My Flesh and My Heart Fail, But God is the Rock of My Heart
Pierluigi Banna - "The way we usually live is fixed in images to which we attach the value of time; it is fixed in projects, in dreams, in expectations to which we tie the value of life, the worth of living."¹
Let us ask the Spirit of Christ to make room for us among the images that most clutter our hearts and minds at this moment, so that we can surrender this morning to the one rock that holds our lives together.
Descend, Holy Spirit²
Good morning to everyone, including and especially to those who slept an hour less tonight—that is, all of us. The first point we take up from the Fraternity Exercises could be indicated by an expression taken from the Comedy.
1."Each confusingly a good learns."³
Each of us, more or less confusingly, identifies something (a project, an image, a dream) by attaining which, by "learning" which, we hope to bring about happiness. That is why we strive for the attainment and fulfillment of these projects. If we notice, at this instant, each of us has a project that we are investing in.
Even if it is just the idea of sleeping an extra hour, we are investing in something. From that, we expect a lot; we expect happiness. Don Giussani wrote, "We find ourselves 'hoping from a certain possession: certain means fixed by us, expected by us, chosen from what is comfortable to us, chosen from what most persuades us, chosen from what most gives us wealth and therefore security.'"⁴
In striving toward this certain possession, however, we forget that we are not the ones who make things; in fact, we are not even the ones who make ourselves. These very things we hope to possess are given to us. We read this in the tenth chapter of The Religious Sense, but how often do we forget: "Man's very first feeling is that of being faced with a reality that is not his own, that is there independently of him and on which he depends [...] the original activity of mine [is] that of receiving, ascertaining, recognizing."⁵ Receive, ascertain, recognize—not control, schedule, possess.
In any case, reality sooner or later reminds us that we are not the ones who make it. Just when we reach out to possess things, it reminds us with unexpected events, as so many contributions recount: the carabinieri break into the house one morning; another makes a serious mistake at work; another loses the son he was expecting; another, who is experiencing a moment of joy, receives the unexpected news of the sudden death of his father.
In those moments, abruptly, reality reminds us that we do not make it, and all our plans for possession seem to dissolve into nothingness. If we then, for a moment, think of the broader scenario of the geopolitical context, of all the wars that are happening and that are getting closer and closer to us—what do we claim to possess? In what possession do we think we can place our hope? What possession will be able to give us happiness?
But there is another way, even more fascinating than these sudden slaps, by which reality reminds us that we cannot hope for happiness from our own possession, from our own control of things. And that is when we even achieve what we set out to achieve: we get it, we almost enjoy it, but that enjoyment does not bring true satisfaction. That enjoyment does not fulfill the promise; it leaves us almost disappointed, sometimes even with ashes in our hands, of what we were trying to hold on to, with possession, with longing.
A poetess of the last century, Ophelia Mazzoni, expressed this experience: "What I had grasped covetously, / in my clenched hand fell apart, / as at evening the rose / under the vault of eternity."⁶ Recently, I happened to see Bernini's statue of Apollo and Daphne in Rome's Villa Borghese.⁷ A beautiful marble statue where you can see Apollo with eyes that say, "Behold, I have grasped! I have caught my woman!" But as soon as his hands—as Bernini uniquely succeeds in describing with his art—get into the flesh of that woman, she begins to turn into a tree. This is a description that the ancients made of an experience that we all—all!—have experienced.
The moment you think you have reached the finish line, that you have achieved possession of the hoped-for thing, when in your eyes there is still the enjoyment of having it, in your hands there is already the experience of the fact that that is not everything; you are reducing to a thing what was meant to give you life.
The ashes on the head, that simple gesture that marks the beginning of Lent, remind us of precisely those shatterings into which so many of our projects, so many of our dreams, that cost us so much investment of energy, expectation, and affection, have been reduced, and yet then they have failed, if not even our hands have crumbled them.
