Celebration of the 100th Anniversary of Don Giussani
Bethlehem, St. Catherine, March 11, 2022
Ez 18:21-28; Mt 5:20-26
Dear brothers and sisters
may the Lord give you peace!
This celebration of ours is part of the Holy Masses celebrated throughout the world on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the pontifical recognition of the fraternity of Communion and Liberation. It is also an opportunity to give thanks and at the same time reflect on the presence of your movement within our Church in Jerusalem.
February was the month of Father Giussani's ascent to heaven and 2022 is the centennial year of his birth. As you can see, a numerous series of events are gathered together in unity, joyfully encouraging us to thank God. As He is the One who aroused Father Giussani in his Church and gave him the living and original experience of faith, as well as a method to live it, a charity without boundaries and hope that knew how to go through the most difficult events to find the light of Christ, which can lead every man towards the future.
It is particularly significant to remember Fr. Giussani here in Bethlehem. If I were to ask the members of the movement, especially those who lived alongside Fr. Giussani, for a short or long time, the question: "what is the heart of this movement of yours?", they would answer, at least for the most part: "the Incarnation." It would seem a banality, because the Incarnation is also the heart of the Christian faith, and therefore common to all. But Don Gius, as he liked to be called, had already understood that society was now going through epochal changes, never seen before, with social and economic revolutions of enormous scope, and where it seemed that the salvation of the world for the dominant thought depended exclusively on the hand of man, and not on religious theories - too detached, according to them, from real life. It was thus necessary to find new ways to communicate the faith in that society, so different and in some ways even adverse. The core of our faith, the Incarnation, risked remaining only a definition, an article of faith, but not a lived life, an experience, an encounter. By now, an increasingly evident gap was being created between faith and life, between church and world. Believing in the Incarnation, on the other hand, means seeing reality, the real world, with the eyes of a saved person. It means believing and experiencing that this real world, such as it is, has been reached by Christ, the only and true salvation, and that in this very world, therefore, here and now, I can still encounter salvation, see Christ. As far as I know, this was precisely the providential intuition of Fr. Gius, to bring Christ back to the center of human experience, to incarnate Him in real life, to be able to see His face in this world of ours.
Nazareth and Bethlehem are therefore the centers of Giussani's experience. That little girl in Nazareth and that child born in Bethlehem speak to us of a God who becomes man, who comes to live among us, who takes on our nature, our face, our very habits, who also lives our fragility. He does not want to hide; He has inserted Himself in every fold of human history so that in any place and situation we could find Him, recognize Him and love Him.
It is not by chance that Father Giussani spoke of his pilgrimage to the Holy Land as a fundamental event in his life. As he was sure to live every day behind the steps of Christ, to listen to his voice every day, to desire his face every day. We can truly say that every place for him was Holy Land. This is a lesson also for us, who could live here getting used to familiarity with Christ, or, on the contrary, ignoring it or even neglecting it.
From a certain point of view, the Holy Land, Jerusalem, Nazareth, Bethlehem... are the heart of the movement: here everything was born, here everything can be reborn every day. The small community of CL in the Holy Land, therefore, has a responsibility towards the whole movement. The Church of Jerusalem has the mission to remember every day the Incarnation of the Holy One, and to remind the universal Church that that Event, the Incarnation, is necessarily linked to this Land. Hic Verbum Caro factum est. The Movement of CL in the Holy Land has the same function; to be that unique and special link between the movement in the world and the Land of the Saint. In a certain sense, you are the guardians of CL's heart in the world.
Even here in the Holy Land, however, we need to make visible the intuition of Fr. Gius, who was able to make an admirable synthesis between life and faith, and at the same time who was able to transmit it to thousands of people around the world, for several generations. Here too we need - yes, we, custodians of the Incarnation - to experience that faith is life, that Christ is truly the answer to our truest expectations, and that only through Him can we have a truly liberating view of our society in the Holy Land. We too, in fact, torn by years of conflict, of huge social inequalities, run the risk of seeking easy and immediate answers, which are also always fallacious and short-sighted. We too need someone to bring us back to a true and satisfying look at our daily lives. And it is not catechisms or parish meetings or pastoral plans that will open our eyes. Only by encountering a redeemed person can one experience redemption. Only a saved person can bear witness to salvation. Therefore, for our Church, be those people who help us to make that difficult but wonderful synthesis between faith received and life lived.
A final consideration: part of your movement has also been to bring your experience back to the world of culture, to bring Christian thought into the context of the university and cultural world, where it was sadly absent. Even in this world of ours in the Holy Land, where Islam and Judaism are dominant in the culture, lively but also curious and open, a Christian presence is becoming increasingly urgent; a Christian presence that knows how, in the forms proper to this social context of ours, to send to that cultural world a beautiful and meaningful word, propositional and serene, critical and friendly. They await it, they seek it, they desire it. It would be a significant way of contributing with your movement to the life of this small Church of the Holy Land, which cannot fail to speak of Jesus to all the different social and cultural realities of the Holy Land, in comprehensible forms, here and today.
Before concluding, we cannot fail to recall also what is happening in Europe and address our prayers to them. In these difficult days, we pray for Ukraine, supplicating Mary, Mother of God and Mother of the Russian and Ukrainian people so that the miracle of peace may happen. It is a tragedy that also closely touches the thousands of Russians and Ukrainians who live here among us and who bear the deep wounds of that incomprehensible conflict.
And let us not forget, finally, to continue to pray always for this Holy Land of ours, above all for the Christian community, and for peace among peoples.
Let us ask God also through the intercession of Don Giussani, Servant of God, to give once again to our days joy, serenity and peace of heart. Amen.
