The Craft of Living
Pierluigi Banna - A dialogue exploring the challenges of modern life, sharing life and offering hope for a more authentic existence.
Moderator
Of course, we thank Don Pierluigi Banna infinitely for being here with us. Father Pierluigi is a priest and a professor of theology and Patristics.
Now, Pierluigi, I would like to ask you a question that, for us at the Cultural Center, is a bit of a must. We always ask it of our speakers the first time we meet them, and it is this: You tell us who Pierluigi Banna is.
Pierluigi Banna
It is difficult to define myself, but I am a still young priest, of Catanese origin, living in Milan. These are my connotations. But if I had to say who I am, I would say that I am a person who wants to go to the heart of things, to the truth of things, with authenticity—and who does not want to get there alone. In seeking the truth of things, I also wish to encounter the truth of others.
Moderator
We at the Cultural Center have always felt friendly toward the position of the question. In fact, we have always placed it at the center of all our meetings. Tonight, however, we really wanted to make it the protagonist. In a moment, you will see some friends who will share episodes from their lives and the questions that arose from these episodes. They will describe an event and the question that emerged from it.
I am reminded of what a fifteen-year-old girl once said—who may even be here. It struck me very much:
“The crucial questions of life, the ones that arise suddenly, I usually throw on a chair, as if they were clothes I wore only once. But then there comes a fine day when I have to decide to look at that mountain of clothes to figure out what to do with them: whether to wear them again or put them in the wash.”
Here, the craft of living, according to Pavese’s felicitous definition, is first of all to decide to look at these pressing questions—and to do it together with an older friend. This, for us, is you, Don Pigi (I will call you that for convenience), who is older in the sense of human experience, certainly not chronologically, because you are really very young.
Moderator
The photo you see behind me, chosen as representative of this meeting (The Craft of Living), is actually not accidental. It is the winner of the World Press Photo Contest 2024 and is titled “A Day in the Life of a Quebec Fire Team.” Marika chose it because this man you see portrayed represents all of us. He stands like a bulwark on the rock—depicting our desire to be fully present, to be surprised and embraced by the meaning we are all awaiting if we are here now.
Introducing us to this moment is pianist Elisa Cerri, who will perform Chopin’s Mazurka Op. 67 No. 4. Chopin composed it three years before his death. The composer, consumed by illness and on the verge of a breakup with the woman he loved, was experiencing a deep nostalgia for his homeland, Poland—a feeling he expresses in this Mazurka alongside a zest for life that refuses to die out. That is why we chose it. Thank you, Elisa, for this gift. Let’s give her a round of applause.
Let’s start with the first question: Simona.
Question (Simona)
I’m Simona. I’m a middle school support teacher, and in my relationship with kids, sometimes I’m faced with empty situations, so the human aspect seems “genetically modified” to me. It’s a bit of a strong expression, but I use it to mean that there is nothing I can take for granted—from the path of learning to the elementary dynamics of relationships between the boys themselves and with adults. There is something I’m missing that I would like to understand. I always feel like I “don’t know.”
As a cause, I think of the damage that social media is doing, or the increasingly precarious and uncertain social environments. So I ask myself: How can we fish out the hearts of young people? How can we set them in motion again?
I pose this question while taking into account all the effort I have put into my work over these years in the school. Yet, despite this commitment, it seems to me that everything I know is no longer adequate.
Moderator
Let’s ask another follow-up question so that we can move forward with more agility.
Question
So my question is: Why do I feel such a rush of life (and yet I am of a certain age) while I don’t see it in them? It pains me most in the young people, but not only in them. This desire for life that I feel—could it be because they do not recognize that we do not give life to ourselves? For me, this impetus comes from realizing that I am desired and loved, and I did not give that to myself; I discover it, and I give thanks.
Thank you.
Pierluigi Banna
I will begin to address these two questions. First of all, thank you for the invitation. I would like to ask each of you (of course, don’t answer out loud, but imagine what you would say): What is the first reaction we had to what we just heard?
Our first reaction when faced with someone who seems to have a different heart than ours—“a genetic mutation,” as Simona said—or with someone before whom all our attempts feel inadequate because he or she seems to speak another language, another code from ours, or someone who simply cannot get excited about the things that excite us? We have a passion for life, a passion for certain things, and we try to communicate it, yet that person remains totally unmoved. What is our instinctive reaction when we encounter people who surprise us?
