Friday 19 August 2022 – 12:58
At the Rimini Meeting also an exhibition on Don Giussani
For the centenary of the founder of Cl
Rome, 19 Aug. (askanews) – Don Giussani in words, works, music, images of art and nature, testimonies. It is the virtual 3D exhibition staged at the Rimini Meeting and created as part of the initiatives for the centenary of his birth. A permanent and potentially expandable space where you can “come across” today in the person of the priest born in Desio on October 15, 1922, professor of moral theology at the Catholic University of Milan and founder of the Movement of Communion and Liberation.
The path winds through halls and corridors, accompanying us with some of the most loved musical pieces, proposes audio and video contributions, even unpublished, testimonies of fellow travelers and opinion leaders, immersions in the great works of art that accompanied his powerful readings of pages of the Gospel and self-produced contributions from social, cultural and entrepreneurial works resulting from the encounter with the human and spiritual genius of Monsignor Giussani.
His testimony, says Davide Prosperi, president of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, in the video that opens the path in the entrance hall to the notes of Symphony n. 4, op. 98, I by Johannes Brahms, “is not relegated to the past but is entrusted to all those who continue to find inspiration there for their own life. [ ] Who is Fr Giussani for you today? This is where the journey begins ”.
In fact, there follows an anthology of personal testimonies sent from all over the world in response to this question, which document what the hoarse voice of Don Giussani proposes to us in the first Corridor: “He [Cristo] it passes through me, through you, it passes through all those who give you this testimony, as it passed from Simon, Andrew and John, to his wife and mother [ ] It has entered the second century. It was communicated to others in the second century, then in the third century, then gradually in history up to my mother. My mother told me. This is the terrible, divine concreteness: outside of here there is no Christianity ”. Vissi d’Arte, from Puccini’s Tosca, accompanies the itinerary.
The testimonies collected in Room 1 entitled “His inheritance”, where contributions from personalities of the Church, culture and society on the person and the spiritual and theological legacy of Fr Giussani are proposed here, either directly or indirectly. . Accompanied by Schubert’s Sonata for arpeggione and piano D 82, it is possible to listen to Cardinal Angelo Scola and Francesco Facchinetti, the journalist Monica Maggioni and Cleuza Ramos of the Associacao dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra, the Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops Marc Ouellet and Wael Farouq of Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, and many others. The room culminates in the collection of interventions by the last three Popes: John Paul II (12 September 1985), Benedict XVI (24 March 2007) and Pope Francis (7 March 2015). Meanwhile, from the window of Room 1, the visitor can see a glimpse of the Po Valley and the house of Gudo Gambaredo, a hamlet of Buccinasco in the province of Milan where Don Giussani lived.
“At the origin of Christianity the passion for man, not the (abstract) idea of founding a religion”. These are the words that resound in Corridor 2 to access Room 2, in one of the lesser-known audio by Fr Giussani. La Favorita by Gaetano Donizetti is the musical track that marks this passage. “The Christian proposal” is in fact the theme of the second room. The exhibits feature interiors and objects from Fr Giussani’s house, while the audiovisual contributions, accompanied by the Prelude op. 28 n. 15 by Fryderyk Chopin, consist of interventions by him collected at different moments in his life that make it tangible how he made that proposal his own, relaunching it to young people and all those he met.
And it is precisely the “meeting”, a word with a particular axiological value in Giussani’s life and thought, the fulcrum of Corridor 3, where the photos on the walls show us the priest with John Paul II, Jean Guitton, Shodo Habukawa, Giovanni Testori , Carlo Maria Martini, Olivier Clément. The Hail Mary by Giuseppe Verdi accompanies this “passage” to Room 3, “The Gospel story”, where one encounters the so original and fulminating modality with which Fr. Giussani commented on the Gospels, identifying himself and making him identify with “3D” vividness with the events and the people of those stories.
Giussani introduces us to Mary (Luke 1,26-38), John and Andrew (John 1, 35-39) Zacchaeus (Matthew 16, 13-20, John 6, 22-69, Luke 19, 1-10), Peter ( John 21, 1-19), while an immersive vortex of art image proposes these same figures of the Gospel narrative. On the walls large images with glimpses of a pilgrimage of Fr Giussani to the Holy Land (1986) and during the celebrations of Good Friday at the Shrine of Caravaggio, emblematic moments of this proposal of identification with the Gospels and in the “exceptional correspondence” of Christ to the question of ‘man. The accompanying music is that of the Quintet for piano op.81, II, Dumka, andante con moto, by Antonín Dvorák.
“The religious sense defines the self as the sensational, indestructible, substantial need to affirm the meaning of everything”. This is the quotation that can be heard from Fr. Giussani’s voice while walking along the Corridor that leads us, to the notes of A furtiva lagrima by Gaetano Donizzetti, to Room 4, the last, dedicated to The Religious Sense, the heart of his teaching. of morals at the Catholic University and its theological elaboration. “Suppose you come out of your mother’s womb at the age of now. What would be the first, the absolutely first feeling in the face of reality? ” This is how he provoked his pupils first at Berchet and then at Cattolica and thus the visitor feels called to reflect.
In this room there are also some of those authors that Giussani quoted, read, and studied in depth during the lessons because they had been decisive “encounters” for him for his thought and his own spirituality. Here is Giacomo Leopardi and the Song of a wandering shepherd from Asia, Pär Lagerkvist with A stranger is my friend and Plato’s Phaedo. And for music, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 op 92 alternates with Schubert’s Incompiuta D 759. On the walls, images of lessons while from the windows you can still admire the Lombard landscape with “that beautiful sky so beautiful when it is beautiful”.
At this point we return to the entrance to the Hall from which the exhibition starts, and the visitor can see and hear Don Julián Carrón, president of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation from 2005 to 2021, affirming among other things: “What I has captured of Don Giussani [ ] it was the offer of a way to reach what fascinated me ”.
In the same Hall are collected some of the contributions sent by social but also entrepreneurial works generated by the encounter with the charism of Fr Giussani, “Even work must serve and be a function of the truth and happiness to which man personally aspires” (Don Luigi Giussani).
“Why are they waiting for you?” a journalist asked Giussani in front of a crowd awaiting his arrival at the Rimini Meeting in 1983. “Because I believe in what I say” is his firm and decisive reply, followed by a friendly smile. These words that greet the visitor at the entrance to the exhibition ring even more true at the end of the journey, in their disarming simplicity.
The exhibition was curated by the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation with the coordination of Roberto Fontolan and Michele Borghi and designed by the architect and designer Dario Curatolo. At the end of the path it is possible to leave a comment, consult the site writings.luigigiussani.org and find other insights.
