The Tidings Brought to Mary
Mariella Carlotti - Pigi Banna - Pigi: Good evening, everyone especially I thank Mariella for accepting the invitation. Every once in a while, let's say three times a year, we get together with the younger people from the community school, trying to theme simply how life is going, and what are the questions that are most pressing in the heart by living.
Very often, as I have been confronted with these questions in the last period, mine and those closest to me and those closest to my heart, I have been reminded of the text of The Tidings Brought to Mary, not so much as a content but precisely as a dimension into which it introduces this text, a way of perceiving and living life as a continuous dialogue with the Mystery, passing through the most unexpected circumstances.
Everything can be a factor in a journey. I don't want to anticipate, however, it seemed to me that the best way to look at certain questions that come up was not to have an assembly (I confronted Guto and Teresa and they agreed, in fact they were enthusiastic), but it seemed to me that it was to put oneself in front of this proposal.
That it is not so much a book, but it is a life and that is why it needed a person kneaded with this text like Mariella, as she will tell us, to be able to listen. It is interesting to me that listening to Mariella-and she will now tell us-everyone is there with all the questions that they would have in an assembly, that is, what is boiling in the pot, what is pressing in life, what is open? So that, as we were telling each other at dinner, the grace of an answer may happen that not only comes and answers what we are waiting for, but breaks through the measure of what we are waiting for by opening up horizons that we never expected. So thank you, now it's your turn.
Mariella: So this is a book that, as you know, is an important book in the history of the movement, Don Giussani read it from the first year he taught at Berchet. But, si licet parva componere magnis, it is a book that is my book. And it has become so since when? From a very dated moment I also remember the day, it was April 23, '89, you think. Indeed most of the people I see were not born.
I was 29 years old and in the midst of the most dramatic moment of the first triennial. I go through three-year terms. I've had three three-year drama: the first one was 27 to 30 (87 to 90), the second one was 2005-2008, and the third one I just came out of, 2021-2024. I don't know why, I'm Dantesque, I go in threes. The first three years was this: I did CLU, I am a “daughter” of Enzo Piccinini who was our CLU leader. And so “a go-getter”, which was his motto.
I was the leader of CLU in Perugia, and to give you an idea of what I was like, that is, how God had to plane me, if someone came to me and said, “I have a problem,” I would say, “Look, there are a lot of movements in the church, for example, the neocatechumenals with problems go hand in hand, why are you bothering us in CL?
Go!” Here I was like this, we are the” go-getter” ones, because I met the movement my senior year of high school, I was so excited about what I had met that I didn't understand who had problems. I just didn't understand what problem someone who had met CL could have. Then, when I was 24, I joined memores domini, and the first three years were three wonderful years. Beautiful.
The first three years of vocation. Those years also coincided with the beginning of one of a great friendship with Fr. Gius, I often went to see him and he would say, “write down the things you understand, because it won't always be like that and you'll have to go back with your memory to the gifts you receive in this time which is certainly a time of grace.”
However, in these dialogues, several times he had mentioned “don't be frightened if a trial comes because God always does that: he gives, then he gives you a trial so that what he has given you sticks to you, you become yours truly.” So that I got it into my head that I was going to have breast cancer and I was always showering to see the lump sooner or later. And instead, of course, the proof came from where I did not imagine, that is, I lived these three years (from 27 to 30) in which I did not understand anything more, going to sleep with anguish and waking up with anguish. With an absolute despair of me.
The despair of my not changing (so God made me pay for all those to whom I used to say “if you have problems go to the neocatechumenals,” because then I had problems and I didn't want to go to the neocatechumenals). And so, if I'm here it's because of the friendship of a friend of mine who in those three years made me a daily companion and the friendship that in those three years intensified with Fr. Gius. Until that day, April 23, '89, he told me that I had a moralistic idea of change, that I was measuring myself, that I was so merciless of me without any principle of fondness for me.
And that, for this, he advised me one thing: that I should read at least once a year The Tidings Brought to Mary. And the backlash I would get every year from this reading, that was my change. And from there I began to read, at least every year, The Announcement to Mary. I read it more often than once a year. And so it became a great friend, a great companion on the road. And I am telling you about it tonight.
The theme of The Tidings Brought to Mary is the theme of life as vocation. I was telling Pigi earlier at dinner that once, many years ago, I was with a friend of mine and Don Gius, and Don Gius said to us, “Of all the words I have told you, what is the hardest word to understand and to make understood?” We fired a lot of words: obedience, hope, faith... And he always “but it goes, but it goes, but it goes.”
Finally we say, “whatever, you tell us so we get there first.” And he said that the hardest word in life to understand and to make understood is that life is a journey, because we would like everything right away while things happen not when we want them and not how we want them, but in a journey that seems so slow to us that we go crazy and in which God fulfills our every desire.
And it is the hardest word to understand and to make understood because no one has a will to live, they all have a will to die. Therefore, those who have a will to live exalt themselves by being told that life is a journey; those who have a will to die die. Here, the theme of The Tidings Brought toMary is the theme of life as a journey, the theme - said with a word that if it were not used too much by priests would be beautiful - of life as vocation. Which is the most secular word there is because it is the most definitive word for life.
As vocation: that is, life before what happens, before the Mystery. More precisely -- because life is not before the Mystery -- life before the initiative that the Mystery takes. You don't play steady bowls, they always run, don't they? Life is the relationship, instant by instant, with the Mystery knocking at the door of your freedom through the touch of the real.
