June 3, 1998 - Luigi Giussani laiškai

June 3, 1998

After the audience with the Pope on May 30 in St. Peter’s Square

Thank you my friends!

What happened last Saturday, 30 May, happened because you, you too, are there, together. It is only togetherness that operates. Indeed, God is where unity is. For me the encounter on Saturday with John Paul II was the greatest day of our history, made possible by the Pope's recognition. It was the "cry" that God gave us as a testimony to unity, to the unity of the whole Church. At least, that was the way I felt it: we are one. I said so, too, to Chiara and Kiko who were there beside me in St Peter's Square: how is it possible not to cry out our unity on such occasions?

And then I perceived-more intensely than ever before-the fact that we are for the Church, we are a factor that builds the Church. I felt myself taken into God's hands, Christ's hands, those hands that mould history.

These are times in which I have begun truly to understand-and all the more on Saturday-the responsibility to which God has called me. I had not understood, but on Saturday it was clear. And this responsibility is such in so far as it communicates itself to others precisely as responsibility. This is true when it is for the whole Church, and therefore for the whole movement; when it is an obedience to the fact that-as St. Paul says-"none of us lives for himself, and none of us dies for himself, since if we live, it is for the Lord that we live, and if we die, it is for the Lord that we die. Whether we live or die, then, we belong to the Lord." (Rom. 14:7-8).

It is God who is at work in what we do: "God is all in all". Our responsibility is for unity, to the point of valuing even the smallest good that is in the other.


Affectionately yours,
Fr. Luigi Giussani

Milan, June 3, 1998