Rehabilitation of the Religious Sense

01-02-2007 - Traces, n. 2

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Rehabilitation
of the Religious Sense
From the very beginning, Lent confronts us with the truth of our radical dependence on the Mystery that is the source of our existence, not to depress us, but to launch us on the journey that will allow us to recognize the revelation that “everything is grace”

By Lorenzo Albacete

Recently, I had the opportunity to read the text from which Fr. Giussani said he took the term “the religious sense” to describe our need for the infinite Mystery at the origin of our existence. The term appeared in a Pastoral Letter written in 1957 by the Archbishop of Milan, Giovanni Montini–who later became Pope Paul VI. He defined the religious sense as a natural attitude of the human being which allows us to perceive our relation with divinity. This attitude or orientation is an “innate” aspiration or appetite, submitted to the rule of reason but instinctively oriented to God, as if guided by a superior power. Montini wrote in his letter that this “religious sense” is “like man’s opening to God, the inclination of man toward his beginning and his ultimate destiny.” It is the natural posture of the soul, the defining orientation of the creature as a human being, the “synthesis of the spirit.”
When this “religious sense” hears the Word of God, it recognizes it and brings about the experience of correspondence with what we call “the heart,” so that the divine Word is not received only passively, but as something that “warms” this source of our life and makes of our faith a living reality that identifies us, and not a mere formalism. According to Montini, and Fr. Giussani, our greatest need today is a “rehabilitation” of this religious sense. Without it, Christian life is destroyed by a crippling dualism that empties faith of its power.
It is not surprising that Montini wrote his Pastoral Letter for the season of Lent. The prayers, almsgiving, and sacrifices associated with Lent are meant to help us rehabilitate our religious sense by an education of our desires that will allow us to recognize those desires that constitute the human heart’s need for God. This education prepares the heart for the encounter with the Risen Christ at Easter. Through them, the Church community accompanies the catechumens on their journey to Baptism.
From the very beginning, Lent confronts us with the truth of our radical dependence on the Mystery that is the source of our existence (“Remember, man, that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”), not to depress us, but to launch us on the journey that will enable us to recognize the revelation that “everything is grace,” because the Mystery sustaining our existence is a God that is Love.
That is why Pope Benedict XVI has urged us not to celebrate Lent with an “old” spirit, as a burdensome and heavy duty, but to do it with a “new” spirit of the one “who has encountered in Jesus and His paschal mystery the meaning of life and who now experiences that everything must refer to Him.”