Front Cover: Sts. Peter and Andrew. Icon by Vladimir Grygorenko, 2010. Housed at the Center for Catholic Studies, St. Paul, MN.

Giussani contends, the true practice of preferential love requires an inherent openness to the other which means bearing with the other’s faults, letting oneself be corrected by the other, even suffering or dying for the sake of the other. The willingness to subordinate one’s comfort to another’s good prepares one to meet the demands of evangelical love in the stranger, the widow, and the orphan. Giussani writes: “Friendship is tested most authentically when you are asked to love, to wish good will upon those whom you have never met, the stranger. This does not mean that you would prefer the companionship of the stranger to the one with whom you live; but the affection you have for the person with whom you live is so right [talmente giusto] that it teaches you to love the stranger—like stepping onto a trolley and having compassion [avere pietà] for all the people seated there.” Here Giussani is in line with John Henry Newman: “The best preparation for loving the world at large is to cultivate an intimate friendship and affection towards those who are immediately about us.” For, Newman continues,

By trying to love our relations and friends, by submitting to their wishes though contrary to our own, by bearing with their infirmities, by overcoming their occasional waywardness with kindness, by dwelling on their excellences and trying to copy them, thus it is that we form in our hearts that root of charity which, though small at first, may, like the mustard seed, at last even overshadow the earth.

From “Luigi Guissani on the Notion of Christian Friendship”

Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/log.2011.a412907
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Aquinas at Prayer: The Interior Life of a "Mystic on Campus"
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/log.2011.a412908
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Harry Potter, Eucatastrophe, and Christian Hope
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pp. 66-90
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/log.2011.a412909
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Luigi Giussani on the Notion of Christian Friendship
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pp. 91-121
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/log.2011.a412910
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The Doctrinal Issue Between the Church and Democracy
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/log.2011.a412912
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