Asking The Impossible
Simone Riva and Javier Prades - Exploring the challenges of every day and why the heart is our steadfast ally in every new beginning.
Cara Beltà - I would like to begin with a quote from the book of Don Simone Riva, when he writes: "September is a month of resumption, of school, of rhythms, of habits, everything returns to its course, but with what taste? The end of vacations, the challenges that never let up, could turn the resumption into a condemnation. Doomed to begin again. We have some allies who can help us recover our taste and our passion for life. And their answer is our heart. This quote comes to mind, and I would like to ask Don Simone an immediate question about the challenge of September, the time to begin again. I like this expression, "condemned to begin again", as if it were a burden to be carried on our shoulders, but what is the challenge of September and, above all, why do we say that the heart is our ally in this?
Simone Riva - First of all, thank you for this unexpected invitation, an opportunity to reflect on what reality offers us every day as a provocation. As you said, the question of beginning again is a daily challenge. Every morning when we open our eyes, if we are honest with ourselves, we have to face the fact that someone still wanted us. We can have all the objections in the world, and go through all the challenges in the world, but we have to face this undeniable truth: there is someone who still thought of us, chose us, wanted us, and called us. That is why restoration is an issue we face every day. This ally, which we call the heart, understood as the union of reason and affection in us, that is, our whole being, sustains us because it is invincible. We do not know how this day that has just begun will end; we only know that it has begun. It is in the beginning, in the first moment, that we all find ourselves.
In many ways, everything depends on our first step, our first thought, our first wish that comes up in the morning. If each of us were to think about what comes into our mind in the morning as soon as we wake up - we may not even remember it, so immersed are we in things and so distracted are we. That's why this great ally, our unsatisfied heart, is so valuable. If the reason to start something is not enough, we start anyway. It's not that we don't start, sometimes we fill our days with commitments to avoid thinking, but the heart remains unsatisfied and we have to face this reality. We must understand immediately if we are starting a part of our history in which we are protagonists, or if we are starting something that does not concern us, like those who comment on soccer games without ever playing.
Our great ally is not discounting. We do not need anyone to tell us that we are going the wrong way, that we should do things differently; we find out for ourselves. We check for ourselves whether we are going in the right direction or the wrong direction. This is what I find most interesting: the help we can get from others. I will give you an example that I wrote about in my book that really affected me.
One day I walked into a class, a third grade class, that had just finished a math test. The class was about to start and they were discussing how the test had gone. I was sitting at my desk, a little discouraged, when a student said to me, "Come on, teacher, start!" I reply, "And with whom?" "With me," he replies. This astonished me because in this gesture I saw the mystery that I do not need everyone to be on the same page, just one who says yes is enough.
Meeting with others, in my opinion, helps us. When someone is a little ahead and we have the desire to follow, it is not a replacement of our own path, but an intelligent aspiration that leads us to desire something greater. When we understand that something is wrong, we are more attentive to the answers that reality offers us in the people we meet, in the circumstances we experience, and in what happens on a daily basis. The deeper we go into ourselves, the more we can grasp the provocations that God sends us through reality, for reality is not uninhabited, nor are people uninhabited. There is a great presence in all things and in all people. Therefore, the theme of returning, of beginning again, is the daily challenge of rediscovering the reasons for our yes. I think it is one of the most exciting and dramatic things that we all have to deal with every day.
Cara Beltà - Thank you, Father Simone. I would like to ask Javier the same question again. Remembering something you emphasized last year when you spoke about the religious sense, one of the first things you emphasized was the speed of our time, right? We are all involved in a thousand activities. The time for relationships has been shortened and our relationships with people have been minimized. Sometimes when we reply to messages, instead of writing sentences, we just use emoticons. We all have so many things to do. So I wonder if it still makes sense in today's fast-paced world to deal with these fundamental issues, this core that characterizes us. I also want to understand: why is the heart still an essential ally and starting point today?
Javier Prades—This is very interesting. I refer to what Father Simone said. How does this ally manifest itself in our life journey, allowing us to grasp the differences that are present in each of our lives?
