During the 2020 Christmas break we were invited by some friends from Chicago and Cincinnati to spend the week after Christmas in Florida, renting beach houses close to each other and enjoying the warmer winter beach days together. This has now become a tradition for our family, and a few others that have joined. We go in crowded minivans, coming from all over the Midwest, moved by the possibility of spending some vacation time in a beautiful place with friends. We share the day at the beach playing beach volleyball matches with players ages 9 to 40+ and meeting friends we have not seen in a while as well as new ones. Kids populate each other's houses for meals and this year some parents organized a movie night for each age group so that our cul-de-sal became a movie theatre plaza with different movie proposals for little ones, middle schoolers, and teenages.

We were blessed with so many gifts, it’s hard to keep track – those five perfect, sunlit days in the 70s felt like the embrace of the One who makes it all. It hasn’t always been like that. Some years, our beach trips have been met with chilly winds and gray skies. But truly, it doesn’t matter – we don’t go for the weather – we go for something deeper.

This year, the most precious gift wasn’t the sunshine, it was Maddie.

That first morning, the pre-teens and teens took off on their paddle boards and kayaks, full of energy and independence. The adults followed a bit later, and speaking with some of the other moms Margherita learned something that stopped her in her tracks.

Maddie, the oldest among our kids, a college student, had walked alone through the plaza in front of our beach houses that morning, quietly praying the morning prayers. This was a call for us – this is what we should all be doing, every morning, alone or together, at the beach or at home.
This is what Fr. Giussani taught us. And here was a young woman, a college student, reminding us of it — not with words, but with her quiet, powerful faith.

So we made a decision to gather at the beach at 9:30 every morning. There in front of that infinite sea we would pray together the Liturgy of the Hours. In between the decision and the next morning 1000 doubts gathered: what if nobody will come? What if we cannot do it because we have too many kids to take care of? What if it rains?

But the next morning, parents arrived with toddlers still rubbing the sleep from their eyes. The older kids happily joined, having already run three miles along the shore, played a round of beach volleyball, and taken a refreshing dip! Little ones built sandcastles at our feet. And there we stood — about forty of us — forming a circle, singing the hymn, lifting our voices in prayer.
It was breathtaking in its power. That simple act shaped the entire day and all the days that followed, giving them meaning, depth, and a richness as vast as the ocean before us. When we pray as one, we invite Another into our midst. And He never misses an appointment. He is faithful. He transforms, heals, and creates anew.

We saw with our own eyes the happening of the Christian community, and it is this happening that propels us to Florida in crowded minivans year after year. We go each for that primum that Ft. Giussani mentions at a vacation in 1968:

“We have always expected a lot from our gatherings, and the reason remains the same, even if we would remain a small number… so we should not worry of the modality of our getting together, which could still not be enough, but of the why. The search for the why (we get together) comes before the modality. [...] We are together because of the promise of a new life. We are together not because of a past life experience, but for the experience of the promise of a new life. The preoccupation for the Christian Communion is the ‘primum’ always, on every occasion. The preoccupation for this ‘primum’ makes every action different. If the essence of Christianity is a promise, being Christians first means that the announcement of this promise has a prominent place, from which all begins”. (Una rivoluzione di se’, Giussani 2024; translation ours)

We go on this vacation each winter with our families and friends to live and remember the primum for our lives.

Simona and Margherita, Cincinnati, OH