New Beginning

BY LORENZO ALBACETE

Culture blinded by ideology “hates the father,” as Fr Giussani says in his latest book (QuasiTischreden, not yet available in English).

“Father” means origin. In this case “mother” would be equivalent. Ideology hates fatherhood and motherhood, paternity and maternity. At best, it can only deal with a generic “parenthood.”

The reason why those blinded by ideology hate fatherhood and motherhood is because ideology cannot deal with origins. An origin is the beginning of what did not exist before, even in the imagination. The experience of “origin” is the experience of what is unforeseen, unexpected. Ideologies that influence our culture seek to erase all traces of fatherhood and motherhood, all memory of a real origin. The arguments on behalf of cloning and “therapeutic” experimentation with embryos show this. These arguments are very powerful because they appeal to our expectation of improvements in health care in a future where health is more and more assured. The issue becomes framed in terms of expecting versus desire, and we cannot bear desiring what must be received as a total gift, as a grace. That is why fatherhood and motherhood are eliminated from the argument, and the unique identity of the embryo disappears.

An origin is an event. Ideology hates the event. An event always confronts us with something “beyond” our explanations for it. It always sets us before a presence that is “more” than what fits our preconceptions. It sets us before something new. The event of September 11th, for example, confronted us with a hatred that went beyond what politics, economics, or cultural clashes could explain. Those not blinded by ideology experienced it this way. They still do. Those blinded by ideology immediately sought refuge in explanations and logical arguments.

Ideologies predict the future, but it is only a future that comes necessarily from the past, not a truly new beginning, a new origin. We can imagine a future, but we
cannot imagine what comes from beyond our efforts, what is always “more.” For that, we can only wait. As Father Giussani says, “to expect what we imagine requires patience; to wait for what we cannot imagine requires desire.”

Advent is the season of desire. It points us to Christmas. Christmas is the appearance of the new, of the unimaginably “more.” Christmas is the revelation of the Eternal Father, the Eternal Origin. The Incarnate Son, born on Christmas Day, is the “revelation of the Father and of his love” (Gaudium et Spes, 22). The Eternal Son made flesh bears the imprint of the Origin. But because they cannot bear origins, ideologies cannot grasp the mystery of Christmas.

Without an identity grounded in a true origin, the “I” is mortally weakened, wounded. It can no longer defend itself from the power of those with the resources to build a future according to their will to power. It is not “God” that is dead in such a world. It is the “Father” from whom all origins (all paternity and maternity) proceed that disappears.

As the revelation of the Father and of his love, Christmas, the Incarnation and our share in the Son’s sonship, is the Event that redeems the human “I,” the human reality.
What happened at Christmas is what allows us for the first time to say, “Abba, Father, through the motherhood of the Church, the motherhood of Mary, Mother of the Son.” Thus all ideology is destroyed, and we are set free to be free.

The Christmas liturgy exclaims, Beata viscera Mariae Virginis quae portaverunt aeterni Patris Filium (Blessed the womb of the Virgin Mary, that bore the Son of the Eternal Father). And we pray, “Come Holy Spirit! Come through Mary!”