Fr Giussani’s greeting to the University students of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan for the beginning of School of Community on The Religious Sense, 8th October 1998.

I am very grateful to you for discussing the volume that contains my ideas, exposed over many years of lessons, fist of all in secondary school and above all at the University. Every year I would say, “I don’t want to force anyone to be persuaded, but I don’t want anyone to deny what I say unless he has at least read the reasons I give”.

I ask you to read me with the sincere and immediate intent of sharing with all young people the effort over the value of the religion that arose from Jesus, son of Mary, the Jew of Nazareth.

No-one can understand unless he verifies the ideas and the values in his own singular experience.

This experience may consist even in a shock or in a particular feeling that one discovers in oneself, or in the history of a people or of the world.

Experiences expresses things that prove its truth. What I tell you has all been dictated by something I have studied and desired, that I was averse to but in the end loved passionately.

For me it is experience that teaches the whole value of ideas and things, lasting in time whether as persuasion or doubt. Even great painters, musicians and poets show that they continue to take up the theme inspired by a “beauty” they have met.

On this occasion that you have given me I wish you a sincerity, a frankness in everything and a love for the truth that is shared.

My life has known happiness on these conditions.

Finally I want to repeat to you what that illiterate woman, St Catherine, who is Italy’s greatest female genius, said to the last Pope of Avignon: “If you will be what you should be, then you will set the whole of Italy on fire. Don’t be content with small things. He, God, wants great ones”

Have a good journey.
Fr Giussani