Here, the instant in history when this nature of life (because life is this relationship with God, instant by instant), the instant on the calendar of history when it became clear that this is the nature of life is the moment of the announcement to Mary.
Which, in fact, is the title of a book that is not about Our Lady at all, but because the title gives the theme of the book and not the content of the book. The theme of the book is that life is the proclamation to Mary. What is the Tidings Brought to Mary? The angel of the Lord declared unto Mary. Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. That is, that moment unveiled that life is the touch of Mystery and freedom is availability. And that beginning reveals the permanent method of life: life is always the announcement to Mary, which is why Fr. Giussani advised us to say it three times a day, to remember that it happens three million times a day.
Life is the dialogue between our heart and reality. The blade that can unite these two fiery poles, that can unite them or can divide them, is our freedom. My freedom I discover before the Mystery who calls me, to whom I say yes. But this position of freedom as availability to the Mystery-this is really the most acute point of this book-is seen in the moments when life breaks down. That is, in the moments when life breaks down.
Life is made up of moments when, like the protagonist of the book Violaine, one says how beautiful life is, what I desire happens. I remember, when I met the movement, this would have been the phrase I would have said, if I knew how to say it. How beautiful life is, what I wish happens. But then life is made up of moments when it seems that this beautiful consonance with everything there is breaks down. And that what happens is not what I desire. It is against what I desire. Because it is different from what I imagine. The real enemy of hope is really imagination: I, for example, never think about heaven because I can't imagine it and therefore I don't hope for it.
But it is a defect of imagination. In fact, if I start thinking about heaven I become an atheist. And this is a reminder that I have to live moment by moment, because heaven will be the ultimate moment. For me this has really been the drama of life: life never goes the way I have in my head that it should go. So much so that the real blasphemy and all our rebellions against God always begin with the phrase it is not fair. It is in the name of justice that we rebel against God.
This is a great theme of the book, because then this book is made of references, even internal references, beautiful. So this is the drama: you cannot help but start from the heart, but the heart begins to imagine. But if you don't accept reality, you despair.
Fr Giussani used an image to describe this that has always thrilled me. When Michelangelo went to the marble quarries in Carrara and saw a block of marble, he, who was a genius, saw the David inside. So much so that he conceived of sculpture as removing, not shaping. Taking away, so that there would appear, inside the marble block, the ideal figure that the marble block had dictated to him. When we fall in love we see in the marble block of the girl we fall in love with the woman of our life, and we start sculpting. When one starts a job, when I started teaching, I saw inside that block of marble what I wanted to become.
And I began to sculpt. However, at some point the chisel runs into a vein in the marble that it had not foreseen. Because that's the way marble is. Maybe there's a geologist or a chemist here and I won't venture ... but they tell me that for example the block of marble in which Michelangelo made the David was I don't know how many centuries set aside in Florence because everyone was running into a vein that prevented them from going ahead with the idea they had in their head.
The genius is the one who bends to the vein. The others throw away the piece of marble. And so the genius at the end of life made the David, made The Prisons, made the Pietà. The other made a dump of marble that were all supposed to be masterpieces. He did not lack the idea, he lacked obedience to the vein. Here, this theme of freedom in the face of the initiative that Mystery takes, as it emerges when life breaks -- I don't know about you, you're all pretty young, so maybe it broke little, in my life, it broke a lot, and they were very painful moments. For example, one breaks a self-image, one breaks a heroic image that one had of one's vocation. In short, you break a lot of things.
Think also of Our Lady, those thirty years when she had a child in front of her -- it's easy to say that the angel had told her, yes, however, then he was gone. How many times in her must it have broken? Will she have felt this rupture? The last one, under the cross. Here, this theme is played out in a four-act play set in a conventional Middle Ages, we are in France at the time of Joan of Arc, when all the people are going through the greatest of crises. What is the greatest of crises that a people can have? That there is no more authority.
There is no longer a father. Because, in fact, there is schism in the Church and there are three popes. That is, three who say they are popes. And in France there is no longer a king. So there is a historical rupture that is the setting of the drama. But then this rupture is reflected in the story of the characters.
There are six characters. But Fr. Giussani taught us that actually these six characters describe two triads that are the two possible positions in the face of the drama of living, of which each character in each triad embodies one aspect. These two positions of freedom first of all have two roots. One root is Anna Vercors who, despite her name, is a man.
Anna is the mother of Mary in the tradition, so I don't know if that's why she chose it. Anyway, Anna Vercors is the root of the first triad. The root of the other triad is his wife Elizabeth. They are two characters that are not seen as much in the drama as the others, they are precisely the root that, however, flourishes and bears fruit in the other two characters of the triad. Anna Vercors is the wealthy feudal nobleman who owns Combernon, the fief in which the story is set.
He has been married to Elizabeth for 30 years and they have two daughters, Violaine, the eldest, and Mara. Anna Vercors, now an old man, having reached - shall we say - retirement age, instead of putting on his slippers and finally resting, since France is without a king and the Church without a pope, in the face of the wickedness of the times he does not blame the times, he gives himself.
This gift of self is expressed in the fact that he decides to go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. An old man who left to go as a pilgrim to Jerusalem would probably not return: he goes to die so that the people to have authority. He gives himself to the world. Therefore, the root of the first triad is a man who feels himself as a function of the total design, as a function of the people to whom he belongs.
