The Other Who Make Us Live - Holy Week
“Truth is born of the flesh. The ideal is concrete or it is nothing”
Luigi Giussani - meditation by Monsignor Luigi Giussani for university students Holy Thursday and Good Friday 1989.
To mark the occasion of Easter, the Epochal Change Digital Cultural Center is republishing notes from Monsignor Luigi Giussani’s 1989 Holy Week meditations. These reflections, originally shared with university students from the Communion and Liberation movement , are presented in two parts: Holy Thursday and Good Friday. This edition was translated by the Epochal Change editorial team.
We are not naive. Something irresistible, something greater, has happened. The Victor is present over all the evil that surrounds and permeates us.
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Holy Thursday
I. "Hear, O Christ, the voice of those who implore You." If there is a real difference between us, it is this one — between those who implore and those who do not. In every other respect we are equal, different only in our features. Exaudi Christe supplicantium preces: hear, O Christ, the plea of those who cry out to You.
What do we ask for in this supplication? To be freed from the yoke of evil, as the Lenten hymn puts it. There is no point dwelling on definitions of evil: we feel it, the moment we are not totally distracted, the way children are. We accuse it — within and around us — so totalizing in its claim, so brazen in its presumption. "The whole world lies in wickedness."
We are not naive. What we reenact together today is not an act of naivety. The plea that has become daily for many of us is more expansive today — more fully expressed, more deliberately free — yet it is not naive in the least. There is not only the choice between naivety and cynicism. There is a wisdom that is humble and painful, yet certain — and therefore finally vibrating with a possibility of joy that only grows with time. We are not naive because something irresistible has happened, something greater: the Victor is present over all the evil that surrounds and permeates us, finding in us a radical "complicity."
"How will they manage to live with that ultimate decency that allows one to enjoy a flower or a child, a friend or the sun — to feel life as possible, as deeply reasonable?"
Imagine that evening in Capernaum. Christ takes the scroll from the attendant in the synagogue and begins to comment on a passage from Exodus — the manna in the desert. As His words flow, the crowd that had tried to make Him king suddenly bursts in. He had fed them miraculously, freely; they had been straining toward the Messiah, and in that moment their hope seemed to have a face, a name, a presence. And it was true — only not in the way they had imagined, but irreducibly otherwise. Christ, seeing those people who had circled the lake to find Him, interrupts His discourse, and something like emotion overtakes Him. Looking at that crowd, He surely thought: "But how do they manage to live?" He who never had a moment of distraction. He whose thinking pierced through every stone and touched the root of everything: "I always see what My Father does." That crowd before Him was like a flock without a shepherd: "How will they manage to live?"
How will they manage to live with that ultimate decency — the decency that allows one to enjoy, in a truly human way, a flower or a child, a woman or a friend, the sun or the stars — that makes life feel, even secondhand, as possible, as deeply reasonable? He knew they had no means. No means that man himself possesses was sufficient for this purpose. The great means of thought and reflection had traveled far over the centuries — especially in the centuries immediately before Him. But it all ended in confused dead ends, in a closed horizon, broken only now and then by a certain flickering of hope. He had come to make reasonable living possible. A life lived with reasonable joy, in which it would be clear why bringing new human beings into the world is not a crime.
He had come for that. And so He desired, with an ardent desire, to continue His presence throughout history — a presence therefore visible: "I will be with you until the end." Where? Cardinal Meisner said it well, in a context of open hostility, in his inaugural address at Cologne: "The eternal Word of the Father became flesh, and now in the Church He has remained audible and tangible to all people. For this reason we are not naive — because it happened, and it has remained with us, in the Church."
But what form does this presence take? A human form. His presence is audible and tangible through people, within a human community — not a community formed and governed mechanically, but one made up of people who freely recognize Him. This is why He is present through our own person, whatever we may be, because we freely recognize Him. With a freedom that, as Péguy says in defining the relationship between God and man, touches the supreme radiance, the supreme purity to which man can attain: gratuity. Because to recognize the presence of one's Lord is absolute gratuity.
