Chancellor, Magnificent Rector, Honorable Professors,
Ladies, Gentlemen, my dear friends.

Our Movement can also be viewed from a theological point of view, or a philosophical one, or – why not? – also from a psychological and pedagogical point of view.
With reference to some aspects of the psychological dimension, let us consider the main points of our spirituality.

The first point is God who is Love.
It is an established fact in psychology that the most basic need of every person is to be recognized in his or her unique and unrepeatable identity, and thus not to be considered a number or an object.
Normally this certainty derives from one’s parents and family, from personal talents or from the education one has received…. Through this one feels he is himself, distinct from others. But all these factors can be relativized (if others do not recognize him, do not understand him, do not esteem him, one can be overwhelmed by a sense of meaninglessness and depression…).
The discovery and the acquired certainty that God loves him or her, wanted him to exist (and therefore one is not an object of pure chance or blind fate) is the basis for that psychological certainty which gives meaning to one’s life and a purpose for existing.
Only the certainty that God is love "also for you", gives you the strength to continually go out of yourself in order to live and love and create a social communion.

Other points of our spirituality are love and mutual love.
The fact that God is Love and that His will coincides with love, and therefore with loving one’s neighbour, is confirmed not only by Jesus' teachings but also by the psychological experience of interpersonal relations. The only relationship which is not a relationship of violence or conditioning, but which recognizes and respects the "person" of the other as a transcendent being, is the relationship of "loving others as oneself". Not only does my love confirm the other as a being distinct from me, equal to me, and transcendent like me, but this same love also establishes my own personal "existence".
Only love takes into account differences (or distinctness) while safeguarding equality, thereby making unity possible.

The psychological relevance of the dynamics in question is clear. If we consider the case of maximal relations, I become a person in the highest sense when I freely and consciously affirm others, even at the cost of my own life. Jesus expressed this dynamic reality with the words: "No one has greater love than this: to lay down one’s life" for others.
In other terms, no one is more self, more person, than he or she who transcends him or herself, denying him or herself in order to save the transcendence of another (a case in point would be Jesus or Father Kolbe or Mother Teresa…). This is the most authentic "humanism" that can be conceived or attained.

Jesus crucified and forsaken.
The psychological law of becoming mature as a human being is also defined by the spiritual law proclaimed by Jesus. "He who loves his life will lose it, he who is ready to lose his life… will save it for eternal life" (Jn. 12:25).
In the process of becoming mature, in fact, one cannot reach a new phase without detaching oneself from and renouncing the previously acquired level (the weaning of a child is a painful passage, but one that is necessary for growing up; accepting the arrival of a new baby brother or sister is another painful passage from the egotistical position of being the centre of attention to a phase of socialization, which means the relativization of self in order to become integrated with others in a whole; transcending oneself in an "us").

It is well known that psychological illness always arises from a refusal to accept the suffering of this passage (in order to remain comfortably in the situation one is already in and is acquainted with) out of fear of what is "new" or fear of "others", who appear merely as threats who could limit or depersonalize me.
In fact when one refuses communion with others in order to save his or her own Self (the fear of becoming an object, of being taken advantage of, of being sucked or swallowed up by others, as psychologists would say), at this point psychologically speaking (and also spiritually speaking) one is already dead.
For C.G. Jung, the highest possible level of human pesonalization was expressed by Jesus when He cried out on the cross: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" because in the precise moment when God experiences human mortality his human nature reaches the divine…

One thing that comes into evidence in persons who live the Word, is that an authentic person is a simple person and being simple, such a person is free. Every kind of attachment to one’s self or to things destroys the Self, disrupts it, both by favouring pride and self-satisfaction and by building up that "false Self" which psychologists call ego.
The problem of man today is the need to build an integral Self, freeing it from the tendency of ego. To put it in other terms, to free it from every kind of avidity and possessiveness. The integral Self is found in those who are able to empty themselves, efface themselves, in order to enrich themselves in communion with others.
And all this is Gospel teaching.
Mary is an icon or image of this self-effacement, especially in her desolation at the foot of her crucified Son, whom she had to lose. But that immense emptiness can embrace and contain all God’s children.