Newtown, Connecticut: Witnesses of Life

Newtown, Connecticut is the town where on December 14, 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot 20 children and 6 adult staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

The world badly needs to hear testimonies to unity and to witness the coherence exhibited by lives truly in tune with basic human needs. St. Paul aptly wrote in this connection that ‘we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men’ (1 Cor 4:9) (Giussani, Morality: Memory and Desire, 61).

Newtown, Connecticut is the town where on December 14, 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot 20 children and 6 adult staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Prior to driving to the school, Lanza shot and killed his mother at their Newtown home. As first responders arrived at the scene, Lanza committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. The incident was the deadliest mass shooting at a high school or grade school in U.S. history and the second-deadliest mass shooting by a single person in U.S. history, after the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings (Cf. Wikipedia).

The New York Community had been hearing about a new School of Community formed in Newtown, Connecticut from Olivetta Danese for a number of months. This new School of Community began from a desire of Harry Deeks, a gentleman in his mid-80s, after he met Father Peter Cameron, O.P., a priest who celebrates some of the weekend Masses at St. Rose of Lima Church in Newtown. Father Cameron had talked about CL, Father Giussani, Schools of Community, and the New York Encounter. Harry wanted to know more and began to attend meetings in New Haven. Desire begets desire, and when Harry was no longer able to travel to New Haven for the existing School of Community there, he thought he could start one in his home parish. Olivetta and others from New York began going to Newtown to support the new School of Community that was being born.

On Sunday, June 7, while driving from Brooklyn for this first Community Day in Newtown, the dream Olivetta voiced at the Assembly of the Fraternity Exercises in May emanated as the promise of why this day was proposed and was happening: “to be one with whatever I have in my hands.”

Our time together began at dawn and Steve Ford’s home. They welcomed everyone for a barbeque planned with care by their whole community with an attention to beauty that expressed the hope at the foundation of their friendship and the desire that it grow. The weather was perfect. The adults mingled and met one another as the children played, throwing horseshoes and trying hard to mind their parents’ admonitions to stay off the tire swing that had been roped off to allow room in the yard for tables and chairs. We sang songs accompanied by guitar while a bright sun illumined the backyard, green and lush and full of nature’s welcoming that affirms being as gift.

After the barbeque, we drove to St. Rose of Lima Parish to hear three witnesses. Each of these reminded us that there is no path to the Father that does not go through the present, and that the present does not let us rest for long. Each witness grappled with the questions “How can I live? What is faith?”

Jennifer Hubbard spoke first about her experience since her daughter, Catherine Violet, was one of the children killed in the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
She said, “I thought my faith was strong (before Catherine died) but it barely scratched the surface.” The unexpected and violent death of her child was met with sorrow and confusion, but also with a peace and assurance that Jennifer could only attribute to God’s companionship. “For the longest time,” she said, “I wasn’t really real because I thought I couldn’t get mad, I couldn’t get upset because if I was mad, if I was upset, then I wasn’t really being a good Catholic. If I believed He has a purpose for me then I should be okay with this, and believe me, there are days that I am not okay with this. Finding a flip flop underneath a stair in the garage sets me off.”

On the days filled with struggle, Jennifer turns to scripture. She identifies with Jesus forsaken on the cross crying out “My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?” but she also hears “Be still and know that I am God.” She says that her prayers are often dialogues with God. “I don’t know why it took losing Catherine to realize that it’s a conversation.”
Part of her conversations include asking why her, why Catherine, and she is reminded that if God chose a “… little kid with a stale piece of bread to feed thousands, why wouldn’t he use me? Why wouldn’t he use you?”

Giussani said that “the supreme test of humanity is how death is confronted . . . the saints receive the opportunity voluntarily to embrace death as they affirm life” (Morality: Memory and Desire, 62-63). Truly Jennifer affirmed the positivity of reality because she has lived the experience of losing her daughter so unambiguously in dialogue with the One who gave Catherine to her. How anyone could have a child killed at school and have anything positive at all to say is a sign of Christ. Here. Now. Hearing from Jennifer made clear that wherever Christ happens, whether in and through our charism or outside of it, He is always giving Himself for us. We know Him through the unity of the Church.

Monica Canetta spoke about the life of her son, Matteo, beginning with her pregnancy, then through his birth and death. She and her husband, Carlo, were supported in this experience through their adherence to the companionship in the Movement so much so that Matteo’s prayer card said: “What matters in life is not ‘doing something’ but allowing oneself to be loved.”

When twenty weeks pregnant, Monica was told that her baby had fetal anomalies incompatible with life. Her doctors encouraged her to terminate the pregnancy, but Monica knew that Matteo was alive, already a person, though very ill. From the first diagnosis, Matteo’s parents understood “…that this baby was a gift, a gift from God. Somehow…we didn’t know how. And so we decided on the name Matteo. We looked up… we had a book on names and from the Hebrew Mateo means “Gift of God.”

Throughout the weeks and months that passed until the day of Matteo’s delivery, Monica and Carlo were not alone. “We had company,” Monica said. She sought counsel from a friend in the Movement, Elvira, who is a neonatologist. “Don’t worry,” Elvira said. “We are going to face this together. Remember the Church is like a mother. Don’t eliminate any question. Don’t censor anything. We can face everything.”

