Faced with the Mystery of the Other
Simone Riva - A few days before the beginning of Lent, the Book of Sirach reminds us that a jolt of reality is a gift. It is God's method.
“When a sieve is shaken, the waste remains; so when a man argues, his faults appear. The potter's vessels are tested in the furnace, so the way of reasoning is the test of a man. The fruit shows how the tree is cultivated, so the word reveals the thoughts of the heart. Do not praise anyone before he speaks, for this is the test of men” (Sir 27:5-8).
With Lent just around the corner, this Sunday's liturgy surprises us with a text that has retained the power to cross centuries, remaining a provocation for every age. How often, in fact, does reality use shaking us up as its method? At first, we remain shocked and disoriented, but shortly after, the full extent of that shock emerges, and we verify what has remained standing and what has fallen.
As a friend told me a few days ago, he had to undergo invasive surgery for a long-diagnosed disease. When I called him to find out how it went, he said: “Now a new phase of my life begins. I understand that I have to stick to the essentials, even if I don’t know what that is yet.”
No one remains indifferent to the shock of reality. The same dynamic also occurs in relationships. Sirach, in fact, warns: “The way of reasoning is the test for a man.” And the way we reason—about ourselves and others—is verified when we are “face to face.” In a personal encounter, we have the possibility to discover and surprise the person we are talking to, using the first form of communication we were given: our body.
Hands that shake more or less intensely, eyes that seek or avoid each other, scents that arouse curiosity or repugnance, furnishings that welcome or repel—the physicality of relationships is essential to understanding who we are and who we are dealing with. The way we reason is expressed in human impact before the exercise of thought: “The fruit shows how the tree is cultivated.” For this reason, we can hope not to be overwhelmed by our interpretations when facing life. Details speak, shout—an already present truth.
We can enter this Lent in a thousand ways: listless, excited, indifferent, disappointed, intolerant, angry—or we can ask for this attention to the details of reality that the sobriety, typical of this time, seeks to fully enhance. Not yet another attempt to affirm our efforts—some call them trifles—but the audacity to let ourselves be taken aback by God’s method.
Father Giussani, for example, describes it like this: “It is an act of life that sets everything in motion. The beginning of faith is not an abstract culture but something that comes before: an event. […] It is a life and not a discourse on life, because Christ began to ‘spring’ in a woman’s womb!”
This awareness has been lost in recent centuries, and so has the possibility of beginning to answer young people’s questions. If there is no beginning, there is no attack on the problem posed by the nature of man: the need for an answer to the demands of his reason. Talking to young people, but also to adults, about faith means sharing an experience, not repeating a discourse on religion, however correct it may be (A. Savorana, Vita di don Giussani, Rizzoli, 2013, p. 1160).
But perhaps discourses are more comfortable for us: they don’t shake up any sieve, and the refuse remains well hidden.
The author has not revised the text and its translations.