In the synagogue of Capernaum, then, He "saw" His continuity in history — through the reality of a human community not mechanically assembled, but made up of people who freely recognize Him, fulfilling the supreme law of the heart: gratuity. Gratuity is found where all calculation collapses: in the wonder with which the Samaritan woman felt herself seen and understood by that man sitting at the well; in the wonder with which Zacchaeus heard the words, "Come down, I'm coming to your house." We have all felt at least the distant echo of these moments of supreme humanity, which can look like the guileless openness of a child. But they do not arise in us from naivety — they are fully conscious, filled with emotion and admiration. Gratuitous. We belong to the reality of His company freely. Any calculation on our part would not keep us bound to it for even a minute.
II. Truth is born of the flesh, as Mounier says. If He is the eternal Word of the Father made flesh, then truth is present among us as flesh — in history, in the world, yesterday, now, and tomorrow, until the end. "Heaven and earth will pass away, but not a hair of My presence can be exorcised."
Péguy meditates on this mystery with a gravity that deserves to be heard: “(This is what the angels themselves don’t understand, my child, this is what they've never experienced.) As a carnal mother nourishes, and warms at her heart her last-born, Her carnal infant, at her breast, Securely held in the fold of her arm, Thus, taking advantage of the fact that we are carnal, We must nourish, we have to nourish in our heart, With our flesh and with our blood, With our heart, The carnal Words, The eternal Words, pronounced carnally in time. Miracle of miracles, my child, mystery of mysteries. Because Jesus Christ has become our carnal brother Because he has pronounced, carnally and in time, eternal words,
In monte,*? upon the mountain, It is to us, the weak, that he was given, He depends on us, weak and carnal, To bring to life and to nourish and to keep alive in time These words pronounced alive in time. Mystery of mysteries, this privilege that was given to us, This incredible, exorbitant privilege, To keep alive the words of life, To nourish with our blood, with our flesh, with our heart The words which, without us, would collapse fleshless. To grant, (it’s incredible), to grant to the eternal words, In addition, like a second eternity, A temporal and carnal eternity, an eternity of flesh and of blood, Nourishment, an eternity of body, A worldly eternity.
Thus the words of Jesus, the eternal words are the infants, the living infants suckling on our blood and on our heart On us who live in time. Like the least of the peasants, if the queen in her palace is unable to nourish the heir apparent Because she lacks milk, So the least of the peasant women from the least of the parishes might be called to the palace, Given that she'd be a good wet-nurse, And she might be called to nourish a son of France, Thus all of us children from all the parishes We are called to nourish the word of the son of God. O misery, 0 misfortune,* that this would happen to us, That it would belong to us, that it would depend on us To make the word understood through the centuries of centuries, To make it resound. O misery, o happiness, that it would depend on us, Shivers of happiness, We who are nothing, we who spend a few years of nothing on earth,
A few wretched, pathetic years, (We immortal souls), O danger, the risk of death, it is we who are responsible, We who are incapable of anything, who are nothing, who are uncertain of tomorrow, And even of today, who are born and who will die like creatures of a day, Who pass through like mercenaries, And yet it is we who are responsible, We who in the morning are uncertain of the evening, And even of the afternoon, And who at night are uncertain of the morning, Of the following morning, It’s folly, it’s still we who are responsible, it depends on us and us alone To assure the Words a second eternity An eternal eternity. A remarkable perpetuity. It belongs to us, it depends on us to assure the words An eternal perpetuity, a carnal perpetuity, A perpetuity nourished with meat, with fat and with blood. We who are nothing, who will not last, Who practically speaking won’ last at all (On earth) It’s folly, it’s still we who are responsible to preserve and to nourish the eternal On earth The spoken words, the word of God.
Mystery, danger, happiness, misfortune, grace from God, special choice, terrible responsibility, misery, glory of our life, we ephemeral creatures, that is, who don’t spend but a day, who don't last but a day, poor vagrant women who work like mercenaries, who remain in a country merely to harvest the wheat or the grapes, who work for a wage only for fifteen days or three weeks, and who hit the road immediately afterward, along the path, turning the corner at the poplars, we simple travelers, poor travelers, fragile travelers, precarious travelers, eternal vagabonds, who enter this life and who immediately exit, as vagabonds would enter a farm only for a meal, for a crust of bread and for a glass of wine, we feeble, we fragile, we precarious, we shameful, we weak creatures, we flimsy, we transient creatures, we vagrants, we shepherds, (but not, not at all strangers), singular grace, (risk of what disgrace’), Fragile creatures, it depends on us whether the eternal word Resounds or does not resound.
