THEOLOGIAN FOR OUR TIME

 

Considered to be one of the most important churchmen, and perhaps one of the most important theologians, of our time, SERVANT OF GOD LUIGI GIOVANNI GIUSSANI was born on October 15, 1922, in Desio, a small town in Brianza, north of Milan, Italy. His parents were Beniamino, an artist and a carpenter, and Angelina, who worked in a textile factory. He was a Socialist; she, a devout Catholic.

Luigi entered the seminary at the age of eleven, and was ordained a priest on May 26, 1945, by Bl. Cardinal Ildefonso Schuster, OSB.  His ordination had been accelerated by the authorities in the Milan archdiocese as they feared that his serious respiratory health problems (which would plague him his entire life) would lead to his death before becoming a priest.

After ordination, he taught for a while, and discovered a remarkable talent for communicating with the young. In 1954, he went to teach at a Milan secondary school, and that same year founded a movement called Student Youth, which grew into Communion and Liberation.

In the early 1950s, he requested of his superiors to be allowed to leave seminary teaching to work in high schools. He was driven by a desire to bring the Christian experience to the school environment in response to the questions of young people living in a context that he perceived to be increasingly hostile to both the Christian faith and the Catholic Church. He perceived a need to help young people to discover that real faith was relevant to one's life.

In 1964 Father Giussani began teaching introductory theology at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, a position he occupied until 1990. In obedience to a request of his Archbishop, Giovanni Colombo, he devoted himself to theological studies. In the late 1960s his superiors sent him on several periods of study in the USA. During this time he wrote “ An Outline of American Protestant Theology. An Historic Profile from the Origins to the 50s”.

One of Father Giussani's central themes is that Christian faith is, in its most primary and central form, a relationship. He emphasized that Christianity began as a relationship with a particular individual, Jesus of Nazareth, and that the morals and theology of the Church are an outgrowth of this relationship.

He believed that one of the central problems for faith in the modern world is that it has been subject to various reductions. Some people experience faith as merely an empty formalism completely focused on following moral rules. There is no longer a living relationship with the person of God, but instead a ritualistic attempt to meet standards. Similarly, faith is sometimes reduced to intellectualism or an attempt to rationally defend certain doctrinal positions. Although morals and doctrine are both important they are not the central event of faith. The central reality of faith is a relationship with Christ as He becomes visible within reality.

In 1983 he was given the title of Monsignor by Pope St. John Paul II. He outlined his views on politics in an address to an assembly of the Italian Christian Democratic party at Assago on 6 February 1987.

He was a friend of Andrea Aziani (see Blog Jan. 3, 2019) a missionary to Peru.

He died on 22 February 2005 at the age of eighty-three and was interred in Milan's Cimitero Monumentale.

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, (later Pope Benedict XVI), delivered the homily at his funeral, where he said of Msgr.Giussani: "He understood that Christianity is not an intellectual system, a packet of dogmas, a moralism; Christianity is rather an encounter, a love story; it is an event".

On 17 January 2006, the Holy See officially recognized Servant of God Giussani as the co-founder, along with Fr. Étienne Pernet, A.A, of the Sisters of Charity of the Assumption, a community of religious women.