inside america

When a Hurricane reminds us what our heart is made for
In the tropical season, the biggest threat comes from the sea that, either agitated or calm, carries an inexorable meaning: a huge aspiration for the Infinite. Just so is the human heart, in whatever vicissitudes of life…

by lorenzo albacete

I write this column at the height of the hurricane and tropical storm season. One tropical wave after another comes out of Africa and lines up along what is called “Hurricane Alley,” moving west toward the Caribbean islands, and then turning north–northeast along the East Coast of the United States. The scientists cannot tell us with certainty whether the storm will actually brush the East Coast, or whether it will pass by sufficiently to the east to minimize the danger to the millions who live along the coast. In both cases, however, the biggest threat comes from the sea. For a reason completely unrelated to the threat of the storms, I have been reading what Msgr. Giussani wrote about the sea in a letter to his life-long friend Fr. Angelo Majo, written on September 24, 1946, when he was just short of his 24th birthday, and just one year and four months after being ordained a priest. At that time, Fr. Giussani was at the seashore, seeking to recover from a serious illness. (This letter was part of a series of letters to Majo written from November 1944 to February 1997, published by Majo in 1997 in the book Lettere di Fede e di Amicizia ad Angelo Majo. To my knowledge, there is no approved English translation of the book. What follows depends on my own translation. The letters from Majo to Giussani are not published in the book.) 
Fr. Giussani compares his friend’s soul or self to the sea: immense and arcane, which can always be heard murmuring a mysterious and profound thought (or truth) that you can understand, but cannot repeat to yourself in words that are comprehensible and precise; this sea which at times is still and you can barely hear it sighing on the shore–and it seems as if it’s dreaming–and after a few hours it’s all turbulent and breathless and passionate and you don’t know how. But either calm or agitated, silent or irate, the sea has, every day and in every instant, a basic meaning, unique and inexorable, which is its very greatness: the overwhelming feeling of a huge aspiration for the Infinite, to the Infinite Mystery. According to Fr. Gius, his friend’s heart is like the sea, in the painful or serene vicissitudes… At all times there is a voice, a passion, an agony, at the base of all of this, and it is the voice, the passion, and the longing for Him, the supreme Happiness, Beauty, and Goodness which created our father’s and mother’s hearts as ephemeral specimens of Him. As a result, the experiences of life, pleasant or not, cannot but draw from our hearts this overwhelming need. This is particularly so of the painful experiences, especially the hardest ones, and mostly the uttermost painful ones, and it is for this reason that they are the greatest blessings.
When I read these lines a few years ago, I underlined them as very moving, but the tragedy is that I stopped at admiring their inspirational beauty. I did not allow them to move my heart beyond the inspirational consolations. Now, watching all week the news about the hurricane threat, my heart began to cry out for the One who alone can calm the sea that is my soul, that is in fact man’s soul, man’s heart. 
I have been reading the testimony of a friend of mine about the year she spent here in New York City, thinking about her judgment that the American Christians, including Catholics, have accepted the diminishment of their heart’s desire as the price for peace and harmony and personal progress in this society with such diversity of faiths and religious ideas. In this context, I went back to Fr. Giussani’s words about the human heart and the image of the sea. As a result, I am confident that in this society too the heart of man will prevail over the powers that seek to diminish its cry for the Infinite Mystery. It is only along this path that Christ can be found, and the walls of the prison of Peguy’s society “after Christ without Christ” will be broken.