Freedom is the Most Precious Gift
Julián Carrón - Epochal Change presents the speech given at the 2005 Rimini Meeting on August 21, 2005. The title of his talk was 'Freedom is the Most Precious Gift that the Heavens Have Bestowed Upon Man.' The meeting was introduced by Emilia Guarnieri, Chairwoman of the Meeting for Friendship among Peoples Association.
This speech occurred during Carrón’s first year as President of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, a role he assumed on March 19, 2005, following the death of the movement’s founder, Father Luigi Giussani.
The 2005 Rimini Meeting was dedicated to the theme of freedom. In his speech, Carrón addressed the concept of freedom, describing how it had been reduced to pure autonomy in modern society.
"Freedom, Sancho, is one of the most precious gifts that the heavens have ever given to men; neither the treasures that the earth encloses nor those that the sea covers are to be compared with it; for freedom, as for honor, one can and must risk one’s life."[1]
That the value of freedom for humans has not changed much since Cervantes wrote this sentence is shown by this statement by then-Cardinal Ratzinger, with which he begins one of his speeches on freedom: "In the consciousness of mankind today, freedom appears by far as the highest good, to which all other goods are subordinate."[2] The two statements are similar.
The similarity of the two statements, however, should not blind us to the difference in how freedom was conceived then and how it is conceived now. For Cervantes, it was such a precious good that for freedom "one can and must put one’s life on the line." Today, however, we find ourselves in a situation where it is difficult to find men who will venture onto the path of freedom. We can say that freedom today is as precious as it is scarce. Just ask yourself how many truly free men we know. We are faced with an enormous desire for freedom but, at the same time, with an inability to be truly free—that is, to be ourselves in reality. It is as if everyone bends to what is expected of us in every circumstance: one has one face at work, another with friends, yet another at home. Where are we really ourselves? Not to mention how often one feels suffocated in the circumstances of daily life, without the slightest idea of how to free oneself, except by waiting for circumstances to change or for them to shift on their own. Eventually, one finds oneself stuck, dreaming of a freedom that never arrives. At a time in history when we talk so much about freedom, we witness the paradox of its absence. Even worse, we are content to live without it, as Kafka denounced: "Freedom and responsibility are feared, and each one prefers to suffocate behind the bars it has built for itself."
"The history of recent centuries could be summarized as a progressive reduction of the person to the depersonalized individual or to formal freedom, putting real freedom in parentheses."[3] Let us try to understand why.
1. The Modern Reduction: Freedom as the Absence of Ties
The genius of Jesus left us, in the well-known Gospel parable of the Prodigal Son, a memorable page that can help us understand the modern path to freedom that has led to this formalism.[4] We all have it clearly in mind.
"A man had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ And the father divided the wealth between them. After a few days, the younger son, having collected his things, departed for a far country."
The parable describes a typical Palestinian household of Jesus’ time: a father with two sons. No conflict is indicated in the family’s relationships. The fact that they have wealth to share suggests this is a family of some means. The text further confirms this with other details: they have servants; the father wears a ring; they own fine clothes, sandals, and a fatted calf—all signs of the kind of family to which the prodigal son belonged. That was his home, the place where he was a son and, therefore, loved. Home: the place where one is truly himself because he does not have to prove anything to anyone—he is loved simply because he is a son. Home was the place where everything was his and reality was his friend, where he could hear his father say, "Everything that is mine is yours." Everything was ordered to satisfy his needs in familiarity with his father.
Despite all this, the youngest son did not seem satisfied and demanded his share of the inheritance to leave home. The allure of autonomy had won his heart. His desire for freedom drove him to cut the most meaningful ties. He did not seem to care much about moving away from his father and his home, his place of belonging. Perhaps it all appeared to him as an obstacle to his longing for freedom; home felt too confining. It was necessary to break the bonds that kept him tied to a home—that is, to a tradition—and to go far away from it.[5] Nothing could then stand in the way of fulfilling his desires. The road would thus be fully paved. He thought this way he could reach a pinnacle of freedom he had never experienced before.
What could have driven this son to such a radical choice? Perhaps he had been attracted by the fame of cities like Alexandria, Antioch, Ephesus, or Corinth, which seemed to promise freedom for a young man with wealth like himself. But, in fact, this attraction had taken root in him even earlier, when he succumbed to the allure of autonomy that had crept into his heart. He could not resist the seduction of fending for himself, with no father, no home, no true belonging.
Reality soon roused him from the dream. The boy "squandered his substance living dissolutely." He found nothing that lived up to his desires—so much so that nothing satisfied him enough to keep him tied down. Everything passed without a trace—no ties, no history with anyone. The absence of ties began to show its true face: loneliness. "When he had spent everything, a great famine came to that country, and he began to find himself in need" (v. 14). He started to realize that autonomy was only an illusion.