This revitalization is what allows us to begin again each day, each moment, and each stage of life. There are times when one feels that stopping to consider certain questions seems almost alien to daily life. I just want to point out this clue, this symptom, so that each of us can recognize our own inner reality. Each of us imagines himself as he wishes, and the imagination can allow many things. Each individual thinks of himself as he wants to think. But where is my freedom? Who am I really? What is my true condition? Notice that even a moment devoted to listening to these questions seems to add a new charge. In such a busy life, one must still find a moment to reflect on these things.
When you find yourself in this situation, it is as if the alarm bells are ringing. When meaning becomes an additional dimension, then it really becomes... Yes, it becomes one of many things that we quickly deal with and try to dismiss as quickly as possible. So today taking time to reflect on the heart can become one of a hundred commitments of the day, some more urgent and motivated, others less so. Some may feel suffocated and say, "I miss the air, I can't breathe without it. This is not a complaint, but a positive realization when we realize that there is a focal point that holds all facets of life together.
We can regain our authentic position in life at any moment and start from there. The only bad thing is to think about starting from here instead of here. It is important to understand where we really are in order to take the right steps forward.
If I find myself thinking, "I could have done a hundred other things this morning, but I'm sitting here thinking I should be somewhere else," then I'm paying a price for not being fully present in this encounter, but more importantly in the most powerful resource: recognizing myself problematically, often problematically, on a path that begins again, as Fr. Simone always emphasized for the children and for us adults. This is the sense of recovering the religious sense, the nature of the heart of existence, and so on. This is the first step to approaching and understanding what our real position is today, and this is always very healthy.
Cara Beltà - Yes, this is one of the risks that Father Simone's book immediately avoids. It is a series of articles that start from small episodes in your professional and daily life in which you can glimpse interesting truths and realities. So there is always this beginning of a life that seeks meaning in the present. Another interesting aspect that struck me, besides this ability to make the book a treatise on simplicity, is its approach to the big questions of life.
The other aspect that fascinated me is the method you use, especially your encounter with people. People tell you something with just a half-sentence or the way they move, don't they? Recently, during my high school graduation exams, I had the opportunity to come across an interesting text. I work in a school that used to be run by the School Fathers. There is a large painting depicting the eight rules that teachers in schools had to follow, dating back to the mid-1600s. The eighth rule reads, "Speak to the young as an angel talking to other angels," suggesting that teachers should present themselves to their students as someone who can reveal something of great value to them.
The angel is the one who brings the news and makes you face the mystery, so there is this extraordinary dimension of the other's preciousness. Do you have any stories or situations you would like to share with us?
Simone Riva—First of all, one thing that is really important to me is to say that I found this insight in myself; I learned it. And because I first saw it in myself, there is someone who looks at me like this. I have seen that it is much more effective to follow this method than to break reality according to one's own pattern and expect everything to fit into one's own measurements.
So it is not that you can take a course to learn to look at reality this way, you have to be looked at this way. Otherwise, at some point, everything becomes annoying because, let's face it, everything annoys us. We are impatient with everything, even the simplest and most mundane things unless something new has happened in our lives. A new way of being with ourselves. When I live this way, details that would have bothered me or not interested me a few years ago, now intrigue me. I want to understand why the other person says yes or no, why the other person chooses one thing over another, why they raise their hand for the first time in class.
After a while, you get into the class and you figure out who is throwing themselves more and who is holding back more, until one day one of the more reserved kids raises his hand. He had never asked a question before, so I thought he was just going to ask to go to the bathroom. Instead, he asked a question. In addition to the question, I wondered what had happened to him. What made him raise his hand in front of everyone, in front of classmates who, as we know, often play a role assigned by the class. If you have always been the one who does not ask questions, you must continue not to ask questions.
If you have always been the one who does the most, you must continue to do so. Sometimes these dynamics determine the climate of the school.
