#by fr. luigi giussani

[songpasserine]

We need a total response that comprehends and saves the entire horizon of the self and our existence. We possess within us a yearning for the infinite, an infinite sadness, a nostalgia – the nostos algos (home sickness) of Odysseus – which is satisfied only by an equally infinite response.

The human heart proves to be the sign of a Mystery, that is, of something or someone who is an infinite response. Outside the Mystery, the needs for happiness, love, and justice never meet a response that fully satisfies the human heart. Life would be an absurd desire if this response did not exist.

Not only does the human heart present itself as a sign, but so does all of reality. The sign is something concrete, it points in a direction, it indicates something that can be seen, that reveals a meaning, that can be experienced, but that refers to another reality that cannot be seen; otherwise, the sign would be meaningless.

On the other hand, to interrogate oneself in the face of these signs, one needs an extremely human capacity, the first one we have as men and women: wonder, the capacity to be amazed, as Giussani calls it, in the last analysis, a child’s heart. The beginning of every philosophy is wonder, and only wonder leads to knowledge…

If wonder opens me up as a question, the only response is the encounter, and only with the encounter is my thirst quenched. And with nothing else is it quenched more.

— Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Pope Francis), 1998

[apesoformythoughts]

We “modern” men and women have a difficult relationship with the past. We are told that it was rife with injustice and oppression, and that tradition is a straitjacket restraining our freedom. We tend to think that everything old is, by default, obsolete. We like reinventing, or “rebranding,” our persona, leaving behind the history that shaped it. In the name of a better future, we risk losing memory of the past.

We are paying a price for this loss. In school, education is increasingly about securing a well-paid job, rather than awakening curiosity and handing down a common heritage. At work, different generations no longer seem to share the same ideals and have a hard time communicating. In social life, we stick with our online tribe or we “bowl alone.” Ignorance of history opens the door to manipulation by the powerful. Above all, the lack of roots generates a feeling of precariousness. It fills the present with anxiety and empties the future of its promise. Is there hope?

Recalling his first meeting with Beatrice, who, for the rest of his life, would embody beauty itself, Dante Alighieri writes:

“In that part of the book of my memory, before which little can be read, there is a heading which says: ‘Here begins a new life.’”

The encounter with a great love gives us a glimpse of a mysterious presence — the ultimate Beauty and Love — whom we always expected but never met. The awareness of this presence, its memory, can heal our relationship with the past and give reasons to hope and to build. Within this experience, “whatever you remember is a fragment of being that rises from the sepulcher, and the different fragments, coming together, rearrange themselves into a design that is no longer just a promise, but a promise that is already being fulfilled" (Fr. Luigi Giussani). All that is needed is our attention.

Join us on February 14–16, 2025, for a weekend of public discussions, exhibits, and live performances to explore how memory and hope shape daily life: work, education, affection, and society.

via nyencounter

[goalhofer]

Famous 1922 births.

Bishop José De Jesús Sahagún De La Parra (Mexican Catholic bishop)

Albert Lamorisse (French movie director & producer)

Betty White Ludden (American actress)

Agathe Poschmann (German actress)

Joanne Dru Wood (American actress)

Daniel Macnee (British-American actor)

Haskell Wexler (American cinematographer & movie producer)

Audrey Meadows Six (American actress)

Kathryn Grayson (American actress & singer)

Archbishop Hilarion Capucci (Syrian Catholic archbishop)

Ralph H. Baer (German-American inventor & video game designer)

Cyd Charisse Morris (American actress & dancer)

Karl Kordesch (Austrian-American inventor)

Carl Reiner (American actor & director)

Russ Meyer (American movie director & producer)

Richard Kiley (American actor & singer)

Doris Day (American actress & singer)(pictured)

Josephine Cottle Masterson aka Gale Storm (American actress & singer)

Michael Ansara (Syrian-American actor)

Barbara Hale Katt (American actress)

Jack Klugman (American actor)

Roscoe Brown (American actor & director)

Darren McGavin (American actor)

Bea Arthur (American actress)

Sir Christopher Lee (British actor & singer)

Baroness Sheila Sim Attenborough (British actress)

Judy Garland DeVinko (American actress & singer)(pictured)

Eleanor Parker Hirsch (American actress)

Howie Schultz (American baseball & basketball player)

Jason Robards; Jr. (American sailor & actor)

