Giussani's Points for the Formation of a Christian Personality
Morality, Article 5: Giussani's Five Principles for the Christian Personality
Welcome back! If you didn’t read the previous article introducing Fr. Luigi Giussani, I’d recommend you do that first. You can find it here.
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Earlier, we established that “giving witness to the faith is our life’s task.” For Giussani, it really is as simple as that. There isn’t room in the Christian life for a compartmentalized discipleship, that here acknowledges that Jesus is Lord and there does not. Remember the principle from St. Augustine: pondus meum amor meus; what we love, what we truly love, will begin to take over every aspect of our life. Discipleship that is allowed to penetrate every category of our lives will begin to show itself in the way we act and what we do, of course, but in other smaller and more foundational ways: who we spend time and what we spend time doing; how we decorate our home; the attitude with which we bear the endless monotony of Chicago traffic; how we dress, what we read, and all the rest.
This kind of witness is not unique to only those in Holy Orders or who have taken vows as a consecrated religious. “In this way,” Giussani writes, “we express our personality, not as priests, not as monks, not as workers, not as professionals, nor as fathers and mothers of families, but as Christians.”
The task of bearing witness to the Lordship of Jesus can be broken in the following way:
Affirming that salvation is already present;
Pointing it out, in the way it was once pointed out to us. It can be difficult to discern where and how Jesus’ salvific action is at work in the daily experiences of life, and those who have become attuned to perceiving it have a duty to help those who are having trouble seeing it. Remember that even the crustiest, oldest priests have spiritual directors since longevity in the mission doesn’t mean everything is completely clear all the time for them;
Giving witness to everyone. It’s possible to show the Lord to someone who doesn’t even know they are looking for him and who doesn’t know how to recognize him. When you meet someone new, at a party or a business engagement perhaps, you are encountering them for the first time and you must be introduced by someone. You might see that person out of context two months later, having forgetten their name and how you know them, but still there is a recognition; “I can’t place it, but I know that I know you.” Your witness to Jesus, introducing him to someone even quickly or subtly by a word or a glance of love, allows for this kind of recognition to grow and take place. “I know that I know you, and I know that I like you. But, remind me, who are you?”
Characteristics of the Christian Experience
Christ is the Savior of History and of Our Existence.
Hans Urs von Balthasar (with the help of Nicholas of Cusa) has a principle that is described by one of my favorite Latin phrases ever: God is totaliter aliter non aliud. God is totally other, and yet not other at all. This first and most basic of Giussani’s five points picks up on this concept and takes it further. All at once, Christ is the savior of all, the totality of the cosmos falls under his power and jurisdiction (as I said in the post about the Lordship of Jesus); in a word, the Lordship of Christ is indescribably cosmic; one cannot fathom its “length and width and height and depth” (cf Eph. 3:18) of his love. Similarly, the salvation of Christ applies to each instance of the human person in a profoundly individual way; his knowledge of and care for every single person is almost unbelievably personal.
Therefore, Giussani concludes, “Christ is the exhaustive meaning, the meaning of the clear beautiful sky this evening, of my person, of our persons, of the whole world. To affirm that Christ is the savior means to point out the path on which everything can be realized and fulfilled.” Jesus doesn’t just totality of everything, he is the totality and the fulfillment of everything. He is salvation, and gives himself to us freely as an unmerited gift.
The opposite of this position is something like pelagianism or moralism, that salvation in fact comes through our own efforts or through some means that we humans have created with our own hands. When we place our ultimate hope in something made by human strength, Giussani reminds us simply that we “delude ourselves.” This position plays out so clearly in ideological and political positions which use all the rhetoric of salvation and even make promises for a better future, but in the end all ideology collapses under its own weight and the action/inaction of its major characters.
Because Christianity is not an ideology that relies on others to espouse it, but rather on a person who is unchanging who desires to espouse us, it stands by its very nature as set against the modus operandi of the world.
The reality of Christ is in the Church.
The real, saving presence of Jesus Christ is found “within” the unity of believers, the Church. Here, Fr. Giussani pauses and adds a clarification that is very important: “In the Church as Christ founded her: with authority, with bishops, and with the mysterious gestures called Sacraments.” The fact that the Sacraments work, that they do what they signify ex opere operato instills hope in those who receive them with faith, and this hope becomes a tangible reality for the individual only if he or she first encounters it within the community.
I love the way Giussani articulates this point:
So, to put our hope for salvation in Christ implies a judgement that this hope is present in the Christian community: in that part of the Church that arises in the setting where we love, a community may be small and wretched, small and full of defects, because it is made up of people like us, but - if it is faithful to the constituted authority - always exists in service to the whole Church as a sign of Christ’s path.
