How the Ultimate Questions Arise

Daniele Nembrini - Good morning, everyone, and welcome back. Today, we welcome Father Julián Carrón, whom we’ll never cease to thank for his contributions. He’s been with us for a few years now in this work on the religious sense. But most of all, we thank him for his unwavering love for the religious sense that resides in everyone’s heart. I welcome him and give him the floor. Today, he’ll introduce us to the tenth chapter of The Religious Sense. We’re excited about this book. Thank you, Fr. Julián. 

 Julián Carron - As we have heard in the songs, the drama of living is something that everyone has in their fibers. And many times this drama is expressed in the normality of life, in the everyday, as the first song says for example. What is this drama? That “one day after another time goes by. The streets always the same, the same houses. One day after another and everything is as before, one step after another, the same life (...). Someone also this evening returns home disappointed slowly. (...) And hope is now a habit [one no longer waits for anything].” It is an expression in which everyone can recognize himself, thus surprising himself in the everyday. 

So, the question is: Are we condemned to this or is there another possibility to live life, to live this daily, “one day after another”? Is it possible to live it differently so that disappointment does not prevail in the end? Or should we simply settle for it?

In the journey we took in addressing The Religious Sense, we could see what we mean by “religious sense.” Religious sense, as the words of this song describe, coincides with that radical engagement of our self with life, with daily life, with the “day to day” that is documented in certain questions. What is the ultimate meaning of existence? Why does everything not end in disappointment. Why is there pain, death? Why is life worth living after all? Or: of what and for what is reality made? 

So, the religious sense matters to us because we care about life, because we care about not losing life by living! Because we are not afraid to look into the face of this daily experience, and see if there is another possibility of living the daily without it ending in disappointment. Therefore, the religious sense coincides with this level of the human, of certain dramatic, unavoidable emotions that one finds upon oneself. And if one, even, sees that “everything” around “conspires to silence us,” to silence this drama, then -- Rilke says -- one is almost ashamed to have this “ineffable hope.” The questions we addressed in chapter five of The Religious Sense can be emptied, as we have seen in later chapters. 

And, when they become emptied and lose this drama, it is not without consequences for life, it is the origin of that disappointment we studied in chapter eight, whereby barrenness prevails: incommunicability with those dearest to us, loss of freedom, even to the point - this is how that chapter concludes - of the loss of the taste for living, as if it were inevitable. If these questions are so decisive for living and their emptying makes everything flat, “one day after another,” then how can we start again when they are lost, when they are emptied? Are we doomed to the fact that disappointment prevails, that the emptying of these questions makes life flat? This is the big question addressed in the chapter we are about to begin. How are these questions reawakened? This will lead us to a concise understanding of what the itinerary of religious meaning is.

Don Giussani - the author of the book - has a clear, sharp perception: that chapter ten of The religious sense is “the keystone” of our way of thinking, of the way in which we want to experience the real, precisely so that life does not become a disappointment.

This urgency is particularly relevant to an observation that has always struck me from a Spanish philosopher, María Zambrano, about our time: “What is in crisis, it seems, is that mysterious nexus that unites our being to reality, something so deep and fundamental that it is our intimate sustenance.” If the relationship with the everyday real is so decisive that it is our sustenance, to the point that, if it is lost, life falls flat, empties out, disappoints, then there is no greater urgency than to rebuild the true relationship with reality. Don't run away from reality to search in dreams -- as the song says -- which, then, “are still dreams” and are unable to respond to the urgency of living... So, let's face it.

How can it happen that life, in whatever situation we find ourselves, can constantly reawaken itself in relationship with reality? How does life reawaken itself with its questions? The answer to this question forces us to identify the structure of man's reaction to reality. That is, there is no need to complicate ourselves with strange thoughts: let us observe life, let us observe how we react in the face of reality! Songs, like the one we heard, say it very simply, like Lady Gaga's Shallow , “Tell me something, girl, are you happy in this world?” Living, not taking a philosophy class, not taking a spiritual exercise class, but from the bowels of living arises this question: but you, are you happy? Or do you need something more? Is there something else you are looking for? Aren't you tired of trying to fill that void that constantly comes up in the experience of living? Do you need more? Or this other song by Billie Eilish, which we used last year: “I used to float, now I just fall. I used to know, but now I'm not sure. What I was created for. What was I made for?” What was I made for? What is the meaning of my being? These are reactions that we surprise in reality. As happened to me last year when, arriving at Grumello for class time, I find a person telling me about an incident that happened in the class I was supposed to enter. It had happened that when the kids didn't feel they were being looked at for the expectation in their hearts, they rebelled. 

