It would be hard to pose questions that are more urgent, more intricately interwoven with the fabric of our days and our relationships, with what happens to us and what we do hour by hour, and which call out to our need to leave a mark so that we can avoid ending up in the nothingness that often seems to envelop our present environment: What will withstand the test of time? What makes it possible that life, our life, not slip by in vain, but become a path capable of building us up and building up the world around us?

Deep down, these are questions we all share, no matter what conception of, position on, or vision of the world we have decided to embrace–assuming we have chosen one. Reality itself will raise these questions, at a time and in a way we least expect.

This is the reason you will find the question "What will withstand the test of time?" both on the cover of this magazine and in the booklet that will soon be available on the CL website containing the text of the Spiritual Exercises of the Fraternity of CL: this text contains meditations and an assembly focused on the necessity to put faith–the event of Christ as it happens in our lives–to the test in reality, of verifying whether it holds up, if it helps us become true men and women.

What you will find in the booklet is a true path that is possible for everyone to follow. It is a path not founded on theories: no idea is able to adequately respond to the question posed. Rather, it points to a new life, a way of being in the world that generates a new way of seeing and knowing reality, and allows us to delve deeply into the underlying factors of this new life and way of being to the point of recognizing their origin, the wellspring of it all: Christ. If faith were not capable of reaching this point, of responding to that question, it would be useless. And if it could not demonstrate that capacity within our experience, if it were merely the repetition of doctrines, albeit true ones, it would still be useless and too abstract. It could not move anyone.

What we offer to our readers is demanding: a proposal of work to be done, work that demands of us that we take the time to go deeper, to consider, and to verify. It is for this reason that the booklet will be the basis of CL's educational proposal for the next few months.

To accompany the beginning of this work, we have chosen to dedicate the "Close Up" section this month to the Exercises. You will find stories and witnesses that document what happens when you begin to take the question asked by the title seriously, verifying the answer for yourself. In simple terms, this verification changes our life. It is a verification that never stops, always putting us back in front of the same urgent need for the existence of something that will last forever.