Canadian Store (CAD)
You are currently shopping in our Canadian store. For orders outside of Canada, please switch to our international store. International and US orders are billed in US dollars.
The following chapter is excerpted from A Generative Thought: An Introduction to the Works of Luigi Giussani edited by Elisa Buzzi.
For Man by Pope Francis I
When I gave the lecture
on which this chapter is based during the presentation of the Spanish edition
of Luigi Giussani’s book The
Religious Sense, I was not
simply performing a formal act of protocol or acting out of what could seem to
be simple professional curiosity about a work bringing into focus an
explanation of our faith.1 Above all, I was expressing the gratitude
that is due to Msgr Giussani. For many years now, his writings have inspired me
to reflect and have helped me to pray. They have taught me to be a better
Christian, and I spoke at the presentation to bear witness to this.Msgr Giussani is one of
those unexpected gifts the Lord gave to our Church after Vatican II. He has
caused a wealth of individuals and movements to rise up outside the pastoral
structures and programs, movements that are offering miracles of new life
within the Church. On 30 May 1998, in St Peter’s Square, the Pope met publicly
with the new communities and ecclesial movements. It was a truly transcendent event.
He asked specifically for four founders from among the many movements to give
their witness. Among these was Msgr Giussani, who in 1954,
the year he began teaching religion in a public high school in Milan, initiated
Communion and Liberation, which is present today in more than sixty countries
in the world and is much beloved by the Pope.The
Religious Sense is not a
book exclusively for members of the movement, however, nor is it only for
Christians or believers. It is a book for all human beings who take their
humanity seriously. I dare say that today the primary question we must face is
not so much the problem of God – the existence, the knowledge of God – but the
problem of the human, of human knowledge and finding in humans themselves the
mark that God has made, so as to be able to meet with Him.Fides et Ratio
By happy coincidence,
the presentation of Giussani’s book was held the day after the publication of
Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Fides
et Ratio, which opens with this
dense consideration:Moreover, a cursory
glance at ancient history shows clearly how in different parts of the world,
with their different cultures, there arise at the same time the fundamental
questions that pervade human life: Who
am I? Where have I come from and where am I going? Why is there evil? What is
there after this life? These
are the questions which we find in the sacred writings of Israel, as also in
the Veda and the Avesta; we find them in the writings of Confucius and Lao-Tze,
and in the preaching of Tirthankara and Buddha; they appear in the poetry of
Homer and in the tragedies of Euripides and Sophocles, as they do in the
philosophical writings of Plato and Aristotle. They are questions which have
their common source in the quest for meaning which has always compelled the
human heart. In fact, the answer given to these questions decides the direction
which people seek to give to their lives.2Giussani’s book is in
tune with the encyclical: it is for all people who take their humanity
seriously, who take these questions seriously.Paradoxically, in The Religious Sense little is said about God and much is said
about human beings. Much is said about our “whys,” much about our ultimate
needs. Quoting the Protestant theologian Niebuhr, Giussani explains that “Nothing
is so incredible as an answer to an unasked question.”3 And
one of the difficulties of our supermarket culture – where offers are made to
everyone to hush the clamouring of their hearts – lies in giving voice to those
questions of the heart. This is the challenge. Faced with the torpor of life,
with this tranquillity offered at a low cost by the supermarket culture (even
if in a wide assortment of ways), the challenge consists in asking ourselves
the real questions about human meaning, of our existence, and in answering these
questions. But if we wish to answer questions that we do not dare to answer, do
not know how to answer, or cannot formulate, we fall into absurdity. For man
and woman who have forgotten or censored their fundamental “whys” and the
burning desire of their hearts, talking to them about God ends up being
something abstract or esoteric or a push toward a devotion that has no effect
on their lives. You cannot start a discussion of God without first blowing away
the ashes suffocating the burning embers of the fundamental whys. The first
step is to make some sense of the questions that are hidden or buried, that are
perhaps almost dying but that nevertheless exist.
