I entered the Church twelve years ago, met the movement Communion and Liberation soon after, and by some extraordinary grace found myself two weekends ago in Rome for the first time to celebrate the Jubilee of Movements with our new Pope. Being in Rome is itself exceptional – the layers of history visible and tangible, the proximity to so many saints’ tombs and holy places for pilgrimage, the particular blue of the Roman sky. I know zero Italian, and for the first 48 hours I was convinced that the word “prego!” all the guards were saying to me meant “pregnant!” because my very pregnant belly was being acknowledged and blessed with a lot of line skipping (“prego,” apparently, is a way of saying “you’re welcome!” to go ahead, and not “pregnant”...).

But in the midst of my cultural ignorance and awe, being in St. Peter’s for the feast of Pentecost with so many different living expressions of the same belonging I experience in the movement was something extraordinary. The people embraced by the arms of St. Peter’s recalled the birthday of the Church: “At Pentecost, Mary, the Apostles, and the disciples with them received a Spirit of unity, which forever grounded in the one Lord Jesus Christ, all their diversity. Theirs were not multiple missions, but a single mission” (Pope Leo XIV’s message).

Looking around at everyone participating in those two days in St. Peter’s – people belonging to CL and other lay communities – it was clear to me that the life of the movement is not simply (although, perhaps it is firstly) for the growth of my own faith. It is for the possibility of communicating the love of Christ to the whole world. As John Paul II said to CL on the 30th birthday of the movement, “go into the whole world to bring the truth, the beauty, and the peace that are found in Christ the Redeemer.” “A single mission”! The jubilee celebration communicated clearly that if my belonging to the movement has the horizon of the world, then my personal journey of faith is woven into the fullness of the Church expressed in history.

I sat there on the steps of St. Peter’s with old and new friends and with people who share with me this “single mission” whom I will likely never personally know, completely grateful for Fr. Giussani – his witness, his ‘yes’ to the Lord, his words and the friendships he lived that continue to correct, inform, and transfigure my life. “[I]f you’re here, it’s because God began something. You’re not here because you began but, rather, because God began something. Five years ago, ten years ago, none of you could have imagined that you would be here and you could have imagined even less that you could have persevered in staying here” (Giussani, Is It Possible To Live This Way?, Vol. 3, page 66).

God really did begin something in me and in each of us – I am happy to walk the path of discovering the way He will bring it to completion, and to keep asking for the grace to persevere in staying here.

Hannah, Cincinnati, OH

See the complete list of relevant Jubilee of Movements texts here.