The Self at Work: It’s the Time for the Person
Daniele Nembrini: Thank you, Julián, for accepting our invitation to be here with us again this year to introduce the Convention entitled, "The Self at Work: It's Time for the Person."
These are hard, dramatic times—bad times, I dare say—for us, among us, and throughout the world; there is no need to mention the well-known events reported in the news. I cannot recall who said it, but hard, difficult, and bad times are not new; they existed even in the Roman era. Is this not the most urgent problem we face?
I believe the most urgent problem we face is confusion. Specifically, I think the most serious problem is the confusion about who man is, who I am, who we are, and who the people we meet every day are. Václav Havel said, "The tragedy of the modern world is not that man knows less and less about the meaning of his life, but that he is less and less interested in it." This is the real problem, from which all the others probably stem. Moreover, as Camus's Caligula says, "This is not what prevents men from eating and dancing," from enjoying themselves while remaining unhappy.
Kierkegaard—and I am coming to my conclusion before leaving the floor to Julián—said, "The ship is now in the hands of the ship's cook, and the words he transmits through the captain's megaphone no longer concern the course [or the purpose, as we might say], but what they will eat tomorrow."
So, Julián, we are infinitely grateful to you for your witness as a man—a true man—and therefore as a father and a teacher, because you are indeed a witness in this period of great confusion. We need prophets of humanity, and I believe that only time will prove the value of your testimony. Thank you on behalf of everyone.
Julián Carrón: Thank you for this new invitation to share the moment that marks the beginning of a new year, in which, to help us understand, we will have to return to face the drama of our "I." As we listened to the opening songs,¹ which speak of this existentially decisive theme, each of us could experience the dissonance or harmony in what we were hearing. From the very first moment, we are immersed in the theme we want to address today and throughout the year ahead: to better understand what we are. This is a particularly challenging task at present.
1. The Fear of the Present
During the summer weeks, while I was thinking about this speech, I was struck by a debate in the Italian press that is paradigmatic of the times we are living in. It was triggered by an article by Michele Serra in la Repubblica, which focused on the "apocalypse" of today, of a world that "overwhelms people and escapes their understanding."
Serra writes: "There is something very significant, I believe. And that is the substantial loneliness of many (almost all?) in the face of evil and destruction. (...) The famous 'points of reference'—the beacon in the storm, the refuge in the tempest—seem to have faded or disappeared. (...) So who can we ask, 'What do we do now?' Under what great common canopy can we gather to dispel our fear and react to the scandal, to implement some measures of comfort and remedy?"²
Among the various comments on his provocation, Marcello Veneziani's is significant: "The sad decline, the fear of the present, the great fear that runs through the world, the unhappiness of today" describe "the gastric juice of an epochal malaise, widely shared." Faced with this malaise, Veneziani emphasizes the inability to understand the problem:
"We limit ourselves," he says, "to photographing reality at the moment, without any other key to explanation. This is another reason why society is sinking into nihilism and we blame Trump, Musk, this or that. We do not realize the glaring disproportion between the plans—the gap between diagnosis and prognosis."³
Such references are just one of many examples of the disorientation we find ourselves in, of the disproportion between the widespread malaise—at all levels—and the attempts to deal with it, because, even before any response, what escapes our understanding is the nature of the problem.
We see this ourselves, firsthand, in our relationships with our students, where we see this drama bubbling up as they struggle to understand themselves. In this sense, the summary offered by Benedict XVI in Caritas in Veritate (75) is illuminating: "The social question has become a radically anthropological question." In describing the claim of the "absolutism of technology"—which "believes it has unveiled every mystery" and arrived "at the root of life"—Benedict spoke of a world that, paradoxically, fails to recognize humanity. He argued it does not even touch on the problem of man if that which "reveals man to man" is missing.
Pope Francis, too, in various speeches at the beginning of his pontificate and, in particular, addressing the million young people at Tor Vergata, has recentered the anthropological question—that is, the question of each of us. As Paolo Pombeni, a historian from Bologna, noted in Il Mattino, speaking of "a return to the primacy of the human situation over the social situation, of the mystery of the individual over the explanation of historical contradictions": without forcing partial readings, Pombeni emphasizes that the Pope does not start "from a reference to a great 'doctrine,' but from an experience, which is that need for truth that leads man to question himself." That is, in the foreground, there is "the problem [which we see clearly every day] of the restlessness of the human heart."⁴
Luciano Violante, commenting on World Youth Day, also emphasized the emergence of the "demand for meaning" and "the inadequacy of the physical world to respond." For him, the crux of the matter was: "What is the meaning of life? The search for meaning must be undertaken not only by young people but also by adults [as we know]. What does it mean to live through a change of era? How do we equip ourselves?"⁵
We see this problem emerging with particular force, especially in the experiences of young artists and celebrities who document a relatable struggle because of the loyalty they show to themselves.