What, then, is the great temptation when you see your hands reduce to ashes the things you most wanted to possess? The temptation is to turn down the volume of your desire, saying, "Next time I must be more careful; I won’t push the accelerator so hard; I’ll settle for less."
Sometimes even our Lenten resolutions come down to this "caution" in the way we express our desires. But let’s listen to this beautiful song, Whisper, which instead wonders, in the midst of so many betrayals and disappointments, what this big old heart is looking for that we can never get rid of.
Even when we are sprinkled with the ashes of our failures, in the midst of a world that accuses us, as we sometimes feel, we need a whisper. "Everyone is filling me with noise; I don’t know what they are talking about. You see, all I need is a whisper in a world that only shouts."⁹
A friend of ours, whose contribution I will read a large excerpt from, experienced this: "Last year, after a very painful incident at work, I resigned from the hospital and stopped nursing after almost 15 years. I could no longer stand in front of the sick, the doctors; I could only see in them the sign of my failure, of how wrong I felt.
What I had clung to for the past few years suddenly collapsed (work, relationships...). [Here, everything turned to ashes]. I spent weeks, exhausting months, where I just wanted to run away from the daily grind, unable to start again, wondering why such a bad thing had happened to me.
But all the whys I was asking myself only made me more and more stuck and led me to flatten my desires more and more with respect to work and the emotional sphere. Shame dominated in telling what had happened to me and distrust of everything. [Here is that attempt to lower the volume of desire: shame and hiding]. What allowed me to begin again, slowly, to live and not survive as I was doing, was first meeting a new friend, [a whisper, as the song said].
A friend in front of whom I was able to tell everything that had happened to me and was wearing me down, who immediately welcomed me and offered me his friendship. And from there, day after day, the fog that shrouded my every morning diminished [...]; he proposed a method to which I freely adhered and led me to trace, to search in my everyday life for other human faces in which I could feel the same freedom and truth that I had had with him. [...].
Running into these new faces has not silenced the questions I have about life. [It has not lowered the volume of desire! But this method that is proposed allows one to live up to this desire! And indeed, it continues...]. On the contrary, these questions exploded in the truest and most beautiful way than in me, who had totally lowered the bar of what I desired."
The Lenten journey offers us a method that allows us, starting from our desire to possess things and its failure, precisely from the ashes of failure, to experience what holds up in life, what allows us to stand, without lowering the bar of desire.
The Lenten journey, rather than condemning our claim to possession and inviting us to lower the bar of desire, first and foremost helps us to look at our attempts and failures with passion and tenderness, because it recognizes there in action the demanding character of life, which rightly impels us to lean toward things.
We cannot be grateful enough to Fr. Giussani who made us realize this demanding character of life, because it is not wrong to desire to possess things; it is not wrong to have plans, dreams, and ideals.¹⁰ Life is a web of needs. Needs are the fabric of life. We should not be afraid of them just because sometimes they have brought ashes into our hands.
Giussani can state with conviction the value of these needs because he met Christ. I recently listened to the homily of a priest friend who, in fact, said that "the only one who looked at man's need as a favorable opportunity was Jesus. I did not come for the healthy, but for the sick, for the needy. [...]. This is why Jesus calls 'blessed' those who hunger and thirst for this fullness."¹¹ That is, precisely those who have tried to possess and have failed.
In this Lent, and especially with clarity in the days of Holy Week, the last days of Christ’s life on this earth, we can see all the way He first went in the face of His desire for possession and the ashes of His mission.
2. "My God, why have you forsaken me?"¹²
"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" In those very days, Jesus also experienced the failure of His plans. Perhaps we never think about it enough, but how must He have felt to see that His own had all run away? One had even betrayed Him. The people who had previously cheered Him, the people He loved, now accused Him.