Typically, our reaction is not astonishment; it is not surprise. It is concern—anxiety—because there is something we cannot control, something that is not what we expected.
Perhaps we should recall that when we are faced with something alive—especially a freedom that is alive—its defining characteristic is that it should always surprise us. If a husband, after 50 years, says to his wife, “You no longer surprise me,” it means he has managed to turn his wife into a thing. But if a husband truly loves his wife—and the same applies the other way around—he will always sense that gap of a freedom different from his own, which cannot be controlled.
So, to me, the first issue regarding the “youth question” is not so much how different young people are, but why it disturbs us that they are different from us. Why are we so frightened by the diversity of their reactions instead of being intrigued, amazed, and thrilled that there is still a freedom in the world that does not fit into our calculations?
In Hamlet, Shakespeare said, “There are, Horatio, more things in heaven and earth than are in your philosophy.” We should be amazed that the sky is always different from how we imagine it—there are always more stars than we can see. Yet why do we marvel at the sky and the stars, but not at a freedom different from our own? This is the first point I note. There is a continuous refrain about concern for young people—about fear of them—that overshadows the first fact: our amazement that this generation is not like us. It is a new freedom, a new humanity, asking to be recognized as other than me.
But if we want to delve deeper: Why doesn’t astonishment prevail instead of concern? A study in the United States, called “The Anxious Generation,” focuses on Generation Z, which is allegedly dominated by anxiety. It suggests much of this anxiety stems from how adults conceptualize reason: everything must be anticipated, and every potential blow cushioned before reality is even encountered.
We raised them believing they would never crash into anything. I don’t know how comprehensive this study is, but it reflects a familiar attitude in which adults want to keep young people in check. “For their own good!” we say, because their freedom could harm us and them. But why is this freedom not the first thing we marvel at—something bigger than the sky and the stars?
When Churchill visited the United States in the early days of MIT, he was told, “Here, we will study how a new Hitler cannot be born”—and as you can see, such studies continue with AI. Churchill replied, “I, by that day, hope to be dead.” Because more astonishing than a controlled, planned freedom is a freedom that simply is—one that is other than me, uncontrollable. It exists precisely because I do not create it; it is not how I want it to be.
Connecting this to the earlier questions, I believe a large part—though not all—of the unease young people feel arises from our limited ability to open them to the mystery of life, to look sympathetically at its unexpectedness, to greet life with wonder and surprise before we look on it with worry. We try to control everything—yet most of reality lies beyond our control.
As Anna said so insightfully, when we operate under a mindset that wants to keep everything in check, we inevitably end up shrinking our horizons—like the phenomenon of hikikomori, where people confine themselves to their room to avoid getting hurt. But who says we have to control reality? Who says the wounds reality inflicts are not the very moments from which we learn the most? Learning that reality is different from what we expected can mark the beginning of our maturation. Reality is always beyond us, greater—a mystery. If no one ever tells young people this, then we adults are the ones injecting the fear of diversity into their veins.
So, I don’t have a solution for our young people, but I pose this question—to myself and to all of us: Why don’t we begin to revisit our conception of reason? Is it an “anxiety-inducing reason” that wants to control everything, or is it a reason open to the surprise that the other may offer, to the diversity that the other is?
Two examples. A boy once said to me, jokingly, “My aunt tells me to enjoy these years because they are the best years of my life. What are things like after that?” In doing so, his aunt put a kind of performance anxiety on him about adolescence—where you have to do and undo everything—but she failed to convey that life can keep getting better every day. Or, in a more provocative instance, a teenager said, “But Mom, why do I have to do homework and then end up looking like you do? You work, you study, and by nighttime you look the way you do!”
Quite a provocation!
Pope Francis, in Spes non confundit, includes a beautiful passage suggesting that we must revisit our understanding of happiness. We see that happiness does not lie in what we manage to possess, which inevitably leaves us disappointed. A conception of reason that aims to keep everything under control—even another person’s freedom—will, upon grasping it, be left disappointed, watching what it has tried to achieve crumble in its hands. Instead, Pope Francis says, “we need a happiness that is definitively fulfilled in what fulfills us, that is, in love, so that we can say, even now: I am loved, therefore I exist; and I will exist forever in the Love that does not disappoint and from which nothing and no one can ever separate me.”
