Sandro Magister, The Mystery of Fr. Giussani, Revealed by his Writings

For the first time, a book presents the spiritual biography of the founder of Communion and Liberation. At the center of everything are a "coming" and an "encounter." An extract from the volume's culminating chapter

I should learn more about CL catechesis.

Giussani must have meditated for a long time on the teaching method of Jesus. In fact, he tried to duplicate it in his relationship with young people. [...] In this volume, he talks about three factors in the teaching method of Jesus. Especially the aspect of following. Jesus is a master to be followed. In the same way, in Christianity it is necessary to follow someone who lives the original event concretely in his own life. Then there is the need for renunciation. Christ asked his followers to leave everything, although he promised a hundredfold to those who would do so. There is no Christianity, for Giussani, if there is no sacrifice, acceptance of trial, detachment. Finally, the third principle, it is necessary to proclaim one's allegiance to Jesus in front of everyone: so that men may know that He is the center of our affectivity and our freedom.

Only love can explain and enable this process, can usher us properly into this inconceivable claim by Jesus. Otherwise, the only result can be opposition. What could the Jews do in the face of someone who identified himself as the source of the law, who maintained that he had the power to forgive sins, to judge between good and evil, to be the way, the truth, and the life? We must say either that Jesus is insane, or that He is truly God. But in order to arrive at this conclusion, in order for this possibility to appear on our horizon, we must have an openness of soul, a sense of discomfort with our own evil, a genuine discovery of Jesus and his infinite humanity.

There is a seal, a particular sign in the preaching and life of Jesus that for Giussani is the most enlightening sign of his divinity: the conception of man that He proclaimed.

Jesus came to reveal the Father to us, to tell us that we are children, that in each of us there is a reality higher than any other reality subject to space and time. Every person contains within himself an original, irreducible principle, the foundation of inalienable rights, the source of values. It is this that we call soul, spirit, that level of our personal being that is in immediate relationship with the infinite. Already in the first volume of the trilogy, entitled "The religious sense," Giussani dwelt on this theme, which was extremely important to him. It could be said that it was the keystone of his entire cultural position, the reason for his opposition to all power, and of his veneration of the Church as the guardian of the intangible truth of man. "Jesus concentrated on this problem, the relationship with the Father. Without that relationship, the individual man does not have the possibility of having his own face, he does not have the possibility of being a person."

With Jesus, the discovery of the person enters the world: He is the messenger, Giussani says, of the exclusive and total dependence of the individual man on the Father, He is the great educator of religious piety. This is the most suitable attitude for man, the one that leads him to discover prayer, his awareness of his fundamental dependence on God, that constant dependence that involves every moment and every slightest aspect of our lives. In this way, existence is realized as a dialogue with the great presence, the Being who is love, who gives himself constantly. [...] Our dependence on the being who creates us is fulfilled in our complete self-donation, in sacrifice, in "giving ourselves" [...].

Giussani's vision of salvation absolutely does not avoid the topic of sin, much less that of original sin. He was well aware that man by himself constantly falls into the temptation of referring everything to himself: he needs another, he needs to accept the love of another, to be liberated from being free. All of this creates tension in his life, a struggle, a search. If his immersion into the Eastern tradition led Giussani to feel that the divine transfiguration is already at work in the world, his closeness to modern man and in particular to the Protestant world – with which he became familiar during his studies in America – made him feel that he shared in the entire drama of fallen man. In the Church, he saw the path of redemption. Ever since God became man, He has saved man through other men, in order to make salvation possible everywhere and for all time. These will be the themes of the third volume of "PerCorso," entitled: "Why the Church."