But the worst was yet to come. "So he went and entered the service of one of the inhabitants of that region, who sent him into the fields to herd swine. He would have liked to have been satiated with the carobs that the swine ate, but no one gave him any" (vv. 15-16). Here is the end of the adventure of autonomy.[6] Fatherless and with a master. His home: that of the swine. Where had the promise of freedom gone? The desire for fullness could not be satisfied even with the carobs the swine ate, because no one gave him any. Boredom became his companion.[7] His fate did not matter to anyone.[8] It was the complete realization of the breaking of all ties, down to the one with reality, which had now become inhospitable and foreign to him.[9]
Freedom, however, is by no means automatic, as shown by the eldest son. The latter stayed at home with his father; everything there was his. Yet he did not realize this, as shown by his reaction to his father’s mercy upon his brother’s return. He grew angry and refused to join the feast, rebuking his father: "Behold, I have served you for many years and have never transgressed a command of yours, and you have never given me a kid to feast with my friends. But now that this son of yours, who devoured your possessions with prostitutes, has returned, for him you have slain the fatted calf" (vv. 29-30). One can live at home as a servant without the joyful awareness of being a son. "And the father answered him, ‘Son, thou art with me always, and all that is mine is thine’" (v. 31). The formalism of the elder son retained no more of freedom than the name.
Beneath the rubble, something remained in the younger son: his heart. Not even all the disasters he had caused could remove the longing for freedom from his heart. "Then he came back into himself [i.e., into his heart] and said, ‘How many wage earners in my father’s house have bread in abundance, and I am starving here!’" (v. 17). Even while starving, he could not help but desire it. And with freedom, he desired the one who made it possible: his father. Quickly, he decided, "I will arise and go to my father and say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against Heaven and against you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your servants.’ He departed and set out for his father" (vv. 18-20). It was the memory of his father that kept the longing for freedom alive. With this decision, he recognized that the only true freedom is filial freedom: not to live as an orphan when one is a son, but to live by consciously embracing the condition of a son.[10]
This is always possible for us now, too, because there is always a father waiting for us: "When he was still far away, the father saw him and was moved and ran to him and threw himself on his neck and kissed him" (v. 20).
Whatever condition we find ourselves in, each of us is called to freedom, to recognize it as "the most precious gift the heavens have ever given to men." The path may be troubled, but it is always possible. How?
2. What Is Freedom?
2.1 Feeling Free: A Phenomenon of Satisfaction
"How do we know what freedom is? Words are signs with which man identifies a certain experience: the word ‘love’ identifies a certain experience; the word ‘freedom’ identifies a certain experience."[11] The word "freedom" identifies a specific experience.
Since it is an experience, the starting point of awareness is to look at that experience, as Fr. Giussani always taught us. If we look fairly, when do we feel free?
Let us imagine the classic example among us of a girl who learns that her friends are having a party and feels like going. She goes to her dad, and he, surprisingly and contrary to his habits, tells her no. The girl’s despondency and anger are unmistakable signs that she does not feel free. Only when, after a rather heated dialogue, her dad finally agrees to let her go does she feel free.
We feel free when we see a desire fulfilled. Therefore, freedom is the satisfaction of a desire. This is the truth hidden in the immediate, instinctive impression we all have of freedom, blatantly expressed in the simple phrase, "To be free is to do as you please."
2.2 Wholeness as a Dimension of Desire
But it is also true that we are not satisfied with the fulfillment of our most immediate desires. The more we fulfill these desires, the more it becomes evident that we desire something greater. When we were children, we were content with candy. Not anymore today. Our experience, if one pays attention to what it tells us and remains loyal to what emerges from it, reveals the true nature of our desire, which never runs out.
We have all experienced that life does not always thwart us, preventing us from fulfilling our desires. On many occasions, we succeed in accomplishing what we desire, but it does not satisfy us permanently. After a while, we are back to square one. That is why I have often thought that one begins to realize the drama of living not when life answers "no" to desire, but when it answers "yes." When it answers "no," one can still wait for the occasion when it responds affirmatively, but the drama begins when life answers "yes," and that is not enough. When a man has this experience with work, wife, things, he ends up asking himself: So what is enough? "Quid animo satis?"
I have told many times what happened to me while visiting friends in Barcelona. There was a friend who was painting. Her dream was to have a big exhibition. She finally succeeded. The success was, as she told me later, beyond all predictions. So I could not believe her when she said that on the day of her great success, she had spent the whole afternoon crying. Why can one cry after a success? Was my friend abnormal, did she perhaps have some problem? No, she had had the same experience as Pavese on the day he was awarded the Strega Prize: "In Rome, apotheosis. And with that?"[12] Why is it not enough? Why, after success, is one not fully satisfied? What is satisfying, then?