Stepping out of the box means that there is a freedom and an urgency. As long as we do not feel this urgency, we risk living under the big sheet of rules. This is also the case in school. I teach in a public school in Monza, a very big school with different addresses, but that's how it is. There are officials. The form must be perfect. If the form is perfect, the school works. It is important that no one from the outside can say that things are happening in the school that are out of place. Officials are present in the school, in the church, in the families, everywhere, and their only interest is that things work.
But they are not interested in what is under the cover of rules and procedures. But that is where the most interesting things happen because underneath the facade there is life that cannot be governed by the procedures of class councils, or the deliberations of school boards, the positions of those in charge, and so on. Life happens, thank God, without asking anyone's permission. Is there anyone who is willing to be a companion and interlocutor? This seems to me to be one of the main points. In the last few years I have seen that the most interesting game takes place there. Because you are not looked at for your role, your intelligence, what you can say or can't say, what you have or haven't studied, but you are looked at for who you are.
I was struck by a fact three weeks ago when we had dinner with the seniors before graduation. After dinner at the restaurant, the kids wrote a letter to us teachers. It was very nice because they were joking in a nice way, but also expressing sincere thanks. Two things struck me. The first was how they saw us, not only as teachers but also as adults. They also criticized those who took on a purely bureaucratic role, because kids are merciless about that.
I was also surprised by what they said when it was my turn. They joked a little, but then they thanked me because I was the only one who could get them to open up and ask questions. It surprised me because I thought that one hour a week was not enough time to do anything meaningful, but in that hour I really entered their classroom, curious to see their point of view and to see how I would be able to intercept their self.
This leads to the other question. The disposition to start from the point of the path where the other person is. To love the point of the other's path. This is the only way if we want to meet the other person without imposing our own opinions on him, but to really meet him. To love the point of the other's path, not just to tolerate it, to understand it, to bear it, but to love it. Because Christ did that. He did not come among us in an antiseptic suit, but shared all our humanity to the depths, to the bowels of our needs.
What the students told me touched me because they understood that I was interested not only in their performance but in what moved them in their hearts. It is in this alliance of hearts, to use a term that accompanies us in this meeting, that we truly discover whether the truth of the self can emerge along with the truth of the other. I truly believe that there is nothing greater in life than to be looked at and to look at others in this way.
Cara Beltà - Thank you, Father Simone. I want to pick up on this point because I think that is the most difficult thing: to be looked at for who you really are. You mentioned earlier that the question of the heart cannot be an addition to daily life, as if it were a parallel activity to other daily activities. The heart is the substance of who we are, but I think it only reveals itself in an encounter, in something that happens, right? Like the stories Fr. Simone just told: the children feel that they can come out when someone looks at them in this way. That is Christianity: an encounter that reveals who we are, even the heart.
Javier Prades - This is one of the most dramatic pedagogical points for education in general, and certainly for education in the Christian life and faith. It is crucial to understand how the whole way lived in the rich tradition of the Church enlightens and animates the humanity of each one of us and of everyone. At school, at university, at work, that's why I think this is one of the most important and interesting aspects, one of the examples that Fr. Simone just mentioned: to understand the relevance and the human meaning of the statements of faith that are the development of the encounter.
That is to say, to meet, to enter into a presence that speaks a name - Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God - in the life of the Church, in the Christian community. This encounter recovers, illuminates, corrects, and restores the human experience in such a way that I do not insist too much on this risk of traveling on parallel levels, where a certain language and certain learned categories may not find relevance in lived reality. Or where those who discover all the drama of the existential quest they carry within themselves feel that Christian words are distant, abstract, belonging to a world that has passed. This is why a systematic itinerary of formation in all the dimensions of what we call elementary experience, which makes what the heart is in action concretely luminous, has an absolutely extraordinary value.
We are faced with exhausting situations. Life is full of challenges: to health, to work, to the family, to superiors, to others, to politics, to culture, and to many other things. It can happen that we turn sincerely to God with our prayers, and this is sacred, but then there remains a distance from the concrete fatigue, from the reality of daily difficulties. One finds oneself helpless, without energy, without capacity, without the strength to overcome these difficulties in such a way that one succeeds in restoring the unity and the joy of life in every circumstance.