The opposite of him is his wife. Bravissima. A very good woman, those in the second tern are all good. Elizabeth is a very good woman, very good wife and mother. But you can tell the difference between the two of them in a dialogue they have in the first act of the play, of which I will read you just two lines.
When her husband tells Elizabeth that he is going to Jerusalem, she tells him, “Perhaps that France is no longer good for you?” And he replies “too much pain there is in France”. “But we are comfortable here and Reims no one touches it": this is Elizabeth, we are comfortable here. She has confused - it is the confusion of today - being comfortable with wanting to be comfortable. She has reduced wanting well to being well.
We are made to want well, we are bad when we don't want well. “But we are comfortable here and Reimsnobody touches it ". “Exactly.” “How precisely?”. "Exactly , we are too happy. And the others not enough". This is the difference between the two. This dedication of self, which Anna Vercors lives at the end of his life by going pilgrim to Jerusalem, had had an advance that he inside his fief maintained a cloistered monastery, Montevergine, as an opening to the infinity of his work.
As an opening to the totality of the design in the world of his work. The daughter worthy of such a father is Violaine, the name is a flower. She looks like the scent of a flower, she is a flower. Violaine is beautiful, she is sweet. Perhaps the word sweet is the most repeated word next to Violaine's name in the play.
And it has always struck me that sweetness is the backlash of a presence, always. Jesu, dulcis memoria. She is beautiful, she is sweet. She is all full of the rush of love. She is 18 years old and she loves James Hury who is sort of her father's adopted son, the male that her father did not have.
And the father before he leaves for Jerusalem will tell James to marry Violaine. And to Violaine to marry James: how beautiful life is, what I wish happens. I love James, James loves me. With Giacomo, however, Violaine's sister, that is Mara, is also in love. Mara is the plant that grows out of Elizabeth's root. Mara is bitter. Always bitter. Always resentful. Resentment is the opposite of sweetness. One can live life always resentful, bitter.
As continually disappointed. Whoever in you hopes will not be disappointed, this week I was struck by this line from a song that is also a Psalm. This position of Mara and Violaine can be seen for me very well in one way: how they use their eyes. Violaine looks, Mara spies. They are two ways of seeing. The one who spies sees what is in his head, he seems to see because he sees aspects, but he makes them total.
Because he spies. It is so true that the one who spies does not see well, that the one who spies normally goes to report because he needs confirmation, while the one who looks does not, because the one who looks is satisfied with what he sees. The spy is not satisfied with what he sees; he needs accomplices, always.
In fact, throughout the book Violaine watches, Mara spies and goes to report to her mother, to James Hury... Look at it in the book, there is this movement of the spy. The two triads are closed by the fruit of this root and this flower. In the first triad the fruit is Peter of Craon. Peter of Craon is the builder of cathedrals, the architect, he builds the dwelling where everyone can have shelter, so it is the most important function in the people. The opposite of Peter of Craon is James Hury who is the fruit of the second triad: Violaine's betrothed, the one with whom Violaine is in love. James Hury is very good, he is a very honest worker whotakes great care of his fields.
That other one builds the cathedral for everyone and he works on his fields. James Hury, Elizabeth, Mara, they are ruled by justice. They always say: it' s fair, it's not fair, it's just, it' s not fair, throughout the book. In all the dialogues, underline all the times these people say the word just. They always talk about what is right because the horizon of what they do is always defined by duty, not by love. We will see that and here we finally begin. I have described the three triads, are they clear? If they are not clear say. So, on one side Anna Vercors, Violaine, Peter of Craon, on the other side Elizabeth, Mara, James Hury.
There is an antecedent that is not told in the play but emerges from the characters' lines: Peter of Craon, who is a genius and like all geniuses is debonair, is in love with Violaine. He is Anna Vercors' best friend, because the man who gives himself for the world and the man who builds the cathedral are related. Peter of Craon, therefore, is in love with his friend's daughter. And one day, at Anna Vercors' house-this is the antecedent that is taken for granted before the story begins-he, seeing Violaine so beautiful attempted to rape her.
The violence did not take place because Violaine resisted. And she forgave him. How is it that a man forgives? He did not tell anyone. Because silence is forgiveness, for us men who can only do so much. She did not tell her father either. It remained a secret between her and Peter. But there is a third party who, as Peter says in the prologue, knows. In fact, Violaine says so. There is a third party who knows that Peter tried to rape Violaine: God. And God also forgives Peter.
But he forgives him in a paradoxical way, as God always forgives in a paradoxical way: with leprosy. Or rather, he, precisely because he tried to rape Violaine, that is, he tried to separate her from the good design to which her father had destined her and God had destined her, he brings this division into himself which is leprosy, he says so.
But leprosy was God's way of introducing him to his calling, he will be the virgin. He will not be able to marry. Because he is a leper. And therefore his greatest sin becomes the door to his vocation: this is God's forgiveness. But because the people cannot live without those who build the cathedral, the bishop made an exception. The lepers were to live outside the human consortium.
But if Peter of Craon does not build cathedrals, how do the people do? There is no more home. Then he can continue to build cathedrals, the bishop makes an exception for him. Because the authority, as I always tell my teachers, the educator, is the one who gives a rule and then always makes an exception to make you understand it. Because a life all rules is called a prison, a life all exception is called a mess, a real life is one that has a rule, that is, has a fatherhood that gives you a way and then continually makes exception for you to do it.
