Homily notes of Most Rev. Diarmuid Martin, Emeritus Archbishop of Dublin, at Father Giussani's Anniversary Mass.

We come to remember in our prayers the life and witness of Don Luigi Giussani and to reflect on his legacy to us as members and friends of the movement he founded Communione e Liberazione.

We reflect on this anniversary of the death of don Giussani in the light of two contexts: firstly, the context of today’s feast, the Chair of Saint Peter, and secondly in the light of this Jubilee Year focused on hope.

We celebrate this anniversary on the Feast of the Chair of Peter, the feast day on which don Giussani passed from this life. We remember today in a special way Pope Francis, struck down by illness. We pray for Pope Francis that he may be restored to good health and to his mission of leading the Church in a time of change.

Pope Francis has called the entire Church to renewal and especially to renewal in mission. If I were to ask many people what was the theme of the recent Synodal process, they would immediately reply with one word: synodality. That, however, would only be half the answer. The final document of the Synod stressed the centrality of mission. “Mission enlightens synodality and synodality strengthens mission”. Synodality is not just about changes in church structures and Church government. Mission is the mandate not just of an ecclesial elite, but is mandated for every Christian, even though with varied roles. Every Christian and every Christian movement is called to the mission of announcing the Gospel.



Don Giussani, through his way of life, placed devotion and fidelity to the place of Peter and his successors in the Church as part of the charism of CL. Being a follower of don Giussani requires living that same devotion and fidelity through seeing themselves and their movement principally at the service of the mission of the Church and of witnessing to the dissemination of the message of Jesus Christ in society.

Secondly, we are called to witness to the faith in the special context of the Jubilee Year of hope. Hope was a theme taken up in many ways by don Giussani.

In his work "Beyond Optimism - Hope", he challenged us to address the question of finding hope in a world where there are many reasons for not being optimistic. He did so strangely by warning us about optimism. It is hard to hope when times are not optimistic. He reminded us also that it might well be even harder to hope in times when society is registering uncritical optimism.

Where things are not objectively optimistic, then it is foolish to be optimistic; but that does not mean that it is foolish to have hope. Nor does it mean that hope is just some sort of narcotic that helps us to bear with it when times are not so good. For Giussani, hope is not simply a series of quantifiable, predictable outcomes of a mechanism. Hope is deeper. It is never just an outcome; it is a way of life.

Jesus can only be found when we strip ourselves of all the human additions and short-lived supports and the fleeting empty hopes which we tend to build around ourselves to create our own self-image, our own identity. Our true humanity requires no image making. Human dignity belongs to all identically. This is because that human dignity, which is the root of hope, is not simply a social construct; it is a given, a gift.

This path to finding Jesus is not one that rests on our own devices. However, it is not something entirely passive. Following the light of Christ requires us at least to take the risk of setting out on a journey about which we have no idea where it will lead us. It requires us, as Giussani points out continuously in his book, to set out on the path towards Another, that is Jesus Christ. This search does not and indeed cannot exempt us from carrying out that search within the realities of a concrete today or tomorrow. However, it involves us coming to the realization that the foundation of hope, within the realities of the world in which we live, involves recognising the demands and the identity of Jesus Christ.

Recognising Jesus means recognising a child who was born entirely by the power of God. This child, at his birth and in his life, shows us what God’s power is about and what all power is about. It is about saving and protecting, caring and nurturing and radically transforming humankind.

I am convinced that so many young people today reject God because they have never been presented with the true God, since many believers so often do not witness to God as God reveals himself.

Renewal in the Church will not be possible simply through accepting or dialoguing with the values of the day. Dialogue between faith and culture cannot end up being simply polite conversation, it must lead to real challenge; real challenge based on the manner in which we as Christians have rooted our own values in something different, something beyond us, in that Another who represents the radical otherness of God.

That is the challenge of evangelization. That is the challenge also of building a hope-filed society, one that we recognise we need more than ever, but which our own forces cannot attain. As Pope Benedict XVI recalls in his Encyclical Spe Salvi (#23): “There is no doubt, therefore, that a ‘Kingdom of God’ accomplished without God—a kingdom therefore of man alone—inevitably ends up as the “perverse end” of all things as described by Kant: we have seen it, and we see it over and over again”.

In a world of uncertainty and insecurity like ours, we need men and women of deep hope who bring to their lives and then through their lives to others that true hope which can change hearts and bringing meaning and purpose. We remember the life of don Giussani in a way which reflects the way he lived: his life, his message was not about himself, but about Jesus Christ and about how Jesus Christ and he alone gives meaning to our lives. Don Giussani kept his gaze fixed on Jesus in every aspect of his life; he deepened his relationship with Jesus through prayer and reflection on the word of God. We commemorate don Giussani best through recommitting ourselves to deepening our knowledge of Jesus and what Jesus means in our lives.