EVIL OF LIVING/ Fr. Aldo: “A void to provoke a more intense question.”

The interview of Marina Corradi and Father Aldo Trento is contained in the book, The Ten Commandments, the first title of the Lindau I libri di Tempi. The book will be sold, at the launch price of 10 euros rather than 12, at the Tempi stand at the Meeting for Friendship among Peoples (August 22 to 28, Rimini Fair, Hall C3).

April 2010. Father Aldo Trent is stopping by Milan. I meet him at his friend’s house in Concorezzo. I had never talked with him face to face. I am struck by his simple face, that of a bellunese peasant, with clear eyes and something childish. These are some questions that I asked and his answers.

What I do not understand is how you manage to talk about Christ as a very concrete presence. It is something that amazes me. I do not see Jesus Christ. I seek him and chase him, but He is not a presence as you can be here before me. I understand Barabbas Lagerkvist, who, after having traveled a lot around the Golgotha, says defeated: "I desired to believe." For me, even within the desire, Jesus Christ is often a ghost.

What you say happened to me too, once. What has given Christ concreteness was the way in which Fr. Giussani looked at me, the way in which he held me with him and accompanied me. Through the eyes of Fr. Giussani, Christ has become a concrete presence beside me.

Okay, you knew Fr. Giussani, but on the other hand, not everyone who met Giussani received an equal certainty of faith. While many men meet neither Giussani nor any credible witness of Christ. What about them?

I think anyone who meets an authentic Christian and goes quietly on his way is bourgeois, who basically has a very modest question in life. Regarding those who don't find anyone, I think a sort of natural selection comes into play, operating based on the intensity of their demand for meaning.

And these are the favorites? Do they exist, the favorites?

That they exist, is witnessed to by Scripture, and they are those who God punishes the most, because they don’t stop searching for Him.

You said two years ago at the Meeting: depression is a grace. Depression, as you know very well, is also a deep pain. Grace, then, why?

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