What does dissatisfaction after success teach me about the nature of my desire, my nature as a man? Pavese guessed it well: "What a man seeks in pleasures is an infinity, and no one would ever give up hope of achieving this infinity."[13]
2.3 Freedom as the Capacity for Total Satisfaction
Freedom, then, precisely from the experience of satisfying immediate and partial desires, is revealed as the "capacity" for total, complete satisfaction—that is, as the capacity for perfection, for self-realization, for fulfilling one’s desire as a man.[14]
No one has described the nature of human desire like Leopardi:
"Not being able to be satisfied by any earthly thing, nor, so to speak, by the whole earth; to consider the inestimable breadth of space, the marvelous number and bulk of worlds, and to find that everything is little and petty to the capacity of one’s own soul; to imagine the number of worlds infinite, and the universe infinite, and to feel that our soul and desire would be even greater than such a universe; and always to accuse things of insufficiency and nothingness, and to suffer lack and void, and nevertheless boredom, seems to me the greatest sign of greatness and nobility that is seen in human nature."[15]
This is the unique greatness of man: his desire is "even greater than such a universe." It is precisely because of this breadth of our desire that we can "accuse things of insufficiency and nothingness, and suffer lack and void, and yet boredom." What for so many is the misfortune of life—feeling the insufficiency of everything, suffering lack and void—is for Leopardi the greatest sign of the greatness of human nature. We can accuse that insufficiency precisely because, by nature, structurally, we have within us the ability to judge: it is what the Bible calls the heart. Without the ability to judge for himself what does or does not correspond to him, the affirmation of man’s dignity is but an empty word, and man, after all, depends on power. How is desire aroused? This is a decisive question today, when desire cannot be taken for granted because, as A. del Noce says, "the current nihilism today is the gay nihilism—that is, without disquietude (perhaps one could even define it by the suppression of the Augustinian inquietum cor meum)." This is a question of the future.
3. The Path of Freedom
Whatever situation each of us finds ourselves in, the real continues to come to us, arousing in us awe—that is, curiosity and desire for what is before us. It is always the impact with the real that awakens our humanity, in all its dimensions and capacities. "The capacities that are in us are not self-made, nor do they translate into action on their own. They are like a machine that, in addition to being built by others, also needs another to set it in motion. Every human capacity, in a word, must be provoked, solicited, to put itself into action."[17] What sets it in motion is the impact with reality.
It is therefore the real that arouses desire, insofar as it shows itself charged with attractiveness. Far from being indifferent, we are originally attracted by the beauty—by the good—of the real. In the encounter with the attracting real, freedom is set in motion. In this impact with the real, which happens all the time—because we cannot think of ourselves outside of reality—and which attracts us, freedom is already, from the beginning, called into play. How? It must respond to the call of the attraction of the real. Freedom’s non-neutrality in the face of the real means that different options regarding the meaning of the real are not equally reasonable. One who rejects the attractiveness of the real is already censoring a given and is therefore less reasonable than one who acknowledges it.[18]
This highlights a first aspect of self-possession that characterizes freedom.[19] Whatever the attractiveness of the real, it does not eliminate freedom’s capacity for choice. On the contrary, it sets it in motion. The imposing attractiveness of Being does not spare man his ability to decide; rather, it constitutes its true and original provocation.
On what basis do we decide to adhere or not to this provocation? On the basis of the correspondence that the real establishes with the needs of the heart. The response that Being provokes in me constitutes the judgment on which I act.[20] When I stand before beautiful mountains and say, "How beautiful!" I make a judgment about those mountains, just as when I cry out in pain before an injustice inflicted on me or others. This quick judgment, whereby I discern whether a thing corresponds to me or not, prepares and orients the step to which freedom is called.[21]
But this, as we said, is only the first step on the path of freedom. Let us ask: What is at stake in the choice, in every choice? Adherence to what appears and we recognize as good—that is, choice is made in view of fulfillment, the end. Why do I want the capacity for choice? To adhere to that which affects and attracts me. "My freedom," writes J. R. Jiménez, "consists in taking from life what seems best for me and for everyone." The girl wants the capacity for choice to decide to go to the party—that is, to adhere to a glimpsed good. It is precisely in this adherence that her desire finds satisfaction and, therefore, she feels free.
The capacity for choice belongs to a freedom still on the way to its full realization, which consists in adherence to that which corresponds—that is, to the Good, to destiny. To stop only at the first aspect—the capacity for choice—is, in fact, to abandon the fulfillment of freedom, because I do not exercise the capacity for choice that I have except by adhering to what I desire. The capacity for choice, therefore, has adherence as its purpose. "I cannot conceive nor tolerate any utopia that does not leave me with the freedom that is most dear to me: the freedom to bind myself"[22]—to bind myself to that which fulfills me, to the infinite I seek in pleasures, to the You who calls me through the attraction of things, to the You who makes me be, to the One to whom I can say, "My truth is You, my self is You, I am You who makes me."
It is in this adherence to that which corresponds to me that desire finds satisfaction.
4. The Relationship with the Mystery, the Foundation of Man’s Freedom
How can we explain this—my, your—desire for totality, or "for infinity," as Pavese put it? The only reasonable hypothesis is the Infinite. This openness to totality is the most evident sign that man is in direct relationship with the Mystery that makes him. I have this desire within me, but who gives it to me? Another who does that to me. It is this openness to totality that makes me free, able to choose between different things, not to be reduced to a cog in the machinery of circumstances or power. Péguy expressed this with his unique brilliance:
"This freedom
is the most beautiful reflection there is in the world because it reminds me, it refers me back,
because it is a reflection of my own freedom,
which is the very secret and mystery
and the center and the heart and the germ of my creation."[23]
Finite, created freedom refers back to infinite freedom. Infinite freedom is at the origin of my freedom. Without it, mine would not exist.