Life was given to us for this reason. Without a responsible, free, and gratuitous relationship with the eternal, the precariousness and fragility of living would make no sense.
A commentary on Caravaggio's Christ at Emmaus observes that in the act of self-revelation, He illuminates the gaunt faces of the men around Him and the miserable, everyday reality He holds in His hands — bread and the still life on the table. All things, therefore, are embraced and assimilated by His presence, becoming its reflection. Truth is born of the flesh. From affections to the theater, from family to the workshop, from sleeping to walking — all things, over time, and the more one lives consciously, are penetrated by the eternal. The eternal cannot be lived continuously in its entirety. But the more a man walks through time, the more he feels this connection between what he holds, the page he reads, the fleeting word on his lips, and the infinite.
This is why Milosz, in Miguel Mañara, speaks of "an old age in love with the tomb." Because the tomb is not the final wall, not the last conclusion — it is the threshold glimpsed within everything, the horizon of the infinite in the face of every reality. Everything in our hands becomes something else; before our eyes it pulses with a value and a meaning unknown to those around us — in the family, at school, on the bus. There is therefore a painful solitude, like Christ's in Capernaum. One wants to stop with every person one meets, to let them glimpse this final destination, which is not a wall but a passage, a threshold. Instead of tomb, one ought to say threshold. The maturity of a man — his "old age" — is in love with the final threshold: the threshold of the eternal and the infinite.
III. Truth is born of the flesh; the ideal is concrete or it is nothing. The word concrete comes from concresco — to amalgamate, to condense, to consist. In this sense, Jeremiah the prophet, foreshadowing the Messiah, speaks these words: "I will stand with my face hard as stone before their attack" — the attack of everyone. Truth is a stone; that is why it can be built upon. Truth is concrete: it is born of the flesh.
The Man who spoke that evening in the synagogue of Capernaum gives no further respite to time and to history, through the people He chooses and who freely recognize Him. A community that nothing in the world, no evil force, can destroy. A community of people — because the Church is either a community or an abstraction — that draws close, that wraps around us, that determines the way we feel, see, think, touch, use things.
We too — "called," invested with the presence of that Man, members of this community that makes the truth made flesh, Christ, audible and tangible — we are, like everyone else, bearers of a disability. There is a story about Pope Pius XII approaching a group of pilgrims. Everyone reached out to kiss his hand. But one of them kept his head bowed and did not move. The monsignor accompanying the Pope noted quietly, "Your Holiness, he is blind." Then Pius XII placed his hand on the man's lowered head and said: "We are all blind."
We all carry a disability with no comparison to any other disability we can see. It is called original sin. From the very beginning, a lie. And from this: fragility, weakness, the capacity for fear, the ease of terror — and therefore the ease of violence and arrogance — an easy loss of direction, so that people normally live far from themselves, in the anguish of a silence that confines them to the boundaries of their own self.
Because of this handicap, the ideal in the flesh appears to us as an aridity. The ideal embodied in the relationship with one's mother, with friends, with another person — truth incarnate within all of this — appears to us as a loss. We immediately fear a dryness; we have the sense of losing something. To love truly the person to whom we are bound is felt as renunciation. This is how the original handicap reveals itself: truth within the flesh seems like something "abstract" — something that tears away, robs, takes a part of us, empties us.
And so the ultimate fruit of that handicap, in whatever temperament it takes root, is acedia. Which means without-care: we do not take care of ourselves; we do not want to take care of ourselves. We refuse to accept joyful beauty so as not to be forced to change, so as not to be forced to make an effort. We refuse the glad beauty of things so as not to change. Change is toil. Change is risk. And so smallness shapes our face and our character.
A prayer in Lauds says: "Almighty God, look upon humanity exhausted by its mortal weakness, and grant that it may come back to life through the passion of Your only Son." We tend to think that Christ introduced the cross and sacrifice into the world — and indeed He was nailed to that cross, and we might want to echo Carducci's bitter cry: "Crucified martyr, You crucify the world." But no. He accepted the cross. He accepted the sacrifice — and in doing so gave it meaning, offering in Himself the meaning of pain, of toil, of risk. And so He set us free. Whoever accepts Him is set free.