Rory Calhoun (American actor)

Friar Jules Wieme (Belgian Catholic lay brother & missionary)

Margaret Middleton aka Yvonne De Carlo (Canadian-American actress)

Isaac Caesar (American actor & writer)

Jackie Cooper; Jr. (American actor & director)

Mervyn Hamilton (American movie director)

Janis Paige Gilbert (American actress & singer)

Cardinal Roger Etchegaray (French Catholic cardinal)

Noémi Ban (Hungarian-American holocaust survivor & lecturer)

Lizabeth Scott (American actress & singer)

Dr. St. Gianna Beretta Molla (Italian doctor & Catholic saint)

Fr. Luigi Giussani (Italian Catholic priest)

Coleen Gray Zeiser (American actress)

Ruby Dee Davis (American actress & poet)

Michel Galabru (French actor)

Iancu Țucărman (Romanian engineer & holocaust survivor)

Barbara Bel Geddes Lewis (American actress & artist)

Dorothy Dandridge (American actress & singer)

Kim Hunter Emmett (American actress)

Constance Ockelman aka Veronica Lake (American actress)

Stanford R. Ovshinsky (American engineer & inventor)

Charles M. Schulz (American cartoonist)

Redd Foxx (American comedian & actor)

Maila Syrjäniemi Mioni aka Maila Nurmi (American actress)

Paul Winchell (American actor & ventriloquist)

Ava Gardner (American actress)

Stan Lee (American comic book writer & editor)(pictured)

[apenitentialprayer]

James Tissot, Simon de Cyrène contraint de porter la Croix avec Jésus, 1886-1894.

7th Station: Jesus Falls for the Second Time

If we pay attention to our days, to each input of sacrifice, which we make, we truly perceive ourselves as redeemers, rebuilders of destroyed cities, redeemers with Christ. Thus our action opens out, opens up: with the presence of Christ, with the heart of Christ, our personal life breaks through the horizon and opens itself to the Infinite, an Infinite that, like the light of the sun, reaches the lowest dark places, making everything new. We must collaborate with that for which Christ died. “Vocation” means being particularly called to this, to making it inevitable for us: participating in that action through which Christ died in order to redeem, in order to save man. We cannot walk the streets and look at the faces of others without feeling a longing, a yearning desire to save them. It is within this yearning that we save ourselves.

- Fr. Luigi Giussani

[revolutionoftenderness]

"Christian tradition sweeps away the notion of the useless person, of time without meaning, of the purely banal act. In the Christian perspective, each one of a person's actions is for the whole world. Each act assumes a cosmic dignity . . . from washing dishes to guiding the Church, from caring for a child to governing a country. In this perspective, the person is free from circumstance. Chance does not determine her value. She can be great, she can journey to perfection, even under the worst or the most humble of conditions." ~ Luigi Giussani, Why the Church? (p39). [The Kitchen, 1858 - James McNeill Whistler] 

• Luigi Giovanni Giussani was an Italian Catholic priest, theologian, educator, public intellectual, Servant of God and founder of the international Catholic movement Communion and Liberation. For more:  https://english.clonline.org/fr-giussani 

• James McNeill Whistler participated in the artistic ferment of Paris and London in the late nineteenth century, crafted a distinctive style from diverse sources, and arrived at a version of Post-Impressionism in the mid-1860s, a time when most of his contemporaries in the avant-garde were still exploring Realism and Impressionism. More: https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/whis/hd_whis.htm

[johnjanaro]

Today is the 15th anniversary of the death of the Servant of God Msgr. Luigi Giussani. It is very beautiful that this great priest died on the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter, in light of his remarkable devotion to Peter's successors. His longtime friend, Saint John Paul II, would go to join him in eternal life a month and a half later. But before that, the ailing Pope sent his personal representative to celebrate the funeral of this great “teacher of humanity,” a Cardinal who once said, "Fr. Giussani changed my life." Within two months, that Cardinal became Pope Benedict XVI. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world from Rome, another Cardinal helped present his own country’s first editions of some of Giussani’s books, saying “He has helped me to appreciate and live more deeply my own priesthood.” Seven years ago, as this Cardinal prepared to retire after a lifetime of intense service to the Church, planning to reside in and become chaplain of an elder care home, he received an unexpected call from Rome for one final service. A conclave. But it turned out to be rather a longer task. On March 13, 2013, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was elected Pope Francis. But Giussani did more than inspire the Popes of our time. He taught thousands of ordinary people in Italy and all over the world. One of those people is me, even if I have been one of the more distracted of his students. Still, insofar as I have anything worthwhile to communicate, the credit must go first of all to the two men in the first picture who taught me and showed me how to stay with Jesus. My dear friends of the CL Movement: it is distance and distraction that keep me from seeing you more often, but it is also illness and my debilitating condition. I miss you all, but hold you close in my heart and prayers. https://www.instagram.com/p/B84557oFdae/?igshid=q9rymkzkwu7w

