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Desire Is an Event, not the Premise for Misery

A consequence of original sin is the reduction of desire and taste until they die of anorexia. Christ has come in as “movement”–He mobilized everything. A psychoanalyst speaks

edited by Maurizio Crippa

“Centuries ago, Christians observed: original sin is a culpa, but a felix one. It provided the occasion for the Son to become incarnate, to become a companion. They demonstrated that they had a head; instead of reasoning in terms of a decline, stewing in their guilt, they did what an economist aspires to do: reverse the destiny of an economic crisis.”
On a rainy, but not gloomy, Saturday afternoon in Milan, we discussed with Giacomo Contri words like desire, sin, and happiness, that recently resonated through the CL Fraternity Retreat and will resonate again at the Meeting in Rimini: “Is there a man who desires life…?”

Where would you like to start?
From Christianity’s unmistakable trademark: God decided to “reason on the upside.” He distinguished between sin and guilt, forgiving but not condoning. And the solution was the incarnation. This was a new, unprecedented, unknown, undreamt-of solution; it had never occurred to anybody. It was so new that it was not a solution only for us, but also for Him: so much so that He decided to rise again as a man. Therefore, it is not a pedagogical operation–albeit a generous one–that He then kept to Himself like this, a man, satisfied like this. It suited us because it suited Him. I call the new regime that came into the world this way the “regime of the appointment.” Jesus means appointment, even consultability, since He made His thought and His Father’s thought known. I repeat: it had never occurred to anybody to ask Him to come as a man. This is the “New” Testament. God acted in a supplementary way–He posited more than our intellect was capable of thinking. Supplement means richness, and this overturns the current banal ideas of desire as a hole and of happiness and satisfaction as something that fills this hole. In the encyclical Dives in misericordia, the accent is on dives, rich; even the Muslims speak of pure mercy. God is not a ruler who fills the hole (panem) with at the most a sadist-ludic treat (circenses). He distinguishes Himself from the Emperor.
We have a sickly idea of desire: something is missing. God did not think of it or posit it in this way.

I like the term “sickly.” This is precisely it: God posited a supplement (even for Himself), not a complement that fills the hole. And, I insist, He supplemented even Himself by making Himself man, and He liked Himself this way (resurrection). He saved the economy by launching it again, not by stopping up leaks, and He did it by unthinkable means–by making Himself a factor of the economy, since He remained Man. This has nothing to do with empty stomachs, material or spiritual. We understand very little, because between us and God it is like between men and women: we are pitiful. Here’s an example. Someone happens to phone and say, “Let’s get together this evening.” What is he asking? Not to fulfill a desire he has, but to make him feel a desire he doesn’t have. He was sitting there feeling depressed, without any ideas or desires, and he asks someone else to enliven him, to put him back in motion. If “revolution” means anything, it means this. Khrushchev was a counter-revolutionary when he said that Communism is “goulash for all,” the hole filled up, not a relaunch, a new beginning. Let’s take the concept of aperitif. Aperitif means that I am seeking an appetite. This is something we lack tremendously. Desire is an event, not a premise for misery. And it is even more an event if it is the wish for something that I earlier did not wish or even think about. In my opinion, prayer is an aperitif: a way of producing a taste. Would that we conceived of education as an aperitif! Usually it is an oxidant.

That taste that we had lost, or original sin…
The consequence of original sin is the reduction of desire and taste. First Adam and Eve liked each other and gratified each other without objections; then they were ashamed of each other (“naked”), that is, the objections began. They had less desire. This has made us anorexic: we have no desire, for food or anything else. Christ came in as a principle of mobilization. We speak of “Movement,” but this makes sense only if it means movement. The idea that original sin produced death is simply correct; death is “all still.” So what did God do? He remobilized everything. In historical terms, we say “Church,” but the concept is that of movement. We were sitting still and He put us back in motion! The expression “the City of God” has the same value: movement in accordance with every factor and possibility.

In the common mentality, instead, “being religious” is understood as not taking an interest in reality, “sitting still.”
Buddha was a genius. I do not agree with anything, but he was a genius. He understood and said: To desire is to move, and I do not want movement. And “Nirvana” is the end of movement (of the body, of the city). “Our God” is movement. He Himself moved, and has not finished (“resurrection”). There He is, the un-finite.