Man is in direct relationship with the Mystery. "I" am a relationship with the infinite. All the dynamism of the self unfolds and tends toward a perfection—that is, a fulfillment of the self that, in all it achieves, is never complete. What man tends toward is something beyond, always beyond: it is transcendent. Thus, self-consciousness perceives the existence of something else—that is, God, Mystery, God as Mystery. God is the ultimate limit to which man’s desire tends.[24]
This is what the Catechism says: the soul is directly given by God. This is the greatest truth of the Christian doctrine of creation. That we are created in the image and likeness of God means we are called to a unique and direct relationship with Him. The vocation of life is this relationship. Called not to just anything, but to God, to full happiness. Man is capax Dei.
This is what prevents man from being reduced to his biological, psychological, or sociological antecedents. The attempts of the "masters of doubt" to reduce the self to one or another of these factors will always fail. Of course, they may affect me, but they do not determine me to the point of reducing me to their mercy. Man can never be reduced to a mere piece in the machinery of internal or external circumstances. The self can always rise above circumstances, its own feelings, or states of mind.
"Only because I have not made myself can I be free; if I had made myself, I could have foreseen myself and, thus, I would have lost freedom."[25]
We are in direct, irreducible relationship with the Infinite. This is the ultimate reason for man’s greatness. This greatness is so profound that it sometimes frightens us. For it takes great courage to live up to our infinite desires. It is not easy to find people who live the full breadth of their desires, capable of "desiring the impossible," like Camus’ Caligula.[26]
This is why freedom is at risk today—because few take their desire seriously or agree to live up to it. "The worst threat to freedom lies not in letting it be taken away—for those who have let it be taken away can always regain it—but in unlearning to love it."[27] Because, as Spanish poet Rafael Alberti says, "Freedom is not possessed by those who do not thirst for it."
María Zambrano writes, "Man finds himself again chained to necessity, but now by his own decision and in the name of freedom: he has renounced love in favor of an organic function; he has exchanged his passions for complexes, because he does not want to accept the divine inheritance, believing that by this he is freeing himself from the suffering, from the passion that all the divine suffers among us and within us."[28]
Instead, it is in accepting this "divine inheritance" that freedom consists. First, because only the divine Mystery can awaken in me that desire for totality—that ultimate irreducibility to all conditioning—without which there is no freedom. And second, because only the infinite Mystery can be the adequate object of my freedom. Finite freedom, precisely as the capacity for total satisfaction, defined by its desire for the infinite, can only be fulfilled in infinite freedom.
Therefore, freedom is adherence to Being, to the Mystery that makes us, to the real and mysterious You from whom I am made at this very moment. It is in accepting the Father, like the prodigal son, that I become free.[29] Perhaps we, like him, needed to leave home and then feel homesick for it when we lost everything. And so we discovered the good of having a Father, and that recognizing Him does not jeopardize our freedom but makes it possible.
The Mystery who made us knows about our resistance to this surrender into His fatherly arms:
"I know the man well. I am the one who made him. He is a strange being.
For in him plays that freedom which is the mystery of mysteries.
After all, much can be asked of him. He is not too bad.
…
But what cannot be asked of him, holy God, is a little hope,
a little trust—in short, a little relaxation,
some renunciation, some surrender into my hands,
a little bit of remission. It always stiffens."[30]
The rejection of the Infinite does not occur without consequences for freedom. This rejection leaves freedom without an adequate object. Without adherence to the Infinite Mystery, man remains at the mercy of all the forces of power in any circumstance. Without recognizing the Mystery as the root and fulfillment of all desire and partial attraction, freedom is but an illusion. If freedom is the experience of satisfaction, we can gauge the state of our freedom along the way by the degree of true satisfaction we experience in our relationships with people and things. We can do as we please, but we can all see how many times in a day we have a real experience of freedom—that is, of fullness, of satisfaction—in our role, in the contingency of daily choices, in adhering to partial goods and attractions. What usually prevails is asphyxiation, feeling cramped everywhere, waiting to escape. So true is it that many flee into imagination to endure the "lack and void." "Without recognition of the Mystery, night advances, confusion advances, and—as such, at the level of freedom—rebellion advances, or disappointment fills the measure so much that it is as if one no longer expects anything or lives without desiring anything except furtive satisfaction or a furtive response to a brief request."[31]
Instead, it is by adhering to this Mystery in everything that man becomes free. It is there that he can find the satisfaction of his desire for wholeness. Our greatness, as Leopardi reminded us, lies in feeling this desire for infinity vibrate within us, but being aware of the nature of our desire makes us realize that we are unable to fulfill it ourselves. As man receives the desire for wholeness, he must also receive its fulfillment. The fulfillment is there—it is He who awakens it for him—but man must not stiffen; he must surrender. Without this surrender to the One who can fulfill it, freedom remains lost, without an ultimate object.