Among the most recent examples, the singer Gaia Gozzi, 27, with a growing career, says of herself on Instagram: "Today the diabolical trinity came to visit me. A sense of emptiness, anxiety, and loneliness arrived to stay longer than usual. (...) In a short time, they laid down the law, gagging my soul and holding it hostage." She continues: "I have traveled extensively, both internally and around the world, in search of an answer, a solution, a method that could appease this incessant need to fill my life.
I reached the forests of the Amazonian Acre, the endless expanses of Icelandic volcanic beaches, and the humid Vietnamese rice fields, and despite adding countless experiences and lessons to my life baggage, I have not yet reached a conclusion." She speaks of "small momentary pleasures and dopamine rushes that can easily become useless band-aids placed over a deep and still open wound. This effort must be allowed to breathe, to be oxygenated. The anxiety to solve a problem is itself the problem. (...) An apparent resolution in the form of a 'cure' ends up causing a deeper infection. (...) The child in me just wants to be seen, loved, accepted, and sought after... without needing to do anything, but simply to be."
She is not alone. Italian rapper Shiva, interviewed by Le Iene, said: "Since I was a child, I have felt a huge emptiness inside. I have always felt misunderstood... I have everything. Everything. Money, friends, family, success, but I still feel that something is missing. I am only happy when I distract myself. That's why I always distract myself: I eat, drink, record, gamble." They ask him:
"Are you happy?"
"At that moment, yes."
"Because you aren't thinking?"
"Exactly."
"And you don't know why?"
"You're born that way, just like that."
It's the drama that Gaber talks about: "The word 'I.' It's a strange cry that vainly hides the fear of being nobody."⁶
Often, we find that the only way out is to escape from ourselves. Steven Basalari, 32, a well-known entrepreneur and influencer with over a million followers, recounted this on Instagram: "After two months spent traveling the world—amidst parties, new faces, and thousands of wasted euros—I found myself faced with a reality I already knew but can no longer ignore. I am sickened by the superficiality that pervades relationships, a void masked by euphoria, a constant race to fill time with nothing. I lived the dream life that everyone would want, with experiences that should have made me feel alive, but in the end, they only emptied me. I looked into the eyes of many people, but in few did I see anything real.
This lifestyle, this constant distraction, this pursuit of emptiness made me lose the person I truly loved. (...) I was supposed to leave for another vacation in Sardinia with friends—everything already organized and paid for—but this morning, I decided to cancel. I no longer want to escape and pretend that this way of life belongs to me (...). It is not a rejection of the world, but a return to myself. I know I'm not the only one who has pretended to be fine, who has worn a fake smile, who has adapted to a rhythm that didn't belong to me. I know what it means to fill every moment so as not to hear the emptiness, to seek company so as not to feel lonely, to chase fleeting moments so as not to face the slow pain inside."
Each of us, in our own circumstances, can trace all the attempts at distraction, all the palliatives we resort to, as well as the suffocation caused by constantly "running away" from ourselves. Deciding to no longer ignore discomfort, and the affection for oneself necessary to do so, are the least obvious things in the world.
This is why Don Giussani was so right when he wrote years ago: "The supreme obstacle to our journey as human beings is the 'neglect' of the self. The first step, then, on the human journey is the opposite of this neglect: an interest in one's own self, in one's own person. An interest that would seem obvious but is not at all: just look at our daily behavior to see the immense gaps of consciousness and lost memory that characterize it."⁷
2. And Who Am I?
So, what does our experience, and the experiences these people recount, tell us? The answer is simple. To answer this, the method is simple: observe the experience itself. Discover yourself in action. It amazes me that even running away can become tiresome. "I don't want to pretend anymore. I need to return to myself," said Basalari.
Like him, some people, by not censoring this wound and by no longer wanting to run from themselves, come to feel that understanding themselves is crucial. There are people who feel the urgency to understand who they are and what they want.
