RIMINI MEETING/ "That nature which pushes us to desire great things is the heart."

The 2009 Meeting gave form to the title that was chosen for the XXXth session: "Knowledge is always an event." Almost 800,000 people participated in a fact that was an opportunity to see that knowledge always arises from an encounter and to show that the security of their identity, generated by faith, amplifies the desire to open up to the world. The more we are ourselves, the more we are interested in the others; this is why religious, cultural, social, economic and political figures came to Rimini and found themselves well there.

And this is exactly what turned the noses up of who cannot explain why "the audience applauds everybody at the Meeting: Tremonti and Draghi, Tony Blair and Bersani, Passera and Tronchetti Provera, the devil and holy water and of course Andreotti." According to a widespread mentality, in fact, one who believes is by nature closed and divisive. Instead, "those who pass through those gates are `inclusive'" (E. Scalfari, la Repubblica, August 30, 2009).

In continuity with the previous session, the 2010 Meeting intends to look at the nature of man, what the Bible calls the "heart", a synthesis of reason and affection. This is the meaning of the title: "That nature which pushes us to desire great things is the heart." This sentence is part of the response of Don Giussani to a young woman who had confessed her doubt that it was all an illusion to wish for great things. His response continued like this: "Then follow it. What does it mean to follow? It means to compare all the encounters you have with what your heart tells you and when they correspond, to follow them. So, going forward you will have no fear that it is an illusion, but understand that in fact this is not an illusion. What seems an illusion, is in fact, a bias, a suspicion. "

For this reason, the title sounds like a challenge to the cultural and social context in which we find ourselves: the era of post-modernity, in fact, tends to deny this original structure, reducing man to a biological phenomenon, and even when it speaks of "reason", identifies it with a superstructure defined exclusively from the biological aspect.

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