Generating Traces in the History of the World: New Traces of the Christian Experience

by Luigi Giussani, Stefano Alberto, Javier Prades

Generating Traces in the History of the World is a synthesis of Monsignor Luigi Giussani's reflection on the Christian experience. His exploration of Christianity as an unforeseen and unforeseeable event in which the mystery became a man reveals how, by acknowledging this fact, an individual is simultaneously able to use reason and be moved by affection. Discussing the ways in which Christ continues to be present in history through the companionship of those whom He joins to himself in Baptism, Giussani illuminates how a sense of Christ's mercy can overcome negativity and encourage a useful life. A profound and moving work, Generating Traces in the History of the World will interest all those who have been inspired by Giussani's thought.

184 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 2010

About the author

Luigi Giussani was born in 1922 in Desio, a small town near Milan. His mother, Angela, gave him his earliest daily introduction to the faith. His father, Beniamino, a member of an artistically talented family, a carver and restorer of wood, spurred the young Luigi always to ask why, to seek the reason for things. Fr. Giussani has often recalled episodes from his family life, signs of an atmosphere of great respect for persons and of an active education to keep alive the true dimensions of the heart and reason. An example is an episode when, still a young child, he and his mother were walking in the pale light of dawn to morning Mass, and his mother suddenly exclaimed softly at the sight of the last star fading in the growing morning light, “How beautiful the world is, and how great is God!” Or the great love of his father, a Socialist anarchist, for music, a passion that led him not only to try to lessen the impact of difficult moments in the family by singing famous arias, but also to prefer to the few comforts affordable in a modest economic situation the habit of inviting musicians home with him on Sunday afternoon so as to hear music played live.

At a very young age Luigi Giussani entered the diocesan seminary of Milan, continuing his studies and finally completing them at the theological school of Venegono under the guidance of masters like Gaetano Corti, Giovanni Colombo, Carlo Colombo, and Carlo Figini.

Besides the cultural training it offered, and his relationships of true esteem and great humanity with some of his masters, Venegono represented for Fr. Giussani a very important environment for the experience of the companionship of some “colleagues,” like Enrico Manfredini—the future archbishop of Bologna—in the common discovery of the value of vocation, a value that is enacted in the world and for the world.

These were years of intense study and great discoveries, such as reading Leopardi, Fr. Giussani recounts, as an accompaniment to meditation after the Eucharist. The conviction grew in him in those years that the zenith of all human genius (however expressed) is the prophecy, even if unaware, of the coming of Christ. Thus he happened to read Leopardi’s hymn Alla sua donna [To his Woman] as a sort of introduction to the prologue to the Gospel of St John, and to recognize in Beethoven and Donizetti vivid expressions of the eternal religious sense of man.

From that moment, reference to the fact that truth is recognized by the beauty in which it manifests itself would always be part of the Movement’s educational method. One can see in the history of CL a privileged place given to aesthetics, in the most profound, Thomist sense of the term, compared to an insistence on an ethical referent. From the time of his years in the seminary and as a theology student, Fr. Giussani learned that both the aesthetic and ethical sense arise from a correct and impassioned clarity concerning ontology, and that a lively aesthetic sense is the first sign of this, as evidenced by the healthiest Catholic as well as the Orthodox tradition.

Observance of discipline and order in seminary life became united with the strength of a temperament that, in his dialogue with his superiors and the initiatives of his companions, stood out for its vivacity and keenness. For example, Giussani promoted together with some fellow students an internal newsletter, called Studium Christi, with the intention of making of it a kind of organ for a study group dedicated to discovering the centrality of Christ in every subject they studied.

After ordination, Fr. Giussani devoted himself to teaching at the seminary in Venegono. In those years he specialized in the study of Eastern theology (especially the Slavophiles), American Protestant theology, and a deeper understanding of the rational reasons for adherence to faith and the Church.

In the middle of the 1950s, he left seminary teaching for high schools. For ten years, from 195

Reviews

[Insurrecto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Siempre resulta complicado hacer una invitación a la lectura, pero en ocasiones resulta imposible.

Porque como decía Unamuno, y repite Jesús Carrascosa en el prólogo, hay dos tipos de libros: los de leer y los de comer. Y éste es del segundo tipo.

Con su estilo habitual Luigi Giussani va explorando las huellas de la experiencia cristiana partiendo desde el problema humano, que resuelve el encuentro con Cristo, que se mantiene vivo y actual por el don del Espíritu Santo y cristaliza en la existencia cristiana, abierta a todos los hombres.

Una joya para leer y releer.

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ik heb dit boek gelezen en besproken tijdens de gezamenlijke avonden in mijn parochie. We lazen steeds bepaalde paragrafen en reflecteerden er dan op wat dit eventueel zou kunnen betekenen voor ons eigen leven.

[Fr. Zachary Brasseur · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first chapter, with its illustration of the call of the first disciples in the Gospel of John, is one of the best descriptions of the Christian experience I have encountered. The rest of the book is excellent commentary on the significance of the Church in the world.

[Esmeralda E. Negron · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book should be read by anyone who want to take the claims of Christianity seriously enough to verify.

[Megan Revor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great place to start Luigi Giussani. I would recommend reading it slowly because there are so many treasures. I would say my life is different after reading this book.

[Fred · Rating 3 out of 5]

Generating Traces in the world is a chimera of a book. The book itself has authorship of Giussani, Stefano Alberto, and Javier Prades and lacks the lively voice of works by Giussani. Careful readers should be aware of the correction from Cardinal Farrell in 2022: "First of all, I would like to point out that the doctrine of “charism succession”–proposed and nurtured during the last decade within CL by those who were in charge of its leadership, with implications that are still being cultivated and fostered during public speeches–is seriously contrary to the teachings of the Church"

This idea is referenced in Generating Traces as well as other texts in the movement:
"For now, the comparison is with the person with whom everything began. This person can be dissolved, but the texts left behind and the uninterrupted succession— if God wills— of the people indicated as the reference point, as true interpretation of what happened, become the instrument for correction and for reawakening; they become the instrument for morality. The line of references indicated is the most living thing in the present, because a text alone can be interpreted wrongly. It is difficult to interpret it wrongly, but it can happen." (Generating Traces, 84)

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love anything written by this man!