The experience recounted by the great rapper Marracash is a prime example: "I don't have a single friend who is doing well. Not one. And I'm not always in great shape either (...). Success and money are useful at the beginning; they help you get out of nowhere. They make the difference between not being able to go on vacation and finally being able to go. But from then on, you need something else. You need yourself [you need to take control of your life]. You need to understand who you are and what you want to do with your life."
Someone who has had this experience can challenge young people who want to achieve what he has achieved. "I would give the kids a Rolex, and then I would ask them: has it changed your life? I've been there. I went from having nothing and thinking I would live the same life as my parents in public housing to having the money I need to be free. But there is a level beyond which money no longer makes a difference; there are other things that change your life and make you grow up. You only feel free when you know who you are and what you want."⁸
"Our first interest is therefore our own subject," says Fr. Giussani. "Our first interest is that the human subject—which each of us is—be constituted, and therefore that my own human subject be constituted, so that I understand what it is and am conscious of it. It is, in fact, what lies at the root of the totality of my actions,"⁹ of everything we do.
What drives a person, from within their experience, to want to understand this dramatic situation—a situation in which escape is useless and they must return to themselves? What remains "healthy" in a person, allowing them to wait?
3. Waiting
Giussani uniquely described this "factor" that remains intact in man despite everything. As we can see, it applied not only to the historical moment in which he said it, but it still applies today, when things have become even more complicated: "In today’s world, so devoid of presence, where man is so lonely (...), in a world where man is so alone and therefore so yielding (...), in a world where man is so much a prisoner of those who, in whatever way, appear stronger than him, in this world, deep down, the expectation of salvation remains intact [whatever word we use, it is the expectation of being fully ourselves]. And this is experienced to the extent that a certain dignity remains in man, a certain originality remains, a certain human pity remains.
"Because "whatever we think of the truth, it is inseparable from the expectation that one day—as Adorno said—'the real image of salvation' will emerge. (...) The situation in which we live (...) leaves intact in man (...) the melancholic ambiguity of experience [there is a melancholy within us, as we see in all these authors, compagni di strada, whom we have quoted]; man expects from the truth of things, however it is conceived, that it will emerge, despite everything, within appearance, the image of salvation,"¹⁰ something that allows us to live with ourselves, without having to escape.
The expectation that remains—unextinguishable despite all the confusion—is the irreducible core of man. It is the cry of Miguel Mañara, in Miłosz's unsurpassed work: "Ah! How can we fill this abyss of life? (...) Because desire is always there, stronger, crazier than ever, like a sea fire that spreads its flame in the depths of the black universal nothingness! It is a desire to embrace infinite possibilities!"¹¹
Today, just when it seems that meaninglessness is established and that nihilism has won, Miguel Mañara's boundless desire emerges more acutely: the irreducible need for total satisfaction, for fullness. It is this irreducibility that gives us no peace. And it is precisely this irreducibility that challenges our reason.
4. Irreducibility (or the Mystery of the Self): A Challenge to Our Reason
But where does this irreducibility come from? What is this irreducibility that we try to ride in every way but cannot find the meaning of? Because our irreducibility, precisely because it exists, demands an explanation, an origin. We tend to take this nature of ours for granted. Other beings do not perceive this irreducibility; they do not, therefore, perceive emptiness; they do not perceive boredom. What is this irreducibility that we find within ourselves and that makes us make so many attempts to resolve it, to reduce it, to find an adequate response to it?
