Giussani on Mystery

I came across the following quotation  in Magnificat magazine. There, it is presented as a meditation on Holy Saturday. As I was getting into it, a seminarian entered the chapel to water the plants, and I said to him, "Listen to this", and began to read aloud to him what had delighted me. He smiled as he listened, and nodded agreement. It was a fragile moment of communion, connection,  that brought home even more the truth and beauty of what I was reading. Giussani amazes me because he is able to put into words, better than a theologian, or a poet, the spark of the Mystery Present that gives life and joy to human friendship, marriage, community, and  Church.

If we stifle the Mystery as a dimension of our relationship with people and things, all reality becomes like a game: it falls to pieces - looks and hands split it into parts that have no connection to each other....

    The alternative in life is between the response to the Mystery which we are called to give, and living according to the rule of "whatever I like." The task that has been given to us is for us and, as an example, for the world; this task is for the world. Christ, alone, died to call the world back to the fact of the Father; thus, no matter how few we are, we are called to this task to call the world back.  There is no middle ground between the task and "whatever I please."

     During the night of Holy Saturday, the fact occurred that saves human existence from the confused tremble to which it could seem destined and lifts it up towards a festive task....

      Reality is already in the hands of the one who conquered it, who won it back to himself. All of reality is his creation, to the point that the meaning of reality is his person. In him everything consists. To us falls the task to show it to everyone, to declare it, because it is something that is.

      We are not meaningless pieces. Our life is not a game! What has begun in our life is a construction....It is the relationship with the Mystery, the relationship with destiny, the relationship with happiness that makes us radically original, like a totally different world, in this world. That everything should come together in a unity without confusion, in a harmony, in a song, in a symphony - this is truly another world.....

     Everything is ordered towards a purpose, a beauty, so in our lives what gives meaning and purpose to everything, what recreates a harmony, has entered in. 

It is a companionship that, above all,  opens up this perspective. It is a companionship for the world, a companionship that opens up, adopting the same perspectives as Christ's, that is to say, the redemption of the world, to shout the happiness the world is waiting for; to shout what the world is made of and to shout the world's destiny, ....that little by little invades everything.

The meaning of life for all peoples, indeed for all of reality, is borne in this people.

Magnificat, Holy Week 2013,  pp.197, 198