Introduction. Man is made for God. This means he has the very capacity for God within himself. Such “capacity”—actively stretching him out towards the object for which he is made—is called “religious sense.” He finds it upon himself as a fact of nature. The religious sense, therefore, identifies the vocation of human life, the initiative of God who creates being.
I. Perspective
1. Religious sense and faith. The religious sense has as its object the Mystery itself. It gives way to multiple attempts through which man aims to know and to come into relationship with God. In clarifying the relationship between religious sense and Christian faith, it is necessary to correct a widespread idea of ecumenism, according to which all religions are equal: equating the faith arising from the encounter with Christ with any expression of religious feeling misunderstands the nature of Christianity and eliminates Christ as historical fact. For only in the encounter with Christ—the Mystery made man—does the truth of the religious sense become clear: it is by following Christ that one fully understands what the heart, reason and destiny are. The most important thing on which to build the path of one’s life, therefore, is not the religious sense, but the encounter with Christ.
II. The Primacy of Reality
2. Reality is the important thing. The starting point of the dynamism through which the “I” knows itself is the impact with reality. The alternative to this, even with regard to self-knowledge, is to start from one’s own image. The “I” is realized by becoming aware of what is right in front of it, just as its eyes can see it and its feelings can perceive it. Man finds within himself an infinite, immeasurable desire. This desire is common to all people: everything experienced must be compared with such an “endless destination.” The identification with any aspect of reality dictates an ideal that coincides with the limitless demands for truth, beauty and love; from this comparison comes the tension to realize the project that the impact with reality arouses. Here is the concept of work.
3. Reality and reason. Reason is consciousness of reality according to the totality of its factors. Such definition identifies the essential requirement of reason, which, in its relationship with reality, is expressed in an “openness to totality,” in a restlessness that does not subside except when all factors have been considered. The more man strives to grasp this totality, the more he realizes that he cannot reach it but by admitting a factor that is irreducible to all others—the Mystery. By looking at reality, the “I” understands that reality does not make itself, but that an Other creates it. Only in the mysterious companionship of this “You” can one not perceive reality as something extraneous. The alternative between accepting reality and rejecting it is then taking place in the face of this “You,” who historically became incarnate in Christ, showing Himself to man as his Savior.
4. Evidence and needs. The “I” consists of a nucleus of original evidence and needs projecting it onto reality and letting it recognize what reality is. On the basis of such needs and evidence, in the impact with reality man is struck by an “affectus.” The nature of such affectus, which is an essential factor of knowledge, can be identified ultimately in that curious and positive openness that describes the original structure with which God placed man before reality. These same needs and evidence compel the “I” to conceive reality according to an image they have dictated: man cannot help but desire to change reality according to those needs and evidence. However, this would not be possible if Christ had not come to make them clear to man and to support him in experiencing them.
5. Self-awareness. First, self-awareness grows when the “I” becomes aware of its origin—relationship with something infinite. In every action of the “I” there is a striving towards the infinite, towards goodness, truth, justice, happiness, and ultimately leading towards something that can fulfill these desires. Second, self-awareness grows through the impact with reality. Third, it springs up the more affection grows, intended here as the ability to adhere to being, to welcome and accept reality, affirming it for what it truly is.
III. Human Beings—Structure as Plea
6. Committing to our whole life. In order to be able to discover within ourselves the nature of the religious sense, we must commit to our whole life. Each particular element must be placed in an overall perspective. This implication of totality in any specific action, though impossible in a material sense, can be achieved in a spiritual sense, insofar as the details are experienced in light of the ultimate goal; namely, the existence of an ultimate meaning that unites them is recognized.
7. Thirst and heaven. By its very nature, the dynamic of reason implies the existence of an “ultimate reason,” that is, it implies the existence of an answer to the question that defines the human structure. If the nature of the “I” is an infinite thirst for meaning and satisfaction, the exhaustive answer to this thirst can only be infinite and eternal: therefore, we can imagine that in heaven the satisfaction of our heart’s desire will be an eternal satisfaction. In earthly life, human beings have an obvious foretaste of this eternal satisfaction in everything they experience according to God’s will, that is, according to truth.
8. Natalino Sapegno’s negation. Sapegno states that Leopardi’s reflection is characterized by “those questions that the true, adult philosopher dismisses as absurd and devoid of genuine speculative value”—What is life? What is the use of it? What is the purpose of the universe? Why is there pain? Nevertheless, human experience always ends, by its structure, with these ultimate questions. Leopardi attested to this in his poem To His Lady, when he perceived in the beauty of the woman he loved an inexorable reference to Beauty. Man does not find Beauty (truth) in experience, to which he inexorably aspires, but experience tells him that it is necessarily there. This realism is opposed by Sapegno, who argues that, since truth must be affirmed as transcending experience, it does not exist, and that man’s own plea must be erased. By denying a priori a fact of experience, this attitude is clearly irrational. It is with Christ that this reality has entered experience, has become the object of man’s experience.
