AN ORIGINAL PRESENCE

Interview with Father Julián Carrón,
President of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation,
for the Spanish magazine Alfa y Omega – March 20, 2008

A year ago, on March 24, 2007, St. Peter’s Square in Rome was full of CL people coming from all over the world to listen to Pope Benedict XVI’s audience on the occasion of the 25year anniversary of the papal acknowledgement of the Fraternity of CL, of which you have been recently reconfirmed President for the next six years. What stayed with you of that audience?
In me, there is the living memory of the fact that that day in Rome was the apostolic confirmation of the value of the charism of Father Giussani, recognized for the life of the Church. Pope Benedict XVI emphasized the personal origin of the charism and confirmed its permanence in the experience of the Movement. And he sent us back into the missionary duty that Pope John Paul II had already given us, a duty to be witnesses in the world of our faith that is deeply rooted in the Body of Christ, which is the Church.
Today, that missionary challenge is even more decisive, if I think back to what happened in Brazil in the past few weeks and of which we have been astonished witnesses. During a meeting in Sao Paolo with fifty thousand followers of the Brazilian Sem Terra (Landless) movement, Cleuza Zerbini, the founder (together with her husband Marcos), said, “Carrón, a few years ago you had a movement called Nueva Tierra(New Earth). When you met Father Giussani, you gave him your movement, because you said you had nothing more to look for. Everything you were looking for you had found. Today, history repeats itself once more. Today, we do not have two roads, but only one. Today, Nueva Tierra and Sem Terra will join the Movement of Communion and Liberation.” You can imagine how deeply moved I was, like the time when Father Giussani called me in Spain to ask me to guide the Movement. And, in the same way, I felt so little then, a nothing in front of that task. In Sao Paolo, I had the same feelings. The Mystery put us in front of this new event, but I am not afraid, because He who started this good work among us will complete it. Our duty is to say yes to this new and mysterious form in which God presents Himself in our life.

How did you receive this renewed mandate to guide the Movement over the next few years? What does this mean for you?
I have accepted the decision of the diaconate of the Fraternity with the same spirit I accepted the invitation of Father Giussani, trying to obey the method with which the Mystery calls me. Today, I am better aware of my total disproportion in front of the task I am called to perform; before, I was seeing things from afar, while now, I have a closer awareness of those same things. What I want to live is well explained in the passage of Soloviev that Father Giussani suggested as a permanent manifesto of our Movement: “What is dearest to us in Christianity is Christ Himself. He Himself and everything that comes from Him, since we know that the wholeness of the divinity corporally resides in Him.” I want to live this; I wish for nothing else in my life.

What does this means for the future of CL?
The impressive things that have happened this year show once more our responsibility, according to the mandate of March 24, 2007. We are called to live a profound and personalized faith that can allow us to stay in our reality “with a spontaneity and freedom that allow new and prophetic, apostolic, and missionary achievements,” said Pope Benedict XVI, to be able to cooperate with the priests and “making present the Mystery and the redeeming work of Christ in the world.”
 A mature faith expresses itself in the works wherein man’s desire is embodied, and in this way it contributes to the life of society. Catholic faith is not just a private affair limited to some parts of life. It is an element that makes everyday life better, more human and more positive, and puts us in the perfect position to be able to face everyday problems and difficulties, in our relations with others, in education, in the workplace, and even in civil and political appointments lived as charity.

In your opinion, what does the cultural and political milieu of Spain and Italy, with rightful distinctions, represent for Christians?
Providentially, we have found the text of a 1972 speech by Father Giussani that I believe to be very current, at least for me. Talking about another dramatic moment of our history–the crisis of 1968, of which some current phenomena are the latest consequences, he said, “God never permits anything to happen unless it is for our maturity, our maturation. In fact, the truth of the faith is demonstrated precisely by the capacity of each of us and of every ecclesiastical reality (family, community, parish, and the Church in general) to valorize what appears to be an obstacle of persecution, or difficulty, as a road to maturity, by the capacity to make it an instrument and moment of maturation” [see Traces, Vol. 10, No. 3, 2008]. For me, it is a bright description of the right attitude we should have to live in our present time. But it is, above all, the following sentence that I would like to stress: “This, we can say, is the indicator of our faith’s truth, its authenticity or lack thereof: if the faith is truly in the foreground, or if in the foreground there is another kind of concern; if we truly expect everything from the fact of Christ, or if we expect from the fact of Christ what we decide to expect, ultimately making Him a starting point and a support for our projects and programs.” Therefore, the troublesome situation our countries are going through is above all an opportunity allowed by God to educate us, to verify what we really love and also to uncover the ambiguity in each human undertaking, which is limited by its very nature. 

What does this judgment imply for the public presence of Christians?
In the present situation where, as we have seen, reacting to others’ provocations is not enough, we are pushed to rediscover the originality of Christianity. A non-reactive, original presence is required. “A presence is original when it comes from the consciousness of its own identity and from the attachment to it. In this, it finds its consistency” (Father Giussani).  As Christians, we have not been chosen to prove our dialectic or strategic skills, but just to testify to the news that faith has introduced into the world and that “conquered” us, changing our look toward people and reality.
In this context, I believe that the challenge we are faced with is the usual one, since the beginning of the Movement: the educational challenge; educating adults in the faith, according to a method that makes the attachment to Christ reasonable. As Father Giussani said at the 1987 Synod, “What is missing is not the verbal or cultural repetition of the announcement. Today’s man is waiting, probably without knowing it, to experience a meeting with people in whom the fact of Christ is such a present reality that their lives have changed. It is a human impact that can upset today’s man”—that is, the meeting with something that matches our heart’s needs, that shakes reason of its torpor and that can be the answer no moralism could ever dream up.

Briefly, what original thing can the CL charism offer?
What we have received from the Church is a grand tradition; the human and Christian genius of Father Giussani has rendered this a present and attractive experience in today’s reality. In faith, loneliness and skepticism are defeated and life becomes a huge certainty because Somebody Else is at work in history. We can live this way in every circumstance and in every trial. This is the contribution we believe we can give to the life of our people—in Spain, in Italy, and even in Brazil, where we have our new friends. We want to show the pertinence of faith to life’s needs—the need for truth, beauty, justice, and happiness—and therefore the usefulness of faith in the life of today’s men. We do this with the disarmed example of our experience, curious to meet and recognize the truth and authenticity in everyone, to walk together toward the fulfillment every man desires from the bottom of his heart. This faith is hope for everybody’s life.

Can this be enough to face the attack of a world that is further and further removed from the Church and from faith and that wants to build itself without—if not against—Christianity?