It is only this that frees us from whims, from the dictatorship of desires, which is nothing but a reduction of desire to something at hand. Therefore, writes Fr. Giussani, "Christian religiosity arises as the only condition of the human. Man’s choice is: either to conceive himself free from the whole universe and dependent only on God, or free from God, and then he becomes a slave to every circumstance."[32]
But how can man have the clear consciousness and affective energy to adhere to the Mystery as long as it remains a mystery? How can the still obscure and mysterious object awaken the energy of freedom to fulfill it? As long as the object is obscure, one can imagine what he wants and determine himself in his relationship with that object as he pleases.
This is what happens in the experience of love. As long as the person to love remains mysterious, as long as the person who claims my whole self has not appeared on the horizon of my life, I continue to do as I please. The fact that I know he exists does not free me from being at the mercy of everything that appears before me. I know that I long for the Infinite, that this Infinite exists because I always long for it, as Lagerkvist said, but every day I grasp the particular, I pursue any object, which then leaves me unsatisfied. This is man’s fate, unless—as L. Wittgenstein wrote in his 1936-37 Diaries—"God" deigns to visit him: "You need redemption, otherwise you are lost (…) It is necessary for a light, as it were, to come in through the ceiling, the roof under which I work and over which I do not want to climb (…) This striving for the absolute, which makes any earthly happiness seem too petty… seems to me stupendous, sublime, but I fix my gaze on earthly things: unless ‘God’ visits me."[33]
5. The Companion Who Makes Freedom Historically Possible
It is only when the Mystery, as the beloved, reveals its face that man can have the clarity and adequate affective energy to adhere—that is, to commit all his freedom. With Jesus, the Mystery has become "an affectively attractive presence," igniting man’s desire and challenging his freedom—that is, his capacity for adherence—like no other. Man only needs to yield to the winning attraction of His person. As happens to a man in love, it is the alluring presence of the beloved that arouses all his affective energy: it is enough to yield to the allure of the one before him.
"What is needed is a man,
what is needed is not wisdom,
what is needed is a man
in spirit and truth;
not a country, not things,
what is needed is a man,
a sure step, and so firm
the hand he extends that all
can grasp it, and walk
free, and be saved."[34]
And like the beloved, I discover the present Mystery in an encounter—unexpected, quite a surprise! As happened to John and Andrew, the first ones who met Jesus and remained attached to Him for the rest of their lives. Their freedom was so challenged by His unique exceptionality that they could not go on in life without coming to terms with that person. A correspondence so impossible elsewhere happened with Him that they never left Him again. "Their authentic freedom, therefore," the Pope told us in the message addressed to this Meeting, "is the fruit of their personal encounter with Jesus. The freedom of those who had encountered Him found unparalleled fulfillment. A hundredfold down here, Jesus would later say. That is, a hundredfold satisfaction as a foretaste of the full one."[35] And they were not visionaries. Otherwise, sooner or later, they would have abandoned Him. They would have felt lost as well.
It is in this relationship that man’s otherwise confused longing becomes clear. So true is it, as William of St. Thierry says, that Christ is "the only one able to teach me to see what I desire."[36] It is He, Christ, who fully reveals man to man.[37] "When I met Christ, I discovered myself a man," said the famous Roman rhetorician Gaius Marius Victorinus.
The Mystery, to call man back without him stiffening, as Péguy said, used the method of preference. Just as He introduces us to love not through a discourse but by making us fall in love, so, to reveal to us what freedom is, He arouses all our desire for wholeness by placing before us an attraction so powerful that we can experience, at the same moment—"at the same time"—the fulfillment of this desire.
Dear cardo salutis. The flesh, the Word made flesh, is the hinge of salvation. An affectively attractive carnal presence is the only one that can overcome our resistance. A winning attraction is the only hope for us, so often tempted by the allure of autonomy, by that almost murderous affirmation of ourselves that leads us into nothingness. Only the attraction of the Being that shines in the face of Christ, present here and now in the flesh of the Church, can defeat the allure of nothingness.
Why does this man have this attraction? Who is this man? He is Christ, the man full of God—or God made man. A man who accepts belonging totally to the Mystery, to the Father. He accepts that it is Another who fills his heart. In Him, the vocation of man is fulfilled. And because of this, He is the only one who introduces us into the mystery of the Father, in which our freedom is fulfilled—sons in the Son (cf. Gal 4:4-7).
But for Him to reveal Himself to me as the fulfillment of my freedom requires my freedom to let Him enter the depths of my self. We actually discover that we have found the One who fulfills our desire for freedom the very moment we become free—that is, His. He does not reveal Himself before I have freely decided for Him.
Indeed, Christ did not come to spare us the exercise of freedom, as we might sometimes wish. What would salvation be if it were not free? It is the drama of God expressed in Péguy’s genius:
"I feel like, I am tempted to put my hand under their belly
to support them in my wide hand,
like a father teaching his child to swim,
in the current of the river,
and who is torn between two feelings.
Because, on the one hand, if he always supports him and if he supports him too much,
the child will confide in us and never learn to swim.
But also if he does not support him well and at the right time,
that child will find himself drinking
…
Such is the mystery of man’s freedom, says God.