Understanding, for example, Giussani's way of religious meaning, when he reveals what mystery means as a promise, brings out for me one of these brilliant connections. He connects the opening of mystery to the highest category of human reason: possibility. This year I have been thinking that "possibility" is a secular term for "God" when mystery is revealed in our actual relationship with it. Thus, Christian words are filled with meaning when we use them, or they emerge as an attitude when the horizon of the possible is present in any effort of any kind. And I can say, I may not be able to do it, and that's fine, but I'm not saying it's impossible, that's quite another thing. We turn out to be skeptics and atheists, not because we deny the word "God," but because we live existentially as if God does not really exist.
You see, beyond my words, I can be an atheist, an unbeliever. Because in fact the attitude, the sensibility, the outlook on life that I have is closed, is without possibility. Grudges, resentments, physical work to bear, work problems, social problems, many things. You say: "This educational work, where the encounter is born, is everything that none of us could ever have said on our own: the name of Jesus, the name of Our Lady, the sacraments, prayer, the life of the Church, the Christian community. These names are charged with a power that awakens possibility. I can struggle all my life with a particular problem, but my attitude is religious. And it is sustained, corrected, by the encounter when I turn to Our Lady, to Jesus, and participate in the sacraments. These are powerful and effective signs of a human return that lead me to say: is it possible?
Is it possible to forgive? Is it possible to be where we all are and discover that the test that reveals our true place comes when we face reality with our words and our feelings? I could say now that I can't do it, but I think this possibility, this possibility of a real relationship with the mystery, is an important existential reflection.
Cara Beltà - Thank you, Javier. It is impossible to ignore this statement because the idea of religiosity as a category of possibility seems really great to me. What do you think, Fr. Simone?
Simone Riva - Yes, I think that from childhood, but also secretly as adults, we all have the desire to achieve impossible things. We know all the reasons why something will never be attainable, but underneath it is as if we are thinking, "What if it happens? What if it happens?" Recently I went to the hospital for a blood test. While all the computers were frozen, I got to make some jokes with someone who was waiting there. In a moment, I was immersed in the drama and pain of so many people who were there not for a routine test like I was, but for yet another test to find out the status of their disease. I think in the hearts of many there is this realization, "I will never get better, but what if it happens? What if it happens?" What Father Javier said sounds like the very root of what we call hope, the possibility of the impossible becoming possible, no thanks to us.
History documents this. Christian history has documented the most impossible thing ever happening: God became man. Who could have planned, conceived, imagined, and realized such a thing? No one. We were faced with the greatest gift of life and history.
Not only did He become man, but by becoming man, He made possible something else that sometimes seems impossible: that one can make peace with oneself. This is a critical and dramatic point that we have to deal with every day. There is a part of us that wishes we could change the characteristics of our character, eliminate some traits that cause us fatigue, and eliminate some fixation or sin that we cannot overcome. We would probably like to do it, but the mystery intervened. He surprised us by accepting our humanity as it is. He made the impossible possible: tenderness toward ourselves, without which life would soon become a condemnation or a great distraction.
The alternative is to live life as a judgment. I have friends who think every day that they want to end it because living life as a condemnation forces them to be present. The alternative is to live life as a great distraction, absent from the present. If we do not have this relationship with the mystery, we end up chasing the circumstances of life, falling into misunderstandings, distractions, and confusions that lead nowhere.
It seems to me that Father Javier's question concerns the risk of living the present as an appendage to life. Sometimes, in meetings, even among priests, we have prayer, and then we move on to the concrete as if the concrete is always elsewhere. Life is elsewhere. These are very rigorous questions in which we cannot cheat because there is a detector in us to know if we are really present or not.
Cara Beltà: Both Javier before and you now introduced the theme of freedom, because there is no personalization of faith without some personal risk, without putting one's freedom at risk. The boy who raises his hand? It is really the boy who exposes himself, who risks his own freedom. In your book, there are very beautiful pages about freedom also because you quote Péguy, it is high poetry.