The world makes Satan’s accusation its own, which we heard on the first Sunday of Lent: "If you are the Son of God, why do you not come down from this cross?"; "But perhaps you are not the Son of God if you have come down like this." Or rather, "If you are the Son of God, will you now come down from this cross, or do you plan to end your life this way?"¹³
Within a few hours, the good dream of Christ, of His mission, was shattered. In the face of people’s insinuations and accusations, what does He do? He realizes that it is useless to dialecticize, to explain to them that they are not understanding. He does not go down to bargaining with the objections of the crowd and power.
Christ is clear that His heart at that moment is so sad¹⁴ that this would never be enough for Him. Unlike Adam and Eve, He is not wasting time by coming down to bargaining with the serpent’s temptation.
He understands that His sadness is such that the only one He can turn to is the Father, the Father who has always loved and fulfilled Him. To Him, not to others, He turns at that moment.
Because Christ, at this moment when everything has failed, what does He need? He does not need Peter to come back and apologize to Him because he had a blunder; He does not need to come down triumphantly from the cross and the others to hail Him as a god; He does not even need Caiaphas and the soldiers to be electrocuted at once.
That, however, would not be enough for Him. He needs to know whether the Father is with Him. Therefore, He gathers all His bitterness, all His sadness, and does not deny it, but cries it out to the Father: "Have you abandoned me?"
Christ in those days experienced all the questions that any of us may experience in life, only, unlike how we often do, He did not keep them to Himself; He did not look upon them as a fault, but turned them to the Father. As does the song we now hear, O Lord, what can I say? Hearing it now can be an opportunity for us to gather up all the questions we keep inside, to turn them to the Father.
The most striking thing about Christ’s passion is that the Father seems not to respond to this cry. He does not do as He did at the moment of His baptism, when He rips open the sky and proclaims before all, "You are my Son, the beloved one."¹⁶ He does not say, "Let Him come down from the cross."
Now, however, He does not say, "Bring Him down from the cross." He does not listen to His prayers as He does before the tomb of Lazarus, leaving everyone speechless.¹⁷ He remains silent, as so often happens to us in our lives: it seems to us that God is silent.
Why does He do this? So that Christ can fully make His human experience, which is our own human experience, and can fully recognize without any pressure, without any facilitation, with all His freedom what truly corresponds to Him, what truly His humanity can accomplish. The Father does not want to replace Him, does not anticipate His response, but takes a step back to leave the Son’s freedom totally wide open, so that He can make His whole human journey.
Christ, then, in that condition, which certainly was not comfortable, against all murmurings of the people, against all temptations and emotional blackmail, what does He affirm? He affirms that He can deny everything, even though, by now, in the eyes of the world, He seems to have lost everything. He can renounce His credibility; He can renounce His affection for His disciples, but He cannot renounce His affection for the Father, even though He seems to be silent. This is the certainty, the only certainty, of His life.
In the eleventh chapter of The Religious Sense, that passage from Dostoevsky’s The Demons, in which the captain of fortune, having happened upon the intellectual salons of Petersburg, exclaims, "But if God does not exist, am I still captain?"¹⁸ is taken up. It is as if he is saying, "Go ahead and discuss whatever you want, but if God does not exist, am I still captain?"
Like this man, Christ acknowledges on the cross, "However much you may question everything about my mission and my person, if the Father were not there, would I still be Son?" This is a recognition in light of all lived experience. We, too, of what presence could we say, "If I am what I am, it is because He is there?"¹⁹
That is, "If He were not there, I would not be the father or mother of my children; I would not be here today; I would not be at my workplace? If He were not there, I would not be." As the passage from Psalm 73, which we have put under the title of this retreat, states: "My flesh and my heart fail, but God is the rock of my heart."²⁰
Christ acknowledges that when everything fails, the Father remains the rock of His heart. Could He come down from the cross, could He deny the Father? But the only one who allowed Him to not deny Himself was precisely the Father; everything else He could renounce, even being right and making a good impression before the world.
