A conversation on this year's Encounter theme with Michael Waldstein, Professor of Theology, Ave Maria University, John Waters, Author; and Fr. José Medina (moderator), US coordinator of Communion and Liberation.

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The heart of the matter, for us, lies in the fact that reality becomes evident in experience. This statement is of capital importance. What interests us is reality. If something is not real, who cares about it? What does it matter to us? It cannot be of any use to us. Everything fades away; everything is fleeting. It is reality that matters. Reality! How can we know reality? How can a scientist know a distant star that the ancients were not able to record? Only modern telescopes can bring it so near that a scientist can read it; he has to bring it nearer. What does it mean to bring nearer this distant star which to the ancient, more serious observers would have been non-existent? How can they make it existent? How can they speak of it as if it were present? How can they make something far away present to themselves? It can be present if this faraway thing enters into experience. What does “enter into experience” mean? It means that I see it as if it were this glass [of water], as if it were a friend, as one of the things I take hold of in the multiplicity of persons and things that comes from who-knows-where and goes who-knows-where, but at a certain point becomes evident. Reality shows up on our radar screen as the content of our activity, and is grasped by us in as much as it enters experience. Thus, truth and reality become recognizable in experience. 
~Luigi Giussani, Address to a group of university students, 1996

Speakers will dialogue on and develop the content of this year's Encounter theme.

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