So I say to those who had told me about it, “Now let's deal with this, because I'm interested in the boys being able to understand. Why are we interested in addressing the issue of religious meaning? Precisely so that they can understand, through the experience they have, who they are!” I went into the classroom and asked the kids, “What did it reveal about you that you didn't feel looked at, listened to? What does it say about you? That you have a need to be liked, to be valued, to be listened to and not to be invisible, which did not arise to you by stopping to think, but emerged from the experience of living! What does this say about you? Who are you?” 

Then they realized, observing themselves in action, that they have this urgency, just as each of us feels it. Man realizes the factors that constitute his true nature by observing himself in action: it is necessary to observe the human dynamic in the impact with reality. For it is revealed in the impact with reality, living life! It is when one is not looked at, or when he is not satisfied with what he has and asks, “But is this enough for you?”; not when he stops and says, “I have to think about it....” No, it comes to him from living! In fact, we read in this chapter, “An individual who has experienced little impact with reality, because he has had very little effort to live, to accomplish, will have little sense of his own consciousness [the sense of what is the urgency within him, he will not be able to understand himself], he will feel less the energy and vibration of his reason.” So, he will be able to enjoy life less, because when life is flat, dry, nothing really interests, disappointment comes, as we heard in the song. It's not that reality is not there in front of him, but it doesn't amaze him, it doesn't vibrate him! And the whole relationship becomes flat, dry, without meaning.

Imagine what life lived like that is! But what is amazing, when one is attentive to what is happening, is that there is no situation, not even the most dramatic, that cannot be an occasion when life can reawaken the person, as we saw happen this year to the musician, Giovanni Allevi, who, in the face of illness, could have said, “You see, this is confirmation of the total disappointment of living.” Instead, no: “Suddenly, when everything fell apart for me: I lost my job, I lost my hair, I lost my certainties, that's when I found out what hope I had! Because it's as if the illness was not everything, and it was the opportunity to realize the unexpected gifts, which were there in front of me! [but didn't recognize them, didn't see them].” And then he, even in a hospital room, began to recognize that each individual is unique and unrepeatable, to feel all the gratitude for the beauty of things, of creation. He says, “You can't count the sunrises and sunsets I've admired from that hospital room.” And so it was with the recognition of the doctors, the nurses, all those people who cared for him. 

The provocation of reality, instead of being a disappointment, led him to realize everything as a “gift.” It's not that he has to change the reality, it may be the one he lived in the hospital or the daily one I saw yesterday, but, at a certain point, if one looks it in the face, it can make that fullness explode that we see in the testimony of this musician or so many others. But I say, is it necessary to wait for such a dramatic event to happen for our humanity to be reawakened? Or can we educate ourselves to live reality in such a way that it is itself constantly awakening us and not allow everything to become flat? This is the attempt Don Giussani makes in the tenth chapter.

He starts by provoking an imagination, each one trying to make it his own as I explain it: “Imagine,” I used to say to the boys, ”that you come out now from your mother's womb with the consciousness that you have now-which each of us has-and the first thing that you find in front of you, as you are opening your eyes, is Mont Blanc: what would be the very first reaction in front of the real thing that you come across?”

Everyone agreed, “Awe.” One cannot avoid that in front of reality one is seized with astonishment. Then, explaining the chapter, I recounted this episode many times. One day, a Brazilian friend told me that he had been in a mountain resort in northern Italy, in La Thuile, accompanying a group of Brazilians and Mozambicans on a trip to the Col de San Carlo, a place from which they could see Mont Blanc. They were there chatting, as they were walking, and this friend was thinking to himself, “Now, when we get in front of Mont Blanc, from where you can see the view, I'm going to tell them to be quiet so that they can be struck by that spectacle.” They had just arrived, and before he said anything, everyone was speechless, taken aback by that beauty, that spectacle, which affected them so much as when one says, “Eh!” and is speechless, so impressive is that reality.

Then, as if he hadn't seen this, because another group had stayed behind, he thinks again, “Now when the others come, I'll tell them to be quiet too,” but the same thing was repeated, the same reaction. He didn't have to say anything because as soon as they came across that show, everyone was silent, caught up in reality. Imagine if one, opening his eyes in the morning, could feel all the backlash of reality filling him with awe! Just realize, ask yourself, “But if you asked now, how many are here today listening: who was amazed this morning in opening his eyes? Or when they found their loved one, or a child?” And we begin to see that, with the same ingredients, people, things, reality can be discounted. One time, I was explaining these things in Catholic University, and as soon as the first hour was over, a guy comes to the chair and says, “Prof, I don't need to imagine-as you said, ‘If I were born this instant and saw reality...,’ because it happened to me.” “How, it happened to you? You were born now with the consciousness you have now?”
“Yes, because I had a car accident and was in a coma for months. Then I woke up with the consciousness I have now. You are absolutely right! Everything was new, everything was beautiful, everything affected me, nothing was as obvious as before, when I got used to seeing it.” “Why?” “Because the before, having been in a coma, I could no longer take it for granted. But now, listening to it, I realize that for the past few days everything has begun to fade again: already the glow of flowers or leaves or people's faces is beginning to fade. Reality speaks to me less than when I came back to self-awareness after the coma.” 