The opposite of this point is a reduction of a relationship with Jesus to something that is purely individualistic; it is the classic “Me and Jesus” mentality that is so prevalent in Catholic and other Christian circles. We are made in his image, but too often we (even unknowingly) reduce Jesus and try to remake him in our image. I am reminded of an Episcopal church in St. Paul, near where I went to college, that, in addition to the many rainbow embossed signs and flags outside of it, had a sign that read, “God is still speaking” and another, “Don’t put a period where God put a comma.” (That latter always made me laugh because of course the Biblical languages don’t have periods or commas, and it represents a very silly theory of divine inspiration… /nerdy rant)
In Giussani’s terms, remaking Christ using an image that we’ve come up with fosters “an individualistic relationship with an abstract image, whose concrete influence would only be the words of the Gospel according to each person’s interpretation.” This is why Giussani makes the point over and over about fidelity to the Church as she was constituted by Christ and to remain within the fold and faithful to the constituted authority. Departure from authority is a departure from Christ, but certainly not because those who hold the authority are perfect in their witness to Jesus. You can’t flee into a vacuum, so as a person runs from authority they never really get away from it, they’re just substituting it for another kind of authority.
If there’s no authority, then I’m the authority; if I’m the authority (who am I to be the authority?) then you can be the authority, too; if we’re both the authority, then there’s not really authority. And if there’s not really authority, then I’m the authority…and so on.
The reality of Christ is in the Church. And “the presence of Christ is manifested instead through the experience of the Church within the community where we belong.” So if a person really doesn’t like their parish or their priest, and think that the first action item is to pack it up and become a commuter-Catholic to some parish where the grass is greener, Giussani (I think) would say “LOL” and remind them that there is no better place to deal with such difficulties than within the community of people where you are living and moving and having your being.
In the Church - as Christ constituted it - Jesus manifests himself all at once locally, universally, and personally.
The Awareness of Faith as the Fruit of an Encounter
Sometimes we meet people who say that they have “read themselves” into the Church. These stories are actually fascinating, and are usually worth listening to. A famous example would be someone like St. John Henry Newman in the 19th century.
I think most people can think of someone they know who is bright and well-versed in the matters of the faith, but who wouldn’t know Jesus if he knocked on their front door wearing a name-tag. There are those who have all the right reasons and all the right answers but still feel quite lost.
In this third principle, Giussani teaches something very important about what “faith” actually is. He writes,
The existential awareness of what faith truly is, and that of what Christ truly is; the living discovery of the value of our…community, of what the Church truly is, are not the fruit of a reasoning process, nor of our study. They are instead the fruit of an encounter. (emphasis mine)
I was once the parochial vicar of a small, mostly Black Catholic parish on the east side of Joliet. That little place was very largely unknown, and had very little to offer in comparison with larger parishes with better resources. But I have yet to meet a person who prayed with us there who did not leave feeling loved and welcomed, and very interested in coming back again as soon as possible. The people who prayed there encountered something that was so attractive, so rich, that they left feeling “struck by a light and called to a life that is different and more true.”
You can perceive the connection between this principle and the one just before it; the community, where Christ has made himself present, is the setting or arena for the encounter and the place where the fruit of the encounter is discerned and comes to fuller fruition. The sad thing is that so (so) many Catholics are missing this - both the encounter with the richness of the Gospel promise and the sense of a real community within which they are safe and free to live the Christian life.
Only after an encounter with Jesus that makes the Church and the Christian life appear concrete, no longer abstract or theoretical, can a person feel at home in the Church. It’s this encounter that makes it possible live in the way that Principle 2 asks us to (“in the reality of the Church as Christ constituted it”). A sense that I am met, known, chosen, and loved by Jesus himself and by this community is a major component of responding to a provocation to make a total response to Jesus and to the community; most people miss this completely.
The encounter with the person of Jesus within the Church touches us so deeply and the fruit is manifested so authentically that what has happened provokes/demands a total response. Remember, Christ is totalizing; he is the “integrating principle” of our life; and if whatever we perceive is not provoking/demanding a total response, then it is not yet the discovery of faith in all its fulness.
Giussani teaches that the opposite of faith as the fruit of an encounter is faith built solely upon “established gestures.” So many church communities of every denomination reported that some percentage of their people did not come back to church after the COVID lockdowns. It can be hard to imagine, but there are a lot of people in the world - even weekly church goers! - for whom not being able to attend Mass meant absolutely nothing. For these Christians, it is as if “Christ and the Church were outside the demands and interests of our life.” They went to Mass because “that’s what we do on Sunday” and not because “we know and love the living God who is the totalizing factor of our life.”
Giussani again:
This encounter has to do with…partiality, a partiality lived as ritualism or as administrative and associative bureaucracy.
The person who has perceived the rich encounter with Jesus that provokes a total change can say, almost spontaneously, (Giussani again) “Christ is everything for mel the experience of the Church is the experience of my entire subject. Christ and the Church are salvation for me…Christ and the Church are the deep inspiration that even touches the structure of my actions, of everything I do.”
The kind of totalizing change really makes or breaks how deep the roots of discipleship are allowed to go. How much are we really willing to put on the line, to really change in the deepest ways, to conform our lives to his?
Again, adherence to the Church as Christ constituted her is crucial here if for no other reason than because the Church possesses a 20-century treasure trove of witness, testimony, and instruction in how to live this life in a way that is healthy, authentic, and free.
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Next time, principles four and five. Til then, be good.