And so the bishop allows Peter of Craon to continue building cathedrals. He is to go around in a black cloak, with a bell, therefore announcing his approach and will give orders to the workers from afar. And we finally come to the prologue, I will be brief now. There is the prologue and then there are four acts. The prologue is wonderful. I am here for you to read this book, not to explain it to you, however, I will spoil it all to the last page. It's so good anyway, it's like saying: the Divine Comedy starts that he's in shit and ends that he sees God, after that I swear to you that reading the Divine Comedy is another experience, isn't it? And so The Announcement to Mary. In the prologue Peter of Craon went by night, because he is leprous, to say goodbye to his friend Anna Vercors who called him because he wants to tell him before his wife that he is going to Jerusalem and wants to say goodbye for the last time to his friend. Violaine has noticed and so when he sneaks out of the house at dawn, she stands in front of him. And she opens the door for him. She opens the door for him. The real door. Violaine has gone to say goodbye to him because she wants it to be clear to him that she has forgiven him. And Peter says -- I will just read you a page from the prologue -- pax tibi, peace be with you. Peter himself, at the end of the drama, will say, “and peace, he who knows it, knows that joy and sorrow in equal parts make it up”.
“Pax tibi. All rests with God in deep mystery! But what was hidden becomes visible again with him, and I feel on my face a fresh breath as of a rose. Praise your God, blessed land, in tears and darkness! For man is the fruit, but the flower is of God [the beginning is of God] and the good smell of all that sprouts. Like the mint leaf, theodor exhaled by a hidden holy soul reveals its virtue. Farewell, Violaine, who opened the door for me ! I shallnot return . O young tree of the science ofGood and Evil , behold the unraveling begins in me , for I have laid my hand on you. And already in me soul and body are separated, like wine in the winepress mixed with the crushed bunch! What does it matter? To me woman was not necessary. I did not possess corruptible woman. The man who has given preference to God in his heart sees in the hour ofdeath his Guardian Angel ".
The man who is available to the design of the Mystery, in the sacrifice, sees the Guardian Angel. That is, he sees the Mystery knocking. But the man who has not given this preference, in sacrifice sees only sacrifice. Because the opposite of sacrifice is not enjoying it, but it is beastly toil. If it were enjoying it I would not be a Christian, at 64 I know that the opposite of sacrifice is simply meaningless toil.
Violaine says, "Peter of Craon, I know that you do not expect from me comforts of ‘poor man!’ and false sighs, nor that I say to you ‘poor Peter.’ For the sufferer the words of a joyful comforter are not of much value, and his evil is not to others what it is to him. But suffer with our Lord. And know that your evil deed is blotted out for that which depends on me, and that I have made peace with you. And I will not despise or abhor you because you are infected and sick, but I will treat you as a healthy man, like our old friend Peter of Craon, whom I respect and love and fear. This I say to you. And so it is.".
This is Peter's yes . Violaine in this is Jesus saying to Peter do you love me ? I love you. One who forgives you is one who restores you as freedom. “Thank you, Violaine.” “And now I have something to ask you.” “Say.” “A beautiful story that Father told us, of a Justice that you build in Reims and that will be more beautiful than St. Remigius and Our Lady”.
And here you can see the makings of father's interest in the cathedral. In fact, Peter is building the most beautiful of his cathedrals dedicated to little Saint Justice. They had found the little body of an eight-year-old girl, a martyr from Roman times. And on the little body of this eight-year-old girl miracles had occurred, and then all the people had wanted to build on the body of this little girl Little Saint Justice.
The most beautiful of the cathedrals of France. You see. The word justice for James is a measure, for Peter it is an eight-year-old girl on whose body he builds the cathedral. So he began to tell him about this beautiful cathedral that he is building and that all the women of Rheims give gold for the construction of the cathedral. Violaine is thrilled.
She never calculates. Because he who builds the cathedral of Saint Justice does not calculate. Instead, those who build her justice always calculate. She does not calculate. So what does she do? She takes off from her finger the ring that James Hury gave him, the golden ring, and gives it to Peter. And he says to him: this is for the cathedral. And Peter at first says: but are you sure? Is it the engagement ring? But maybe...
Then all of a sudden he looks at it and totally changes the tone of what he's saying, "just this alone do you have to give me for the cathedral? A little gold you wore on your finger?". She is stunned because he was being complimentary before. “Isn't that enough to pay for a little stone?”, “Justice is all a big stone”. And Violaine, laughing, says “but I am not from the same quarry”. And here he is wrong, because she is from the very same quarry. And Peter says “one stone is needed for the base, a different one is needed for the summit”. And then Violaine says “one stone, if I am one, be the active stonethat grinds the grain coupled with the twin stone”, that is I know I want, I want to marry. And I already know what stone I am, I know what stone I want to be in the great cathedral of God. I thought I knew it too.
And here Peter says “even Justice was but a humble little maiden to her mother, until the instant that God called her to martyrdom”. "But no one means me harm! Should Iperhaps go away and preach the gospel among the Saracens?".
And here Peter says the phrase that Fr. Gius said is the key to the whole drama: “ it is not the stone' s turn to fix its place, butthe Master of the work who chose it”. And Violaine says, "Praised then be God who assigned me my place at once. And I have not to seek it. And other place I do not ask of him. I am Violaine , I am eighteen years old, my father's name is Anna Vercors and my mother Elizabeth. My sister's name is Mara and my fiancé Giacomo. That 's it. That's it, that's all there isto know. Everything is clear to the evidence, everything is predetermined , and I am delighted. Iam free, I don 't have to worry about anything , and he is the one who guides me , poor man, he who knows what needs to be done! Sower of steeples, come to Combernon! We will give you stones and lumber, but you shall not have the daughter of the house!". How I love it! Here, Violaine, it looks like me in my twenties.
