MEMORES DOMINIby Lucio Brunelli and Gianni Cardinale

<< Memores Domini
MEMORES DOMINI by Lucio Brunelli and Gianni Cardinale
30 Giorni (30 Days), 1989 no. 5, pp. 56-62 > Italian > Spanish	This is the name of a new association approved by the Holy See. Its purpose: to live the memory of Christ in the world of work. Lay persons, they practice poverty, chastity, and obedience. A talk with its president, Msgr Luigi Giussani They put their property in common, practice chastity, and live obedience, but they do not wear religious habits nor take vows. They devote at least a couple of hours of their day to prayer and contemplation, but they are "totally immersed in the world" and earn their living by their own work, like everybody. It has not been easy to find a canonical place in the Church for these lay monks of the third millennium who call themselves "Memores Domini," those who live the memory of the Lord. They began in 1964, but only in 1981 were they recognized as a "Pious Lay Association" by the Bishop of Piacenza, Msgr Enrico Manfredini. Seven years later, on 8 December 1988, it was the Holy See's turn to approve them and recognize their juridical status as a "Private Universal Ecclesial Association." In the meantime, they have grown: now there are hundreds of members, men and women (with a slight predominance of the fair sex), and houses also throughout Europe, Africa, and Latin America. President of the Memores Domini ("for the duration of his natural life") is Msgr Luigi Giussani. For the first time, in this interview, he has agreed to tell about the history and meaning of this new experience of Christian life that was born out of the womb of Communion and Liberation itself. How and when was the idea of Memores Domini born? LUIGI GIUSSANI: A long time ago, in the early 1960s, some members of Gioventù Studentesca (Student Youth; only later would the Movement take the name of Communion and Liberation) insisted on being guided to live a dedication to God within the world. I received this proposal with admiration, but I was not immediately in agreement. So much so that in the beginning I did not participate very enthusiastically in their biweekly prayer meetings, and only after a period of two or three years did it become evident to me that this could be a special, but meaningful, kind of provocation and fulfillment of the Christian experience that we had initiated some years before. So then I protected the decision of some of these young people to adapt a farmhouse on the outermost edge of Milan to be their house and logistical center. This house, many years later, and suitably renovated for the purpose, still functions as the Mother House for today's Memores Domini. My uncertainty, then, was manifested also in the fairly generic name, "Adult Group," that we used inside the Movement until the 1980s, to indicate the houses that were slowly multiplying. Why this uncertainty? GIUSSANI: The idea of this form of dedication was not mine: I obeyed the circumstances that were the vehicle for a proposal made to me by the youths themselves. And too, there was the terror of a further and much more weighty responsibility. What does pontifical approval of this association mean to you, today? GIUSSANI: It is a respite of certainty for which we are grateful to the Supreme Pontiff, because approval is not only support for our attempt, but more profoundly, it bears what we are and what we want into the great obedience to the mystery of the Church. What are the basic rules of life which a member of the association has to obey? GIUSSANI: They can be synthesized in the categories in which, traditionally, the Church summarizes the imitation of Christ. Obedience, in the sense that the spiritual effort and the ascetic life are made easier and more authentic by sequela. Poverty, as detachment from individual possession of money and things. Virginity, as giving up a family in favor of a total devotion to Christ also in a formal sense. In the statute, it is written that the members of Memores Domini are asked to live in a house where property is heldin common and regular cadences of meditation and prayer are observed... GIUSSANI: Yes, the Memores Domini are intended to live together in "houses," in a companionship determined by three to ten or twelve people. The companionship to which the Lord calls us when he gives the vocation itself is like a sacramental sign, in an evidently analogical sense, in which Christ's presence and our dedication to it are enacted in a way that recalls it every day and every moment, as the first sphere where we learn to live the faith, to face and to mold the reality of the world in accordance with the love for Christ that we live. It is thus the primary locus from which all work, which defines man's entire life, has to draw its exemplary form. When the members of Memores Domini enter their house, they are invited to become aware of the reason why they are within those walls, become aware of the very way things are arranged in the house, of how time is spent at home. The perception of that little sketch of a world as the great room of the humanity of Christ, the great house of humanity in Christ, is impressive. We understand, then, why insistence on silence is very important in the life of the Memores Domini houses. In each of them there is the obligation of total silence for an hour a day, in which each one places himself in front of Christ, and this deep silence is required also after the recitation of Compline in the evening. This very consciousness of the house as the beginning of the way all men will live the world when Christ manifests Himself, as the first locus of the offering of one's own life to bring this on as soon as possible, demands a vigilance that only a continuous tending towards silence can foster. This climate of physical silence is pursued all day long, even if obviously it does not prevent necessary words being spoken, but they have to be said in full