Notes on Miguel Manara

Luigi Giussani

Flash I – Miguel’s outburst. He lives life according to subtle violence; he lives in his richness
of talents and possibilities. He realizes his futility, as Andre Gide in The Fruits of the Earth:
Desire! I have dragged you with me along the highroads; I have denied you in the
fields; I have sated you with drink in the big towns—sated you without quenching
your thirst; I have bathed you in the moonlight nights; I have taken you with me
wherever I went; I have cradled you on the waves; I have lulled you to sleep on the
high seas…Desire, desire! What more can I do for you? What more do you want?
Will you never weary?

Flash II – Girolama is a presence through which he recognizes the goodness of his soul. It is
a presence that makes one’s self-awareness possible. The whole dialogue is the event of
change for Miguel.

It is conversion. It is like a rebirth, and a recovery of the world. Finally seeing after
darkness. The embrace of everything becomes possible. Girolama for Miguel is the sign of
the Presence that makes him able to embrace everything. If we don’t help each other
toward the journey to the ideal, then we suffocate or kill each other.

When she dies, he is suspended over an abyss. He cannot deny the truth she has shown
him. Desperate, he begs for a presence.

Flash IV – the abbot is another form of the same companionship. The abbot’s speech unveils
what it means to pray.

The story line of humanity and of the heart is in the mature man as well as in the child. We
are children, but we are called for this journey where nothing is lost, forgotten, or
renounced. On the contrary, everything is regained, everything is finally found. From the
appearance of beauty, the sadness that redeems it comes about, and finally, love comes
about. The word “love” has no chance whatsoever of being ambiguous: it is to affirm with
the wonder of all one’s being, the Other, the Destiny, the presence of the Destiny, this sign,
this body of destiny that is the other person, and the sky, the earth, everything that happens.
My happiness, my sorrow, and my evil become worthy of love! Everything is new, as Saint
Paul says. Behold, the old has passed away, it no longer exists. We are children. There’s
nothing to forget or renounce, there’s no mutilation. There is only a resurrection.

Let us pray to the Lord, who has given us Being, the Father, He who is our Destiny, original
consistency of out life and its meaning; let us pray to Him through whom we are born in
every instant, that He may make of our lives a mature fruit, that He may make us great, that
He may make us run the whole length of the journey. Let us pray, let us ask God.

Prayer is asking for Christ, that’s it. Because within that, there’s father, mother, brother,
sister, husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, friend, companion, man, sky, and earth. It’s there
within. That is the formula of the truth: God, all in all. It is the formula of existence toward
the explosion of the truth.