Another friend, a priest, found a doctor who was sympathetic to Monica and Carlo’s wishes to complete the pregnancy. Father Paolo often visited; he was quiet and reserved, but listened to Monica as she voiced her experience. Monica shared her doubts and questions with her School of Community. Could it be possible that she and her husband were biologically incompatible? Was something wrong with them? Were they carriers of a disease?

“The real companionship was all these friends that helped us stay “in front of what is” because we were not able. Every day you start over. You have days when you are sad. You are carrying a baby you know is not going to make it and so there is all of that sadness, all of that pain and yet the real companionship we found in the Church, in this movement, was really the help to stay in front of what is.”

Mateo was born at 6:13 a.m. on April 21. He was born and cried a little bit. The baby’s heartbeat was slowing, so Monica asked Carlo to baptize the baby. “We had a beautiful outfit that my mother in law made that was the perfect size. Father Jose arrived and then Father Paolo. Father Paolo had the chrism oil so we were able to finish the baptism rite and then Matteo went to Heaven shortly after that. I wasn’t anxious. It was a very intense day. We stayed in silence a lot in front of this mystery. We cried. We prayed. Father Jose was there for a long time. Carlo’s dad was able to come, and of course, my children.”

“What matters is not what you do but that you are loved into existence. This was very clear. So, what about now, today, after Mateo came and left. What I’m discovering is that this question, is like a dialogue...you are in this dialogue with God…A couple of nights after the funeral my husband said, “Why did this happen to our little baby? He was so innocent. He didn’t do anything.” And I said, “I don’t know, I have no idea, but we can ask. You ask and I’ll ask on my own. And then he said a second thing, “I don’t want to forget him.” Even this we can ask. There’s a line in the Morning Prayer that says your mom might forget you but I won’t forget you. Even if we forget, God is not going to forget.”

Following Matteo’s death, Monica received a condolence letter from someone she did not know. The letter “…showed me the value of Matteo’s life was in being. He didn’t do much but just the fact that he was is changing and changes people. See the miracle is in being. God does it. He touched this lady. It’s another confirmation that it’s not so much what you do but the fact that you are loved. So life becomes beautiful. We can participate in His glory, in His pure form of love today.”

Stephen Sanchez followed to speak about his experience of prayer and work this summer, confined daily in an office cubicle. For him, even there Christ entered. Although he did not share an experience as dramatic as the death of a child, his witness reminded us that “any aspect of existence, even the most banal, is worthy of a relationship with him and, therefore, of his intervention” (Giussani, At the Origin of the Christian Claim, 49). “At 5:30 our alarm rings and we say the Angelus. At 6:45 my wife comes in and says would you like to say the Morning Prayer? By 8 o’clock we are out the door to work. On the way to work we say a Rosary. Then we get to work and the first thing we do is my wife leads prayer for the office. And so literally by the time I get to work I have prayed 17 times.”

Stephen’s work life is spent in a confined space, surrounded by others also confined. But within those constraints, he invites liberation. “I hate the cubicle. It is gray and small. Fr. Carron tells the story of a young consecrated woman in Spain who in her room, to remember that it was a place to be in relationship with Christ, wrote YOU on a piece of paper on her table. So I wrote YOU on a post-it note and I stuck it above my computer. Why? Because I hate this cubicle and the only thing I want to happen in this cubicle is that He (be with me)…and Jennifer said this so beautifully, ‘Christ let it be your face. Let it be your will.’” I want my life to be for the world. I want to have a beautiful witness for the way that Christ has changed me. So most of my prayer every day is, “You have to change me, Christ.” Stephen continued: What I want to say of my experience of belonging and my experience of life, the interesting thing that Christ has done in my life is that even if my circumstances are mundane or small they don’t cease to be dramatic. I see all the multitude of yeses that I make will make it possible, I pray, one day in the face of things that are difficult, to say yes to those also, or especially in the thing that I can’t resolve which will be the thing of my own death. To be able to say, like Msgr. Albacete did, I don’t want to be preserved. When He comes I want to go. I want to say yes. This becomes the daily struggle that I live out in my cubicle trying to remember that my life, although it feels contained, has already been met by Him and is therefore offered for everyone.

Following the witnesses, Fr. Jose Medina celebrated the evening Mass at the parish. For us to be with the parish for Mass was another sign of the truth of our companionship. We did not live the day insularly nor provincially but in freedom, fidelity, and communion with the whole Church. After Mass, this unity was further affirmed by many of us going for pizza before the long drive back to Brooklyn. We had to eat dinner sometime anyway, so why not together? This friendship is not something we have made but received, and in shared life, we grow in the certainty that we are generated by following.

This day in Connecticut was an experience of the miracle of Christ’s presence among us, and it helped us to experience and know how belonging to the life of the Fraternity affects the way we face the demands of daily living. His presence is not something we manage or make, but provokes in us the hope that He will come again. We are saved in the hope of redemption (Rom 8:24), and this certainty of salvation is happening right now, in this, our present life. We cannot be changed if not by something that is happening now. This makes us beggars; this makes us ask, and it moves us to pray. Prayer puts us in the disposition for seeing things for what they are and is dialogue with the One who created us.
"The real problem of Christian sanctity . . . lies in the recognition that Something has occurred, Someone has given himself up for us; this is what day by day changes us, our attitudes, our faces . . . Our value resides in the objective Reality flowing from the Event that occurred. We must willingly adhere to that Event and allow it to penetrate us. The key to the proper direction to follow is to rely not upon our own strength and resources, but to adhere to Someone who has come ‘in the flesh’." (Giussani, Morality: Memory and Desire, 98).