awareness of the environment where one is, thus in respect for others' recollection. This climate of silence is suspended when the members gather around the table to eat their meals. The Memores Domini also agree to place their salaries and their property in common. Whatever is left over after the needs of each house have been met is put in the Common Fund of the Memores to be used for works of charity and mission, or for the general needs. Is it true that in the houses of the association it is forbidden to have a television set? GIUSSANI: It is not forbidden: it is advised, and when this advice is not taken, except in cases of strict necessity, it is repeated somewhat energetically. Television, too, is like the mouth, the tongue: it can be governed, it can be used reasonably. But, above all else, television itself, because of what its usual contents are, makes reasonableness in watching it very difficult, and in the second place this advice helps save us from the vanity of curiosity. Therefore, more than the absence of television, which is already by itself a healthy safeguard, what is valuable is the call to reasonableness in the use of time. Are exceptions allowed to the obligation to live in a house of Memores Domini? GIUSSANI: Yes, when there are serious family or personal reasons. In this case, the members of the association participate in some of the important moments of the life of "house,'" while in economic terms it is obvious that first and foremost they share the responsibility for the life of their family members. Aside from the Vatican definition, what distinguishes the Memores Domini association from a religious congregation or also secular institutions? GIUSSANI: The Memores Domini association does not imply the explicit declaration, in the classic "vows," of the prospect of life to which one commits himself. This is not because of any kind of reticence, but because it seems to us that Baptism and Confirmation can be sufficient as a foundation for a total dedication to Christ and the Church, without having to have recourse to the characteristic formula of religious life that is expressed in vows. My image is that of a lay person who freely lives an existence totally immersed in the world with total personal responsibility. For example, if he is an entrepreneur, he is fully the boss of his company or if he has other partners, is co-responsible with them for his business. It is not the claim of a greater freedom, but a statement of total respect and confidence in the personal responsibility of the Christian lay person. There is a moment, however, along the path of the Memores Domini, when the vocational commitment is assumed in front of the entire community as a permanent commitment. This moment has always been understood as an assumption of responsibility before all the mystery of the Church. Does this determination to safeguard the lay character of your work, by imagining new forms of monastic life for the new times, also mean that you think the traditional forms of religious life have exhausted their function, historically speaking? GIUSSANI: I think that the forms of association determined totally by faith are alive to the extent that they respond to the "signs of the times," as John XXIII would say. Now, it is a sign of the times that today, God and Christ (and the tendency is to include also the conception of the reality of the Church) are not denied but, in the best of cases, put to one side in life, outside of life with its web of concrete needs. It is thus necessary for Christ to be witnessed within the reality of the world, in its daily dynamic, in the workplace. Because work is the phenomenon that expresses man's attachment to life, the activity that gives concrete form to the image it takes. It is within the condition of work conceived in this way, with its all-embracing meaning, that witness must be made to Christ. And this is precisely the purpose of the Memores Domini: those who live the memory of the Lord in their work. Right in the heart of a world in which the deification of work proceeds hand in hand with the spread of a hedonistic religion, the testimony of a more powerful savor, of an indestructible gladness, of a new sense of beauty, of a true intensity of affection and love, becomes more surprising the more the intolerant or inevitable leveling that the secular culture brings about of feelings, even the most common ones, comes upon equally inevitable pauses imposed by grief, disappointment, and sudden silences generated by boredom or an "incomprehensible" emptiness. Congregations and religious orders, as in fact some instances already show us, have to bend in this incarnation of testimony even when their testimony is rendered in front of God's angels: in the silence of a cloister or the strictures of a conventual rule. Enacting, within the bounds of possibility and in accordance with the rules of each order, a rebirth of their origins, which were or have to become again immanent in the life of the people. Sometimes, precisely in the name of a presumed immanence in the people, some religious communities take up today the path of social and political activism, becoming the "flower in the buttonhole" of parties and cultural currents traditionally hostile to the Church... GIUSSANI: The dissolution of the origin from which orders and congregations were born certainly does not correspond to the need for incarnation of which I was speaking. The lie would be even more complete if the immanence in the world were reduced to an identification with it, assuming as a decisive criterion for understanding one's religious life criteria and modules of worldly culture, and thus concessions to practices whose source is not Christ in the Church. In this case, one's faith, instead of judging the world, would be judged by the world. And surreptitiously--but not really--one would break away from his own religious definition and the dynamism that this brings