And Peter says, "Once I heard, as I passed through the forest of Fisme, two beautiful oaks talking to each other andpraising God who had rooted them well in the place where they were born. Now, the one at the prow of a galley makes war on the Turks on the vast sea, the other cut down, by my care, in the Tower of Laon holds up Joan, the good bell that is heard ten leagues away. Maiden, in my trade one keeps one's eyes wide open. I know how to find the good stone under the junipers and recognize good wood like the wise woodpecker . And so I know men and women". "But not maidens, MasterPeter! This is too fine stuff for you. Besides, there is really nothing for you to know.". “Do you love her much, Violaine?”, hear how he changes.
He is the virgin for whom he completely changes all the time--that is, I think all of us have met someone who when we talk is constantly changing the table underneath. “Do you love him very much, Violaine? ‘ ’He is agreat mystery between us.” "Be blessed in your chaste heart! Holiness is not to be stoned to death in pagan land or to kiss a leper on the mouth, but to do God's will with readiness, whether it is to remain in our place or to rise higher.". Then Violaine says , “Oh! How beautiful the world is
And how happy I am!". And Peter replies “Oh! How beautiful the world is and how unhappy I am!”. Violaine is moved by Peter's unhappiness. And because she does not calculate, she kisses him. She kisses him on the mouth. Kissing the leper on the mouth, in the Middle Ages, indicated the acme of charity. So much so that it is the gesture with which the adventure of my countryman, Francis of Assisi, began.
In the shadows is Mara spying and seeing Violaine giving the ring to Peter and then kissing him. It is crystal clear, the two understand each other. So she goes to report to James that Violaine is having it off with Peter. Giacomo does not believe her. And there is the first act: Anna Vercors leaves, not waiting for her daughter's wedding, which will take place soon after Anna Vercors leaves.
Here we are in the second act and there is what Don Giussani called the most beautiful love dialogue in the entire history of literature. It is the day of the engagement, the day before the wedding. The day of the official engagement. Violaine arrives in the garden, she is beautiful, wearing a white dress embroidered with gold. James keeps looking at her inebriated because she is beautiful. And he keeps saying "but how beautiful is the world in which the part he gave me is you. Sweet Violaine. How beautiful you are, Violaine!". And she, like all women in love, tells him, “sayit again.. . say it one more time ... tell me one more time that you love me ”.
But, at one point, after she is almost drunk on the things James has told her, she suddenly says, "Consider what you are doing, taking me for your wife! - it is as if he is saying I am mystery, are you ready to receive mystery? - Let me speak to you with all humility, Giacomo my lord, you who are about to receive my soul and my body in custody from the hands ofGod and my father who made them . And consider the dowry I bring you , not similar to that of other women. But this holy mountain (Montevergine), which stands night and day in prayer before God, like an altar that always smokes, lamp always burning whose oil it is our duty to feed.
And witnesses of our nuptials not men, but God Himself, God whose fief we hold. He who is the Almighty, the God of armies. Not the July sun illuminates us, but the light of His face. To the saints, the holy things ! Who knows if our hearts are pure? Never had our race so far lacked the male, always the sacred bond had been from father to son transmitted. And behold , for the first time it falls to the lot of a woman, and is with her the object of covetousness.". “No Violaine” -here we see what James is-not man of letters, nor monk, nor saint am I. Not theguardian nor the converso of Montevergine am I. I have a task and I will fulfill it, to feed those murmuring little birds and fill the basket that they drop from up there every day . So it is written and it is well. I have well understood all this andhave nailed it in my head. No more needs to be asked of me. You don't have to ask me to understand what more about meand why those holy women are locked alive up there in that pigeonhole (Too bad if you don't understand this you don't understand Violaine). To the spirits the sky and the earth to the humans, who without the labor of the good worker do not give grain the fields and this, without boasting, I can say that I do and no one will teach me anything, perhaps not evenyour father. Of other time he is fixed in his ideas. To each his own place, that is justice. Your father, giving you to me and, in one, Montevergine knew what he was doing and it was according to justice".
And Violaine says, "But I, James, do not love you because that is right. And were itnot so, I would love you the same andmore". “I do not understand you , Violaine”. "Giacomo, do not force me to speak! You love me so much and I can only hurt you. Leave me! Thiscannot be about justice between us! But of faith, of faith alone and charity. Get away from me while it is still time." “I do not understand you , Violaine”. “My beloved, do not force meto tell you my great secret”.
At this point, she takes Giacomo's knife and with Giacomo's knife slashes her dress under her breasts. And she shows James, on her body, the flower of leprosy. She is leprous. And this marks her calling. She too will be a virgin, Peter through his greatest sin, she through her greatest act of charity. And at this point James believes Mara, how impossible it is for a man to truly trust! No one trusts anyone. So much so that if one in life finds one who trusts you, that is the encounter of a lifetime. I am not criticizing anyone, because I also do not trust myself.
