inside america

Faith Is Coming to
Seek Out Man Again
WHAT PREVENTS US FROM REDUCING THE LENT AND EASTER SEASONS TO FOLKLORIC REMEMBRANCES OF THE PAST, TO RELIGIOUS FORMS OF SECULAR “VACATION” TIMES? ACKNOWLEDGING, IN CHRIST, A TOTALLY NEW REALITY, WHICH COMPLETELY FULFILLS THAT THIRST FOR INFINITYTHAT DEFINES ALL HUMAN BEINGS.

by lorenzo albacete

“An educated person, a person familiar with and appreciative of the intellectual, scientific, and technological achievements of Western civilization–can such a man or woman believe, really believe, in the divinity of Jesus Christ, the Son of God”?
This paraphrase of Dostoyevsky (from The Devils) came to mind as I was preparing for the seasons of Lent and Easter. What meaning can Lent and Easter have for the kind of person in Dostoyevsky’s challenge?
In our Christmas 2010 poster, Cardinal Ratzinger asks the same question. In his words, “Why does faith still have any chance at all?”  This is his answer: faith is still possible because “it corresponds to the nature of man.” That is, faith is “natural” to man.
But, is all this talk about what is natural itself meaningful today? Didn’t Cardinal Ratzinger himself say that the classical view of nature has “capsized nowadays”? Today, science claims that “nature as such is not rational, even if there is rational behavior in nature” (cf., The Dialectics of Secularization, by J. Ratzinger and Jurgen Habermas). How can we say that faith corresponds to the nature of man?
The answer lies in looking at modern life in terms of experience, rather than in abstract philosophical and theological terms. (Of course, these remain important and useful in the search for precise expressions of the experience.) Man’s defining original experience is, in Ratzinger’s words, an “inextinguishable aspiration full of nostalgia, for an infinite.” It is this that makes us human, and “none of the attempted answers will do, only the God who Himself became finite in order to tear up our finitude… only He corresponds to the question of our being.” This “impossible correspondence” (L. Giussani) is an experience of absolute newness when the incarnate God reveals Himself in our lives here and now.  But how to travel the path today from the original “inextinguishable aspiration full of nostalgia” (“Man is greater than man,” said Pascal) to the reasonable recognition of the Presence that fulfills it, called faith?
To guide us in the proper path or itinerary of faith is the mission of the Church, and its Liturgy embodies this educative journey of our hearts. Lent and Easter are privileged liturgical seasons meant to educate our hearts and minds.
Lent and Easter allow us to travel along a path created by the “history of salvation.” This history is experienced by the Church as the fulfillment in Christ of the history of Israel as the people of God.
We can divide this history into five stages: creation and fall of man, call to Abraham and creation of a people, Exodus and the Covenant, King David, and the Prophets. All of these are “Old Testament” events considered from the experience of salvation in Christ. Each event represents a step along the path to Christ, events that educate our minds and hearts to recognize Him when He becomes present.
Three things are of crucial importance.
First, it is the experience of the reality of Christ that allows us to understand the Hebrew Scriptures as we do.
Second, this experience of the reality of Christ is not the “logically necessary” fulfillment of the Old Testament. The reality of Christ is a totally new and unimaginable reality.
Still (third point), this reality corresponds totally to the destiny for which man was created, the fulfillment of that original thirst for infinity that defines and unites us all as human beings.
In my opinion, it is these three points that our celebration of Lent must emphasize in order to say something meaningful and attractive to the man or woman in the quote from Dostoyevsky. Without this emphasis, the observances of Lent and Easter become a folkloric remembrances of the past, religious forms of the secular “vacation” time, and “meditation programs” so popular today, or, sooner or later, something totally meaningless.
Emphasizing these three points will lead to Cardinal Ratzinger’s response to the question about the possibility of faith in our world today. “That is why,” he says, “Christian faith will come to seek out man again.”