The more adults there are who feel loved and who dwell in this love, the less they will fear the diversity of these young people, and the more they will begin to regard it with sympathy. This is because behind what appears to be a “genetically altered” or “anthropologically broken” diversity lies a new opening for fresh discoveries—for us, first and foremost.
Moderator
Giovanni, it’s your turn now. Then we’ll finish with the teachers.
Question (Giovanni)
I’m Giovanni. I am a teacher. Before teaching, I worked in a juvenile center. One day before Christmas—knowing how sensitive the Christmas season is for those living in a recovery community—I spoke with one of my students who lives there. I asked him, “Listen, how are you? Do you know if you’ll be able to see your parents at Christmas?” He told me he didn’t know; he was waiting on the decision of social workers, a judge, etc. Then he looked at me and said, “Prof, I don’t get it. If my parents did something wrong, why am I the one who has to pay?”
This question really got to me. Earlier, you mentioned that we should help them look at the mystery with sympathy. I feel very small in the face of this question, but it’s not enough to say, “Oh well, I’m small compared to this.” He asked me this question, and I feel I need to respond. So I ask you: What am I being asked to do when he poses such a question?
Question
I also teach in a classical high school. While correcting homework, I came across a girl’s essay that said, “This line from Three in the Morning by Carofiglio never appealed to me: No other woman after your mother. I would have liked to hear this line from my father, being the daughter of separated parents. Every time I read it, it fills my heart, as if it partly repairs it.”
I was struck by her comment—that each time she reads this sentence, she feels her heart is repaired. When I read it, I was jolted into realizing that these kids have broken hearts because of their complicated family situations. Only later did I recognize that this provocation was also aimed at me. My heart, too, is broken when it isn’t surprised by something new in the present—when it doesn’t live the present moment, even this moment here. So my question to you is: Do you also take everything as a provocation for yourself? In what way?
Pierluigi Banna
Yes. I take everything as a provocation for me, just like the examples you mentioned, which are everyday occurrences. They involve boys, girls, and even older adults who raise problems bigger than I am. If you think—as Giovanni said—that you yourself are the solution to these problems, you’ll tear your hair out. And in a moment of madness, if you imagine you can solve them, you may fix a detail—like inviting the boy to spend Christmas at your home—but you can’t change the fact that he doesn’t know whether he’ll see his mom or dad. You can be a wonderful teacher, but you can’t undo the hurt that girl has suffered from her father and mother.
In this regard, I’ve always been struck by an expression Carrón used in a 2017 interview: “In the face of certain problems, others are revealing to us a problem that is ours.” We not only feel very small—it is realistic to feel that way—but we also feel stirred inside, called and wounded at the same time by the other’s unbridgeable pain.
Maurizio Maggiani, commenting on the Paderno crime in a poignant article in La Stampa, described pulling up to a bus platform and finding a boy crying. He tried to console him, but the boy kept crying. He even tried offering him a glass of water, which the boy refused.
Maggiani says, “Then I left, and that boy had awakened in me a pain I was carrying.” Perhaps this is our greatest initial contribution to those young people: if from their pain—which we cannot solve or fully fathom—we allow something within us to be ignited, if we let them awaken that place in us where we still suffer and which, nevertheless, strongly resonates with their pain.
For me, this is what it means to stand before them as human, adult, and mature: not downplaying the wound, not running away from it, not taking someone else’s place, but being there with your own wound before the other. Because the other has such power to unmask and provoke you—who thought you had arrived at adulthood—into confronting things you believed you had resolved. Sometimes, when a kid in class treats us badly or looks at us poorly (I’m a teacher, too), or when they get distracted—why does it hurt us? It’s not just a matter of pride. It strikes a point in your life where you need to re-examine yourself, and only if you take your own humanity seriously at that point can you truly offer something to that kid. Otherwise, as I said before, you will either unload your tensions on him or merely gloss over his pain, but you will not stand before him as a human being.
Lévinas had some incredible insights about this: the other calls me, but calls me in a way that forces me to bring forth what I share with them.
But let’s address the core issue: those of us who have traveled a bit further down the road than adolescents—what do we have to offer regarding their wounds, their questions? This is where it all comes to a head, where we discover whether there is a tradition, in the true sense, that shapes us.
Tradition is not a bundle of facts, knowledge, behaviors, or rituals to be passed down to new generations. Balthasar said that Christian Tradition is like manna: it must be renewed every day, or else it spoils.