So I understood something Fr. Giussani says, pertinent to the path we are on in this chapter. He says, “Don't expect a miracle, but a path.” The miracle had happened to this boy, it's as if he could see the answer to the question Nicodemus asked Jesus, “Is it possible to be born again being old? And be amazed as the first time before things?” The boy says, “Yes, it happened to me, but after a while it starts to decay.” And so it is surprising that despite the fact that this can happen at a certain age, with the consciousness one has as an adult, life, which does not discount, shows us our fragility and, at a certain point, things no longer amaze us, everything is taken for granted. When this prevails in everyday life, it is boredom, because reality no longer tells us anything. Therefore, what we are proposing is a journey! Because this decay can only be answered by helping us to walk a path, in which we educate ourselves to look at reality without taking it for granted. That is why Fr. Giussani calls this chapter, “The Itinerary of Religious Sense.” “Itinerary,” so that life may become life constantly! So that it may not be taken for granted! So that it is not all flat! So that it is not all disappointing. One who has been in a coma may be amazed again at reality, or one who is in the hospital can be amazed at the sunset or sunrise, which he may not have been so amazed at before, but, when life has challenged him, the sunsets and sunrises have made him jolt in bed!

And that is a hope whatever the circumstance we are in, there is always that possibility.
We address this chapter to help us not get used to everything. Because if the relationship with reality constitutes our “sustenance”-as Zambrano says-life is filled with life! It happens only if this relationship with reality is so astonishing that it awakens us from our habitual torpor, from our constant failing, causing us to return again and again to that very first feeling we have before the real: amazement. Why? Because we come across something that is “given,” that amazes us, we do not take it for granted. We see it happen when, by whatever circumstances, we are astonished one day by something that was there but we did not see before: we can touch with our own hands what life would be like if we could educate ourselves, according to the desire we have, to have a relationship with all the real that is as true as the first instant! All of life is filled with this fullness, like the day when one stands speechless and amazed before the face of a loved one, or before Mont Blanc, or before the sunrise from a hospital room. It is not an effort, it is simply a relationship with the real that needs to be learned! So a journey needs to be made, which is possible to those who do not want to settle with less than that.
So what does it take to allow oneself to be struck, as when one stands before the beauty of Mont Blanc, and not to reduce, “But we see Mont Blanc every day!”? One can stand in the hospital and see the sunrise through a window, or one can realize the nurse's attention that is not taken for granted, or your child can realize that mom brought him coffee and it is not taken for granted. This is what fills life with fullness, if we educate ourselves to experience the relationship with the real, in every detail, as not being taken for granted. How does this happen? Father Luigi Giussani, in the chapter, relates that one day, giving a lesson, he asked, “But what is evidence?” And a boy, filling him with amazement, replied, “It is the recognition of an inexorable presence, something I come across that is present and amazes me!” Whether it is the face of a loved one, the reality of a sight like Mont Blanc, a sunrise or a sunset in the hospital. And Giussani, after celebrating the boy for the brilliance of his response, adds:
“We when we open our eyes every time see the evidence of reality, but we are not surprised.” He seems to be repeating what the boy said, but adds a word: “Not only the recognition of an inexorable presence: ‘becoming aware’ of an inexorable presence! Realizing this presence!” That is why the difference between everyone in the world waking up this morning is whether they noticed or did not notice. Whether what prevailed, as soon as they woke up, was feeling all the heaviness of the things to be done, without even a moment of astonishment, so then the whole day is determined by this heaviness.

As soon as you wake up! Without even an instant of astonishment, we have already lost it. Because the presence of reality does not arouse in us a cold registration that leaves us indifferent, without even striking us. It is full of an attractiveness, it is a “pregnant wonder” that awakens us! That truly makes us ourselves! This is the origin of religiosity. Religiosity originates in this backlash of reality, which so amazes us that we become aware of something that is “given” by someone else.