Therefore, in the face of all emotional blackmail, in the face of all other forms of temptation, but especially in the face of the Father’s silence, Christ affirms the Father. It is, in fact, as if He renounces everything, but really everything, even His own responsive image, in order to affirm the Father and surrender Himself to Him: "Into your hands I commend my Spirit."²¹
Here is the pinnacle of the human experience of Christ, which each of us can do: surrender. Giussani writes: "The sign of abandonment is as if one dried up all the springs of pride; he no longer takes pride, it becomes impossible for him to take pride because nothing is his, and everything becomes his if nothing is his."²² That is, if I no longer keep anything for myself and put everything about me back into the Father’s hands, everything becomes mine.
This is the human experience of Christ, passed through a labor, a very human labor, that draws out all the needs—the sadness, the disappointment, the bitterness—and goes all the way to the bottom, to the one You who deserves the surrender not of something, but of Himself, just when all for the world is lost.
The Father’s silence, to the point of seeming abandonment, allows complete and total freedom of Christ’s surrender, unconditioned by anything but His human recognition that without the Father, He can never be Son.
It is not a conditional or forced abandonment but an abandonment in which the source of love for others flourishes again. The source of pride is extinguished, and the source of love flourishes again because—as Giussani writes again—"in love, one is as if dying to oneself or wanting to disappear to affirm the other,"²³ who finally makes you yourself.
Abandonment is not a renunciation, a defeat for those who have failed, a consolation prize for those who have failed to fulfill their mission, but it is reaffirming the essentials of one’s mission, reaffirming the only love worth living for. But the love worth living for is greater than life. The love worth living for is the love worth dying for, that is, happily consuming this life, because stronger than death is not life, but the love of life for which one can even die.²⁴ Let’s listen to Morirò d’amore by Giuni Russo.
Wind in my hair and eyes to the sun,
and vigilant echoes in my heart.
I entrusted my thoughts and words to the air.
I miss your words:
the shouted words, then repeated by the echo, they sing.
I’ll die of love, I’ll die for you.
Your smile, your joy,
how I miss the whispered words.
Silent now, to you, your words for me.
I’ll die of love, I’ll die for you.
Feel the wind against the railings:
with you near, I spend my evenings,
and your words, your words brush against me,
those words you know how to say when I want to leave, they win.
I’ll die of love, I’ll die for you.
I half-close my eyes, and your hands caress me:
those shouted words, then sent back by the echo,
singing from the sky.
I’ll die of love, I’ll die for you.
The path of Lent is not a mortification of desire, but it is to discover through this desire what love is for which it becomes good to live and good to die. As Jesus did.
3. "To nothing but Jesus is the Christian attached."²⁶
By looking at Christ and moving our steps behind Him, we can regain all the things we cherish most, which have kindled our desire for possession so much that we treated them badly, so much that we were trying to want their good. The more we hold on to a thing, the more we hold on to a person, the more we realize they are not ours.
If we don’t want to make ashes of it every time we hold it or don’t want to lock it up in our claims, then, like Christ, we can let another measure in. Since Christ allowed the Father to come in between Himself and the measure of His mission, we, too, precisely in front of the things we hold most dear, can let Christ’s presence enter.
This is why Fr. Giussani, speaking about the beginning of Lent, says that it is a matter of not pursuing our projects of perfection "but looking into the face of Christ, looking into the face of one! Very simple, very easy ... but very uncomfortable because you can no longer follow yourself. Happiness is following Another."²⁷ To look Christ in the face, that is, to be attached to Him before our measure. In this sense, "to nothing but Jesus is the Christian attached."
A contribution that can help us understand this passage. It’s about a friend who made a big mistake at work and lived through all the following days trying to put the fixes to this mistake and also fearing the boss’s reactions. In the mess, he relates: "The more the day went on, the more the fear and worries grew, and the heart became heavy, and everything was not enough for me.