IV. How does an exhausted humanity come back to life? It needs food. "You are looking for Me because I fed you with bread yesterday. I am the bread of life." Bread is destroyed by identifying with us; Christ, in the intensely carnal sign by which we make Him our food, draws us instead into Himself. The dynamic is reversed: "Whoever eats this bread will live forever." We eat, and He identifies us with Himself. It seems abstract — until it becomes an experience that time matures, that maturity in love with the great threshold: Christ draws us into Himself. "For with Him you were buried in baptism, with Him you were raised to life, with Him God gave life to you who were dead because of your original 'handicap,'" writes Paul to the Colossians.
Let us not forget, however, the condition the liturgical prayer attaches immediately after: "Grant that this exhausted humanity may come back to life" — but then it adds — "through the passion of Your only Son." Through His death, He has possessed us.
There is nothing more awe-inspiring than this: God became flesh, became one of us — and remains among us, expressing the reality of His presence, the continuity of His irresistible action through our community — and yet most people either forget this or do not recognize Him, as the scribes and Pharisees did not. "God demonstrates His love for us," Paul writes to the Romans, "because, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." And from the Letter to the Hebrews: He took upon Himself our infirmities, bore our sins, redeemed us with His blood. He died for us, so that by dying to sin we might rise to life. Only from the full and completed meaning of His death does the immense meaning of life spring.
V. As He left Capernaum that evening, who knows how He must have said to each one of that small group of faithful who remained — while everyone else was walking away saying He was mad — "My friend, do not be afraid."
We must not be afraid of things that are still unclear, because they become clear only by living them, in conversion to Him. To convert means to turn toward that presence in everything we do — a "turning toward" that becomes, over time, habitual. Not to be afraid means to convert. Not to fear a shadow or a noise, not to fear the malice of a neighbor — it means looking with serenity in one direction: conversion is walking in the presence of Another, and, while walking, being conscious of this presence. The Other is the Mystery born of a woman: Christ.
"The Church is either a community or an abstraction. It draws close, wraps around us, determines the way we feel, see, think, touch, use things."
Christ is here and now in the community obedient to His Church — through which He has awakened us, and with which He walks with each of us. This community with which we have set out has no value except this one: to be the community with which He awakens us daily and walks with each of us daily.
Have no fear of sacrifice in any sense, in any form. Suffering is necessary so that truth does not crystallize into doctrine but is born of the flesh — is flesh.
There is another word that names both the sacrifice and the content of conversion: the word Paul uses when he speaks of Jesus, the man Christ, the Truth made flesh. "He became man; He became obedient unto death." The fear is of obedience — because sacrifice is obedience. Obedience is the beginning of a knowledge and an action that transcend one's own measure, one's own criteria. In obedience, in conversion, a person follows another — and so must detach from his own criteria. Obedience becomes the principle of an action that exceeds my own thinking, an act that goes beyond what I would want to do. Obedience is affection for Another. And affection is the energy with which a person ennobles time and space, the reality held in his hands.
The first sacrifice, the first obedience, takes place in judgment: to convert to another means to obey. The second sacrifice is in affectivity — as the energy of adherence and of possessive mastery of things. This sacrifice strikes us as absurd. Doing something we do not like seems absurd. But this alone is what makes us grow in truth — the truth with which we look at the stars or at the person we love, with which we say "I." We act in terror and repugnance at the prospect of sacrifice; that is, we act as though the decisive point of everything were what we ourselves understand. Which is the formula of the tomb. Because if the true is only what I understand, the closure is already complete, the limit already drawn — room, prison, and tomb, since whatever is static decays and rots, and from that comes mortal boredom.
The criterion of existence, the law of our heart, is an Other. An Other who lives in a place — a friendship, a community — into which He has called us: a vocational community. The existential criterion is found in a place — the community to which He has called us — a place that thinks and acts. Obedience is to this place. If thought and affection must follow this community, if they belong to this community, then our whole person belongs to it — because thought and affection are our person. We belong to an Other who lives in this place, and therefore we belong to this community. What determines us is not what we think and feel but our adherence to that to which we belong — just as the substance, strength, and joy of a child are identified with belonging to a father and mother. A child cannot think this — but his strength and joy are his father and mother. If a child lacks father and mother, his life is in fact handicapped. What a crime, then, the abuse or instrumentalization of our friendship!
