Dear Friends,

As the audience that Pope Francis has granted us for the Centenary of the birth of our beloved Fr. Giussani, filling us with deep gratitude and joy, approaches, I feel the urgency to re-iterate to you the reasons for our participation in such an important event, to help us await for it with humble and sincere hearts, wide open in prayer.

The audience will be a fundamental step on the journey we are on. At such a delicate moment for the movement, with the pilgrimage to the house of Peter we want to affirm once again our affectionate following of the Pope, and in it our passionate love for Christ and the Church. As sons and daughters, we therefore entrust to Pope Francis the desire that animates us from deep within to offer, through the concreteness of our existence, our contribution of faith and of building the common good for the benefit of all our human brothers and sisters, continuing to beg, first and foremost for ourselves, for Him who alone can fulfil the thirst of the human heart: Jesus of Nazareth. This is what Fr. Giussani taught us and witnessed to with his life: “In the great riverbed of the Church and in fidelity to the Magisterium and to Tradition, we have always wanted to bring people to discover–or to see more easily–how Christ is a presence” (Fr. Giussani). We “exist only for this.”

In these weeks leading up to the audience, therefore, let us keep awake our petition to Christ that He may make us capable of renewing our yes to His call in every moment: it is in the yes of each of us, in fact, that our following the Church, which we wish to express through our united presence in St. Peter’s Square on October 15, is made concrete.

As we await the meeting with the Holy Father, with our hearts open to welcome his words and blessing with joyful gratitude, trusting in the merciful embrace of the Church, we entrust the journey of our movement to Our Lady's intercession. We are aware of our nothingness and at the same time are full of indomitable hope in the One who can do everything, in walking that “beautiful road” of which Fr. Giussani never ceased to make us certain: “How can we live out the familiarity with Him, that
familiarity in which His word becomes evident and the only one that gives meaning to life? There is a way: the companionship born of Christ has erupted in history: it is the Church, His body, the mode of His presence today, a day-by-day familiarity, a commitment in the mystery of his presence within the sign that is the Church. This is how a rational evidence, fully reasonable, can be born, which makes us repeat with certainty what He, unique in the history of humanity, said of himself: I am the way, the truth, and the life” (Fr. Giussani).

Let us pray to the Holy Spirit to accompany us and enlighten us, and let us always pray for the Pope and his intentions.

In friendship,
Davide Prosperi
#100Audience