So, if we do not grasp the questions these young people pose—and the wounds they open in us—to ask ourselves what truth our forebears have left us, what good we have accumulated from our years of experience, we miss the chance to renew this Tradition. We do have something to offer: we are full of experience, knowledge, and ideas. But all these things we claim to know risk becoming a barrier between us and the young if we do not let these relationships call into question what we hold. Then the miracle occurs: Tradition continues.
Goethe said, “What you inherit from your fathers, you must earn back in order to own it.” Confronted with the boy who asks, “Why shouldn’t I cut myself?” you must reclaim everything you’ve learned in life—because you got out of bed this morning. And you can thank that boy, because he makes you recover your tradition. So, in whatever stumbling way you can manage—because of the opening he has created in you—you communicate to him anew what has been passed on to you. In the Catholic sense, this is how Tradition works. As Péguy said, it is not about storing what we have inherited in musty boxes, but bringing it to life again through our own bodies, our own faces, all that has been most precious to us.
I’ll give a provocative example: A mother asks me, “What do I say to my daughter who wants to have a sex change?” I say, “How do you respond to your daughter’s question—What is your identity? If you are not clear on how to answer that for yourself, you’ll always be confused before her, unable to propose to her the tradition that has been handed down to you.”
Because if, when asked “Who are you, truly?” you only answer “I am a woman,” that response merely judges your daughter and doesn’t help her move forward. Who are you, really? Does “I am a woman” encompass all that you are? After two months, this mother thanked me because the question took root in her so deeply that it allowed her both to express what she thought of her daughter’s choice and to embrace and grow in their relationship. That, to me, is continually renewing our Tradition.
I’ll cite one last example from the tradition of the Fathers and how they interpreted Moses’ burning bush, where, in the Book of Exodus, God appears as a bush that keeps burning yet is never consumed. The early Christians read this as what Christ did by becoming man: our humanity was like a burning bush. And what is a bush? Nothing but thorns—dry and barren. Christ came to set it on fire, to bring life and passion to what, in the eyes of the world, was dried up. But not to destroy it—not to consume it—but to make it shine: a bush that keeps burning.
That is how tradition is renewed. We often think renewing tradition is pointing out someone’s mistakes, shining a light on the person who’s distracted or whispering to a neighbor, saying, “You’re doing it wrong; you’re not listening.” To us, that’s tradition: shedding light on missteps. St. Paul says that’s what the law did—it told you, “You’re a burning bush; you’re dry, you’re all thorns, you’re no good; you need to be saved.” Instead, Christ came and covered that wound with fire. He didn’t switch on a lamp over our wounds; He covered them, touched them, healed them, and embraced them with a body like ours. This is the Incarnation.
When someone calls me, I offer him a flesh like his own, but one that is no longer a place of discomfort, rather a place to inhabit, where we can set out on the path together. The question is whether, in the face of others’ wounds, we look for a light that exposes them in their error, or whether we set out with them to find a Savior who embraces our mistakes and gives us a body, a path, and a home on which we can journey together. The difference is vast. In the latter scenario, tradition is renewed because it becomes a path for you as well—one you, too, build with your own wounds and errors.
Question
I am Marilena. After an argument with my husband, I realized that I often take a certain stance when dealing with people who think differently from me—whether it’s my husband or my friends. My stance is either attack, defense, or withdrawal. I’m not happy with that. I see that I don’t take the approach of verifying my own position—of wanting to see whether my view is actually true. It’s a path I’d like to pursue, so I’d like to ask: Are you working on this? Do you have any examples you can share?
Question
I’m Roberto (Marilena’s husband). In some relationships, I notice that I’m looked at in a diminished way, as if I’m not good enough and need to be fixed. When I sense this, I step back and start measuring my words and actions. But I don’t feel free in doing so. So I ask you: How can I avoid this feeling of being reduced, regardless of the other person’s stance?
Pierluigi Banna
When I find myself locked into the positions Marilena describes, it’s usually because I’m reacting entirely to the other person. Instead of looking for a Savior, I’m looking for reassurance—someone to tell me I’m okay. We all know how suffocating it is when we stand there begging for others’ approval. We end up, as Marilena said, in attack, defense, or withdrawal. This is true not only in family life but also socially—even “identity groups,” including Christian groups, often set themselves apart from others by seeking approval or by rejecting outsiders.
