Dearest friends,

We were to have met for the annual Spiritual Exercises of the Fraternity with the question, “What saves us from nothingness?”, but a powerful and dramatic unforeseen event forced us to forego our gathering, which everyone has always looked forward to with great anticipation. But this has not eliminated the question; if anything, it has made it even more acute, because of the nature of the challenge we are facing throughout the world. Precisely the situation that has developed makes it even more urgent to grapple with this question, seeking an answer able to meet it. Thus we thought it necessary to continue to accompany each other in this vertiginous time in which nothingness looms so powerfully over everyone’s life. We desire to stay in front of the provocation that involves all of us, without drawing back. This will enable us to verify whether the new knowledge and the new affection of the “new creature” generated by Baptism are becoming in us the “normal consciousness […] with which it passes through the whole web of circumstances that comprise reality” (L. Giussani–S. Alberto–J.Prades, Generating Traces in the History of the World, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal & Kingston, 2010, p. 53). Fr. Giussani offers us a precious methodological suggestion for carrying out this verification. “For the mentality to be truly new, its awareness of ‘belonging’ needs to be continually engaged in a comparison with present events.” Commitment to the comparison with present events is the method indicated to us in order for our mentality to become truly new. In fact, “if it does not enter into present experience, the new knowledge doesn’t exist–it is an abstraction. In this sense, not to judge events is to mortify the faith” (ibid. p. 54). Our journey together is made fascinating by the promise that this comparison can cause the new creature that is born in Baptism and that is awakened in the encounter with a living Christian community to blossom in us. The text that I am preparing and that we will work on together in the coming months is meant to be the instrument for this. Here below you can read the introduction.

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