Freedom, as you have already mentioned, is by no means an easy desire or aspiration to gain, to exercise, or to play with in life. I notice this both as a mother and as a teacher. It is one's own freedom, of course, but it is especially noticeable when one is confronted with the freedom of one's children, one's students. Giving freedom to people who you feel are somehow under your care, under your direction, is a risk that really scares you. And just as it scares you in the end to play freely in the affairs of life. So I ask you, what is, shall we say, the antidote to that fear, to that risk of freedom? To see it exercised by the children you are somehow called to lead. I intuit that this relationship with a figure who, even when you are alone, somehow constitutes you, is fundamental.
Simone Riva: The antidote is to enjoy it. Freedom is one of the greatest gifts that God has given us, risking everything. So the first thing is to enjoy it, to enjoy the fact that we are free. We often experience it as a problem. It would be better if there were clear rules, and clear stakes. Or, it is okay to have freedom, but within certain limits, as if there is a risk of experiencing it as a problem.
If there weren't, it would be better. If others decide it, it would save us the big question of saying yes or no. So it seems to me that the first antidote is to enjoy it.
The second thing I say is from a cinematic example. I don't know if any of you have seen Top Gun Maverick, which came out in 2022. I think at one point in the movie there is a very interesting scene. These U.S. Navy snipers are called in for a mission by the best guys around. When they don't know who their instructor is going to be, they're wondering among themselves who they're going to choose.
Then along comes Tom Cruise, Maverick, fished out after a break. He is called not because he has a good reputation among the commanders; in fact, no one would call him back. He is called because of a bond of friendship because the Commander in Chief is one of his friends. He calls him because he knows who he is.
The friendship between the two causes Maverick to be called back. They are all gathered there. He makes this move: he gets the manual for the F-18, the plane they were going to fly in. I think you all know it by heart, the manual of the plane. Everybody always says, "Sure, we know it well." He picks it up and throws it in the trash. "Even your enemy." Total silence. Your enemy does not know your limits. Everything starts from there.
I was struck by this because it seems to me to be the second point: to enjoy even what doesn't work in us, in our children, as the certainty that there is another who can see them in a different way, who can embrace them completely, who has thought of them that way without asking us to choose them from a catalog. Even those who now imagine a world in which they can choose the color of their children's eyes and hair, in which they manufacture their son, do not know what character he will have, what he will say yes to, what he will say no to.
There is one point that God wanted to be unassailable. So I say let's enjoy it, even if it gives us problems because when freedom becomes a heavy gift, it forces us to move and also to come to terms with our limitations, which are not a way of saying, "You suck, you're worthless. One of the great challenges for boys, for example, is the suspicion that they are living a useless life. But each of us is unique. How many times, even in school, have we heard the phrase "we are all the same"? This is a lie. It is not true that we are all the same.
We are all unique. This seems to me to be a fundamental point to consider, otherwise, we end up dreaming of a world in which, as Benson writes in The Master of the World, the streets are covered with a rubber mat that makes footsteps indistinguishable and sounds inaudible. Homogenization would be the goal of officials: a world where people's footsteps are indistinguishable, where people can be interchangeable in duties and tasks, where one is worth one. This is the way officials think, but this is not the way God thinks. What sometimes pains me, and I speak for myself without judging anyone, is that even those who live the Christian experience can fall into the same trap. Think of an entrepreneur who is responsible for so many employees, or a father of a family, or even our own category, because we also have communities entrusted to us. One can find oneself doing exactly the opposite: instead of valuing the originality and uniqueness of others, one is concerned that everyone is equal. This seems to me to be the real danger of freedom. It is not so much that one fails in trying to enjoy it, but that one gives up using it for fear of being wrong.
Cara Beltà: I also wanted to hear what you had to add, Xavier, about the enjoyment of freedom and the importance of uniqueness, which I find very interesting. It is precisely in the Christian path that one can learn this ability to look at oneself with freedom. What do you think about this?