"When you were young, you went where you wanted" — that is, the criteria of thought and affection were your own — "but when you grow up, another will lead you by the hand to places you would not have wanted to go." This is freedom. This is salvation. This is the truth of living: to adhere to Another beyond oneself. The possibility of this springs from a place — from the relationship with Christ, not from a relationship with an idea. Christ is the Word made flesh, who communicates Himself through the community He awakens — the vocational community — which He nourishes and sustains, making Himself bread in the literal sense of the word.
Truth is born of the flesh. But suffering is required. And this suffering is — in the measure of one's thoughtfulness — the most reasonable, the most attractive, the most experimentally useful thing we can bear. Life is mysteriously great and beautiful. And time that passes while remaining in the community — that is, in the gaze of His presence — makes it ever greater and more beautiful, ever more fascinatingly mysterious.
Let us close with the prayer of a man who lived — from a certain age onward, having done all manner of things — what we have been describing. It is Augustine:
"God, who to the few who know You show what evil truly is — that is, nothing / God, for whom small things do not make You small / God, to turn from whom is to fall; to turn toward whom is to rise again; to remain with whom is to stand firm / God, to depart from whom is to perish; to return to whom is to live again; to dwell with whom is to live / God, whom no one abandons except those who are deceived; whom no one seeks except those who are urged; whom no one finds except those who have a shred of purity within — / Hear me, as is Your custom, known well to so few."
Good Friday
Why are we together? Why are we "friends"? Our community arises from a single thing — without which we would not know one another, would share nothing, would not love one another. It arises from the wonder of An Event: the wonder of God who became man. Let us imagine — even now, even with our habitually scattered attention — the intensity with which this wonder must have overwhelmed that young woman named Mary. This is why we are so deeply attached to the prayer of the Angelus, making it the theme of our entire day.
God became flesh, a man. God chose to identify Himself with the precariousness of flesh. This is what sets our life and the history of humanity ablaze. From this — from this alone — the whole of human history and our personal history "must" be determined. God identified Himself with the precariousness of flesh, and, as we have already seen, this identification continues through time. The aspect of precariousness changes its face, but it is a permanent Event that — precisely in this changing of faces — has come to us and has drawn us into Itself. We are part of it. We are part of this precariousness in which the Mystery of the Word became incarnate. Therefore our life is infinitely greater than what we can think or imagine.
If God has identified Himself with the precariousness of flesh, He makes Himself present in every moment of history in the precariousness of flesh — our own: "All of you who are baptized have been identified with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female: all of you are one, one person in Christ Jesus" (Gal 3:27–29). Christ — from whom all our wonder springs, and who in our community, as part of the Church, takes on flesh — is God who has identified and identifies Himself with the precariousness of flesh. He is the Mystery become An Event: He is that flesh, just as today it is visible in this Church, in those called today. It is An Event, irreducible. But man, in every age — though today more visibly than ever — has attempted and attempts to reduce it: to words, to an ethical schema, to a model, to an example, to values, trying to contain, constrain, and imprison it within his own cultural conception, claiming to explain it. But it is irreducible: it is An Event.
It becomes clear, then, how the great question arises — the question that, from the mysterious fascination of the Eucharist on Holy Thursday, draws us into the mystery of the suffering of Good Friday. That Event can be accepted or not. It can only be recognized and accepted — or not. Because it is what it is, irreducible. And the echo of Mary Magdalene's weeping begins to resound within the horizon of our own soul — she was one of the first to feel torn apart by this alternative, overwhelmed as she was by the Lord's gaze, pierced through, like the Madonna, at the thought of the rejection that surrounded Him.
"The world rejects Him. The thought and culture of the world reject Him. Christ is reduced to what man can understand, what he can judge useful: common values. Not He who is present — irreducible Event present in my flesh and among us."