And of my government toward him and his freedom.
If I support him too much, he is no longer free.
And if I do not support him enough, he falls.
If I support him too much, I expose his freedom.
And if I do not support him enough, I expose his salvation:
two goods in a sense almost equally valuable.
For that salvation has infinite value.
But what would a salvation be if it were not free?"[38]
We cannot avoid decaying, failing. But then, how do we continually reestablish ourselves? The only possibility is for Christianity to keep happening as an event. Without the continuous reoccurrence of the Christian event, there is no possibility of real freedom. And its permanence is also a sign of its truth: like the true, it endures. In this way, freedom can verify that it is continually being reawakened and set in motion so that it can realize itself.
Where does the Christian event endure? In the Church. "God’s freedom realizes His presence through men whom His presence has changed—men changed by His presence. … His presence, the presence of God made man, is revealed through these changed men. The proper sign of this change is this capacity for unity, impossible to men, which is called, by a whole name, the Church."[39] Through these men, the Mystery continues to make possible the real freedom of man, whose first change is communion among them.[40] Communion is the victory over bondlessness, the fruit of sin.
The Church thus becomes the place of freedom, possible for anyone who approaches it. Only if it is a community that makes real freedom possible in history will it be able to respond to the objection that freedom is not possible in belonging. Instead of bondlessness, lived belonging.
But this real freedom is possible in the community of the Church only if it educates me to recognize the Mystery, the only reality that can make me free in circumstances. This is the profound meaning of St. Ambrose’s phrase, "Ubi fides ibi libertas."[41] Only such a community can realize the aspiration for a dwelling where freedom dwells: "The aspiration to liberate oneself and to build a new dwelling where freedom can dwell," writes Hannah Arendt, "is unprecedented and unparalleled in all past history."[42] The bond with Christ in the Church reconstructs the bond with everything and everyone.
Christianity today comes to meet this desire for freedom in the man of our time. However, if it wants to have any chance, Christianity cannot propose itself to man in any reductive version (moralism, spiritualism, discourse), but through the witness of an experience: Christianity must put "free men" on the stage of the world. The performance of a free man in circumstances, in reality—work, events, circumstances—is what bears witness to Christ.
Therefore, Fr. Giussani stated a few years ago in an interview that what man needs today is not even a religious discourse, but "the experience of an encounter (…) One encounters the Christian Fact by running into people who have already accomplished this encounter and whose lives have, in some way, already been changed by it. (…) It is not an encounter to hear the Gospel quoted or to listen even for hours to the thoughts that the Gospel brings to a given person’s mind. This is witnessing a spectacle, when it is, of sentimental reactions or dialectical suggestions that take their cue from a religious cue. Instead, the encounter is with an event, which may also be a person speaking, but what is striking is not so much the word itself as the change nevertheless taking place in the one speaking."[43] That is what this letter documents:
"Dearest Fr. Carrón, I was telling a friend of the Memores about a recent experience of mine, and she suggested I write to you. Here is what the Lord has given me to understand.
I was hospitalized for a week to perform some tests as a result of the illness I have had for 13 years: Parkinson’s disease (which arose when I was 38 years old). They put me in a room where an elderly lady was already admitted, who had serious problems related to my own illness: she could not sit still due to involuntary movements either during the day or night and had contractures even at the level of her throat and tongue, so they could not even feed her. Exhausted by the dystonias and dyskinesias, and eventually hysterical, she would scream: she found no other means to be heard but to scream. For me, it meant no sleep and no rest, either during the day or night.
I quickly realized that I had to be patient because, when one is hospitalized, one knows that such situations can arise. I tried to calm her down as much as I could, calling her by name, heartening her, making her feel my presence—also because she did not have the opportunity to be attended to daily by relatives.
After two days of this, I found myself really tired; therefore, I went to find the head nurse, told her I couldn’t take it anymore because I could never rest, and asked her if she could do anything. Then I went back to my room in tears.
As soon as I entered, however, I remembered what Fr. Giussani taught us: ‘Live the circumstance as the Mystery that comes to you.’ And so, looking at that little woman writhing all over and screaming—crying out a need, a dramatic plea for help—remembering Gius’ words changed the position of my heart and mind. Surely it must have been good for me to cry; however, that was not what relaxed me: what gave me the strength to continue with her was precisely this awareness that the Mystery was making itself present to me inside that situation, in that room. So I said to myself, ‘Either I suffer the circumstance, or I live it, I embrace it.’
So I began, in addition to heartening her, to also be more attentive to her reactions to the dosages of the drugs being given to her. After a couple of hours, the chief physician came in with other doctors, and they were wondering what to do to help this lady because they couldn’t get the therapy right. Then I plucked up the courage to report what I had observed about her reactions to medication dosages and added that when she felt heartened and in the company of someone (even if they were coming to see me), she calmed down—a sign that she certainly needed therapy, but also had a need for company.