Everything I was doing, all the strategies and analysis I was thinking to solve it, was not enough; I was all stuck in thoughts, and nothing changed. [This is a very true description! We believe when someone we love reacts badly, or something of ours goes wrong. We’re all stuck there, and then we pretend not to think about it, but then we think about it again...].
"Since none of my attempts were working, I prayed again and again and asked for the only viable idea in my head to be realized: 'Lord, fix it, get me out of this mess.'
"I froze and said, 'But do I need this? That the issue no longer exists? Is it enough for me not to struggle anymore?' [To ask these questions—I interrupt the reading—is to make that comparison, which Christ made on the cross, between His need and reality. And that is experiencing!
The friend responds, as an outcome of this comparison], 'No, it’s not enough for me that the thing is resolved, that the worry goes away. But is the problem [all] there? Is it having a life where I risk little and be comfortable? Is it trying to accomplish my little projects? No, that’s not enough for me either.'
"My prayer has totally changed: I don’t need the circumstance to always fit what I have in mind; I need that in front of what I have to experience, I recognize something for me, that I know something about me, to surprise that He will come and take everything from me, not just what I can or cannot do. In short, I needed Him; I missed Him.
[This is a human path; it is the same path Christ took on the cross. Does that mean He doesn’t give a damn about the work? No, we will see later. The prayer has changed]. From 'Get me out of the mess' to 'Lord, come and get me, right here in the mess,' because I can’t do it; alone, I only make a mess. I don’t need to have any problems; I need one who will take me everything and love me everything. And I found myself impressively more free."
This is not the escape route for those who cannot make it, but it is the experience route precisely for those who care about reality, for those who care about that work and go to the bottom of the requirements that cause that concern to erupt.
The more you care about a thing, the more you feel the urgency not to crumble it in your hands, not to be judged by the thing. You sense that to live that thing, to love that thing, to know it more, you need that between you and that thing—let’s call it a child, let’s call it a beloved, let’s call it a friend—between you and that thing that causes you so much pain, there is the presence of Christ.²⁸
Giussani beautifully describes this experience, speaking of the mother’s love for her child: "A mother who has never known a moment when she stares at her child and, staring at him from a meter or two or three miles away, thinks about his destiny: 'Who knows what fate this child of mine will have,' a woman who has not done so, has never tasted being a mother [...] But this, of the mother and the child, is the paradigm for everything; everything, for each of us, for man, everything is like a child being born from her womb."²⁹
Everything—the most authentic friendship, the most exciting work—is like that child. But without this detachment, without letting Him in between you and your plans, between you and your measures, you don’t know, you don’t savor, you don’t fully own the thing. We don’t put a distance between us and things because we don’t care about them, but because we want to taste them fully. The proof, in fact, is that when you realize that between you and the other is Christ, you begin to taste things more.
This is told by a friend of ours, who went to do the Collection among the prisoners (each of them gives something for the poorest prisoners). She comes to two who have nothing, but one looks at her intensely, and she asks what he was saying because he was speaking Arabic, and she did not understand him. So the cousin, who was in the cell with him, acts as an interpreter and says, "He asked to pray for his wife, who is due to give birth today."
And she replies, "I am a Christian; I say a Hail Mary for your wife." So she says a Hail Mary. Then the interpreter asks if he could also say a prayer for his wife who was due to give birth within a week. And she says another Hail Mary.
Something begins to melt in the relationship: they say they are poor and cannot give anything, but they tell that they always give something in his memory on their father's birthday. The friend is moved because she too, on her father’s birthday, who is now in heaven, performs an act of charity instead of giving a gift to him. The prisoner replies to her, "We have the same father, the same God."
Commented our friend, "At that moment, all my prejudices about the Other fell away, all my pretension to set my life right and run it the way I want. An Other came into view. That prisoner’s eyes I cannot forget; they keep me company because they are an expression of a need that only God can fill. That need that is the same as mine, which is to return to the beginning of one’s life of faith, to that relationship that makes life beautiful."
