In Which She Admits That Which Brings Freedom

Fair forewarning: parts of this post might not make much sense to people who aren't in CL. But I hope it entices you to want to know more about it!

Last night at adoration I took along Is It Possible to Live This Way? Vol. 1: Faith. I was wanting to re-read the section where he talks about freedom, destiny and attraction (pp. 60-78). Then I went back further to re-read the section "The Beginning of a New Fact in the World" (pp. 25-41). Then, just for frosting, I re-read the quick summary Giussani gives of that section on pp. 57-60.

Several things became very clear to me.

First of all, I realize that I grasped very little of what this means when we read it in School of Community back a year or two ago. That's pretty evident from the notes I wrote and from the memory of what I associated these pages with.

Second of all, my desire became clear. I had the advantage of being alone in the adoration chapel, so I prayed out loud and banged my book on my lap for extra effect saying "I want this freedom! I need this freedom! I have got to have this freedom!" Maybe I should point out the type of passage I was reading at the time. Something like this one on page 39:

e) Responsibility before the fact
The last point: The response. What is the supreme characteristic of any truly human act, above all when the human act is in front of its destiny? Remember Peguy: God never obliges anybody. Freedom!

Ok, back to things that became clear in a minute. Let me talk for a minute about some of my experiences from the past to make sense of this freedom thing.

When I was 16 I went to Germany with my German class. The first week we toured and the second week we stayed with families. When I arrived with my family I was my usual uptight self, only perhaps a bit worse. For the first night and day, when my host family asked if I were hungry, I always said no simply because I was worried about putting them out. In truth I was starving, but saying no to my own desires out of worry of how I would be received by others was my standard operating procedure.

Something similar happened to me only a couple of years ago. I was traveling with a friend, and I started out the morning feeling thirsty. The meals I had that day hadn't featured any beverages that I could easily drink, nor had I pursued any other, so by mid-afternoon I was really quite thirsty. I spent about six hours being deeply, painfully aware of this fact even though I knew that my friend had water in the vehicle that would be mine for the asking. Finally, after nearly 12 hours of being quite thirsty, I risked opening my mouth and asking her for a bottle of water, which was immediately offered, and that was that.

I tell these embarrassing stories on myself because... um... why am I doing this again?! Penance, maybe? I'll get to the explanation of it here eventually.

Back to what I read. The section called The Beginning of a New Fact in the World essentially lays out the five steps of faith as Fr. Giussani teaches them: an encounter (Peter and John have Jesus pointed out to them by John the Baptist), an exceptional presence (people say of Jesus "I've never heard anyone speak like this man!"), wonder (the disciples listen to Jesus in amazement and want to stay with Him), they ask themselves "Who is this man?" (they realize that there is something divine at work -- the beginning of the recognition of God) and then the section I quoted above, responsibility before the fact (the disciples say "to whom shall we go? You alone have the words of everlasting life!")

This is how Giussani teaches us to understand what it means to follow Jesus, to have faith in Jesus, to be a Christian. This also just happens to outline so perfectly what I have experienced in my adventure with my church choir that I keep writing about. It is because of this experience that I now realize I didn't understand any of this before. In other words, I finally understand the basic premise of CL because God has given me this crystal clear experience through which to verify what Fr. Giussani taught, at least in this one regard. It is not that I was not a Christian before, but for some reason God has brought me to this community of CL and has given me this way of understanding and sharing in the charism.

Yeah, right: "for some reason." Can anyone say "redemption"? Fr. Carron, the current leader of CL since the death of Fr. Giussani, likes to speak of our learning to have tenderness toward our humanity. We read an article on this when I first started with CL, and it really made a huge impact on me. It should be no wonder that someone who starved herself to keep from bothering others and hesitates to ask a friend for a simple drink of water needs a bit of remediation on tenderness towards her humanity! In CL we talk a lot about our human need and our desires as the place where God starts all of His movement toward us. He made us for union with Himself, but the place where we start toward that union is recognizing our desire, recognizing what corresponds to the needs of our hearts. Happiness is momentary, fleeting. But correspondence recognizes that the heart is made for that which is infinite, and can only be satisfied by the Infinite.

I realize that there is something I need even more than food or drink so that I can be fully human, following Christ. I need companions. And not just warm bodies, the way my cat likes to find someone who is laying down to cuddle up against. It is part of being human, but more than that -- it is essential to being Christian that we be in community. It is essential that our relationships share and breathe the fragrance of Christ. This is another aspect of CL that I think it is fair to say I just about railed against a while back. I became a Catholic largely under the influence of books, or so I thought. I like being an intellectual, and I admit I have tended to have a lot more intimacy with ideas than with people. People smell bad, they're scary, and they can hurt you. You can stick a book on a shelf when you've finished with it, and pull it out whenever you need it. Very safe.

Jesus, in his wonderful sense of humor, led me on a quest to answer my friend's challenge by leading me to a group of people where fake plastic Pharisaism is out, and the human following of Christ is in. I remember thinking to myself after the first rehearsal I attended that it reminded me a bit of a bunch of kids having pillow fight. (The woman I spoke with Sunday from the Presbyterian choir used the phrase "unruly Kindergarten." Something about Joe has this effect on people, I think!) And something in me noticed there were no bookshelves to defend me from these, these... humans. (CL at least has books!)

So as I read Fr. Giussani, thought about my need for companions in whom I see the amazing face of Christ, and thought about those blisters on my heart, and as I received the answer to my book-slapping prayer, I realized simply that my freedom comes in admitting I love these people, my choir friends. Allowing for that fact should be no harder than asking for a drink of water when you are thirsty, or for food when you are hungry -- unless you are me, of course.

I caught myself for a moment today thinking "There, that's all finished and sorted out." Hah! As if there is anything in our path of following Jesus that is ever "all finished" on this side of eternity. We are always only just beginning.