There’s a growing notion that to stand before the other, I have to define what I am not, or what the other is not relative to me. This creates a stance of attack or defense: “We are Christians and we defend certain values you don’t understand, because you aren’t part of our history or tradition, and we’re fortunate enough to be included.” Others say the same thing about their values. From here arises the ongoing conflict we see worldwide. Who thinks they’re fighting a wrong cause? Everyone has a good reason, and that reason invariably boils down to the other person’s mistake.
Often, this mindset—attacking those who differ, drawing lines around who we are—breeds closed groups where rules and values are not passed on as a living tradition but used as an identity banner. That tendency isn’t found only in the Catholic Church; it’s a drift affecting all groups that fail to see the other as an opportunity. A similar stance can arise in marriage, where the wife tallies everything she’s done that her husband hasn’t, concluding that if he doesn’t do what she wants, she’s justified in “waging war.”
On the other hand, it’s not enough to adopt the approach of constantly currying favor, a kind of relativist pacifism that seeks only the other’s acceptance. A Church that sells itself out to worldliness—trying to please everyone by watering down its own tradition—ends up with nothing to say. It becomes uninteresting.
So what’s the point? Both stances—resistance or surrender (and we can see them at play in families, at work, in society, and even in warfare, as well as in the Church)—have the same flaw: they put the center of gravity in the other’s recognition rather than in oneself. The other ceases to be someone who calls me to rediscover my foundation; instead, they become someone whose judgment or acceptance I depend upon. Pierangelo Sequeri—one of Italy’s leading theologians—recently wrote in Avvenire that perhaps the Church has realized it shouldn’t be obsessed with making itself attractive or with building a parallel society.
After all, we can view the last 500 years of Church history as a struggle to maintain recognition in society as Christians. But there’s a far more interesting position—one Pope Francis reminds us of in Spes non confundit—which sets our center of gravity not in the other, but on account of the other’s provocation, in the One who grounds me. For a Christian, that would be Christ: something deeper than the other and deeper than myself, which I did not create.
Pope Francis used the image of an anchor—a sign of hope. Amid the storms of history, we’re not toppled if we know that neither the trials nor the fleeting favors of this world can conquer us, because we’re anchored in the hope of grace—in the hope of Another who is creating us at every moment. I say this because whenever I’m at odds with someone or dislike a particular situation, the real crux lies in shifting my center of gravity from seeking approval or clashing with the other to allowing my encounter with them to anchor me more deeply in Christ, rediscovering the root of my freedom. This, in turn, enables me to adopt fresh, unanticipated, and hope-filled responses—even toward those who attack me.
I see three indicators in our current era, three signs that deeply resonate with me because they represent people who, in the midst of hostility or superficiality, go directly to the core of what truly grounds us.
Thought for a couple of seconds
1. Child saints—from Carlo Acutis on, and even more anonymous saints, children who pass away and inspire tremendous faith and hope around them—might be a sign we should notice. In a world where Christians debate who they should be, the Lord sends us holy children who remind us that the key is to be simple and to treasure the dearest thing in our lives. Being childlike strikes me as a sign of great hope. A child has only one concern: knowing that Daddy and Mommy are there, and then he proceeds, almost unaware of the surrounding danger. It’s up to Daddy and Mommy to protect and guide him.
2. Martyrs—our second great sign of hope—also bring countless people to faith, and they still exist in the world today. They die without feeling obliged to debate with those who kill them for their faith. As St. Stephen, the first martyr, showed us, their only concern is to relive what Christ experienced in front of His persecutors. They’re not worried about giving answers or being accommodating; they merely proclaim their certainty in the One for whom they give their lives. And by giving their life, they also offer it for those who kill them. This generates hope.
Tertullian said that “from the blood of the martyrs, the Christian people are continually being born.” Perhaps a Christian who is more prepared to shed its own blood rather than its own words would spark far more hope around it.
3. Many elderly people or the gravely ill, nearing the end of life, do so not in despair but in hope—almost as though they dwell between heaven and earth, ready to meet Jesus. Were a young person—who feels no will to live—to encounter someone like that, it would be a life-changing event.
They shine as examples of people not seeking recognition or conflict, and not attacking others. In their own bodies, they’ve realized that life is not about displaying power in history, but rather about saying yes to the foundation of your freedom in that history—living like a child, giving your life to the last drop of blood, and experiencing old age and death as a meeting with someone.
