{"id":25192,"date":"2009-12-24T10:42:45","date_gmt":"2009-12-24T14:42:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/2009\/12\/that-nostalgia-for-the-infinit\/"},"modified":"2017-12-21T08:47:15","modified_gmt":"2017-12-21T12:47:15","slug":"that-nostalgia-for-the-infinit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/2009\/12\/that-nostalgia-for-the-infinit\/","title":{"rendered":"That Nostalgia for the Infinite"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is a phrase of Dostoevsky that accompanies me these\u00a0days, when I have to speak of Christianity to all kinds of people in Italy and\u00a0abroad: “Can an educated man, a European of our time, believe –truly believe– in\u00a0the divinity of the Son of God, Jesus Christ?” This question rings like a\u00a0challenge for all of us. It is precisely on the answer to this question that\u00a0the success of the faith depends today. In an address given in 1996, the then\u00a0cardinal Ratzinger answered that faith can have this hope “because it finds a\u00a0correspondence in human nature. In man there is a nostalgic hope for the\u00a0infinite that cannot be extinguished<\/span>.” In this phrase he indicated the\u00a0condition necessary: that Christianity needs to find the humanity that pulsates\u00a0in each of us in order to show all the greatness of its claim.<\/p>\n

Yet how many\u00a0times are we tempted to look at the concrete humanity in which we find\u00a0ourselves–for example the unease, the dissatisfaction, the sadness, the\u00a0boredom–as an obstacle, a complication, an impediment to the realization of\u00a0what we desire. Thus we get angry with ourselves and with reality, succumbing\u00a0to the weight of circumstances, in the illusion of going ahead by cutting away\u00a0a piece of ourselves<\/span>. But unease, dissatisfaction, sadness, and boredom are not\u00a0symptoms of a illness to treat with medicines; this happens more and more often\u00a0in a society that mistakes disquiet of the heart for panic and anxiety<\/b>. They\u00a0are rather signs of what the nature of the “I” is. Our desire is greater than\u00a0the whole universe<\/b><\/i><\/span>. The perception of emptiness in us and around us of which\u00a0Leopardi speaks (“want and emptiness”), and the boredom of which Heidegger\u00a0speaks, are the proof of the inexorable nature of our heart, of the boundless\u00a0character of our desire–nothing is able to give us satisfaction and peace. We\u00a0can forget it, betray it, or even deceive it, but we cannot shuffle it off.<\/p>\n

\"Nativity<\/a>So\u00a0the real obstacle on our journey is not our concrete humanity, but disregard\u00a0for it. Everything in us cries out the need for something to fill the void.\u00a0Even Nietzsche perceived this; he could not but address the “unknown god” that\u00a0makes all things. “Left alone, I raise my hands\/ … to the unknown god \/ I want\u00a0to know you, you the Unknown,\/ Who penetrate deep into my soul, \/ Shake up my \u00a0life like a storm,\/ Beyond my grasp and yet so close to me!” (1864).<\/p>\n

Christmas\u00a0is the announcement that this unknown Mystery has become a familiar presence,\u00a0without which none of us could remain a man for long, but would end up\u00a0overwhelmed by confusion, seeing his own face decompose, because<\/span> “only the\u00a0divine can ‘save’ man<\/span>, that is to say, the true and essential dimensions of the\u00a0human figure and his destiny” (Fr. Giussani).<\/p>\n

The most convincing sign that\u00a0Christ is God, the greatest miracle that astonished everyone–even more than the\u00a0healing of cripples and the curing of the blind–was an incomparable gaze. The\u00a0sign that Christ is not a theory or a set of rules is that look, which is found\u00a0throughout the Gospel: His way of dealing with humanity, of forming relationships\u00a0with those He met on His way<\/i>. Think of Zacchaeus and of Magdalene: He didn’t\u00a0ask them to change, but embraced them, just as He found them, in their wounded,\u00a0bleeding humanity, needful of everything. And their life, embraced, re-awoke in\u00a0that moment in all its original profundity. \u2028Who would not want to be reached\u00a0by such a look now? For “one cannot keep on living unless Christ is a presence\u00a0like a mother is a presence for her child, unless Christ is a presence now -now! – I cannot love myself now and I cannot love you now<\/b>” (Fr. Giussani). This\u00a0is the only way, as men of our time, reasonably and critically, to answer\u00a0Dostoevsky’s question.<\/p>\n

But how do we know that Christ is alive now? Because his\u00a0gaze is not a fact of the past<\/b>, but is still present in the world just as it\u00a0was before<\/span>. Since the day of His resurrection, the Church exists only in order\u00a0to make God’s affection an experience, through people who are His mysterious\u00a0Body, witnesses in history today of that gaze capable of embracing all that is\u00a0human.<\/p>\n

Father Juli\u00e1n Carr\u00f3n
\nPresident of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation
\nCorriere della Sera<\/em>
\n24 December 2009<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a phrase of Dostoevsky that accompanies me these\u00a0days, when I have to speak of Christianity to all kinds of people in Italy and\u00a0abroad: “Can an educated man, a European of our time, believe –truly believe– in\u00a0the divinity of the Son of God, Jesus Christ?” This question rings like a\u00a0challenge for all of us. … Continue reading That Nostalgia for the Infinite<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[1875,31912],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25192"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25192"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34918,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25192\/revisions\/34918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}