with it. The Memores Domini Ecclesial Association--as article 1 of its statute reads--has a "private," not a "public" character. Thus, in its concrete actions, it does not involve the responsibility of the Church as such. Is there a particular significance in this choice? GIUSSANI: This experience, like that of Communion and Liberation out of which it was born, wants to be totally immanent in the ordinary life of the Church. If it needs an organization, this is only to preserve a helpful solidarity in the difficult task of Christian witness and to nourish continuously the spirit from which this commitment springs. Thus it is as though I wished that the members of Memores Domini not even be pointed out as an "association" in the Church. In short, that what is noteworthy and notable be the people with the example they give, not as members of a new entity in the Church. In this sense I accepted the formula of being private. After the desecrating permissiveness of the 1970s, today--in the era of AIDS--even in the secular camp there are those who list "good reasons" for living chastely. And too, the pagan religious world also recognized and practiced the ideal of virginity. Think of the "state chastity" of the Roman Vestals or the condemnation of marriage by the Gnostics of the second century. In your opinion, how is Christian chastity different from all this? Does it perhaps lie in the fact that the consecrated person lives the same renunciation but for a different purpose: service to others? GIUSSANI: The difference is the same as the difference between the Christian and the pagan: love for Christ, acknowledgment of His presence, and grateful wonder for His remaining steadfast in history. A greater openness to the service of our brothers is, and must be, a normal consequence for anyone not compelled to sacrifice his physical and affective energies to creating a family and bringing up children. But this is not, absolutely, the reason for Christian virginity. A militant revolutionary, too, could force himself to give up having a family in order to devote himself totally to his political cause. The reason is above all the fact that Christ called some of His own to this form of life. One discovers in this way that if this was the form of life taken by Christ it could not imply any sort of mutilation of the human or a diminished realization of the value of affection. Then, out of curiosity, so to speak, or attracted by this consideration, one asks himself what was the strength of the love with which Christ looked at the men and women He met. Simon, John, Zacchaeus, Mary Magdalene... it was like a relationship that cut across everything and came down to the destiny for which each of them was created, embracing all that person's humanity. There is no greater love than this love for the person's destiny, because of which one can really give one's life for his friend, as Jesus says. From this point of view, a father and a mother too, if in some way they do not live the profundity of this gaze on their children, it is as though they loved them less. The profundity of this gaze implies, paradoxically, a detachment. But in existential terms, precisely this detachment enables an even more profound human embrace. From this point of view, virginity is an ideal for everybody, even for those who do not choose it as a condition of life. Those who live it as a condition of life are like pointing fingers, in the community, to say to all: let's remember who we are. This is why one of the aspects of the Christian event that is certainly evocative as few others are is identifying completely with the relationship that Joseph had with Mary. Virginal affection does not eschew any of the characteristics of human love. It makes preferences real, just as it redeems dislikes. What you are saying does not correspond to the common idea about Christian virginity, which sees it as an amputation (heroic or paranoiac according to the point of view) of human love or a mystical detachment from the unredeemable "flesh," as with Oriental monks... GIUSSANI: I have been to Japan and spoken at length with Buddhist monks. I am not an expert on Asian religions, but my impression is that in Oriental mysticism, virginity is a suggestion resulting from pessimism about matter, the perception of individuality as a limit to totality and thus as the origin of evil. Good is the whole, evil is the particular. Procreation, an inescapable goal of the natural relationship between man and woman, is a continual generation of the human particular in which evil becomes pain. At any rate, there is a trace in every human experience of this supreme aspect of the truth of the person which Christianity has generated and brought to light. Traces of nostalgia for an ultimate, uneliminable purity that historically, however, outside of Christianity, often ends up being expressed in pessimistic or violent moralistic forms. It does not appear that in the Movement of Communion and Liberation, young people are subjected to repeated reminders of the norms of Catholic sexual ethics, nor are special campaigns launched to promote vocations. Nonetheless, vocations continue to flourish, to the priesthood, the religious life, and lay virginity, even in completelynormal young people who, like their contemporaries, are in and of themselves little inclined to make sacrifices without a reason, in this as in other spheres of human life. How do you explain this paradox? GIUSSANI: That is very true, this apparent paradox exists. But I would like to say that the aspect emphasized in CL that most achieves the result you mentioned is--to use the words John Paul II addressed to us--precisely the fact that we believe in Christ dead and risen, "present here and now." A current presence, that is documented and revealed in the albeit contingent aspect of the life of the Church. Undoubtedly young people, and those who are no longer young, need to be continuously introduced to