Dear Friends,

Who among us has not had the experience of a time that seems like we are living heaven on earth? Because we were so happy, so full. These are irreplaceable, exhilarating moments that we wish could go on forever, because it “seems like we’ve found / the secret key to the world,” (F. Guccini, Farewell). Yet, so often, it seems like moments later, “everything falls apart,” as one of Giorgio Gaber’s songs (L’illogica allegria [Illogical Joy]) says.

It is starting from this elementary experience – which we all share – that we feel the full urgency of the question we have placed before our eyes these days together: “What can withstand the test of time?”

We cannot respond to this question with our own opinions or instinctive reactions. None of these, in fact, are able to offer a response that lives up to the urgency we all perceive inside us. Only a fact, only a lived experience is enough to give an adequate response.

Finding such an experience is not a matter of intelligence or effort; it is a question of attention. Fr. Giussani reminds us of this, saying, “Finding the ultimate truth is like discovering something beautiful along one’s path. One sees and recognizes it, if one is attentive. The issue, then, is this attention” (The Religious Sense, p. 34).

But how can we recognize such an experience, without making a mistake? “What really counts in life,” Kierkegaard writes in his Diaries, “is that at some time one has seen something, felt something, which is so great, so matchless, that everything else is nothing by comparison, that even if he forgot everything he would never forget this.”

Has something like that ever happened to you?

Only those who see it in their own experience will be able to respond to the question you have proposed for the Triduum, which is “the” question in life.

Is there any adventure more fascinating than finding “the” answer?

Best wishes on your adventure!
And Happy Easter!

Your friend,
Julián