The Restlessness of the
HeartThe drama of the world
today is the result not only of the absence of God but also and above all of
the absence of humankind, of the loss of the human physiognomy, of human
destiny and identity, and of a certain capacity to explain the fundamental
needs that dwell in the human heart. The prevailing mentality, and deplorably
that of many Christians, supposes that there is an unbreachable opposition
between reason and faith. Instead – and here lies another paradox – The Religious Sense emphasizes that speaking seriously about God
means exalting and defending reason and discovering its value and the right way
to use it. This is not reason understood as a pre-established measure of reality
but reason open to reality in all its factors and whose starting point is
experience, whose starting point is this ontological foundation that awakens a
restlessness in the heart. It is not possible to raise the question of God
calmly, with a tranquil heart, because this would be to give an answer without
a question. Reason that reflects on experience is a reason that uses as a
criterion for judgment the measuring of everything against the heart – but “heart”
taken in the Biblical sense, that is, as the totality of the innate demands
that everyone has, the need for love, for happiness, for truth, and for
justice. The heart is the core of the internal transcendent, where the roots of
truth, beauty, goodness, and the unity that gives harmony to all of being are
planted. We define human reason in this sense and not as rationalism, that
laboratory rationalism, idealism, or nominalism (this last so much in fashion
now), which can do everything, which claims to possess reality because it is in
possession of the number, the idea, or the rationale of things, or, if we want
to go even further, which claims to possess reality by means of an absolutely
dominating technology that surpasses us in the very moment in which we use it,
so that we fall into a form of civilization that Guardini liked to call the
second form of unculture. We instead speak of a reason that is not reduced, is
not exhausted in the mathematical, scientific, or philosophical method. Every
method, in fact, is suited to its own sphere of application and to its specific
object.Existential Certainty
Concerning personal
relationships, the only adequate method for reaching true knowledge is to live
and live together a vivid companionship that, through multiple experiences and
manifold signs, allows us to arrive at what Giussani calls “moral certainty,”
or even better, “existential certainty.”4
This is the only adequate method because
certainty does not reside in the head but in the harmony of all the human faculties,
and it is in possession at the same time of all the requisites for a real and a
rational certainty. In its turn, faith is, precisely, a particular application
of the method of moral or existential certainty, a particular case of faith in
others, in the signs, evidence, convergences, witness of others. Despite this,
faith is not contrary to reason. Like all typically human acts, faith is
reasonable, which does not imply that it can be reduced to mere reasoning. It
is reasonable – let us push the term – but not reasoning.Why is there pain, why
death, why evil? Why is life worth living? What is the ultimate meaning of
reality, of existence? What sense does it make to work, love, become involved
in the world? Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? These are the
great and primary questions that young people ask, and adults too – and not
only believers but everyone, atheists and agnostics alike. Sooner or later,
especially in the situations at the very edge of existence, in the face of
great grief or great love, in the experience of educating one’s children or of
working at a job that apparently makes no sense, these questions inevitably
rise to the surface. They cannot be uprooted. I have said that they are questions
that even agnostics ask, and I would like to mention here, paying him homage, a
great poet from Buenos Aires, an agnostic, Horacio Armani. Whoever reads his
poems encounters a sage exposition of questions that are open to an answer.The Total Response
Human beings cannot be
content with reductive or partial answers that force them to censor or neglect
some aspect of reality. In fact, however, we do neglect some aspect of reality,
and when we do so we are only running away from ourselves. We need a total
response that comprehends and saves the entire horizon of the self and our
existence. We possess within us a yearning for the infinite, an infinite
sadness, a nostalgia – the nostos
algos (home sickness) of
Odysseus – which is satisfied only by an equally infinite response. The human
heart proves to be the sign of a Mystery, that is, of something or someone who
is an infinite response. Outside the Mystery, the needs for happiness, love, and
justice never meet a response that fully satisfies the human heart. Life would
be an absurd desire if this response did not exist. Not only does the human
heart present itself as a sign, but so does all of reality. The sign is
something concrete, it points in a direction, it indicates something that can
be seen, that reveals a meaning, that can be experienced, but that
refers to another reality that cannot be seen; otherwise, the sign would be
meaningless.On the other hand, to
interrogate oneself in the face of these signs, one needs an extremely human
capacity, the first one we have as men and women: wonder, the capacity to be
amazed, as Giussani calls it, in the last analysis, a child’s heart. The
beginning of every philosophy is wonder, and only wonder leads to knowledge.
Notice that moral and cultural degradation begin to arise when this capacity
for wonder is weakened or cancelled or when it dies. The cultural opiate tends
to cancel, weaken, or kill this capacity for wonder. Pope Luciani once said that
the drama of contemporary Christianity lies in the fact that it puts categories
and norms in the place of wonder. But wonder comes before all categories; it is
what leads me to seek, to open myself up; it is what makes the answer – not a
verbal or conceptual answer – possible for me. If wonder opens me up as a
question, the only response is the encounter, and only with the encounter is my thirst
quenched. And with nothing else is it quenched more.
N
O T E S1
Translated by Susan Scott.2
The presentation was for L. Giussani, El sentido religioso, revised
ed. with
notes, translated by José Miguel Oriol, in collaboration with Cesare Zaffanella and José Miguel García
(Buenos Aires and Madrid: Editorial Sudamericana and Ediciones
Encuentro 1998).3
Fides et ratio, par. 1.4
R. Niebuhr, The
Nature and Destiny of Man, vol. 2, Human
Destiny (London
and New York: Nisbet 1943), 6.
To learn more about A Generative Thought, or to order online, click here.
For media inquiries, contact MQUP publicist Jacqui Davis.
No comments yet.