From that time on, every two or three hours, when they came in to see her, they would ask me how she had been doing during that period after the new dosage of therapy—to the point that, toward evening, one doctor asked the primary caregiver if I had become the referral for this patient. The chief physician jokingly replied, ‘Oh yes! We can’t discharge her: the lady is becoming useful to understand well how to manage this therapy!’ However, at that point, I pointed out that they had to ask me how I was doing as well, because the situation was really untenable for so long. The chief physician then assured me that they would expedite the tests to discharge me. And they did.
In the evening, a nurse came into the room to inform me that, even if only for that night, I could sleep in a single room so that I could rest. I then apologized for the reaction I had in the morning due to terrible fatigue, but he replied, ‘Madam, you don’t have to apologize for anything, and know, however, that you are the only one who has endured.’
When I was discharged, a nurse thanked me for the help I had given them as well—not continuing to ring the bell, but trying to care for the patient as much as I could—and told me, ‘Do what you can: never change the character you have; always stay that way!’
I wanted to recount this experience precisely because, in my opinion, one fact was glaring: not that I am good—that I was able to experience this circumstance in a different way from the other people who had happened to be in that room before me—but that it is because of the presence of an Other that suffering can be sustained and become livable. It is the recognition that the Mystery is lived within the circumstance that changes it, that changes you first of all: you live the circumstance better, and you help those who, with you, are called to live it better."
Here is freedom in action: not a self stuck in the cog of circumstance, but a self that finds, in recognizing the Mystery in circumstance, the possibility of real freedom. "If man wants to be free from everything around him," Don Giussani said at the 1983 Meeting, "he must be dependent on God. It is dependence on God that is man’s freedom."
We, like this lady, can experience freedom in all circumstances because we have known a free man who taught us to live all circumstances in the only way they do not crush us: as a recognition of the Mystery—that is, as children.[44] He, as we witnessed, lived his life and illness that way and taught us to look at the positivity of the real in any circumstance. It is to him that we will always be grateful. The most beautiful tribute we can offer him in this first Meeting without him is to be witnesses, for all who meet us, that the only possibility of real freedom is the recognition of the Mystery present. Thank you, once again, Fr. Giussani.
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Footnotes
[1] M. de Cervantes, The Fantastic Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha, BUR, Milan 2005, p. 471. "La libertad, Sancho, es uno de los más preciosos dones que a los hombres dieron los cielos; con ella no pueden igualarse los tesoros que encierran la tierra y el mar: por la libertad, así como por la honra, se puede y debe aventurar la vida" (M. de Cervantes, El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha).
[2] J. Ratzinger, Faith, Truth, Tolerance. Christianity and the World’s Religions, Cantagalli, Siena 2003, p. 245.
[3] P. Gilbert, "Freedom and Commitment," in La Civiltà Cattolica, 3505 (1996) 147, p. 22.
[4] See the summary of this path in J. Ratzinger, Faith, Truth, Tolerance. Christianity and the World’s Religions, op. cit., 251-260; P. Gilbert, "Freedom and Commitment," in La Civiltà Cattolica, 3505 (1996) 147, pp. 17-20. See also M. Borghesi, "La aparición de las nociones de tolerancia y libertad religiosa a partir de las guerras de religión y la Ilustración inglesa y francesa," R.C.I. Communio 26 (2004), pp. 38-53; G. del Pozo, "Génesis y desarrollo de la doctrina de la Iglesia sobre la libertad religiosa a partir de la Revolución Francesa," R.C.I. Communio 26 (2004), pp. 54-81.
[5] J. Ratzinger, Faith, Truth, Tolerance. Christianity and the World’s Religions, op. cit., pp. 258-259: "In the dominant mentality… institution, tradition, authority appear in themselves as the opposite pole to freedom. The anarchic characteristic of the desire for freedom is reinforced, because the regulated forms of communal freedom do not satisfy. The great promises of the early modern era have not been fulfilled, but their appeal is undiminished. The democratically ordered form of freedom can no longer be defended today simply by this or that law reform. The issue touches the very foundations. It is a question of what man is and how he can live justly as an individual and in the community."
[6] A modern example of this is J.P. Sartre. J. Ratzinger, Faith, Truth, Tolerance. Christianity and the World’s Religions, op. cit., pp. 259-260: "Sartre sees man’s freedom as his condemnation. … Man has no nature, but is only freedom. He has to live life somewhere, but nevertheless it ends in a vacuum. This freedom without meaning is man’s hell. … Absolutely anarchic freedom as the essential determination of the human being—reveals itself, for the one who tries to live it, not as the supreme exaltation of existence, but as the nullification of life, as absolute emptiness, as the definition of perdition. In the extrapolation of a radical concept of freedom, which for Sartre himself was life experience, it becomes visible that the liberation of truth does not produce pure freedom, but takes it away. Anarchic freedom, radically assumed, does not redeem man, but makes him a failed creature, a meaningless being."
[7] The same as F.M. Dostoevsky, The Demons, Garzanti, Milan 1990, p. 329: "Everything had now become so dull that there was no need to stand on ceremony when it came to amusement, as long as it was something interesting." Confronted with the scene of a young man committing suicide, one of those present comments, "Why had they so often begun to hang and shoot themselves at our place, as if they had torn themselves from the roots, as if they had all personified the ground beneath their feet?" (p. 348).