If one attaches oneself to Jesus, as this friend did while praying, one enters into a new relationship with people and things: one possesses them with a detachment within, without having the pretense of measuring, controlling, possessing, and holding one’s breath. Does he possess them less? No, he possesses them more, in a new way, as St. Paul writes in the First Letter to the Corinthians.³⁰
"Brethren, the time has grown short; henceforth, those who have wives, let them live as if they had not": not because they do not care for their wives, but because the source of affection for their wives is an Other that enables them to love that woman in a new way.
"Those who weep, as if they did not weep": not because they are not sad, but because between them and that sadness is Christ who wipes away those tears.³¹ "Those who rejoice, as if they did not rejoice": because between you and that full joy, Christ is reminding you that if you really want to possess it, you must not conceive of it as your possession.
"Those who buy as if they did not possess": not because you do not like earning, but because you recognize in that earning a gift that Another has given you. "Those who use the goods of this world, as if they did not fully use them": because everything is ours, but whose are we? We are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.³²
For what would we be if He were not there? What would our desire be without Christ? By resting on that fullness, the fullness of the Father’s presence for Christ, the fullness of Christ’s presence for us, we can have a tenderness toward everything, toward those who even seemed foreign to us, without letting pride crumble everything we touch.
4. "A naive boldness."³³
And it will come like the sun that rises in the morning
It will fly like the wind that soars far away
It will sing, it will sing like a child sings
It will run like someone who wants to tell you: “He’s near! The Lord is here!”
He runs, the one who knows he brings good news
He runs with certainty and looks ahead
Like the one who knows true justice
He runs with certainty and looks ahead
And it will come like the sun that rises in the morning
It will fly like the wind that soars far away
It will sing, it will sing like a child sings
It will run like someone who wants to tell you: “He’s near! The Lord is here!”
I want to sing to you, Lord, as long as I have breath
I want to sing to you and stay close to You
Nothing can stop me anymore because You are real
I run with certainty and look ahead
Like the sun that rises in the morning
(It will fly, it will fly) like the wind that soars far away
(It will sing, it will sing) it will sing like a child sings
(It will run, it will run) like someone who wants to tell you: “He’s near! The Lord is here!”
Two signs can be encountered by those who possess things with a detachment within, of those who love things as Jesus loved them, letting the Father in between themselves and everything: freedom and gladness. You are free from results and are passionately glad because you are certain you are loved.³⁵
It is the naive boldness of the child that can be regained in the journey of Lent. I read a contribution summarizing all the steps we have taken so far to freedom and gladness.
"Four years ago, one day at 6 a.m., four financiers showed up at my home serving me with a grave indictment related to work-related matters, with simultaneous application of house arrest. My life, and that of my family, was overwhelmed suddenly.
"I knew I had not committed any crime, but, as happens in these cases, I had to resign from all work positions, and, in fact, a real judicial ordeal began for me that ended last year. [Everything collapses]. In the first moments when I was under house arrest, I experienced how 'everything that claimed to be solid seems to come apart,' from work to freedom, to justice, to money to live on, everything.
"At the same time, a huge question of meaning exploded in me: 'Why all this?' [We cannot turn down the volume of desire], which was initially a question that immobilized me on the couch for two days. The knowledge that I was loved [by the many friends who wrote] moved me, but, at the same time, it exploded in me, even more, the demand that Thou who loved me through my wife, my children, and my friends would become more and more present.
"I started by asking this: 'I am no longer satisfied with the sign! Now I need sign and mystery to coincide!' [Here is the passage; not even consolation messages can be enough but that You, as with Christ]. I had been part of the movement for more than twenty-five years, but this time, I needed Him to show up more, to be there with me [as the other friend with the job difficulty recounted].
This need became an existential need, literally! I was certain that without this You, really present and visible in my eyes, I would not be able to stand [because we could say, 'Am I still captain, me, without this You?'].