Question
I don’t really have a question. I wanted to share something that happened before Christmas, when my third grandchild was born. He was born with complications (he has casts on his legs and is hooked up to several wires). I went to Milan to help out. One day, I was trying to get out of the car but couldn’t manage with the baby and all these wires. I was struggling, and it just came out of me: “But this is not life!” My daughter, however, instantly replied, “Yes, this is life.” And in that very moment, I realized how much more fascinating, how much more beautiful her response was than mine. I realized just how steeped I am in the common mindset, where all these wires are purely bad news.
Question
I’m also a teacher, and here is my question. I’ve noticed that when I face everyday challenges—work, relationships, raising my child—I’m sometimes able to approach them with a certain positivity and creativity, and often things turn out well. However, I see that, especially when things go well, I never stop to ask, “Where is God in all this?” And once I notice that, I find that I do want to ask myself. So why does this happen? Why do circumstances take over?
Pierluigi Banna
Simply put, it’s because we don’t really allow these circumstances to take over. We have to live every situation to the fullest, without rushing to stick God in there or to rely on philosophical or ideological explanations. The most interesting thing you’re telling me is that the more life presses on us, the more it inevitably sets our reason and awareness in motion. I’m merely stammering out what Don Giussani expressed so well in The Religious Sense: a person who experiences a minimal impact with reality—who therefore doesn’t wrestle with challenges the way you do with your students, or the way Marika struggles when she sees her grandson in this condition—will have a lesser sense of his own consciousness, a smaller stirring of his reason.
So, the first point isn’t about why we don’t explicitly say “God,” but whether we truly go all the way in exploring the provocation that circumstances continually pose. We could look at kids and think, “They’re not like us, so forget it.” We could observe a certain situation and say, “The Christian tradition doesn’t exist anymore, so forget it.” We might look at someone else and say, “We have to fight them because they’re not like us.” But as we’ve seen tonight, everything harbors a hidden treasure that begs to be discovered, because first of all, it opens dimensions within us we never expected. Who would have predicted facing a grandchild in that condition and saying such things? Who would have imagined encountering the current generation?
Where does the question of God arise? It arises only if that presence can embrace all aspects of reality.
If there were a solution that could better encompass reality, I’d follow that solution. If someone told me, “Just do this algorithm and your student will be fine,” I probably wouldn’t be religious at all—I’d jump right to the algorithm. I’m convinced of that. We saw it in the Church: when we thought we were attracting people with a bar and a movie theater, then, of course, the secular world built nicer bars and better movie theaters, and everyone left. Because obviously, the most interesting thing we could offer them wasn’t the cinema or the bar.
Pierluigi Banna
The point is, what presence—or what element—can embrace all the factors of this turbulent and mysterious thing called reality? The moment I come up with an idea, it slips through my fingers. The moment I think of an educational or pedagogical theory, I can’t reapply it consistently. Precisely because I neither create reality nor control it, the question arises: Who creates this reality—nothingness, or someone? But this profoundly religious question only emerges in those who truly experience a deep impact with reality. Only someone who has a grandchild in this condition can ask, “Is this life?” And how do we answer that?
This is the first issue. It’s not about who is more religious or less religious; rather, the more we embrace the elements of reality, the more truly religious we become. If someone discovers an explanation that accounts for more factors of reality, we’ll follow that explanation. But how do we discern whether it’s merely chance or whether someone is actually creating it?
By what criterion do we make that judgment? By what criterion do you evaluate your day with the kids? By what criterion do you look at your grandson? Do you use the regional healthcare system’s parameters? Do you use state laws to decide whether he has dignity? If his father and mother abandon him, does that mean this child has no value? Which criterion do you use to view this reality so that you can fully embrace it? Do you rely on worldly standards—even the mightiest or the most knowledgeable, those who own every satellite system? Or do you rely on a criterion that you carry inside you—one no one can take away—because God Himself placed it there as the greatest gift He could give you?
Here lies the fundamental challenge we face in a world where Christianity is no longer assumed, no longer the backdrop in which we grow up and live. Either we continually judge reality through this criterion we hold within us, or others will tell us how to see reality.