the moral consequence in concrete life of the great and peace-bringing light of faith. This reminder represents the content of an education that is given within a companionship. The light of faith in Christ makes much more reasonable the reasons for the individual laws into which the moral thrust, i.e., the thrust towards destiny, must be translated. Thus in a certain sense it opens to an ease that, to be sure, does not avoid pain and sacrifice, but persuades one to embrace them and, when he has made a mistake, to pick himself up again and go on more easily. The ideal, the thrust towards destiny that defines morality, cannot avoid the experience of toil to the point of sacrifice, even to great sacrifice. But when this sacrifice is lived in the memory of Christ made habitual, it becomes more reasonable and brings with it even a vein of gladness. This is why we always quote the line from The Announcement Made to Mary by Paul Claudel which says: "Peace is made up of equal parts of pain and joy." In the perspective we have hinted at, the sacrifices of the moral life are made more easily, in peace. The purpose of the Memores Domini is to live the Christian memory in the world of work. Traditionally, when the Catholic world speaks about Christian witness in the workplace, it emphasizes the moral aspects of this: the honesty, reliability, professional competence, and altruism of the individual Christian worker. What image of witness first comes to your mind when you think about the Christian presence in the work world? GIUSSANI: I share perfectly the demands mentioned in your question, but we are more concerned to establish the stance of the person, so to speak, which then can be translated into a testimony without moralism and with a consistent humanity. And the origin of this is the most current consciousness possible, and thus habitual, of the presence of Christ and the destination of all of reality to His glory. In particular, it is necessary to keep vivid the consciousness of the content of our personality as belonging to Christ, so that we may leave a different mark on things and the environment, and thus may creatively enact a form of relationship with our co-workers, may spend our time with an intensity that lasts, and may fill our relationship with things in space with a rational beauty. For the most revelatory sign of this position is a vibration of gladness, which is not born out of a diminished sense of responsibility but is originated right in the consciousness of the presence of Christ who rose from the dead and ascended to heaven, and who, therefore, is already at the root of all reality, even of the reality we have at hand, and already redeems it and makes it participate in the eternal truth, a vein of gladness that, arising from this consciousness, makes one feel even more the albeit temporary pain of the weight of things and above all of man's estrangement from his brothers and the very objects of his work. But it is a gladness without irresponsibility, as we read in Milosz' Miguel Mañara, "Don't be surprised at my gladness, I do not forget any of my duties." The Vaticanist front is split between those who claim you took your inspiration from the thought of the founder of Opus Dei and those who emphasize, instead, the elements of difference. Who is closer to the truth? GIUSSANI: When the group of Memores Domini was born, I did not yet know what Opus Dei was. The association edifies me greatly because of its clear affirmation of Christian truth and its capillary efforts at formation of the person. But I have never talked about these things with them, even if I feel that many of the considerations we have made up to now are recognized and shared by the members of Opus Dei with no problem. Perhaps some individual statements might need further clarification, and I would be happy if they helped me to bring this about, while on others there can be different viewpoints that mark the difference in the charisms. Within and outside CL, is there secrecy about the members of Memores Domini? GIUSSANI: There is no secret about belonging to Memores Domini, just as there is no publicity. A certain reserve seems to me a completely natural and understandable necessity. I hope that the members of this group will be recognized by the people around them because of their witness and not because they are affiliated with an association. Speaking about the analogies and differences with Opus Dei, I cannot avoid asking you if there are hair shirts or other instruments of mortification of the flesh in the Memores Domini houses... GIUSSANI: Someone might have them in his room, because, to the extent possible, we insist that each person have his own room, his own "cell," and that this never be violated except for a sufficiently grave reason. Thus a Memor Domini could conceivably have a hair shirt in his room. I do not have one... but I humbly pray to God that this does not mean I have less desire for mortification... Is it true that the heads of the most important communities and works of CL are purposely sought among the members of this association? GIUSSANI: No, absolutely not. Von Balthasar more than once suggested to me that the Movement of CL be led and directed by the Memores Domini, but I have always replied, even directly to him, that I could not see the need for this. It is obvious that precisely because they have to live the Church in accordance with the vocational history that God has given them, they also live the experience of the Movement. They are therefore always urged, because it is always necessary to urge one to the consistence of a position, to give their energy generously for the institutional forms of the Church, just as for the various forms of Movement life. What you say reminds me of a note I jotted down at a recent assembly of Communion and Liberation in Rome: "Itis not at all certain that someone who has a particular religious propensity is facilitated in encountering