And so, as Fr. Giussani says in a lesson to the novices of the adult group, with a phrase that is wonderful to me, to James it becomes obvious to him what is not true. Because one can put oneself in a position in life where the lie becomes obvious to you. You almost have no guilt. It is so obvious what is not true. And this whole beautiful love dialogue in Act II ends with the phrase with which all marriages end, which James says, " Scandal must be avoided . Undress and put on a traveling robe . I will tell you what is best to do".
This is power. And, indeed, he tells her what is convenient to do. They take the excuse that she is going to visit her future mother-in-law, actually taking her to the cave where the lepers are. Into the cave where the leprosy will devour her. And so, think how Violaine's life is broken on the eve of her wedding, of her fulfilled happiness: she goes to the cave instead of James' house. James and Mara get married. Eight years pass, James and Mara are married and have a little girl named Albina.
But this child, still very small, dies. Because the love between Jack and Mara is a love that cannot make life. It throws children out of the womb but it cannot make them live. In fact, the daughter dies. Mara, feeling that there is like a mysterious connection between her daughter's death and her sister's life--James, he is not there, he is away at a fair and Albina dies--takes the frozen body of this child and like a madwoman runs to the cave, throws her into the arms of her sister, now all eroded by leprosy, blind, faceless. He throws her on her and says “give her back to me alive”.
It is Christmas night, Violaine asks her sister to recite to her the Christmas Office, which the angels usually recite to her. And she takes this little niece in her arms, cradles her, and at a certain point a drop of milk comes out of her leper's breast, and the little girl lives again. And she gives it back to her sister, who is mad with joy. She returns home with her living daughter and says nothing to James that Albina was dead.
However, Jack keeps staring at this little girl because this little girl was born with black eyes. But ever since - he does not know - Violaine resurrected her, she has Violaine's blue eyes. Because the encounter that changes your life doesn't change your life, it changes your eyes. You can't look the same way anymore. And James keeps staring at these eyes because they are Violaine's eyes. And then Mara, mad with jealousy, runs back to the cave and kills her sister, burying her under a sand wagon.
And it will be Peter of Craon, who is healed of leprosy (because Violaine took it and he is healed because the people need him), it will be Peter of Craon, who being healed of leprosy can no longer take it, who will bring home Violaine's body. Violaine will bring home the woman he loved. The woman he loves. And so there is a final dialogue between Violaine and James, which I will spare you. The drama closes in Act IV with a surprise ending because the one who was supposed to die, Anna Vercors, returns after eight years, having been in Jerusalem, having been taken as a slave by the Saracens and then freed. And he comes back and finds the dead body of his daughter.
And on the dead body of his daughter it will be his turn to close the drama like this, "She is dead, yes. My woman isalso dead, my daughter is dead , and the Holy Maid (Joan of Arc) has been burned and scattered to the wind. Not one of her bones remains to the earth. But the king and the Pontiff have been rendered to France and to the Universe". Violaine's sacrifice, Joan of Arc's sacrifice, participating in Christ's sacrifice, saved the world. And the salvation of the world is the unity of the people. "Theschism is over. Again, above all men, the throne is raised (there is the king and there is the pope). "I passed by Rome again , I kissed the foot of St. Peter, I ate standing the blessed bread with the peoples of the four parts of the earth (sounds like the movement, huh? That's the description of the movement).
As the bells of the Quirinal, the Lateran, and the voice of St. Mary Major greeted the ambassadors of the new peoples from the East and the West entering the city together ; Asiais found and that Atlantic world beyond the Pillars of Hercules! (This is the world as the virgin sees it. For he who has given preference to God in his heart already sees in the world the fulfillment of the world, so much so that he already sees the unity of the world).
And just tonight, when the Angelus sounds, in the hour that the star Al-Zohar shines in the clear sky, the jubilee year begins that the new Pope grants, remission of debts, release of prisoners, truce of wars, closure of praetors, restitution of goods".
And here Peter of Craon voices our skepticism with the only skeptical line he makes in the whole drama: “Truce of a yearand peace of a single day”. As in: men are incapable of exploiting even Jubilees. I mean, the Jubilee in a little while starts, but do you see what a mess there is in the world anyway? What are you doing with the Jubilee? But do you see Gaza? Do you see Ukraine?
And Anna Vercors concludes, "Who cares! Good is peace, but war will find us armed. Oh Peter! Time is this that womenand infants know more than wise men and old men! I have had scandal like a Jew because the face of the Church has darkened (this sentence for me is the sharpest judgment written in the early 1900s about the Church today) and sheproceeds tottering in universal abandonment. (Since I had this scandal...) I wanted to embrace the empty tomb and put myhand in the hole of the Cross. But my little Violaine was wiser (why was she wiser? Because she understood that the hole of the Cross is the instant that gave you life. She did not need to go to Jerusalem).
Maybe that the end of life is to live?Maybe that God's children will remain with firm feet on this miserable earth? Not living, but dying, and not digrossing the cross, but climbing it, and giving in gladness what we have. Herein lies joy , freedom , grace , eternal youth ! O Violaine!Maiden of grace! Flesh of my flesh! So far away as is the smoky fire of my farm from the morning star , when in virginguise she rests on the sun 's breast her fair bright head , O! May your father up there see you for eternity in the place that has been reserved for you ! Long live God if where this little one passes , her father does not also pass ! What is the world worth compared to life? And what is life worth, if not to be given? And why torment yourself when it is so simple to obey? So Violaine, all ready, follows the hand that takes hers".
Pigi: Thank you.