IV. The Dynamic of Knowledge
9. Suction cup-intelligence. In the dynamic of knowledge, it becomes clear that reason is an original affection towards reality: thanks to its capability to grasp reality, reason is an “affectus.” Affection is like a suction cup with which the eye of the intelligence adheres to reality: intelligence understands, therefore, the reason why there is affection. Reason is realized when it “submits” to reality, that is to say it accepts it, affirms it, and ultimately recognizes that it is given by an Other. Within this dynamic, freedom can intervene and tear affectus away from ratio, with the purpose of arbitrarily using things, eluding that recognition. The condition of human beings is such that—without something greater than themselves, without a presence more powerful than themselves—they would continually succumb to this lie.
10. Being a child. A child shows an essential aspect of the dynamic of knowledge: first of all, he proclaims what he sees. What prevails is Being, not the preconception projected onto Being. Now, when the “I” considers the needs of the heart, the artificial introduction of the claim that the need is satisfied in a certain way alters the nature of the need itself. From the needs of the heart flows all the numerical infinity of our desires; but this infinity must be sacrificed, must yield in the face of the mode of circumstances in which He who created us calls our heart to live. And such sacrifice requires a strength that is only the result of begging to God.
11. “Torna a Surriento.” There is no true knowing if reality is not perceived and accepted as a living thing. Acceptance belongs to affection. It is a feeling of commotion, like that of a child toward his mother—for human beings, to recognize a presence as existing means to accept it according to the resonance it has inside them. This applies summarily to the knowledge of “you,” both human and divine. Man is called to recognize God as a presence, saying “You” to Him. Indeed, one thing is to define God; another is to perceive in Him a present personality. That God is “a presence” means that He is totally free and can become man by entering a woman’s womb. To recognize God—who is an answer to the melancholy we feel inside—as a presence, we must find within ourselves that same melancholy expressed by a song like Torna a Surriento.
V. The Dynamic of Freedom
12. Freedom and satisfaction. In their own experience, human beings find freedom as the capacity for total happiness. A true consistency to one’s nature would always involve an adherence to what truly leads the “I” to ultimate happiness, to God. In order for freedom to be capable of choosing what brings you closer to God, two conditions are essentially needed: a strong, vigilant, rational awareness of the destiny for which humankind is made, and an energy in the affection for destiny. The Mystery revealed itself in Christ as an affectively attractive presence to give man the necessary clarity and the adequate affective energy that would allow the dynamic of freedom to unfold in its truth.
13. The attraction that fulfills. When facing things, freedom is expressed in a choice between yes and no. The mystery of freedom consists in the fact that man has the power to say no even to that which would make him more fulfilled and perfect. The fundamental choice of freedom lies in identifying that in which his fulfillment lies, and in adhering to it. “Usury, Lust and Power,” according to Eliot’s words, measure the “worthiness” of life in accordance with what has been determined by the dominant mentality which errs, first and foremost, in the awareness of reality.
14. The blade of freedom. Freedom is like a blade that runs between good and evil, separating what is true from what is false: without this choice man would not be free. In the dynamic of knowledge, freedom lies in wait for the moment to cut experience in two, separating knowledge from affection. This is due to the contradiction of original sin, from which only the presence of Christ frees human beings. Such liberation is proven over time the more man lives with the simplicity and sincerity of his heart.
VI. The Dynamic of the Sign
15. The vanishing point. Reason’s look at reality uncovers, of all things, the most interesting factor, namely “the vanishing point.” As in Chopin’s Prelude The Raindrop—apparently, its beauty is determined by the main melody, but the real appeal is in the note that, now in crescendo, now in diminuendo, repeats itself throughout the piece. Likewise, all the color of life seems to be in appearance, but that’s not the theme of life. Rather, what a person wants and waits for is represented by that constantly present note that is the desire for happiness, which refers back to that vanishing point. The move dictated by the desire for happiness is a question. Precisely because this thirst of our heart is inexhaustible, the greatest concreteness of our existence is asking. Christ is the answer to this need and offers Himself as an event to verify.
16. The temptation of appearance. The dynamic of reason is blocked by preconception. Therein is condensed the beginning of man’s greatest temptation—becoming God himself. From the time he decides to reassure himself by finding something where God has nothing to do with it, man is terrified to step out of appearance. When the identification between reality and appearance becomes a burning feeling, it is difficult for man not to fall: the wave of feeling is not perceived as appearance, whatever it may be, but rather tends to identify with the reason for living, wreaking havoc on the “I.” An expression of the temptation of appearance is materialism. To help humans overcome this hopeless impediment, God had to become man—Christianity is an event, which anyone can recognize.
17. Inevitable references. A miracle is an experienceable fact that inevitably refers to God. Man looks at the world, and from this gaze he is referred back to something else, because all that exists does not have sufficient reasons to explain itself. Reality itself enforces the affirmation of God—the cosmos is the first miracle forcing us to admit the existence of God. A miracle is perceived as such by those who experience the religious sense, that is by those who experience a sympathy for God, an openness of their own being to God. God chose a supreme form of familiarity with His creatures as His method of relationship with them and became incarnate in Christ. The fruit of this familiarity is documented in the life of saints, real human beings.