Christ." This could seem "heretical" to today's mentality. Don't you think so? GIUSSANI: I do not see anything "heretical" in this statement, because the religious propensity can also work in such a way that one is attached to formulas he made up himself, or to identifications that are moralistic, for example. During Jesus' time, the Pharisees certainly had a pronounced religious propensity and this did not favor at all their acceptance of the Messiah... For accepting Christ requires a forgetting of self that is implied exclusively in the wonder of a recognition. In the instant when one recognizes a presence like this, it is like a baby looking at his father and mother: the first instant, as he holds out his arms, is a forgetting of self in which his true love for himself becomes real. Naturally, it is then necessary for this original purity to be maintained, by constantly opposing a fall into the dominion of one's own reaction, the dominion of the apparently obvious. You have always refused to be called Founder. Once I heard you confess that it was not your intention to give life to a new Catholic movement. An observer outside CL might deduce from these words a sort of repentance or at any rate disappointment about the organizational results of the experience you began. How do things stand? GIUSSANI: One cannot imagine and thus claim a grace. In this sense, I do not accept the definition of "founder." The Movement is for me a great grace, and the Memores Domini are the most acute moment of this grace. My repentance, if anything, is the constantly renewed awareness of my own inadequacy, also in pain at the inadequacy of others with respect to what has been given us. It is not at all a disappointment but if anything the temptation, or at least the understandable desire, to unburden myself of a great responsibility before God. In any case, it is like a father and mother who have given life to a child: they remain father and mother all their lives, and no divorce is possible from the flesh of the child. This is why it is impressive from the anthropological and moral point of view that Christ gave the same reason both for the indissolubility of marriage and for virginity, i.e., "for the Kingdom of Heaven." It is impressive that the strain undergone for the fecundity of virginity has its parallel in the strain of indissolubility: in this sense the former is like an encouraging companionship to the latter. Those who look closely at Christian marriage not only are not surprised at virginity but also thank God for having given this grace to mankind, because it is like a relief and a comfort, a prophecy and a foretaste of redemption fully enacted in the strain of today. In Catholic circles, even in those that claim to be close to Communion and Liberation, one often hears comments like this: "How nice this movement would be if its religious soul were not contaminated by the action of those of its members who throw themselves into economic works of political and journalistic battles that are inevitably partial and controversial." Are you sensitive to this type of reproach, and in what sense? GIUSSANI: I feel hypersensitive to this type of reproach, just as I feel hypersensitive to every form of abstraction. But my discomfort becomes even graver if the abstraction is made by people who have Christian faith, because it is precisely recognition of the presence of Christ and love for Christ (which build man up in hope: spe erectus, St Paul says) that obligates the Christian to meet and respond, avoiding nothing, having aversion to nothing, to the crowd of conditionings through which Christ Himself calls him. Christ calls man through the concreteness of the conditions of every day, or rather of every moment. Therefore the members of CL, including the Memores Domini, in accordance with the ways in which the Father calls them, have to face the provocation of circumstance in the faith and love from which they continually have to start anew. The outcome of this depends on the mystery of the freedom of grace and the mystery of the freedom of response made by people, and also on the limit of one's own gifts humbly used. Indeed, each one is called to pray to God so that faith in and love for Christ may resonate so much and determine so greatly human effectiveness, giving it a such an evident and shining definition for good that others may be roused by the goodness of what is done to ask themselves, "How do they do it? Why are they so different and yet so human?" Just as Christ, with His miracles, aroused the question in people, "Who is He?" Jean Guitton has written in Le Christ écartelé (“Christ torn apart”) that this scandal at "form mixed with matter, the eternal with time. and the pure with the impure" constitutes the perennial temptation of gnosis. Do you agree? GIUSSANI: What scandalizes people is the relation between the ultimate and unique consistence of things, i.e., Christ, and the contingent form they take. At the root of the abstraction pertinent to this scandal is a mistaken idea of the transcendent, which makes it more difficult to admit that everything consists of Christ and that human work must tend to manifest this consistence. In this sense, virginity is the testimony that history is the pledge, the "down payment" of the manifestation of the recapitulation of all things in Christ. Without this vision of the transcendent, for Christians, too, there would be no alternative between the fundamentalist option--"religious truths" imposed on the reason from the outside--and the raising up of the dominant culture as the ultimate criterion of action. In this sense, the Memores Domini make a contribution to the solution to the keenest struggle going on today in the world and in the Church. A struggle that, seeing fundamentalism and secularization in opposition to each other, ends up denying the very possibility of an incarnation and above all the continuity of that incarnation in history.