Mariella: did you know that Pigi and I were born on the same day? And, another scoop, different year.
Pigi: So we belong to the same stock!
Mariella: absolutely, 24 years difference.
Pigi: So, if there is any question that is so hot... Please.
Intervention: I was struck by the last passage you made. I am very fond of the figure of Peter, lately he is helping me so much, they know because I have told them several times.
I was very struck by the question of the task. In the last part of the drama it struck me how Anna Vercors in the last moment learns from Violaine's body, that is, she learns what Violaine learned from Peter. And that is that the task is to go up to the cross and therefore the task of holiness was what Peter said to Violaine, “holiness is not to go kiss the leper on the mouth or to go proclaim Christ in the land of paganism, but it is to do the will of God with readiness, whether it is to stay in one's place or to go higher.”
And it struck me and I was interested in thanking you because one, following and sensing what his vocation is, so each character, Peter, Violaine and Anna following their vocation is the possibility, they learn from each other in a unity that is the unity that they then create by doing each one's own task, so being in a cave, obeying what happens, that is from the sister who throws her daughter's dead body to Peter who has to build cathedrals, so he is forced to build cathedrals and Anna who gives herself for the Church. And so I was interested in thanking you on that.
Mariella: I want to say one thing, actually two things. Peter, when he brings Violaine home, he says “Finally I have the stone for the supreme”. That is, the foundation stone is the little Holy Justice, Violaine will be the stone for the summit, the stone that will shine over all of Rheims. She, who had consumed her life in the leper's cave.
But I want to take advantage of the intervention that he made...I am in my most Maresco period , who I like best of all right now is Mara, who has always been the bitch, reading the book. This time, when I re-read it, I don't know how to interpret what Don Gius told me so many years ago, but I totally identified with Mara. I hope I am not shocking you. I am very precise Mara spat, that is, all these years of moving like this to become like this bitch... When I was 19, the first time I read The TidingsBrought to Mary I said, “This is a bitch.” It took me forty-five years to become like her. But as I was saying that to myself, I realized it wasn't true. It was true, but it wasn't true. So, if I say, “I am Violaine,” it is true, but it is not true.
Because actually these six characters, these two triads, are not the cowboys and Indians of an American movie, that is, the good guys and the bad guys. When I first read it I thought that the difference between these two triads was in what they desired, that is, the former had higher desires than the latter.
This is not true; they desire the same thing. It is that the latter do not accept that it is reality that unhinges the measure of their desire. While the former do, they do not predefine their desire. However, these six characters, these two positions, I have them all in me. I am not on one side.
I am crossed by these six characters. They are all aspects of me. Because I oscillate between Anna Vercors' dedication and Elizabeth's pursuit of well-being. I oscillate between Violaine's gift of me and Mara's possession. I oscillate between wanting to build for Jesus the most beautiful thing in the world and cultivating the St. Nicholas Conservatory as my garden. Do I make myself clear? And so one thing that is clear to me is that I am all six. And that in me fights every morning this alternative of freedom. And that it is a drama that will never close. I will never be on one side because it is not a side. I don't know if maybe I have confused the ideas.
Intervention: While you were talking I was having the experience you describe now, which is to find myself in everyone. It strikes me, though, that from the beginning when you started talking until this thing you were saying, I actually see in you a great tenderness toward yourself. I mean, even in recognizing yourself in everybody. And so I wanted to ask you what in the present of your life now allows you to look at yourself like this, with this tenderness.
Mariella: Someone who looks at me like this, because this is precisely not mine. Sometimes when I, too, realize that the self-love has melted away and become a love to me, I understand that this is the backlash of someone who is loving me.
Intervention: Several times you have taken up the point both speaking of The Tidings Brought to Mary, and of your own life, that somehow life breaks down, especially then you were saying about a certain image. And even now you were showing us how out of this breaking a life is born. While you were talking, several times I thought about the simple episodes as well, however I was thinking in a maybe smaller way, I was also broken, certain images. I wanted to ask you, both with respect to the text but especially from what you experienced, it doesn't seem automatic to me, in the face of a circumstance that comes that really blows up images and measures, that willingness to somehow accept another measure. If you could just help us get in here more, because it seems to me it's a dynamic that in the small and the big happens every day.
Pigi: You said you just came out of these three years, what happened?
Mariella: I was kind of weirded out by everything that happened even between us over these years. Angry. For me it was a really breaking moment. I was discharged by the Pope. I mean, when they called us to the Dicastery for the Laity, the six of the board of memores domini, and they read us the decree by which the Pope was kicking us out of the board of memores domini, I got a little bit upset.
It was September, it was Padre Pio day I think ... Padre Pio is a saint that I don't like. The first act for which I dislike him is that my father was called Pio, by name. When I was a little girl - Padre Pio died in 68- 69, I'm from 60 and everybody was talking about Padre Pio when I was a little girl -, I was convinced that they were all talking about my father. When he died and I found out that it was that old friar instead, it was a shock to me. From here the dislike never went away from me. However, it was the Padre Pio day the day we were discharged.
So, I had already started the day by saying, it's Padre Pio's day, here, it's going to end badly. They have been tiring years, I am happy to have lived them. Even if they were tiring. Why? Reading The Tidings Brought to Mary, this time I was thunderstruck by a sentence that I didn't read to you because I didn't want to be too long, but always in Act IV there is this beautiful dialogue, again between Violaine and James, in which at a certain point-I'll read it to you because it's too beautiful-James, when Peter of Craon brings her back home, starts telling her that he has been the victim of a conspiracy, he asks her to tell him the whole truth, she tells him the whole truth.
