Testimony of an exhibition guide at Meeting 2024
Dear Paola, Massimo and friends all, accepting to present Enzo’s exhibition at the invitation of Anna Garuffi, to whom I am bound by a great and long friendship, was a turning point for me and a highway of certainty and gratitude. We lived around Enzo at the University of Bologna, living together in 40 in the early 1980s, and now with the Meeting we both had the same desire: to meet Enzo again, so that his life, his change, his sacrifice, would happen again in our lives.
In addition to the many events that happened, thanks to an attentive and curious populace, the emotion that flooded us through our presentations at the Fair, in front of so many people known and unknown, I want to fix two twitches and jolts of the heart that shook and changed me, recounting Enzo’s fever of life and naive boldness.
First of all, I was moved and mobilized by that idea of friendship of his that descended directly from Origin, from the experience of preference in his relationship with Don Giussani, a perception and consciousness far greater than a cup of coffee in company: Enzo’s total and radical belonging to whomever he met, proposing the Purpose that overwhelmed his life. The words written in his intercessory prayer suddenly became clear and tangible to me, when it is said that there was no longer a day when he did not seek “in every way the glory of Christ.” Here, friendship as Glory, Glory of the One who lives among us and in us, after the exceptional encounter with the unmistakable traits of Don Giussani’s humanity. That “in every way” lives and surpasses all moralism, in the perspective of total freedom, fulfilled in being and acting.
The description of the entrepreneur who feels accompanied and supported until 4:30 a.m. at the station, but also of the one who climbs the Cevedale with an orange net on his head and feels wanted and loved, as well as of the freshman friend who feels bitterly challenged by the discordant accent Enzo hears with respect to the connection established in his thesis between Guccini and Leopardi, while he will commit himself to entrust him to the eyes of his closest friends, are shocking.
Nothing is unknown to him of anger, instinctiveness, reaction, opinion because everything in him, gradually and quickly, evolves and conveys itself into ‘without measure.’
Thus the third passage of the exhibition accompanied by numerous examples, left on me, like an unexpected gift, the clear awareness that that ‘without measure’ which is transfigured into the offering of self (part four of the exhibition), is the happening of the new creature: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” Such a radical change that even in the operating room he accepts to be an instrument of miracle.
Beginning the presentations, I therefore chose to invite visitors to take a path to be carried away by Enzo’s contagious strength and ardor, which is possible even today, for each of us before all tempers and temperaments.
So many, really so many, have made this human itinerary, confiding to me that they have come out different, from the entrance to visit. So many invited to the cities or communities, in Italy; so many thanked and wanted to continue the talk even in the kitchen booths.
The added value was the emotion for Luna, Veronica, Francesca, Gigi, Andrea, Silvano, Paolo and the many young people, helpful, fired up and passionate, who among us I saw burning like Enzo in touching everything, reaching out to everyone, ready and open to every detail of beauty, in the density of every moment.
Enzo is alive, like an event that embraces us and continues.
Rosy Di Gaetano