The first thing we must help ourselves to understand, not to flee from, is that so often we "do not start from our true experience [as we see in the characters mentioned], that is, from experience in its completeness and genuineness."¹² We often have the perception that man is already a finished product. Instead, the more we live, the more life reveals what we are! It is always something that unfolds before our eyes with an immensity we could not have imagined. But despite this, we "identify experience with partial impressions, thus reducing it to a stump," instead of "opening ourselves in an attitude of expectation."¹³
For this reason, the more one realizes the structural disproportion—this irreducibility—of which The Religious Sense speaks, the more one understands that no attempt can provide an adequate answer, as when one tries to reduce man simply to an object of scientific research. Wittgenstein says, "We feel that even if all our possible scientific questions were answered, the problems of life would not even be touched upon."¹⁴ Today we see that all scientific progress cannot for a moment adequately answer the question. So, if we do not have this compassion, this tenderness towards ourselves in order to try to understand what we are, we will not be able to understand ourselves, let alone the young people with whom we interact every day. Why? Because we thought we knew man, but, as Péguy says, "The life of a man, a human life, as a man, is not enough to know man."¹⁵
This mystery of our self, "the eternal mystery of our being," as Leopardi said, appears more and more before our eyes, and which Ratzinger describes as follows: "The thing that is most our own, that which ultimately belongs to us—that is, our self—is at the same time the thing that is least our own, because we have received it [we have it within us, but it is given!]. The self is at the same time what I have and what belongs to me least."¹⁶
On his feast day, we can remember how St. Augustine said it even more vividly with his brilliant synthesis: "What is as much yours as yourself? And what is less yours than yourself, if what you are belongs to another?"¹⁷
"In my life, I have never encountered a mystery greater than myself,"¹⁸ the literary giant Cormac McCarthy acknowledges with rare honesty in one of his novels. And why? What is this mystery that we are? Don Giussani describes it very well in The Religious Sense, quoting Dostoevsky: "The bee knows the formula of its hive, the ant knows the formula of its anthill, but man does not know his own formula."
"Because," Giussani continues, "the formula of man is a free relationship with the infinite, and therefore it does not fit into any measure and breaks through the walls of any dwelling in which one wants to arrest it. The questions and evidences that constitute the 'heart' (or 'elementary experience') are the existential trace of the free relationship with the infinite."¹⁹
If we do not realize that the more we live, the more what we are and how we differ from any other being emerges, we cannot understand the reason for our discomfort, why nothing is enough for us, and why we grope for something that then disappoints us. This is why those who have had the audacity to take risks, such as Marracash and others, document it: "Okay, I started from nothing and now I have everything I wanted. But I can't find peace, because I feel the urgent need to understand who I am." This is the reason why we are together and propose this work, because without understanding, as Marracash says, "who I am" and "what I want," life will find no peace, neither for us nor for the young people we meet, with all the hardships we see.
But what documents this disproportion, this fact that man, according to Dostoevsky's expression, unlike the bee or the ant, "does not know his own formula" because he is in relationship with the infinite?
The relationship with the infinite that constitutes man says something about the very origin of this man.
5. Nothing Less Than God Is Enough for Man
Giussani starts from the assumption that nature makes it easy for man to perceive the things necessary for life.
And he says, again in The Religious Sense, that among all necessary things, "the most necessary is the intuition of the existence of the why, of the meaning, which is the existence of God." In Apologia pro Vita Sua, the great Newman says that at age fifteen, while walking down the street, he was struck by the intuition that there were "only two self-evident beings: the self and God." The supreme ease of grasping the existence of God [of not feeling alone with this disproportion, of understanding its origin, why He made us this way] is identified with the immediacy of perceiving one's own existence. Because we are not bees, we are not ants: ants are content to be ants; they do not get bored. We, on the other hand, are not satisfied.
Why? Because this documents Who made us and why He made us. For this reason, "the supreme ease of grasping God's existence" coincides with something we take for granted: the fact of feeling this disproportion, of feeling this emptiness! Because "God [for those who are aware of this disproportion] is the most immediate implication of self-consciousness."²⁰
How is it possible to feel this disproportion, if we are so limited? Because we are made by Another, we are made for a relationship with the infinite: the One who made us did so in a certain way so that we could fill our lives with Him. For this reason, with his genius, St. Augustine says, addressing God: "You show quite clearly the greatness You wanted to attribute to the rational creature"—that is, to you and to me. You show clearly our greatness, the greatness of the "rational creature," because "nothing less than You is enough for its blessed peace [its fullness]."²¹
6. It Is the Time of the Person
When a person understands that this need for fullness—this irreducibility—is not a condemnation but a sign that we are made for the infinite, they can escape the nightmare of seeking answers in what cannot fill their life and begin to decide, to ask themselves the question: "Am I open to this possibility? Or do I prefer to continue groping around, knowing that nothing is sufficient 'that is less than You'?"
The more this emerges in our consciousness, the more we understand why this is the time of the person. Because "the harder the times are [the more life challenges us], the more the subject is what matters, the person is what matters,"²² says Giussani. The decision that the person makes in the face of this question "is what matters." And there is no escape. It is the greatest resource we have to avoid succumbing to the dictatorship of those who want to fool us, trying to respond with attempts that have already proven unsuccessful.
