Who will satisfy man's desire?
Translated from
Nov. 13, 2012
A few days ago, Prof. Damian Bacich of San Jose State Unviersity (California) acknowledged on these pages that "Obama continuing as president presupposes a challenge to the Catholic Church", but he adds right away that the challenge will not be negative if it serves to help the Church mature her presence in the public square.
He pointed out that it now falls on the authorities running the various and many Catholic health care and educational institutions to "find creative solutions and bear intelligent witness of the faith to a society that no longer accepts faith as an oobvious prerequisite for the life we live in common".
The truth is that Bacich's words also apply to Spain which has just convalidated same-sex marriage, and to most of the countries around us who have an ancient Christian tradition and are losing it.
Today's laws no longer express the culture born from centuries of Christian tradition, nor do they recognize natural law, and sometimes, they do not even protect that minimum space that means freedom for everyone, including Catholics.
Hostility is growing in the mass media, and the temptation of thinking ourselves as a citadel besieged has taken hold, not without reason, among many Catholics. How true it is that 50 years after the Second Vatican Council opened, the spiritual desert has very much advanced in the Church!
Well, we could choose to indulge in infinite lamentation united with acid and sharp-tongued dialectic, and consequently dig ourselves into the trenches for a long time, or engage in a new mission that accepts without reservations that faith - and its ethico-cultural consequences - is no longer an obvious presupposition in the common life of mankind. I would dare to say that such a premise is the basis of all of Benedict XVI's preaching.
The events that Bacich refers to took place even as the Pope was giving a memorable catechesis on faith and desire. Let us start by saying that the question of desire has been an inflammable subject and difficultly manageable for teachers, catechists and preachers.
Of course, no one would reject the best patristic and medieval tradition that says the desire for God is inscribed in man's heart, as the Catechism tells us. But the word still remains rather inconvenient (or is it?) - it lends itself to several meanings, it is used in contexts that are not 'Christian-friendly', and above all, it exposes us to great dangers if we do not subject it to strict control.
And why not say it - it is almost better to follow some other path, more than one if need be. That was how it was in many times and places throughout the Church's history. Without rejecting it as a point of departure, our consideration of it has shaded off into its educational value... Just in case.
One impressive thing about Benedict XVI is that at no time is he at risk of burning his tongue with his own words. Indeed, he manages [better yet, manipulates] words with the mastery of great familiarity that he is able to create a symphony that we can only follow, simply because we recognize ourselves in his words unless we are self-defensive.
He starts by acknowledging - impossible to be more realistic than he is - that "many of our contemporaries might object that they absolutely do not feel any desire for God. He no Longer is the awaited one, the desired one, but at best, a reality which leaves them indifferent".
But he goes on to say that basically, "what we have called 'a desire for God' has not completely disappeared and continues to manifest itself in many ways in the heart of today's man."
"Human desire", the Pope continued, "always tends towards a certain concrete good, often not spiritual at all, but nonetheless, man faces the question of what is truly 'good', something that is distinct from himself, that he cannot construct, but that he is called on to acknowledge. Who can truly satisfy man's desire?"
Of course, desire can lead into tortuous byways, it can seek a response in mortal labyrinths, it can transform itself into a maddening spiral. Yes, but without desire, man simply does not exist, as our own poet Machado has said.
It would be absurd if the risk of living kept us all at home; it would be tragic if the labyrinths of life would lead us to deny its original impulse, that which made [the Italian poet [Eugenio] Montale write: "Everything has been written far beyond us".
Every desire that arises in the human heart is an echo of that fundamental desire that can never be fully satisfied, Benedict XVI pointed out, and that is why the Christian should never fear desire - for friendship, for beauty, for creation, for love.
The task of the educator is to transform the initial ecstasy into a pilgrimage, into an emergence of the I enclosed in itself towards its liberation by delivering itself. Not in order that desire be flattened out and loses its impulse, but to protect its deeper truth, to project it like a beam of light towards its true fulfillment.
The drama of the present does not consist in the vivacity of desires but in their brutal reduction and manipulation, and in the false responses that they elicit.
All this seems to me of vital importance for the new evangelization, if it is to be more than a slogan. Because our task as Christians is not to police desire but to be witnesses to the Only One who can satisfy desire.
That is why the Pope keeps saying, "Man knows well what does not satisfy him, but he cannot imagine or define what would make him experience the happiness for which he carries nostalgia in his heart... He is searching for the Absolute, even if he is a searcher who makes small and uncertain steps... but already, the experience of desire, of the restless heart, as St. Augustine called it, attests that man is, deep down, a beggar for God".
Benedict does not gloss over the fact that everyone - believers and non-believers - needs to follow a path of purification and 'healing' of desire. But he immediately warns that "it is not about suffocating the desire that exists in man's heart but to liberate it so that it can reach its genuine height".
The Pope opens a window of fresh air for parents, educators and priests, and I would even say that, without the recourse he describes, it would be difficult to achieve an authentically mature faith, faith such as that which led Peter to say, "And where would we go? Only you have the words of eternal life!"
And if we had any remaining doubts, the Pope concludes the symphony by inviting us to make this pilgrimage and to feel "that we are brothers to all men, travelling companions, even of those who do not believe, of those who are searching, of those who have stopped questioning themselves sincerely about the dynamism of their own desire for truth and goodness".
I don't see better equipment nor a better compass for these times of inclemency that we are going through on both sides of the Atlantic. Our calling is not to hold the Maginot Line, but to undertake ideally the Way of St. James, a pilgrimage in which we will meet up with bandits and farmers, heroes and brigands, out in the open, with each one called to measure his desire against fellow Christians who live and build.