We should follow step by step the announcement of this Event in the Gospel of John, and feel the contours of the great division that the irreducibility of this Event has brought into the world. When we say "the world," we also mean each one of us — because those we see acting on a large scale as forces of good or evil in the world have their roots in us. In us there is rejection or acceptance.
For this reason we beg: "Hear, Lord, the cry with which we invoke You." Grant us faith. Make our life a faith in Your presence, in the irreducible great Event of Your incarnation. Do not withhold Your grace — for just as it is a mystery that God should identify Himself in the precariousness of flesh, so it is a mystery that man should recognize Him. Faith is grace: He makes Himself recognized. Because we would reduce everything to our own measure.
Augustine already said to the dominant cultural world of his time: "This is the terrible root of your error. You claim that the gift of Christ consists in His example. Whereas that gift is His very Person." But since all of this is inconceivable, the assertion of the irreducibility of this Event exposes those who make it to the charge of division. "If you affirm Christ in this way, you divide the world." This was the prophecy old Simeon made to His mother when she brought Him to the Temple, a baby just a few days old: "He will be a sign of division in the world." Just as He is division within ourselves — when our smallness enters into conflict with the greatness of the announcement, and when the narrow instinctiveness of our pretensions clashes with the intrusiveness of His presence.
But we must now say the disturbing thing, and — given its gravity — the terrible thing: He is rejected.
Let us contemplate, within ourselves, the ordinary forgetfulness with which His presence is eclipsed — in our flesh and in our bones; in us who are members of His body, part of His presence, since our precariousness has been taken up by His divinity, held close to Him, embraced by Him, from that day when He gave us His blood and His power of resurrection in baptism. Let us contemplate, within ourselves, the great forgetfulness, the obliteration that invades days, weeks, months. We can spend all this time rejecting Him. Denying Him.
But this terrible disavowal becomes so objectified that it frightens us: the world rejects Him. The whole world rejects Him. The thought and culture of the world reject Him. Therefore what Augustine said against the culture of his century should be repeated today in a still more dramatic and far-reaching way. He is reduced — reduced to what man can understand, what can seem convenient to him, what he can feel and judge useful: values. Common values. Not He who is present, irreducible Event present in my flesh and among us. Our community arises from the recognition of this presence, and the moment this presence is not recognized, our friendship collapses, disintegrates. And this is precisely why the world is totally disintegrated: because He is rejected.
Consider the awareness He had of this. "My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?" He cried from the cross. Let us enter into the awareness that the heart of Christ had of this rejection — as on that evening when, looking upon His city, Jerusalem, He wept and sobbed. And let us consider with what spirit His mother must have followed this — she who invites us never to lose sight of this dimension of the mystery of Christ in history.
But we must now say one more thing, to lay bare the whole of the situation. Why is Christ rejected? In us, in the world? Because He is incomprehensible, irreducible to our imaginations and our thoughts. Yes, certainly. But ultimately, it is not only this. It is because of an offense man feels He commits. Man feels offended by His presence, because He has said: "The world is entirely given over to falsehood." He is not only irreducible, therefore — He contradicts what we think, what the world seems to be, what the world desires, because the world is entirely given over to falsehood. We are bearers of an original handicap, as we have said. This is intolerable.
The world, like each of us, is at bottom optimistic — harboring an ultimately optimistic claim about itself. "If what we imagine and demand comes to pass, then we will do, we will be, we will become..." The world has a presumptuous optimism about itself. It claims to solve the problem of reality on its own, to arrange all of reality and our lives. This is the world's pretension. From this arises the violence within us — because when what is demanded does not happen, and to the extent that it does not, we rebel. We become violent, against Christ and against our neighbor. This is the source of the world's violence: from the pretension of fixing the world arise all wars, of every kind — from the wars of words to the wars of atomic bombs. The pretension to fix the world fills the world with violence. For what gives rise to the order of the world, what makes the world a cosmos, is the mystery of the Creator — that is, as Paul says, it is in Christ, in Him, that all things hold together. Man's pretension to arrange reality makes him the source of violence in the world. This is why that violence has concentrated entirely on the figure of Christ, seeking to unmake Him.
