For some years now, I have taught at a secular university in Mexico City. A few years ago, the rector of the university, wanting to respond to the solitude experienced by many students, asked me to prepare a course entitled “The Art of Living.” In the first part, I teach the Religious Sense, a famous book of Fr. Giussani, seeking to communicate that man is made for transcendence. In the second part, I explore a few questions in ethics. We approach the themes of the course through examples taken from cinema, from literature, from music and from philosophy.
Since I started, the course has always been full of students. It is not to be taken for granted, above all, because the one where I teach is a technical university and the optional humanities courses do not have very much success. What’s more, I have never advertised the course at all: the students arrive through word of mouth. When we begin, I realize that they have an enormous desire to speak about these themes, to grapple with a clear proposal and ask their questions. I discovered that there is no other space in their lives like this one.
Many of them seek me out to speak about personal questions. Some ask to return to the Catholic faith. This surprises me because in the course we do not explicitly speak about God if not as Mystery, neither do we speak about the Catholic faith, unless they are the ones to ask a specific question. Almost all of them know that I am a priest and some come for this reason too, but there are also Jews who participate as well as persons with every kind of spirituality, as we say today. The participation of the Jewish students always impacts me because in the Catholic universities of Mexico City they have permission to opt out of a course if the professor who teaches it is a priest.
I discovered that there is no other space in their lives like this one.
I have learned to not judge their attention by the frequency with which they intervene. Many of the silent students are there like sponges, with an attention that absorbs what is said. I realize this later when I correct their work on the exams.
I have also learned to listen to them to understand in what way they see things and what are the questions that preoccupy them. I change the contents of the course beginning from what they tell me. In this way, a personal relationship is created with them. Last semester I added a lesson on freedom. The question I posed was the following: “Choosing means leaving options behind, doors that we rarely can return to open again. How can we live this aspect of freedom?”. Immediately after hte lesson, I received this email: “Good afternoon, professor. I would like to thank you for today’s lesson. The theme that we looked at and the perspective that you gave us at the end have resolved a problem that I had. Among my greatest anxieties, there is the fact of looking at what I have not chosen, instead of looking at what I have chosen. Seeing things from the point of view of intensity and not quantity, knowing that it is not about having many things but living with intensity those that you have, is like living everything through one single experience. You have no idea how much clarity and relief this new perspective brought to my life. Your course has been one of those things I will never forget. Thanks a million, profession. Have a great day, and thanks again.”