"With this desire, I plunged into studying the indictments (so many folders of wiretaps and other documents). I looked everywhere for clues and signs about why the Lord had led me down that road and why I had to go through that circumstance. [More than a consolation prize! It is a truer possession of things, a fuller, freer curiosity].
But, very importantly, this question made me stay more and more inside the circumstances, inside those acts and documents that initially made me nauseous and that I just could not read.
"It was the beginning of an extraordinary journey! There were also some very hard moments, but it was really an extraordinary path. It was like dialoguing with the Mystery because if you look at reality, it tends to catch every slightest hint of His because precisely, and otherwise you don’t stand, reality becomes transparent, and the signs speak to you! He speaks to you through the signs! It is impressive!
I am not a mystic or a visionary; I am an engineer, so I tend to be rational and look at the given. On this journey, I have seen so many miracles happen, but the most striking in my eyes have been the serenity and gladness with which my family and I have experienced this circumstance, something out of this world."
This letter clearly describes the naive boldness. If you let Christ come in between you and the things you hold most dear, there is a sign of this new possession that comes with it. He says: "serenity and gladness." We might say: the gladness and freedom with which to stand before everything because resting on a fullness that is His Presence.
Resting on that fullness, you are passionate about discovering everything. You are not blackmailed by the recognition of others or the outcome of the affair; you do not allow yourself to be judged by the opinion of reality because you recognize that God fulfills you.
This born-again heart is free and joyful; it goes out to meet everything because it is certain that it has the key to embrace everything: the work that goes wrong and the error at work, the judicial problems, and the Muslim.³⁶
What does Christ work in us? He accomplishes in us what the Father did to Him on the cross. As soon as you yield, not something, but your whole self—because you recognize that you cannot stand without Him—as soon as you rest on Him, He makes your entire life blossom into a new life.
The flesh and the heart are like ashes, but He shows Himself as the rock of your heart, as He did with Peter. He resurrected, revived by the Father, And overwhelmed by the Father’s love; what does He do before the dearest person who betrayed Him? He looks at the ashes of his betrayal, restores to him a heart capable of love, and asks him, "But do you love me?"³⁷
Peter responds with that naive boldness of the child, of one who is reborn from his ashes because he totally surrenders himself to the One who loves him, the only One who allows him to love his wife and children, the only One who allows you not to lose your life.
The method is the same for facing daily battles and world wars: to lean within each cross, one’s heart on the rock that is Christ, for He is the rock of one’s heart.
In this Lent, we ask that the experience Christ had in Easter may be the experience of each of us before the things we hold dearest, as the Stabat Mater asks: "Let my heart burn," let the experience of Christ be stamped in the heart of my experience, for this is the way the True One has found to enter our lives. The way of the True One is an experience. We stand and listen to the Stabat Mater.
He stood at the foot of the cross³⁸
Verse 1
At the foot of the cross where her son hung,
the mother stood in tears and sorrow,
stunned and speechless.
Verse 2
She saw her beloved child
breathe his last
from his weary heart,
poor and forsaken.
Verse 3
Holy mother, imprint
the wounds of the crucified
in my heart,
and let that be my sole contentment.
Verse 4
Make my heart burn
with love for Christ God,
and let my will not be slow
to his great desire.
(Notes reviewed by the Author)
My flesh and my heart fail, but God is the rock of my heart" (Ps. 73:24-26)
Lenten Retreat - Fr. Pigi Banna
March 30, 2025 - Arcimboldi Theater (Milan)
1 L. Giussani, Can one live like this?: A strange approach to Christian existence, Rizzoli, Milan 2007, p. 290.
2 E. Galbiati - J. Schweitzer, "Descend, Holy Spirit," in Canti, Editoriale Nuovo Mondo, Milan 2014, p. 113.
3 Dante, Purg. XVIII,127.
4 L. Giussani, Si può vivere così, p. 257; G. Paccosi, "The Gladness of the Poor," in Id., "What Amazes Me, God Says, is Hope," Nuovo Mondo, Milan 2024, pp. 49-69, here 50-51.