But our evil is redeemed. Our distrust and impotence are redeemed precisely by the ignominy He has lived and continues to live. Let us enter with the gaze that Mary cast upon this ignominy, this passion, this pain — for this is how we are called to look upon Him and to relive Good Friday. But why all this? Why this history — His and ours — from that moment to all of time, until the end? Why? "My ways are not your ways." Because this is the path by which the mystery of the Father brings man to salvation — and first of all brings the Man Christ to glory. What joy to feel this path asserting itself in our life, in the life of our community. Our story is the road by which the mystery of the Father leads Christ to glory and each of us to salvation and happiness.
"Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in Me." "Whoever believes in Me will do the works I do — and greater ones." "For I am going to the Father" (cf. Jn 14). Whoever believes in Him will do greater things in history than He did — because it is in us that He reveals Himself, and in us that He remains. It is through us that history gives Him glory. "Heaven and earth will pass away. Not one of My words will fail." This is the absolute miracle: time and history will never make Him disappear, will never overcome Him. But this permanence happens in us: in us we will be able to see the great works He accomplishes.
"You are My friends. I no longer call you servants — I call you friends. You did not choose Me; I chose you. And I have done this so that My joy may be in you and your joy may be complete" (cf. Jn 15). This is the heart of love. In this love, in this consolation, a wellspring of new life rises mysteriously within us and in the world — mysteriously, because it flows through all our arid and sorrowful earth.
How different our very being is — how different living is — when it is permeated by the certainty that everything is love, that everything is guided by a love, that everything ends, will end, in an evidence of love.
Outside of this love, outside of Your image, O Lord, of our life and the life of the world, nothing is lovable with the clarity with which the sun makes the day beautiful — beautiful and serene, even when filled with costly, toilsome, sweat-drenched work. It is right, therefore, to say that it is cruelty not to participate in this love that has become history in the life of the world and in our own lives. For this reason we must pray to Our Lady: that in place of such cruelty, the sweetness of Her presence be welcomed into our hearts, and our hearts come to know sweetness.
"A little while, and you will no longer see Me; and a little while again, and you will see Me" (cf. Jn 16). This is the paradox of faith. Because justice — the meaning of the world — lies beyond what our eyes see, our hands touch, our hearts feel, our minds grasp. But in our minds, in our hearts, beneath our fingers, before the eyes of believers, the dawn of the full day is already perceptible. The beginning of the true world is experiential.
"Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You... This is eternal life: that they know You, the only true God, and the One You have sent, Jesus Christ" (cf. Jn 17). These words are part of the prayer Christ left as His testament. In a testament, a person places what life has given him as supreme meaning — leaving it in the hands of those he loves, to whom his heart is bound. The supreme word entrusted to us is Glory. The glory of the Father is the glory of this Man, and therefore — if we are part of it — it reverberates in us. It is the glory of our life, the glory of man alive. This is the meaning of the world: that we should share in the glory of Christ, for in the glory of Christ is the glory of the Father, the splendor of Being. Being, the Eternal, is now present among us. If we do not flee from Him, every one of our hours can feel Him vibrate within it. It is dawn, not night — even in sickness, even in pain, in the face of the death of a beloved, in the midst of daily toil. And above all in community — in this great, "impossible" miracle of our unity, which abolishes estrangement at the root, so that I recognize you as part of me, of my own blood, of my own origin and my own destiny, a fellow traveler.
"This is eternal life: that they know You..." Where is this knowledge of God possible? This knowledge of Christ? Where is it seen? In the unity among people that Christ establishes. Our Father, may Your will be done: the miracle of our unity — between You and me, among all of us — which perhaps will one day be the miracle of the whole world.
Let us return, finally, as at the beginning, as every day, to the seed of this story, to the origin, to that point which is a woman's womb: "The Angel of the Lord brought the message to Mary, and she conceived by the Holy Spirit. Behold the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me according to Your Word. And the Word became flesh, and dwells among us."
CANONICAL SOURCE: Il Sabato, April 14, 1990 — notes from Giussani's 1989 Holy Week meditations for CL university students.
*Luigi Giussani (1922–2005) was an Italian Catholic priest, theologian, and educator who founded the international lay movement Communion and Liberation.
Charles Péguy -, The portal of the Mystery of Hope - Grand Rapids, Mich. : William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.