“This love of man proper to Christ”

Luigi Giussani to the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, 25 April 1999

by Don Luigi Giussani

“So, for this I wanted to come here to greet you. That you may live the experience of the father, father and mother, I wish that for all the heads, for all the leaders of your communities, but also for each of you, because everyone must be the father of the friends they have there, must be mother of the people they have there, not giving themselves an air of superiority, but with effective charity. No one can be luckier and happier than a man and a woman who feel they are made fathers and mothers by the Lord. Fathers and mothers of all those they meet. Do you remember how the second book of the School of community describes it, when Jesus, going into the fields with his apostles, saw near a town called Naim, a woman weeping and sobbing behind the coffin of her dead son? And He went there. He did not say: ‘I shall raise your son’. But: ‘Woman, do not weep’, with a tenderness, affirming an unmistakable tenderness and love towards the human being! And indeed, later, He gave her back her son alive. But that’s not it, because others can do miracles, but this, this charity, this love of man proper to Christ has no parallel in anything!”