In one of [Luigi] Giussani’s several exegeses of Scripture, Abraham becomes a prefigurement of Christ in the sense that Abraham’s following of God’s voice, in having “his consciousness . . . woven together with that presence,” was so total that Abraham’s discovery of an absolute dependence would become “the prototype of all those whom the Lord would one day choose.” For Giussani, the awareness of this absolute belonging is the beginning of morality:
God, the creator, made himself visible in Christ, and made humanity visible to itself, penetrated its existence, and moved it toward destiny. And this is the difficulty: not so much to be perfect, to be coherent, but to be ourselves. Life and time are given to us to become always more true, always more ourselves.
He adds that “in order for us to become truly wise, to desire, to be free—in order for us to become a true personality, which is the reason God created us—we must follow another. There is no other way, no intellectual effort or human cunning, that has the value of this method.”
Theologian Aaron Riches states that according to Giussani “it is no longer the man of genius who is preferred but it is the one who is lowly, who is simple, who is pure of heart, who is able to recognize this event, this encounter.” For Giussani, an “existential awareness of what faith truly is” does not emerge from “a reasoning process nor of our study.” Rather, it is fundamentally “the fruit of an encounter” that elicits one “to make a total response” and becomes an event, leading to a life that dramatically gains an inner cohesion, which in turn changes how we perceive our relationship with others, with what has been given to us in our time, talent, and treasure, and transforms even how we look at our sins and limitations.
One of the principal ways that Christ transforms our humanity for Giussani is not simply in extraordinary gestures but in experiencing a redefinition of the everyday, the banal. He writes that “the most minute things in our daily life acquire dignity, have a vast horizon, are no longer a source of tedium and suffocation, and become above all a peaceful responsibility. . . . The banal is not what is small or habitual but that which denies the infinite, a forgetfulness of the God through whom we exist.”
This perspective is not solipsistic but involves “the limit par excellence,” which is “the person next to us, whoever he or she may be.” We see here a reversal of Sartre’s maxim: Heaven is other people. In regaining our “I,” we learn how to truly say “you” to others, a deficiency that Giussani diagnoses as “the ultimate and hidden root of violence” in human relationships.
Richardson closes with this from Giussani:
[In] the expectation of Christ’s final return—lived not as the resolution of present anguish or a formula for detachment, or even recrimination of the present time, but as the urgency to be awake to the truth of every contingent commitment, as the prophetic content of every serious love and responsibility toward the concrete path of life . . . a surprising affection for Christ flourishes, which is the supreme gift of the Spirit and the most authentic miracle of Christian life, of holiness. . . .
The privilege given to one who abandons everything to Christ, the determining presence of my own “I” and the maker of my destiny, does not obliterate and does not sidestep the intelligent, serious engagement that makes judgments, the reason that searches, or the heart that is committed to the point of sacrificing itself, or the will that spends its energy in the tension of a struggle with daily work: this privilege allows all of this to come true and to endure in time. The abandonment of the self to Christ implies the co-involvement of all the forces of the “I.” What we want to affirm, characterizing the Christian life or holiness, is that everything is done for a love.