The challenge now is to draw out human beings who, as they immerse themselves more deeply in reality, recognize what truly corresponds to their hearts and what does not, what makes them more free and what makes them less free. Because when Marika’s daughter said, “Yes, this is life,” Marika could breathe again and say, “That perspective fits more than the one I was offering.” That is how Christianity first entered history—as a more fitting view of humanity, one everyone else had given up on. It says: “The blindness you have, it’s neither your fault nor your parents’; it’s so that God’s glory may be revealed.” It sounded absurd. Yet after a while, they realized He was right: that blind man is now famous worldwide because of his blindness. The same is true of the Samaritan woman, and of Zacchaeus. He came into the world with a gaze that took in reality down to its core, and people could recognize it because it was more true to that inner criterion, rather than to the standards of the powerful—who did, after all, crucify Him. That deeper criterion, more than anything else, is where we find ourselves today.
Moderator
Concerning this, I see that I often think change depends on whether I become capable of viewing reality in this way. But real change lies in recognizing a judgment that aligns more deeply with reality than my own. Otherwise, I’m always stuck in moralism. Let’s take the last two questions.
Question
I’m Giancarlo. I’d like to pick up on Marika’s question: “Is this life?” I have a 21-year-old son with severe autism. Since COVID, things at home have gotten a lot tougher, because stepping out of our routine has caused him to worsen. On the positive side, as the years have passed, I’ve come to ask questions of meaning and purpose that I never had before. I realize my life has changed; I see that Matteo is a gift to me. Still, I sometimes rebel strongly and think, “Lord, how is it possible that, with more time, the situation actually deteriorates rather than improves?”
At the same time, I understand there is another possibility for me: recognizing that there is someone greater who holds me and loves me. So I’d like to ask: Have you, in your own life, ever faced a period of great suffering? And what happened that changed your outlook so much that even such a difficult situation proved to be a resource?
Question
I am Maria Silvia, the seriously ill elderly lady. In my condition, I notice that lately I feel very distressed at the mere thought of the pain my passing to heaven will cause those who love me—my husband and my son. Since I’m sure I can’t remove even one drop of their pain—and perhaps I shouldn’t—I wonder: Who or what enables me to face the sorrow of those I love with the same joyous certainty with which I face my own circumstances?
Moderator
Sorry, Maria Silvia, could you repeat what you were saying? What are you certain of?
Question
This year, compared to last year, I felt free and ready to wish myself a good year—a good beginning—because what I ask of this year, this month, or this day will surely come to pass. I am certain it isn’t a vain hope because I ask to be able to see it.
Pierluigi Banna
Let us draw to a close by touching on the most serious and significant issues of life. I don’t believe there is ever complete resignation when we face these circumstances. In response to Giancarlo’s question, I find in the Church’s companionship and tradition a huge source of support—not for resignation, but so I can present, before a Presence, all my inadequacy, rebellion, discontent, and weariness in the face of a situation.
St. Paul, in his Letter to the Philippians, says, “The Lord is near; make all your requests and questions known to Him, and in this be glad.” It is a state of constant struggle—of wondering why a situation is what it is, not understanding it, and yet sensing that through that situation, the Lord draws near in a paradoxical, unexpected way. Instead of causing fear or anxiety, it blossoms like a flower, an unlooked-for gift—a sort of gladness. You can’t explain how: faced with a circumstance you’d never have chosen, you find yourself glad and, in certain moments, at peace. Then the very next moment, the struggle returns. Yet there is that instant when you feel suspended between heaven and earth, as if called to stand there.
In the face of this, two main points come to my mind:
First, you ask, “Did the Lord forget me, to leave me in this situation?” You’re forced to question whether you can genuinely speak of the Lord as a presence in your life—especially considering everything you’ve experienced—if He has failed you or proved unfaithful.
The Lord has never given me what I expected, because if He had, my life would have been terribly dull. Instead, He has consistently given me more—even too much, I’d say. So, when I look at my own experiences, rather than relying on abstract ideas, I can say: “Up to now, He has not abandoned me—so don’t abandon me now.” This is how the people of Israel journeyed. Even amid rebellion, they would admit, “If God has been faithful until now, He can’t leave us.” Every time thirst, fatigue, or anger overwhelmed them, they’d pause and say, “Who is my interlocutor? Into whose hands am I placing my life? Doctors? People’s affection? Or Someone who will never abandon me?”
Second, and still a dramatic question: “But how do I know what the future holds? Do I have any certainty about tomorrow?”