But Fr. Giussani's genius is seen when he puts the “spies” in front of us to check whether all this for us is a discourse, with a certain logic, but which basically does not touch us, does not amaze us, or whether we are really having the experience he is talking about. At one point in the chapter, he says, “How do I know that what we are doing is not simply describing the logic of what is happening in the real?” As if one, possessing logic, would think that it happens mechanically. Giussani leaves us all “spies”: “I know whether I am living this path as an experience, whether my self is awakened from the torpor with which it has risen.” Like those friends who were walking distractedly toward Mont Blanc and, when they were confronted with that sight, they awoke from all the torpor of the sometimes empty dialogue between them and were stunned by the presence of the real. First sign.

Second sign: when one is confronted with something he did not expect, he feels awakened, he feels the change happening in himself. Why, what happens in us? A gratitude invades us, because life, without our doing anything, simply noticing what we see, brings us to a level of human intensity that no effort of our own can give us. And this - the third sign - makes us glad. Imagine living the everyday, which so often disappoints, which so often is flat, which on most days is dry, with this possibility! We are interested in taking this seriously for ourselves and offering it to the kids, just for one reason: for the passion, for the appreciation of our lives! Where are we introduced to living reality like this? Where are we helped to relate to reality like this? It's not that reality is not in front of us, but on the vast majority of days it doesn't tell us anything. Instead, we think it can be a possibility within the reach of all those who are not content to lose their lives by living, but who value their lives so much that they do not want to lose them. For this is the fruit--fourth sign of what happens if one has an experience--of becoming self-aware: “But I, I have never been so myself as I am now!” So, what makes the man man, more and more self-aware, is this coming across the reality -- not taken for granted, not taken for granted -- that fills one with awe, because it is about one's own person! It is not a cold recording. In what does one see that I am experiencing the

real? If I feel within myself this awakening from the torpor in which I live, if I am grateful and glad and become truly aware of myself. If I-as we heard in the last song-go deep within myself and become aware of my “self” and ask myself, “Where do I spring from? Where does this being of mine spring from?” Like seeing a stream that is rising at this instant from the spring. If the trickle became aware of itself, it would think, “I am a trickle arising from a spring.” Or the tree that would become aware of its roots. If I go all the way down to the bottom of me, I cannot help but recognize that I am made by an Other, that I am “You-who-makes-me.” As we heard in the song, “When I realize that you are, I am reborn like time from memory.” This year, in making this journey to the students at Catholic University, I was confronted with a couple: the girl was a student, he was the boyfriend she had invited to class. Having them in front of me, I tried to empathize with them, so that they could better understand, on the strength of what was going on in their emotional relationship, what I was trying to explain. That boy and girl could hear, “I am you-who-does-me,” not as a “you” that one invents, imagines or self-convinces is there. Both could understand well that the experience of wholeness they were experiencing was only possible because the other's “you” was awakening it.

Perhaps you all know the song Vorrei by Guccini, which says this in a succinct and spectacular way, “Why I am not when you are not there.” The “you” of the other is decisive for being myself. And these two boys, who were there listening to the lecture, could not think of a “you” in the abstract, no: that “you” was the other in front of them! Me without the “you,” without you, I could not experience me as I am experiencing me, with the fullness, with the superabundance that is upon me! What is the prevailing sign of this “you” that makes me me? When it is not there, “I remain alone with my own thoughts,” which is what happens to us the vast majority of the time. And so, if one does not realize-because one already takes this for granted: that you are there! -, let us imagine that, over time, he gets up in the morning, sees his wife and takes her for granted, and no longer notices that “I am not when you are not there”: what will have to happen to him for what he perceived in the past to happen again? Only if, going through all the distractions, he realizes that it is not taken for granted. I have often given this example, to help us understand: how often can it happen to married people who, because of a quarrel, because of a difficulty, because of a moment of darkness between them, find themselves there close together, in the house, next to each other, but feeling the other a thousand miles away? If all of a sudden, when you are so far apart, the other or the other has a heart attack, what do you do? You fly. It wakes you up from your stupor: by the fact that you may lose your loved one, whom you take for granted, you wake up! And you immediately call the ambulance, you agitate not to lose her. That's why I say, friends, it's either heart attack or education. Do we have to wait for the heart attack to wake us up from sleep, or can we educate ourselves to see the other with this look? If one goes to the bottom of himself, this “you” that generates him is the one who can fill life with his presence, because “I am not when you are not there.” 

But in order to be able to say this, one must realize that the other is generating him now to this experience of living. When I was explaining this to my students at the beginning of my teaching, one time a boy, while we were standing in the self-service line at the school cafeteria, said to me, “But are you, prof, sure of what you are saying about this ‘you,’ about God?” [as if I were saying something that upset him]. Is this real?” I replied, “Yes, because I start from reality, not from God. And reality is self-evident even for you! But you take it for granted.”