[clairity-org]

The reason people no longer believe or believe without believing ... is that people do not live their own humanity, are not seriously engaged with their own humanity, with their own sensibility, with their own conscience, and thus with their own humanity.

Fr. Luigi Giussani, Vivendo nella carne

[apenitentialprayer]

This is [sin]: man's fading away from himself.

Servant of God Fr. Luigi Giussani, Meditations Along the Way of the Cross (Third Station)

[apenitentialprayer]

The Resurrection begins from this aspect of our infinite impotence, which is begging, from this supreme recognition that God alone is powerful, and from the supreme gratitude that He who initiated our existence wants to carry it to fulfillment.

Fr. Luigi Giussani

[revolutionoftenderness]

“The truly interesting question for humanity is neither logic, a fascinating game, nor demonstration, an inviting curiosity. Rather, the intriguing problem for a person is how to adhere to reality, to become aware of reality.” ~ Luigi Giussani, The Religious Sense [The satellite city in the mountains, by Alex Andreev] • Luigi Giovanni Giussani was an Italian Catholic priest, theologian, educator, public intellectual, Servant of God and founder of the international Catholic movement Communion and Liberation. For more: https://english.clonline.org/fr-giussani • Trying to categorize or summarize the genre of Alex Andreev’s digital paintings is nearly impossible. Part science fiction, part dystopian future, the scenes are equally disturbing and beautiful, his characters inhabiting a world Andreev tells me is deeply influenced by Soviet-era literature, music and movies. More: https://www.thisiscolossal.com/.../a-separate-reality.../

[revolutionoftenderness]

“Faced with the evil within us, our dominating desire as Christians cannot be the mere resolve to act out of our own strength alone in order to eliminate that evil. For our own strength is grounded in the same weak stuff as the ego and self-will in us that generated the evil in the first place. Our dominating desire therefore must really be for that Something that lies beneath and supports and yet stands outside of our own strength, for our strength by itself is more like weakness. For that reason alone, we must seek Something that can remedy our weakness and turn it into strength; Something that is at the same time rooted even more deeply in us than is our attachment to our own passions.” ~ Luigi Giussani [Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee — Ludolf Backhuysen] 

• Luigi Giovanni Giussani was an Italian Catholic priest, theologian, educator, public intellectual, Servant of God and founder of the international Catholic movement Communion and Liberation. For more:  https://english.clonline.org/fr-giussani 

• Despite his late start as a professional painter, Backhuysen rapidly gained widespread fame and patronage. He became the unchallenged leading seascape painter of the Netherlands after Willem van de Velde the Elder (Dutch, 1611 - 1693) and his son Willem van de Velde the Younger (Dutch, 1633 - 1707) immigrated to England in late 1672 or early 1673. More: https://www.nga.gov/collection/artist-info.5957.html

[revolutionoftenderness]

“The dwelling place is the place where everything is for you, where nothing is against you, where everything is for your gladness, where everything is a sure path to the threshold of happiness and completion. Bearing witness means creating a human reality where His power and glory are seen. The dwelling place is the point where I can see what all my life is looking for – seeing the power and the glory of God. Seeing! This is the design of the Mystery: it wants to make itself known, to make itself loved in human experience, time and space, in the years of our life.” - Luigi Giussani [Street to Mbari, 1964 - Jacob Lawrence] • Luigi Giovanni Giussani was an Italian Catholic priest, theologian, educator, public intellectual, Servant of God and founder of the international Catholic movement Communion and Liberation. For more: https://english.clonline.org/fr-giussani • The most widely acclaimed African American artist of this century, and one of only several whose works are included in standard survey books on American art, Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) paintings portray the lives and struggles of African Americans, and have found wide audiences due to their abstract, colorful style and universality of subject matter. More: https://americanart.si.edu/artist/jacob-lawrence-2828