[8] A. J. Heschel, The Song of Freedom, Qiqajon, Magnano 1999, p. 55: "Man becomes more and more scatterbrained, depreciated, insignificant in his own eyes. Instead, without a sense of the ultimate meaning and the ultimate preciousness of our existence, freedom becomes an empty expression."
[9] "It is true, European man is sick with nihilism," writes John Reale. "Not the total one, which Nietzsche himself wanted to somehow recover, but the one that recognizes no irreversible value, and that masks with a golden patina the anti-values: gain, power, the various ways in which nothingness disguises itself." (G. Reale, quoted in N. Tiliacos, "The Damages of Passive Nihilism," in Il Foglio, March 25, 2004, p. 4.)
[10] That the completed figure of finite freedom is sonship was well seen by Freud, who not surprisingly sets his theory to alternatively solve the problem of the Father.
[11] L. Giussani, Il senso religioso, Rizzoli, Milan 1977, p. 119. See also R. Guardini, Persona e libertà, La Scuola, Brescia 1987, pp. 57-58: "Freedom is not a ‘problem’ at all, but a given. The awareness of being free is not the result of a demonstration, but immediate content of experience."
[12] C. Pavese, Il mestiere di vivere, Einaudi, Turin 1973, p. 341.
[13] C. Pavese, Il mestiere di vivere, op. cit., p. 190.
[14] This is what we ask in the Collect of Week XX of Ordinary Time, to love God "in all things" and "above all things": "O God, who has prepared invisible goods for those who love you, infuse in us the sweetness of your love, so that, loving you in all things and above all things, we may obtain the goods promised by you, which surpass all desire."
[15] G. Leopardi, "Thoughts" LXVIII, in Poems and Prose, Mondadori, Milan 1980, vol. 2, p. 321.
[16] A. del Noce, Letter to Rodolfo Quadrelli, Unpublished 1984.
[17] L. Giussani, The Sense of God and Modern Man, BUR, Milan 1994, p. 19.
[18] Therefore, the Second Vatican Council insisted that the attitude that leads to atheism is never original but secondary (Gaudium et spes 19-20). No man is originally born an atheist; he must become one by eliminating certain factors in his human experience. It is not without his freedom, although it is the Council itself that calibrates very measuredly many other factors that can lead a concrete man not to know how to recognize in his life the reality as a sign that attracts and opens to the Mystery.
[19] Cf. R. Guardini, Persona e libertà, op. cit., p. 101: "I experience myself as free when I feel that I belong to myself; when I feel that in acting I depend on myself, that the action does not pass through me and therefore belongs to another instance, but arises in me, and is therefore mine in that peculiar sense, and in it I am mine." Cf. H. U. von Balthasar, Theodrama. II. The Persons of Drama: Man in God, Jaca Book, Milan 1982, pp. 183-316. This is not the place to demonstrate freedom against determinists. Cf. A. Bausola, Freedom and Responsibility, Vita e Pensiero, Milan 21995. It is enough for us now to say with C. Fabro, The Book of Existence and Wandering Freedom, Piemme 2000, p. 282: "The first existential certainty is freedom." And with Bergson, that "freedom is a fact, and among the facts we observe, there is none that is so clear."
[20] H. Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment, Einaudi, Turin 2004, p. 17: "There exists…"
[21] [Incomplete footnote in original text; no further content provided.]
[22] [Source not provided in original text; assumed to be a philosophical or literary reference.]
[23] [Presumed to be Charles Péguy; exact source not specified in original text.]
[24] [Likely aligns with Catholic theological tradition; no specific source cited.]
[25] [Source not provided in original text; possibly Giussani or a related thinker.]
[26] A. Camus, Caligula, in Theatre, Stories, Essays, Mondadori, Milan 1992.
[27] [Source not provided; possibly Tocqueville or a similar thinker.]
[28] M. Zambrano, Hacia un saber sobre el alma, Alianza Editorial, Madrid 1987.
[29] Cf. Lk 15:11-32.
[30] [Presumed to be Charles Péguy; exact source not specified.]
[31] [Source not provided; likely Giussani or a related reflection.]
[32] L. Giussani, Il senso religioso, op. cit., p. 135.
[33] L. Wittgenstein, Diaries 1936-37, in Movements of the Mind, Adelphi, Milan 1999.
[34] [Presumed poetic source; exact reference not provided.]
[35] [Papal message not fully cited; context suggests a contemporary address.]
[36] William of St. Thierry, Meditative Prayers, Qiqajon, Magnano 1994.
[37] Cf. Gaudium et spes 22.
[38] [Presumed to be Charles Péguy; exact source not specified.]
[39] [Source not provided; likely Giussani or a theological reflection.]
[40] Cf. Jn 17:21.
[41] St. Ambrose, Epistulae, 65, 5.
[42] H. Arendt, On Revolution, Einaudi, Turin 2006, p. 28.
[43] L. Giussani, Interview, [source not fully cited; likely from a CL publication].
[44] Cf. Mt 18:3.