I don’t know what tomorrow might look like—my life could end tonight. Yet there are signs telling me I will find Him again tomorrow. Thus, my ongoing struggle with this Presence is rooted in two realities: recognizing the One who has never abandoned me, and being certain I will meet Him again. Why am I certain? I’m not trying to persuade anyone; I speak as a man who has encountered faith alongside many others. We have the story of One who went there (beyond this life), didn’t remain there, and came back to say, “Okay, friends, I am going to prepare a place for you.” It’s a historical event. Never again has anyone gone where we all eventually go and then returned to say, “It doesn’t end in nothingness.”
“But we didn’t live in that time. We didn’t witness those appearances….” Yet there are signs—experiences—through which a Christian senses the power of the Resurrection, a certainty that Christ overcomes time, space, and death, even now on this earth. Thus, I can say, today, “Later, when I leave this life, I will meet Him again.” What are these signs and experiences—present even now—in which Christians perceive Christ conquering space and time?
I’ll mention three “resurrection” experiences, though there could be many more:
Friendship between people who might otherwise be strangers or who haven’t seen each other for ages. By faith, a singular and genuine bond is formed. I’ve met people I’d only known for a few minutes, but they spoke the truth about me so profoundly that I entrusted my life to them—more than I would to my own parents. And conversely, people entrusted their lives to me, not because of my merits but because they recognized a Presence in me. Some, I don’t see for a year, yet when we meet again there’s an immediate familiarity founded in Christ—not in personality, psychology, or sociology. This friendship transcends distance and time. When it happens, one thinks, “There is something stronger than time and space.”
Forgiveness—a foretaste of Resurrection—because it rescues you from a path that would lead to death. It’s no coincidence that St. Paul, in his First Letter to the Corinthians, writes that sin leads to death—the law of the flesh leads to death. You feel death when you grasp that you’ve done something wrong, that you’ve hurt someone or something. Then you encounter someone who transforms that moment of death into an occasion for life, not condemnation, embracing you and giving you more life than you had before you sinned.
Anyone who hasn’t experienced this forgiveness has missed out on faith’s best gift: it’s the most beautiful thing in this world. It’s like being reborn today, but with an awareness you didn’t have at birth. You discover that what spelled the end for you becomes someone else’s new beginning—and they choose to re-engage with you. Something that overcomes the apparent “nothingness” in which everything seems to end and re-creates you is a resurrection experience, right here in this world.
3. Virginity: an experience that, sooner or later, touches all our lives. There comes a moment—yes, even for those who are married—when you realize that if you truly love another person and want that person with you forever, you must respect their mystery. You must step back. And when you do, a remarkable miracle happens, because you entrust that person, in some way, to the Mystery that creates all things—to Christ. You love him or her even more; you possess that person more deeply than if you tried to hold onto them. Thus, whether it’s discovering yourself as a father or mother to people you never physically conceived, or loving your children, husband, or wife without the need to cling to them, you gain a foretaste of that condition we’ll fully experience in the Kingdom of Heaven, where contact or possession is unnecessary—where a truer possession reaches back to the source, to the root.
For me, these three experiences—friendship, forgiveness, and virginity—already give me certainty about whom I will meet and who will be the destination of my life. I don’t know how it will all be fulfilled, and I struggle because I say, “Lord, why have you put me here? What do you want from me?” Yet, even amid this struggle, I can’t help but be sure of two things: He doesn’t abandon me, and I will meet Him again. This conviction enables me to stand before the most challenging situations, bringing my full stature as a human being, in front of a Presence.
I’d like to add one more point: when you live this way, you look around and discover you are surrounded by friends—plenty of friends. As Don Giussani said before John Paul II in 1998, quoting an Ambrosian antiphon: “Gladly have I given You everything.” And I have seen around me a people who gladly offer their gifts for one another. If everyone approached the struggles of daily life in this manner, they would become creators of a communion—a Christian people who aren’t just an organization driven by a supposed unity. It’s something far bigger: it is His body, the Body of Christ, here in history.
Moderator
Fr. Pigi has shown us what it means, first and foremost, to be friends, and what it means to truly answer questions—because the answer to all our questions is a friend who walks with us. The image of the burning bush is what resonates most with me, because that’s exactly what a friend does: confronted with my burning bush, with my dryness, he makes me burn without my being consumed. It’s a love that doesn’t destroy—the virginity you mentioned.
A friend isn’t preoccupied, as you are tonight, with “answering questions” but simply gives life.
The notes and the translations of this dialogue have not been revised by the author.
