not make myself, you do not make yourself.”
28 See note 25.
29 Monsignor Ennio Apeciti, Head of the Office for the Causes of Saints of the Diocese of Milan.
30 L. Giussani, Ciò che abbiamo di più caro, op. cit., p. 284.
31 J. Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, Ed. Bompiani, Milan, 2024, p. 51.
32 Cf. Jn 1:9.
33 P. Fabrizi and G. Bigazzi, Luce (tramonti a nord est), performed by Fiorella Mannoia, in Canzoni nel Vento, Sony Music, 1997.
34 Cf. Eph 3:18-19.
35 “Only the Christian encounter can, without psychologizing and without the need for particular psychological tools, change direction, restore peace within oneself, and enable one to have, possess, and conquer one’s own peaceful identity, that is, one capable of relationship and work” (L. Giussani, L’incontro che accende la speranza, op. cit., p. 63).
36 L. Giussani, The Religious Sense, op. cit., p. 176.
37 Jerome, Homily on Luke 16:19-31, in Homilies on the Gospels and on Various Liturgical Occasions, ed. S. Cola, Città Nuova, Rome 1990 (or other edition), pp. 137-138.
38 “In the experience of a great love [...] everything that happens becomes an event within its sphere” (R. Guardini, L’essenza del cristianesimo, Morcelliana, Brescia 1980, p. 12).
39 “The northern lights in Milan and Lombardy: the sky turns red and purple. The cause: intense solar activity," Corrieredella Sera – Milan, October 11, 2024, available at: https://milano.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/24_ottobre_11/l-aurora-boreale-a-milano-e -in-lombardia-il-cielo-si-tinge-di-rosso-e-di-viola-la-causa-l-intensa-attivita-solare-ada9db17-fe4d-49b4-916c-c4823f577xlk.shtml.
40 "It is a comparison between what [reality] impacts and something that preoccupies him, that occupies him inside, that is inside him. This comparison gives him the opportunity to seek satisfaction. That is to say, when he encounters reality, when the mode of impact satisfies him, it satisfies something that is inside him, that preoccupies him, that occupies him before the impact. This is why it is a liberation, it is the beginning of liberation: this knowledge is the beginning of liberation because it is the beginning of a way of relating to reality that satisfies, that is, corresponds to, responds to what The religious sense calls “heart.” What “preoccupies” us is the heart. [...]. It is called the beginning of freedom precisely because it satisfies; it is the experience of satisfaction or correspondence" (L. Giussani, Ciò che abbiamo di più caro, op. cit., pp. 64-65).
41 Cf. Mt 16:24.
42 Cf. “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit or ruin himself?” (Lk 9:25).
43 G.B. Contri, in A. Savorana, Vita di don Giussani, Rizzoli, Milan 2013, pp. 189-190.
44 L. Giussani, Si può (veramente?!?) vivere così, BUR Rizzoli, Milan 2011, p. 382.
45 Cf. Mt 25:31-40.
46 M. Flecha, Verbum caro factum est (Villancico, 16th century).
Unrevised notes by the author. Translation by the staff of Epochal Change.
