The Religious Sense at Work is a weekly limited series that explores the way our communal reading of The Religious Sense informs and illuminates our experience of work.

When I started working almost thirty years ago, I was fresh and energized by my university years and the encounter with the Movement. I couldn’t have been happier. But in reality, I was totally unprepared for the next phase of my life.

The first two and a half years in my first job were very, very difficult. Work was challenging, and I was missing the close companionship and all the meaningful gestures that had shaped my university years in Florence. During this struggle an unplanned, incredible encounter happened. I was on my way home from a business trip in Milan, and at the Bologna Autogrill I met Piero – the owner of a big company whom I had known when I was a little kid. Piero was a very charismatic figure. At a young age, after his father’s death, he became a partner of the company and very soon the leader that brought the company to the next level, making it one of the most important textile companies in Italy. He was a very confident salesman and a convinced atheist. I hadn’t seen him for more than 15 years and he proposed on the spot that I come work with him. In my first job, I was a salesman for the Italian market, but Piero was offering me the opportunity to lead sales for an almost non-existing US market. I asked him if he was joking – I wasn't the right profile to do that job! I was waiting for him to tell me the real job, but instead his answer was that he did not care about those "technicalities” of my profile. He said he knew I would be able to grasp his mentality, his concerns, and his approach to the market and ultimately to business, and that this would make me the perfect help for him. He concluded by saying that I would have time to learn and build customer relationships. He wasn’t in a hurry, he was just concerned for the future of the company. He added that for the first 4 months I should just be close to him all day, watching what was happening, and asking questions. So I accepted and joined him at Lanificio Fedora. It was the beginning of the most incredible journey, and the biggest help I could have ever found for my faith. With him, I learned why faith was crucial in business and how reasoning and using your heart was the key to make the difference in every day.

After a couple of years with him, I had the realization that he was, even unknowingly, continuously using the first 3 premises of The Religious Sense. I’ll try to explain why with a few examples.

1. Realism

When we went to visit customers, we met people like Giorgio Armani and other important people, as well as lower management and assistants. It was amazing to see how Piero respected everybody — he was always listening and present in the same way, whether he was with Luciano Benetton or with the assistant of the assistant. He asked many questions in order to understand the details of each matter, and he was often involved, asking about their personal life and personal matters. He was always willing to share his life beliefs and concerns.

One day, I asked him about his sales strategy and what book I could read to be as good as him. He laughed and said there was no book — just the reality of the fact that each human person is different and unique. He used to say that every man is a universe, an immense place with different features. So to be realistic, we cannot approach person A in the same way as person B. He told me, “Simone, you've got to read the room and understand what is the best. It is the specific situation that will dictate the best approach…If you like a woman and she likes fish, you don't bring her to eat a steak on the first date.” He was living in the first premise: the method is imposed by the object.

2. Reasonableness

In these meetings, and even in internal ones, he was always listening, trying to understand what was needed and then do everything possible to make it happen. But one day I saw him very sad at the end of a meeting; he said a couple of quick “yeses” to the customer and closed it. I asked what was happening and he said that the guy was in bad faith; what he asked was so unjust and unreasonable that for the same reason that we always follow what customers need and request, we had to say no. He would not waste time in front of bad faith and said that what was asked was so unreasonable that it was better to lose the customer and the money instead of losing our soul. He was living in his flesh the second premise: reasonableness, which completes and makes the first premise more human and therefore more true.

3. Morality

One of the most incredible stories happened on my third day of work. Piero’s partner, 30 years his senior and previously the partner of his father, called Piero to share the issue of a claim from a customer. He was complaining that the customer was wrong, and wanted Piero to reply to the customer. We went with him to the machines to inspect the fabric and his partner explained the issue. Piero said he was not clear, and asked him to repeat. After the partner finished talking, Piero told him that the first and the second explanation were different. Slightly different but definitely different. So the old man explained again. Suddenly Piero’s face became red and angry and he said to him that this third version was even different from the first and the second. As the truth unfolded, it was a fourth, different version. In short, the claim was that some hidden holes were in a certain part of the fabrics, but when Piero asked the manager to turn on the light of the inspection machine, we all saw that the fabric roll was totally full of these small but very real defects.

He screamed that the customer was right and he did not care how much it would cost us. He said that we should have taken all the goods back at our own expense and reproduced everything. The partner said that it would have cost a fortune; it would have been a disaster because the order was over 50,0000 meters of fabric. He answered with a firm voice that he did not care about the cost — he was ready to lose all the money in the world but not to lose his integrity – his face – in front of a customer that had bought from them for over 20 years.

He finished saying that the truth is the truth and we have to decide if we want to stay with the truth or stay with the money, take short cuts, and lose face – our dignity. He said in a tone I’ll never forget, “Face is more important than money. We can lose and make money, but you only have one face, and when you lose it, in a way you lose your soul.” Here, he showed me the third premise: morality is to love the truth more than ourselves; loving the truth more than our immediate interests.

When I realized that his method matched Giussani’s method, I told him he was the most religious man I knew. He laughed hard, and after asking me if I lost my mind he asked why. I explained to him what I wrote here and much more, giving him all the examples where I saw this religious sense in action in him. I told him that he helped me to live my faith in the midst of my normal life at work, and that in his actions and thoughts I saw the three premises of this important book of Fr. Giussani come alive.

The following day, I gave him The Religious Sense and invited him to meet the community at the monthly assembly. He kindly refused to join, but in the following years he met all my family and friends. I always shared with him the ideas and stories that were emerging at School of Community.

The biggest contribution that Piero made to my life was to see a man who was always ready to learn from reality. He was so certain that reality was positive and it was his job to read it and to work with the factors of that reality to make his life and the lives of “his people” better. I would not be able to understand Giussani’s phrase “reality never betrayed me” if I had not seen those words incarnated in the flesh of Piero, a convinced atheist, who was living in his flesh the experience described by Fr. Giussani.

Simone, Los Angeles, CA