5 L. Giussani, The Religious Sense: Volume One of the PerCourse, Rizzoli, Milan 2023, pp. 140-141.
6 O. Mazzoni, Noi peccatori: liriche , Zanichelli, Bologna 1930, p. 78.
7 See G.L. Bernini, Apollo and Daphne, https://www.collezionegalleriaborghese.it/opere/apollo-e-dafne
8 Passenger, Whispers, in "Whispers" (Black Crow Records and Nettwerk, 2014) https://open.spotify.com/track/44D8hCK2Rhvi2BH6lq0AxH
9 Ibid: "Everyone's filling me up with noise/ I don't know what they're talking about - See all I need is a whisper/ in a world that only shouts."
10 Cf. L. Giussani, The Religious Sense, p. 157.
11 J. Carrón, Christ is where it happens, https://paginasdigital.es/cristo-e-li-dove-accade/.
12 Mt 27:46.
13 Cf. Mt 27:39-44; Mk 15:29-32; Lk 23:35-38.
14 Cf. Mt 26:38: "My soul is sorrowful unto death."
15 B. Carlile, O Lord, What Can I Say, in "These Silent Days" (Low Country Sound - Elektra Records, 2021) https://open.spotify.com/track/3A0yH0LUUziIilTrvYkPQv.
16 Cf. Luke 3:22.
17 Cf. Jn 11:41-42: ""Father, I thank you that you have listened to me. I knew that you always listen to me, but I said this for the people around me, so that they might believe that you sent me.'"
18 F. Dostoevsky, The Demons, Garzanti, Milan 1993, vol. I, p. 238, cited in L. Giussani, The Religious Sense, p. 164.
19 This is Paul's recognition in 1 Cor. 15:10: "By God's grace, however, I am what I am, and his grace in me has not been in vain."
20 Ps 73:24-26.
21 Cf. Lk 23:46.
22 L. Giussani, Can one live like this?, p. 282; G. Paccosi, "The Gladness of the Poor," pp. 57-58.
23 L. Giussani, Can one live like this?, p. 265.
24 Cf. Chr. 8:6.
25 G. Russo, Morirò d'amore, in "I will die of love" (Sony Music 2003), https://open.spotify.com/track/1ETB7WBk6dAwlGRS0i3Tm6
26 L. Giussani, That great strength of the Pope on his knees, La Repubblica, March 15, 2000, p. 16.
27 L. Giussani, Can one live like this?, p. 284; G. Paccosi, "The Gladness of the Poor," pp. 59-60.
28 Cf. L. Giussani, Si può vivere così?, p. 277: "Therefore, the more you care about a person, the more you care about treating him as an instrument for the common path toward your destiny and his destiny, the more you care about the poverty of the relationship: the poverty of the relationship is the truth of the relationship."
29 See ibid, p. 268; G. Paccosi, "The Gladness of the Poor," pp. 56-57.
30 Cf. 1Cor 7:29-31.
31 Cf. Rev. 21,4.
32 Cf. 1 Cor. 3:13.
33 L. Giussani, Can one live like this?, p. 282.
34 C. Chieffo, And it will come, in "Songs" (The House of Miriam 2002), https://open.spotify.com/track/6X7evU7kWPKgAAJzT1PVu6
35 Cf. G. Paccosi, "The Gladness of the Poor," p. 52-55.
36 Cf. G. Paccosi, "The Gladness of the Poor," 67-68; D. Prosperi, "Called that is, sent: the beginning of the mission," Appendix to Traces - Litterae Comunionis 48/9 (2024), pp. 1-12.
37 Cf. Jn 21:15-17.
38 See Anonymous (16th century), Stava a' pi' della croce, ed. F. Soto de Langa, https://youtu.be/OI3tqpAG5sE?si=YGamOIRPgLd66tk4