The starting point, then, is always reality, because reality provokes reason, sets it in motion: it is the spectacle of a child who, when confronted with a toy, cannot help but awaken in him the desire to grasp all the factors in order to use it. Therefore, one cannot experience reality by taking it for granted, without recognizing the “You” who makes it, who is making me now. It is the consciousness of a grown man, who does not take things for granted, who recognizes, notices Who is making us now. Imagine if one woke up every morning with this awareness, one would enjoy life as one enjoys the beloved presence! 

Prayer is not so much what we have in our heads, but it is recognizing this presence that is the fruit of a journey of awareness of reality and self, which leads to recognizing the Other-with a capital letter-who is doing me now. Like a voice, the voice is the echo of an intimate vibration; like the spring fowl becoming aware of the source or the flower becoming aware of the root. See that this,” says Giussani, ”is what lays the groundwork for the ultimate balance of life. Because, when it is missing, we are alone with our own thoughts, worries prevail.

How do you know if this “You” for you is real? It is real if it prevails over all thoughts! If it prevails over worries! Otherwise we are condemned to live invaded by worries and there is no peace. We all know what that means, because not anything gets us out of this situation. But when one lives with this awareness it happens like the child who enters a dark room and gets scared: the reaction is normal, but if mother takes him by the hand and enters the room with him, the child can face any darkness. If one realizes this presence that is at the origin of self, he is never alone, he has conquered loneliness forever. Then he can enter any darkness of existence, in the hospital or in the moment of loneliness, with the profound tranquility of a child taken by the hand of his mother, with the possibility that everything can be filled with this gladness! “There is no healing system that can achieve this except by mutilating something of the human.”

Each person can decide if he or she cares.

Having reached this point, Giussani addresses the decisive question, “What is the formula of the itinerary to the ultimate sense of reality? [To the sense of the ultimate taste of living?] Living the real!” It is not that we have to do who knows what mental artifice: it is to come across the real, to allow ourselves to be provoked by it and to go along with the dynamic it puts into motto without blocking it! To experience the real in its intensity, in its depth, without standing on the threshold taking it for granted. Because, if I do not notice the other as “given,” as a gift, not taken for granted, the other does not tell me anything, I get used to it. So, what makes a man truly religious? Not devout, not pious, but a man! What makes a man a man! With a capacity for self-fulfillment that no one can dream of? Only if he lives intensely the real. It can be in a hospital room or in front of Mont Blanc, and it is in front of that presence that fills life with fullness. He who remains on the threshold, suffocates. 

So when I suffocate, it is because I have remained on the threshold. I suffocate and the other person stews me; even with the person who has amazed me to the point of marrying him or her, if I get used to it, everything becomes flat and suffocates me. Each person is faced with this possibility. If we perceive this itinerary to be adequate to the desire for life that we have, we can really accompany ourselves, and thus accompany the young people who are trying to live life, to introduce themselves in this way. And we can only introduce them if we have experienced this itinerary ourselves.

I was amazed to read, this summer, a few lines from one of the greatest theologians of the last century, Hans Urs Von Balthasar, who says, “We think that life lives by itself, it is taken for granted. No one listens, not even for a second, to the beating of his heart. Nor does he see the hours and hours it gives him.” Allevi's spectacle is that he perceived the “gift” of living and this changed his being in the hospital! How it can change our living in the real: being in the office, almost like a hospital room, where one is suffocating, or being the opportunity to live with that breath. Because, if you were fully aware of what you are, “you would be living solely by this gift that is constantly coming to you. Are you looking for proof that this is so? You are the proof, which an Other is doing to you now! We don't have to look for it elsewhere. 

We are the proof of One who is loving us to the point of giving us life now: “I loved you with an everlasting love, and I took pity on your nothingness” by giving you life! That is why we will not be able to live with this intensity, to bear ourselves, if we do not educate ourselves to the possibility, not of living outside the real, but of living the real in its truth! Without stopping at the appearance, without standing on the threshold, but recognizing to the origin the “you,” that presence that makes life life. And this is work to be done. Because, as we see, only those who do it, only those who agree to walk this path and educate themselves to this gaze, will be able to enjoy every moment with this fullness. If not, he will have to settle for disappointment. To each of us, the answer to this challenge. Thank you.
This is a translated and edited transcription by Epochal Change of the presentation held by Father Huliàn Cahrrón on August 29, 2024, in Calcio, Italy, presenting Chapter 10, The Religious Sense by Fr. Luigi Giussani.

The article was produced with AI narration and has yet to be revised by the author.
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