[revolutionoftenderness]

“It is by encountering the unity of believers that we quite literally meet up with Christ, by encountering the Church as it emerges in the way it has been fixed by the Spirit. To encounter the Church, I must meet men and women in given surroundings. It is impossible to encounter the universal Church in its entirety, for this is an abstract image: we meet the Church as it emerges locally, in each environment. And in one’s encounters with it, one has the chance to be serious in a critical way, so that any possible adherence to it - and this is, indeed, serious, because the whole meaning of life depends upon it - may be totally reasonable." ~ Luigi Giussani [Second Century Fresco of The Last Supper — Catacombs of Rome] • Luigi Giovanni Giussani was an Italian Catholic priest, theologian, educator, public intellectual, Servant of God and founder of the international Catholic movement Communion and Liberation. For more: https://english.clonline.org/fr-giussani • The word catacomb, which means "next to the quarry", comes from the fact that the first excavations to be used as a place of burial were carried out in the outskirts of Rome, next to the site of a quarry. More: https://www.rome.net/catacombs-rome 

[revolutionoftenderness]

"We cannot grow and mature in faith if we too do not give a precise face to Christian identity, such that it is not merely chanting the psalms and speaking of spiritual things, but a life different in its material resolutions from that which this society proposes." –Giussani, "Faith and Fraternity in the Figure of St. Francis" [St Francis Preaching to the Birds - 1922 - MC Escher]

• Luigi Giovanni Giussani was an Italian Catholic priest, theologian, educator, public intellectual, Servant of God and founder of the international Catholic movement Communion and Liberation. For more:  https://english.clonline.org/fr-giussani

• Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) is one of the world’s most famous graphic artists... In addition to his work as a graphic artist, he illustrated books, designed carpets and banknotes, stamps, murals, intarsia panels etc. M.C. Escher was fascinated by the regular geometric figures of the wall and floor mosaics in the Alhambra, a fourteenth-century castle in Granada, Spain, which he visited in 1922 and 1936... He played with architecture, perspective and impossible spaces.... Read more: https://www.nga.gov/.../slid.../mc-escher-life-and-work.html

[revolutionoftenderness]

“In the Mystery of the Resurrection lies the summit and the highest intensity of our Christian self-awareness, and therefore that of my new awareness of myself, of the way in which I look at all people and all things. The key to the novelty in the relationship between me and myself, between me and others, between me and things is in the Resurrection. But this is what we most run away from, what is most left to one side, albeit most respectfully, respectfully left in the aridity of a word perceived intellectually, perceived as an idea, precisely because it is the summit of the Mystery’s challenge to our measure.” ~ Luigi Giussani [Resurrection of Christ, by Albrecht Altdorfer]

• Luigi Giovanni Giussani was an Italian Catholic priest, theologian, educator, public intellectual, Servant of God and founder of the international Catholic movement Communion and Liberation. For more:  https://english.clonline.org/fr-giussani  

• Albrecht Altdorfer became a citizen of Regensburg in 1505; later he owned two townhouses and had his own vineyards. He became a member of Regensburg’s inner council in 1526 and finally its officiaI architect. Little is known, however, about the painter’s early artistic career up to the point (1512/13) when he – along with Albrecht Dürer – began receiving extensive commissions from Emperor Maximilian I. More: https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/the-resurrection-of-christ-albrecht-altdorfer/kgHrJwLh4Hey4A?hl=en

[revolutionoftenderness]

“Experience is either experience of love or it is not experience. After all, Being is charity. The Mystery that makes us exist, that surrounds us, that arouses our questions and desires, and that proposes itself on every side, is Charity…” - Luigi Giussani [Mother And Child, c.1890 - Mary Cassatt] • Luigi Giovanni Giussani was an Italian Catholic priest, theologian, educator, public intellectual, Servant of God and founder of the international Catholic movement Communion and Liberation. For more: https://english.clonline.org/fr-giussani • Cassatt is most famously known for her mother and child paintings. The Wichita Art Museum holds an exemplary painting by Cassatt, simply titled “Mother and Child.” Cassatt devoted many canvases to this relationship, but in this painting, viewers can see that she does not elevate the status of the pair through religious or divine iconography. More: https://www.kmuw.org/.../art-review-mary-cassatt-and...