Reflection on CLU Assembly at Notre Dame

What kind of impact have these Encounters (with the Pope, Rose, and the CLU Spiritual Exercises) had on me, my self-awareness, and on what I desire for my life? What should we learn and follow from these events as a community?

At the Spiritual Exercises last weekend, I realized my longing to live every moment with a new intensity. I admired this intensity within the different communities that joined us from across the Midwest and D.C., which was very evident in the way they communicated and in every gesture. What’s more is the unitary intensity present among the communities as a whole. I left the Exercises with a deep longing to keep this intensity alive.
Just one hour after leaving the retreat house after cleaning up, just as I began to feel the heavy “let down” when a big event is over, Pietro invited me to study with him and a couple other friends. Immediately I answered “Yes” to this invitation as my energy came back to me at the sound of his voice and the thought of seeing my friends again so soon. Here was an invitation to live a mundane moment with this new intensity. And I did experience this intensity- this joy and correspondence and freedom and awareness of the “I”- when we studied. Soon they invited me to go to dinner, but I had to finish assignments despite my longing to continue with them. I couldn’t live life with them in the flesh in that moment, yet I carried the memory of them and the Encounter as I studied.
At dinner the day after the Exercises with close friends from my dorm, I found the conversations to be unsatisfying, lacking intensity. Perhaps I was not open to meeting life in this way, meeting them with this openness, as I am in our CLU community. This is surely a “decentralized” approach, as the Pope explains. Everything is an opportunity to be educated to Christ, to call us back, yet this only happens with openness. I questioned whether it is truly possible to live this intensity with anyone, as Fr. Pietro said. Sure enough, with more openness throughout the week, I did experience similar freedom in other friendships outside of my CLU friends. One evening I was studying in the library and saw Monica, a friend from our School of Community. To me her face was a powerful expression of memory, reminding me of this intensity and need to expect something good, to wait for Someone, in all circumstances with any person (i.e., the other friends I study with, eat dinner with, etc.)

At the Spiritual Exercises, someone asked in a letter, “How can I desire so much and be crushed by this desire?” Why is it so difficult to trust that my desires are given to me, with a promise to be fulfilled in some way, despite my inability to make sense of these desires? Is it possible to live this way, with this intensity, with this longing that is not continually satisfied? For someone like Rose, it seems effortless to sustain looking at everyone with the gaze of love, at everything with intensity. For me, it still doesn’t seem possible, even though I think I am aware that I am loved by Another. But because of the human condition, it is not easy to remain open. It is so simple: as Giussani says, it should be natural to meet something that fulfills, yet it never happens. Work, friends, and school are not enough – sometimes even when I am with those who remind me of the intensity I long for, when I “brush off love,” as Jeff described. Yet when this natural correspondence happens, it is exceptional. It reminds me to keep hope. It reminds me that this intensity is possible. And slowly I become more open to the One who is waiting for us in everything.


The Method of Accompaniment
With this intensity comes to desire to know each of my friends better and better. What does living this intensity outside of School of Community and the Exercises look like? Studying together, dining together, meeting to pray the Angelus, playing Frisbee on the quad… all out of following reality’s spontaneity that we do not control. Our only responsibility is to be open and to respond.
This time together reminded me of my belonging. Why would I not follow the proposals of my friends, who remind me of the One to whom I belong? The proposals of the Vacation, the common fund, the Equipe, the Encounter… they all make sense. The Exercises reinforced why I am working a job to afford to follow these proposals that remind me of my belonging. The proposal to read Giussani every day makes sense, to read the week’s text before School of Community, to be able to engage with a greater intensity with my community.
To live an intensity together is not to replicate each other’s experiences and interests. I do not have to admire the same work of art as my friend if it does not move me. The method of accompaniment- as Jesus invited the apostles to “come and see” – is not the experience of loving Leopardi just as Giussani does, for example. Rather, it is to be educated to such openness to find Him, Love, in everything… art, music, sports, water, sunflowers. We educate each other to this openness by sharing life together, which is the Church, by accompaniment, by pointing each other to our individual Encounters. It is not the type of wine you drink, but the desire with which you drink it.


Prayer: Living Life Aware of Being Loved

This week I experienced a mystery of prayer: in not thinking about myself, in constant prayer for a friend, I experienced a freedom, joy, and lightness toward the tasks of my day. This of course does not mean that my friend’s struggles brought me joy. Rather, in praying for this person, I recognized my own dependence and was living a constant relationship with Love, through faith, which Giussani says is conversion. “Faith is the recognition of the presence of an Other in our midst and accepting that other as the meaning of myself” (L. Giussani, Alla Ricerca del Volto Umano). My freedom comes from this relationship of dependence. My friend recognized his inability to fix his situation, and thus proposed for me to pray for him, which reminded me of my own need, which lifted the burden of my tasks of the day because I recognized that my day does not depend on my own efforts. When I am not living my life with the awareness of being loved, in prayer, I create problems for myself in my own thoughts. We do not create ourselves, yet we have the capacity to create problems for ourselves. Hence I experienced exceptional freedom when I was not creating problems for myself.


Charitable Work as a Response, a Following

“Christian morality is not the titanic, voluntaristic effort of those who decide to be coherent… as a sort of solitary challenge in front of the world. […] Christian morality is the response, the moved response to the surprising, unexpected mercy- even “unjust” according to human criteria- of One who knows me, knows my betrayals and loves me anyway, esteems me, embraces me, calls me again, hopes in me, expects of me. Christian morality does not mean never falling, but always rising, thanks to His hand that pulls me up.”

-Pope Francis from The Caress of Mercy

I can spend my days trying to run from my problematic –human!- thoughts by occupying myself in “service” to others, but this is not what it means to follow. This week I experienced an emptiness after many “voluntaristic efforts” that I organized as a “challenge” to forget myself, in an attempt for self-consolation, which I soon realized was an attempt to create myself. All that was asked of me was to be open and accept the mercy of the One who does create me. I made my own situation worse because I neglected my studies in this effort to forget myself, which is where the emptiness came from, instead of experiencing the fullness beyond anything my efforts could achieve as I realized in following during the Exercises.

I met something beautiful and experienced extraordinary freedom to love in hosting our friends at Notre Dame for the Exercises. With greater clarity I realized that I do not make myself. How was it possible to be so free, joyful, and present during the Exercises despite my sin and my lack of sleep those days on top of exhaustion from the week before? I was not aware of my exhaustion because I was filled with greater awareness that opened me up to fullness beyond anything my efforts could ever achieve. I didn’t consciously realize I was “serving” our friends until Lele pointed it out to us. I along with my ND friends and some from other communities were merely following: this dish needed to be washed, we needed to order more coffee, set the table, etc. We followed, yet it did not seem obligatory, and it was not self-imposed. It was our response. We were genuinely joyful.

Similarly to prayer, charitable work reminds me of my personal relationship with Love, the Source of love. The residents of the nursing home are so aware of their needs, their dependence. They educate me to my own dependence. This is why we experience freedom in sharing life with the marginalized. No matter how exhausted we are after two hours worth of visiting and singing with them, we want to hold onto the last song, “Amazing Grace,” because these individuals educate us to freedom. It is by His grace, by His hand that pulls me up, that I am sustained in moments of both hope and hopelessness, longing and unfulfillment, desire and exceptionality… the essences of living life with intensity.