And he does as men who feel they are victims of a conspiracy of women always do, which is that there was Violaine, Mara, Elizabeth, the Bermuda triangle of women there. And he like a jerk was under it. And so he scolds her, and at one point she says to him, "Giacomo! Youmust quickly give me all the reproaches you have in your heart, and it must be over. That much more we still have to say to each other. And once again I want to hear from you those words that were so dear to me, “Dear Violaine! Sweet Violaine." Short is the time I have left to remain with you.".
James Hury: “But you knew that Mara loved me?”. "I knew. My mom had told me." “So everything conspired with heragainst me”. "Giacomo, there is already too much pain in the world. Better not to be the cause of great pain to others,wanting it.” . “ Whatabout my pain?” "It is something else , Giacomo. Aren't you glad to be here with me?". “Yes,Violaine”. "Where I am there is patience, not pain. That of the world is great, too hard a thing to suffer and not know why.But what others do not know I have learned, and I want you to know it with me. James, is it not already too long that we were separated? And shall we still endure this impediment between us? Must death also separate us ? That which is dead must perish, but all that suffers does not perish. Happy he who suffers and knows why! Now my task is finished". “Andmine begins,”, says James. "And away! Do you find so bitter the cup to which I have drunk ?". “But thus I have lost youforever”. And she says to him, “But tell me, why lost?” (because she has not lost him). “Because you die!” "Understand me James! (this is the sentence that struck me now) What good is a perfume, even the rarest , in a sealed jar? Of no use.What use was this body to me if it so concealed my heart that you could not see it, but only saw that outer mark on themiserable wrapper ?" “Hard was I and blind.” "James, now I am all broken and the scent exhales. And you see that now you believe everything just because I put my hand on your head.". And he says, "I believe. I no longer doubt ".
Now I am all broken and the fragrance exhales. Especially it struck me that he says, what use was this body to me, if it hid my heart like this? What good were the things I was doing, the tasks I had, if it concealed my heart like this? Instead, all the breaking of these years to me is as if it unveiled my heart. So now, I haven't solved anything, but I know one thing: that it's not all the same, but it's all for me.
Because I could not stand those for whom everything is the same. And it was on my soul those who felt everything against them. But I didn't understand how these two things were together. You know what I mean? And instead it's not all the same, so I judge, but it's all for me, everything I judge. All the breaking moments in life to me always brought up the heart. They always forced me to say to myself, but what do I want? But what is it in life that makes me get up in the morning? What is it that I seek? Power? What do I lack?
This is a question of the heart. Therefore, I say, when things are not going the way I have in my head, that is the time when it is the heart's moment. That's the time when the really true things emerge, the really true questions in which, for example, what are the things that really matter. The ones that I really need. So, I come out of this last three years with the fact that I am more me. Because I know more what I am looking for and I know more what I need. Than three years ago for sure.
Pigi: Thank you. This focus says that you have touched a central point, for me, in life. Because you have put each of us back before the proclamation to Mary, that is, before that point where we are all called to respond, all of us. And where the concern is not what is the right thing to do--workwise everyone has their own issues--but is: He who calls me where does He want to take me? Which is another game.
And, from there, everything you said. But for me, every time, every morning, to say the Angelus again, it's really putting me back in front of this alternative: not what is right to do, but where do You who are calling me want to take me? And the thing that impresses me, hearing you again, which is something that moves and excites me, is that great stories of vocation are easily mistaken by the world as great stories of sin. In fact, Jesus died as a wrongdoer. From the very beginning this is the case. While things done right generate nothing.
But perhaps, this is the thing that moves and excites me, the great vocation stories are not those in which everything is done right, but in which we let us, with our sin, be embraced. That's why I get the excitement of saying, “Where do you want to take me?” because it's not so much saying what do I need to change, what do I need to give up, but it's: how will this oak tree make the bow of a ship or the lintel of a bell? The focus, at least mine, came from this, and of the others I hope it intercepted this level.
The author has not revised the text and its translation.
English. Italian.
Fr. Pigi Banna - leader of a school of community in Milan. Currently, Don Banna serves as a lecturer in Patrology at the Seminary of Milan. His office is located in Venegono Inferiore, at Via Pio XI, 32. His academic background in Classical Studies, combined with theological and patristic studies, makes him particularly qualified to teach Patrology, which focuses on the study of the Church Fathers and early Christian literature.
Mariella Carlotti was born in 1960 in Perugia, Italy. She earned her degree in Literature in her hometown. She currently lives in Florence and has been teaching for 20 years at a vocational school in Prato, specifically the "Marconi" Vocational Institute.
(*) Communion and Liberation (CL) is a Catholic movement founded in 1954 by the Italian priest Don Luigi Giussani. It originated with Giussani's encounter with high school students in Milan, where he recognized a need to reawaken faith in a way that was relevant to their lives.
CLU, the acronym for Communion and Liberation - University, represents the presence of the Communion and Liberation movement within the university environment.
The School of Community is the primary educational tool of CL. Its main characteristics are:
It involves personal meditation on a text, followed by community meetings.
Its method is the continuous comparison between the Christian proposal and daily life, to verify how faith responds to the needs of man in every aspect of reality.
Meetings are usually held weekly, in small or large groups, in public living environments or in homes.
