Beauty Made Flesh
Ignacio Carbajosa - “Faith boils down to this agonizing problem: can an educated man, a contemporary European, believe—really believe—in the divinity of the Son of God, Jesus Christ?” When Don Giussani quoted Fyodor Dostoevsky in the third chapter of his work All’origine della pretesa cristiana (At the Origin of the Christian Claim), he was not doing so out of mere academic itch. The problem faced by young people in Italy in the 1950s, just like the problem of my generation—those born in the 1960s in Catholic Spain—was dramatically connected to that same question posed by the Russian genius.
The positivist and rationalist mindset permeating Western culture had stripped the word “God” of any real content, as well as everything that could not be touched or verified experimentally. Half the words in the catechism remained abstract, even if they were still used—sometimes haphazardly—in society or in oratories. At the end of the ’60s and throughout the ’70s, many young people who had crowded into churches and oratories abandoned their faith like someone discarding a used dress, without any drama… although not without dramatic consequences, as time has shown.
How could the mystery of God—who had shown His power in the resurrection of Christ nearly two thousand years earlier—challenge this radical objection to faith that threatened the Church’s presence in the West?
In hindsight, we can now recognize in Don Giussani, and in the charism the Holy Spirit gave him, God’s mercy toward His people. Don Giussani’s personal history and the historical events he experienced form part of the way God intervenes in human affairs.
The first striking thing, belonging to the novelty Don Giussani brought to Milan in the ’50s, is that he did not need to pretend to be “modern” to approach modern man—unlike those churchmen who still, rather pathetically, conceal their clericalism under “fashionable” clothes. Don Giussani was “born” modern; he had nothing to feign.
He himself experienced firsthand the great temptation and objection of the modern world. His “encounter” with Giacomo Leopardi at the age of 13 wounded him deeply, exposing in his humanity the great needs of the heart that have propelled modern man in his search for happiness. Not only that: those needs, as old as man himself, arose in Don Giussani (through his encounter with the Recanati-born poet) in a problematic, nihilistic context. From then on, for three years, even the sacrosanct words of the catechism—heard, read, and studied in the seminary—remained as if suspended. Until the “beautiful day” arrived.
“The Word became flesh means that beauty became flesh; it means that truth became flesh; it means that justice became flesh; it means that goodness became flesh.” The Prologue of the Gospel of John, read and explained by his professor Gaetano Corti, reconciled the young seminarian’s humanity with the Christian event. Beauty, Justice, Truth, Meaning—all things sought by Leopardi and, therefore, by Giussani—were made flesh in Christ and are offered to our experience today just as they were to the disciples two thousand years ago.
From that moment on, the particular story of that young seminarian became a story of grace for the world: “God (…) made me pass through the seminary that way because I had to do CL; otherwise I wouldn’t have made it” (L. Giussani, “Tu” (o dell’amicizia), p. 43).
I too was born into a context that was formally Catholic yet culturally nihilistic. I could say that this context instilled in me an aversion to faith: even though I wanted and needed God to exist (otherwise suffering and death would have no meaning), my positivist reasoning relegated that existence to mere “beliefs” and feelings (which, in any case, I thought I could never have).
Specifically, I found myself facing three objections, the same ones that the dominant culture (for two centuries) had raised against the very concept of God and against the Christian faith. My encounter with Don Giussani was the historical event of grace that allowed me to believe—truly believe—in the divinity of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, and consequently to breathe freely and embrace my entire humanity with all its needs.
The first objection was positivism: due to my upbringing, I considered only what could be seen and touched as truly real, so “God” seemed like a meaningless word with no real referent. Don Giussani, however, opened my eyes and mind to realize that the primary religious place is reality: the fact that things exist points to the Being who sustains them and who keeps me in existence at this very instant.
The second objection came at school. I was a volcano in full swing, bursting with desires in my adolescence. They all testified to my need for an answer. Unfortunately, Feuerbach—whose works I read and absorbed at school—severed any link between my desires and their fulfillment. From him, I gathered that religion was nothing but a projection of those desires: they pointed to nothing and thus had no ultimate meaning.
Those were years in which I felt I was drowning, lacking any horizon for my desires and needs. Don Giussani, on the other hand, taught me to use my reason, to take seriously what I saw stirring in my humanity. He helped me understand that my restless humanity is already accompanied by the divine Mystery that draws me to Himself—a sort of spousal bond. Indeed, that restlessness was a radar that allowed me to detect Christ’s new humanity through my meeting with Don Giussani.
The third and final objection has to do with the Enlightenment masters, Lessing and Kant. According to them, a historical event (and Christianity is such) cannot be the keystone for a universal problem of reason—like the question of life’s meaning. Though I had encountered Christianity when I met Don Giussani, I struggled to believe that a single, particular event could answer all the longings of humanity throughout history. Don Giussani, however, had me rely on the criterion of the heart—our original needs—to recognize that this event was indeed true, because it is true for me today.
I will always be grateful to Don Giussani, and to the Spirit of Christ who inspired him, because he restored all the meaning of my humanity: once an enemy, it became a friend, a traveling companion, and indeed a sign of the Mystery within my restlessness. Just as Christ once removed the stone from the tomb, He continues to show Himself victorious over death and evil today, removing even those stones—the modern objections to faith—that seemed to have definitively buried the Christian event in the past. Don Giussani undoubtedly belongs to the historical mode of that victory.
The author has not revised the text and its translations.