Javier Prades: In my opinion, one of the most revolutionary cultural contributions of our time is the issue of freedom, which is often experienced with little space, both by children and adults, at all levels. Simone mentioned earlier the importance of creating a space of relationship and love to bring out freedom. Here, freedom in action testifies to what has made it possible. This thought may sound philosophical, but it is profoundly interesting, because my act of freedom, which is not entirely born of me, already bears witness to something else and is a witness to something fundamentally good.
But what is good at the root of my life? To be alive. This truth is immediately recognizable in the newborn child. We know nothing about him, but the fact that he is alive fills mother, father, grandparents, uncles, and everyone else with joy. We consider this life to be a great good, and we respond to this good by enjoying it, as we said before, thus witnessing our freedom. This helps us to overcome strong cultural oppositions. To be free means to be able to choose every time, not to be bound by anyone, and to be free to the fullest. Here, when we condemn ourselves not to love and not to allow ourselves to be loved, this not only affects others but also reveals a deeply rooted trace: my first act of dialogue and my first expression of freedom affirms that I love my life voluntarily and freely.
I love life. This is very interesting because it is a truth that we all know but often do not say. We talk about certain things: we like to travel, to go on vacation, to tell someone off, to own something. These are superficial pleasures. But saying "I love life" is the premise of every possible expression of myself. The first act of freedom is to acknowledge this gift and my freedom. And it is not just a statement; those who love life behave in a certain way. Jesus is life, so those who experience Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life do not bind themselves to him simply because he is life itself.
This experience reveals what I have deep within me as the most powerful gift with which I came into the world. From here come all the impulses of desire for life, all the forms of fulfillment, not to fill a void, but to enhance what I already have, to make it stronger, richer, more complete. This is heaven on earth. As time goes by, despite aging, physical pains, conflicts with work, and quarrels with partners, people still want to live. We bear witness to life and to the One who taught us to love it. I am reminded of a text by Fr. Giussani when he was speaking to engineers at the Polytechnic of Milan: "I don't make myself now, but I discover this vibration of life in me and I enjoy it. I enjoy it."
This is mature enjoyment, not adolescent or narcissistic enjoyment. And this testimony is what we carry into the world, whether we are farmers or housewives, engineers, executives, or ministers. Everyone can witness the love of life, the joy of life. This is culturally revolutionary for us as Christians because through this encounter and these meaningful words, we can say, "I carry in my life all the work that happens to me.
We bear witness to life and we want to live it forever. This is an elementary human testimony. When this desire is clouded, we become less human. When it is present, as when the Lord enters our lives, He sets the children free. He is free, he enjoys, and he has brought out freedom as a question, as a relationship, as a tension. Here, God willing, in Europe, in America, in the world, there are children, adults, migrants and the poor. No matter who they are, there are different approaches, but this truth is universal.
Cara Beltà: I wanted to thank you for the meeting yesterday where we talked about Christianity and Christianity and how often Christianity today is reduced to a kind of agency of values. The Church affirms principles and values, but the history of Christianity is much deeper than that. We can't limit the church to that role, can we? Tonight, when you talked about the joy of life and your deep reflections, I was very struck by the idea that religiosity can coincide with possibility. Sometimes we use Christian words without really believing that certain things are possible. As you spoke, I reflected on so many things that I find hard to believe, even though I call myself a Christian. It strikes me that humanity in action, as you described it, is a great thing in Christianity. It's not just about values or principles, it's about a life full of meaning, as you said so well. I want to live, I want to live forever. We thank you both from the bottom of our hearts!
Unrevised text by the Authors
This dialogue was edited by epochalchange.org following the meeting "Be Realists, Ask for the Impossible" by the Cultural Center "Dear Beauty," a meeting with Don Simone Riva, teacher, priest, and writer, and Javier Prades, theologian and rector of San Damaso University in Madrid. The authors have not revised the notes, translations, and editing. Download.