So, what is the person, and what gives them the substance to live the present with more vigor, less tossed about, and less confused?
"What is urgently needed for the person to be, for the human subject to have vigor in this situation where everything is torn from its trunk to make dry leaves, is self-awareness." What is self-awareness? "A clear and loving perception of oneself [how we would like to have this clear and loving perception of ourselves, this ability to embrace ourselves!] charged with awareness of one's destiny [why are we made? why are we made this way?] and therefore capable of true self-affection [it is difficult to find someone who has this affection for themselves], freed from the instinctive dullness of self-love. If we lose this identity, nothing benefits us."²³ This is confirmed by the daily experience of those who are capable of true affection for themselves.
"Self-awareness is, represents the newness of life; one feels life is newer the more one realizes who one is."²⁴ And this is documented by some of us who, starting precisely from what we constantly discuss in The Religious Sense, agree to follow this path.
One of you said: "During this year's journey through The Religious Sense, I had the opportunity to embark on a meaningful journey of self-discovery. The provocations I received, the texts I read, and the testimonies I heard were valuable tools that allowed me to find the time and context to address those profound questions and issues that I often tend to put aside in the frenzy of everyday life. I realized that, for real professional growth—especially in a delicate and formative context such as education—one cannot ignore a personal journey of growth and discovery.
This journey has helped me to look inside myself [finally, without running away], to reflect on myself [without fear], my limitations, my potential, and the meaning of my role as an educator. Some of the interventions helped me to resume my personal search for meaning, even beyond the professional sphere, and represented for me a sort of 'training' of my gaze: toward reality, toward the young people I meet every day, and toward myself." When you experience this and share it, you are surprised by the reaction of others: "One of the students who tended to isolate himself during the lessons on The Religious Sense confided to me during the break that reading the positive messages he had received [on the issues they were addressing] made him feel loved, whereas before he had always felt invisible in class. With regard to the proposal to follow the path of The Religious Sense, I feel the desire to continue. This path not only helps me to live my role as an educator in a more conscious and profound way, but it also 'forces' me to stop and find the space and courage to face those existential questions that, due to lack of time or fear, I often tend to ignore."
Therefore, in a historical moment of disorientation, in which the urgency to know ourselves emerges in us more and more, because we are tired of even running away from ourselves, how can we discover "who I am" and "what I want"?
7. An Event
As we have seen in the contributions I have just read, and in many others, "it is an event, a positive response to the dramatic dispersion in which society makes us live." It is only an event (...) that can make the self clear and consistent in its constituent factors."²⁵
When one begins to realize this, one sees what it means to live life, not fleeing, not running away, not trying to hide, but being able to embrace oneself. The paradox that "no philosophy and no theory" can tolerate is that only an event tells us who we are: only by encountering a presence, a reality like ours, can we understand the factors of our "I" in a clear and simple way. "And this clarity cannot come from our own reflection, but only from an event [by encountering a reality]."²⁶
Why? Because, says Giussani, "the person finds himself in a living encounter, (...) that is, in a presence that he encounters and that exudes an attraction."²⁷ An attraction means that it provokes our heart, as Mina documents in the opening song:²⁸ encountering a presence that makes your heart burst! It's simple; it's like sensing that, yes, what I was made for exists! "You arrived, you looked at me, and then everything changed for me. You burst inside my heart. Maybe it's because you looked at me like no one has ever looked at me before... I feel alive, suddenly, because of you."
For this reason, self-discovery is the very beginning of this life, where one feels alive without having to run away. As one of you says: "It became clear to me that what I experienced in class was not enough, that the questions the students had were ultimately the same as mine and that I needed to investigate more deeply before accompanying them through the dynamics of life and all they provoke. In this situation, as in many others in life, 'someone' comes along who seems to perceive this need, this necessity to leave nothing to chance, but to indulge that desire that is building.
And so I received an invitation to attend the Friday lunches. I had to think about it; the question was whether to indulge this desire or to give more voice to the fear of 'judgment': as a newcomer, it is not always easy to approach the group. But then [by accepting it] an encounter happens, an 'expected unexpected' happens. What happens is that by listening, comparing, asking questions, and not settling for the first answer, you begin to have a real, concrete life experience."
