Luigi Giussani, the Church, and Youth in the 1950s
Monday, March 17, 2008
A Judgment Born of an Experience
On February 24, 2005, the then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, personally represented the ailing Pope John Paul II at the funeral Mass for Monsignor Luigi Giussani; his homily would be discussed for months to come in the international press. Speaking for over fifteen minutes without as much as glancing at a text, he called attention to how “Fr. Giussani always kept the eyes of his life and of his heart fixed on Christ. In this way, he understood that Christianity is not an intellectual system, a packet of dogmas, a moralism; Christianity is rather an encounter, a love story; it is an event.” The future Pope Benedict XVI asserted that this “love affair with Christ” was far from every superficial enthusiasm, from every vague romanticism. Really seeing Christ, he knew that to encounter Christ means to follow Christ. This encounter is a road, a journey, a journey that passes also . . . through the “valley of darkness.” In the Gospel, we heard of the last darkness of Christ’s suffering, of the apparent absence of God, when the world’s Sun was eclipsed. He knew that to follow is to pass through a “valley of darkness,” to take the way of the cross, and to live all the same in true joy.
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