The Journey to Truth is an Experience
To Find Oneself and Dwell in Christ
Preface by Cardinal Marc Ouellet
Archbishop of Quebec and Primate of Canada
At times life offers some momentous experiences that awaken and provoke a decisive change of direction. I remember one day in the Grand Séminaire in Montreal I noted that some of my companions did not seem to be making the same discoveries, on the spiritual plane, as I was. I was struck and disturbed by this and it led me to the Priests of Saint Sulpice, where I dedicated myself to priestly training. My discovery of something lacking in their formation was the catalyst for my vocation to train priests.
Father Luigi Giussani took the reverse path. As a young priest he taught at the Major Seminary in Milan. One day, thanks to a chance conversation with some high-school students on a train, he became aware that something was missing in the Christian experience of youth taught in Catholic institutions. He was so troubled by this that he quit his professorial duties to dedicate himself to the Christian education of young high-school students. His courageous choice was at the origin of a great ecclesial movement that has never ceased to grow and develop in Italy and in numerous other countries.
The book, The Journey to Truth is an Experience gathers some of the fundamental intuitions of this exceptional educator, who, like a modern-day Socrates, develops free and responsible personalities, introducing them to the total reality of human experience. He knows how to gradually recall, question, and lead his interlocutor to a free choice that culminates in the encounter with Jesus Christ at the heart of life.
That he was the object of his disciples’ deep affection can be very naturally explained by the essential discovery that he provoked in them, by having them experience their own identity in Jesus Christ. Thanks to this affection, which responds to an authentic spiritual paternity, many young people and even those not so young have been able to rediscover the Church as an experience of communion that gives meaning to life.
Two questions nourish the dialogue of the members of Communion and Liberation at the “School of Community” and draw them together to educate them: “Who am I?” and “Who do you say I am?” The two go hand in hand and refer us to two analytical factors that are never neglected by the author: rational analysis and the gaze of the believer who tries to embrace all the factors of human experience, neglecting none. Whoever risks this Christian path of education knows that one must commit one’s freedom if one wishes to access the depths of an experience of God that carries its own confirmation within.
Giussani’s pedagogy begins from human experience and leads to a deeper level of this same experience. It helps integrate the affections of the heart and the spirit in a way that avoids rationalism and fideism, thanks to the attention paid to the “person to Person” encounter at the heart of the Christian experience. The outcome is a deep awareness of the identity of each person’s “I” in Christ: this is the result of a clear-eyed and serene alliance to the ecclesial community.
The strength of this Christian path of education is the quality of experience that it facilitates and confirms, thanks to the communital verification that is an essential requirement and commits us in personal witness. “I know who I have believed in” Father Giussani might say, along with Saint Paul, thus clearly transmitting a personal conviction that becomes an extraordinary source of meaning and motivation for those who enter this fascinating experience of reality. May the reading of this book help those spirits in search of truth and those believers in search of a personal experience that may be at the same time deeply ecclesial.
