Father Giussani: people, joy and mission
Milan (AsiaNews) -- "In offering you my life, I saw a people full of joy gather around me." This phrase of the Fathers of the Church, which Fr Giussani quoted hundreds of times, came to life today as over 40,000 people gathered in and around Milan's Cathedral to pay homage to the Milanese priest, founder of Communion and Liberation.
That a man can assemble a people by just offering his life to Christ and talking about Christ is the first miracle of Fr Giussani's life. History shows that people have been assembled by force, by ideologies, by enterprises, creating slaves, ghettos, gangs and leaving individuals alone and angered. For this funeral, everyone came freely, in gratitude for having found, thanks to him and to those he generated, an indestructible certainty and love that will never betray them. This is why, even for the funeral-rites, they were full of joy: no long, whimpering or desperate faces.
Usually, it is said at funerals that the deceased leaves "a void that cannot be filled." But judging by the facial expressions of the 40,000, I would say that Father Giussani leaves "an overflowing fullness", that of the mystery of the life of a man that was spent for Christ and that gave life, that of the mystery of the Cross and of Jesus' Resurrection.
The Pope's profound message, Cardinal Ratzinger's vibrant and emotional homily are signs that Fr Giussani's witness is a Church treasure to be cherished, known and indicated as an example for facing the third millennium's mission: attention and affection for man and his heart, that looks for God, even if clumsily; the proposal and the certainty that Christ -- as the Pope has said -- is "the full and definitive answer" to man's need.
The 40,000, in and around the Cathedral, took on the cold and snow of Milan's winter. Tomorrow, but already today, they will take on trivial ways of living, that mock the majesty of the person; ideologies that feed on preconceptions and lies, that complain without constructing; divisions and destructions, the outcome of power having been exercised as if God did not exist. Fr Giussani's death is not the end of an era: it is a new beginning for the mission of CL members and all Christians. The walkways near the Cathedral, which are usually full of hasty and distracted people, today were like the lateral aisles of the Cathedral: people were attentively following the funeral rite and passerbys would stop in silence. Tomorrow, in another 40,000 homes, offices, schools or stores of Milan and the world, there will be people, who in the name of Christian faith, will make those places more human.
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