Or as another contribution says, with which I conclude: "The work on Il senso religioso is tiring, because it does not allow me to cheat myself, but 'forces' me to give myself reasons. I believe that being challenged, every time I cross the threshold of the classroom, to come to terms with the deepest needs of my life has been the most useful thing for me. Taking myself seriously, in fact, is an opportunity to discover more about who I am and what I am doing in the world. Being serious about my own questions has made me more curious. I no longer need to 'run away from life.
As the young people have said, by being together they can find an answer, or at least a path that gradually begins to offer them clues to this answer. I am moved to see young people who have been deeply hurt by life and who are finally 'beginning to breathe' (to quote their words), or who for the first time feel they are part of a 'real family.' I think all this stems from starting to take ourselves seriously and not running away from the ultimate questions that often make us struggle (and that the world tells us not to consider).
The result is an intensity and a taste for life that is beyond comparison. As one young person said: 'I do the same things as before (studying, playing soccer with friends), but they have a new beauty and intensity.' I hope to continue this work next year as well. It is an opportunity offered to each of us. Thank you.”
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¹ G. Gaber, La parola io; E. Tagliaferri, Mandulinata a Napule; Mina, Mi sei scoppiato dentro il cuore.
² M. Serra, "Noi davanti allo spavento del presente" (We Face the Fear of the Present), la Repubblica, 8/8/2025.
³ M. Veneziani, "Gli stolti incolpano i governi del declino mentre esaltano la resa dell'umano" (Fools Blame Governments for Decline While Extolling Human Surrender), la Verità, 10/8/2025.
⁴ P. Pombeni, "L'inquietudine per la verità: la nuova sfida della chiesa" (The Restlessness for Truth: The New Challenge for the Church), Il Mattino, 3/8/2025.
⁵ F. Ognibene, "Violante: young people ask themselves questions about meaning, the Church knows how to listen to them," Avvenire, 5/8/2025.
⁶ G. Gaber, "La parola io," from his latest album Io non mi sento italiano (2003).
⁷ L. Giussani, In cammino (1992-1998), BUR Rizzoli, Milan 2014, p. 99.
⁸ M. Serra, "La musica è finita, andate in pace" (The Music Is Over, Go in Peace), interview with Marracash, il Venerdì, 7/3/2025.
⁹ L. Giussani, In cammino (1992-1998), op. cit., p. 99.
¹⁰ Ibid., pp. 43-44.
¹¹ O.V. Miłosz, Miguel Mañara, Jaca Book, Milan 1977, p. 15.
¹² L. Giussani, The Way to the Truth is an Experience, Rizzoli, Milan 2006, p. 84.
¹³ Ibid.
¹⁴ L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-philosophicus, 6.52.
¹⁵ C. Péguy, Los tres Misterios, Encuentro, Madrid 2008, pp. 186-187.
¹⁶ J. Ratzinger, Introducción al cristianismo, Salamanca, Sígueme, 1982, 158.
¹⁷ St. Augustine, In Io. Ev. Tr. 29, 3.
¹⁸ C. McCarthy, The Passenger, Einaudi, Turin 2023, p. 165.
¹⁹ L. Giussani, Il senso religioso, BUR Rizzoli, Milan 2023, p. 107.
²⁰ Ibid., p. 179.
²¹ Augustine, Confessions, Sei 1992, XIII, p. 453.
²² L. Giussani, Un evento reale nella vita dell’uomo (1990-1991), BUR Rizzoli, Milan 2013, p. 39.
²³ L. Giussani, "È venuto il tempo della persona" ("The Time of the Person Has Come"), edited by L. Cioni, Litterae Communionis CL, no. 1/1977, pp. 11-12.
²⁴ L. Giussani, Spiritual Exercises of the CLU, 1976.
²⁵ L. Giussani, In cammino (1992-1998), op. cit., p. 102.
²⁶ Ibid., p. 103.
²⁷ L. Giussani, L’io rinasce in un incontro (1986-1987), BUR Rizzoli, Milan 2010, p. 182.
²⁸ Mina, Mi sei scoppiato dentro il cuore (1966).
Unrevised notes and translation by the author. Julián Carrón's speech at the Works Convention, titled "The Self in Works. It's the Time of the Person," held on August 28, 2025, at the Ikaros headquarters in Calcio, attended by 300 Foundation employees.
