MEETING PREVIEW

The Word that Doesn't Tremble
The neuropsychiatrist Eugenio Borgna, who will speak at the closing session of the Meeting, explains why there is no life without the certainty by which reason and heart are allied.

BY PAOLA BERGAMINI

In 1983, he first participated in the Meeting, and his most recent attendance was two years ago. Eugenio Borgna, emeritus head of Psychiatry at the Maggiore Hospital in Novara, a guest dear to the Rimini public, will join Fr. Aldo Trento this year in the concluding session to present Fr. Giussani's book, What We Hold Dearest. In 1988, he participated in the summer "Équipe" (international meeting of those responsible for CL) described in the book. A friend reminded me of a sentence of his there: "Madness is like bleeding of the heart, that is, affective life, experience." Giussani, the next day, commented, "We're all mad." We wanted to talk with him about the title of this 2011 edition of the Meeting. In the dialogue, every noun, every adjective was filled with meaning, deep relationships, bound to the human soul, to daily experience, revealing sometimes forgotten features of the infinite. True reason strives; it isn't appeased. Right off the bat, his first reflection caught me off guard: "This title amazed me, in the sense that I embraced it with wonder in my heart." Here we are. No abstract reasoning. But what does it mean? "It seems to me that it grasps the conditio sine qua non of every life, the search for the infinite that is in each of us. But even before, it grasps the kernel of the fragility, the tenuousness of human certainties that end up being transformed by time. The era in which we live is marked by the apparent triumphs of mathematical, physical, and neuroscientific certainties, all "truths" that find within themselves their own possible contestation because in any case they are relative to the human condition that is fragile, ephemeral. It's necessary to look at a fixed point that is in each of us and that points beyond: our heart."

RETURN TO THAT ORIGIN. "The mysterious journey that brings us to discover the thirst for the absolute that is in us is the premise for seeing where this fixed point found its evidence, its certainty in history–the Gospel we experience through Christian faith, hope, and charity. The power of recognizing in each of us the thirst for the infinite brings us to grasp the meaning of life only in that word that does not tremble, that is not subject to changes and that makes daily life, even the most painful, a wellspring of hope. It is the experience of the Mystery that, like a spark, is reflected in life, transforming it, freeing it from banality, idleness." It is "the immense certainty" we need. "Immense seems to me an extraordinary term. 'Great,' 'dazzling,' even 'boundless' would not have given the connotation that, shifting the axis of discourse to the heart, manages to recover the true value of reason, no longer closed within the tight confines of the visible, but thrown wide open to transcendence." He pauses a moment. "Fr. Giussani transmitted to us, with force and rigor, that only when reason and heart are allied can we have a gaze that goes beyond the temporary, the visible. In him, it was very clear. But all of us are called to grasp in every fact, in every discovery, the meaning and the light of the Event that changed once and for all every human circumstance. Even if our eyes are bathed in tears from pain, we can see and grasp this immensity of existence."
A final question, on the book: "What struck you?" "It's very beautiful. Without the things I read I wouldn't have been able to answer your questions. I continually listen to Fr. Giussani."