The Cataclysm, Man, and the Need for
God
Giancarlo Cesana - “Corriere
della Sera,” January
7th, 2005
Dear
Editor,
Permit me to intervene, in response to the provoking juxtaposition
(see Corriere della Sera, Jan. 3) of Professor Severino’s
comment on the Pope’s affirmation (and invocation!)
in the face of the “fearful cataclysm” of Southeast
Asia, “God never abandons us.”
The catastrophes that smash blindly against the life of men,
as if they were ants or mice, re-propose in exceptional terms
the question, which is daily, about destiny. In fact, currently
in the world every year 56 million people die, over 150 thousand
a day, and only a small minority does so after a long life
and an appropriately assisted illness in the midst of loving
faces. Even the latter condition, which we perceive as normal,
does not eliminate the laceration of death, which is truly
a personal, as well as collective, tsunami. Fr Giussani once
told about a philosophy professor at Berchet High School,
an atheist, who at the end of the funeral for colleague,
a Greek professor, who had died in the classroom in the midst
of teaching, said, “Ah, yes, death is the origin of
all philosophy!” Fr Giussani commented that this problem
is the origin of every true system of thought, and no humanity
exists that is not qualified by this dramatic wound. Notwithstanding
the apparent indifference of the few who take vacation in
the midst of the dead, who would not want—to put it
lightly—a clarification on the tsunamis that strike
our existence? The first clarification is not realized in
understanding, as much as in recognizing someone who can
respond. A little child is trustful about life not because
he has understood it, but because he knows that his father
and mother will introduce him to it. In the face of the infinite
mystery that dominates us, we are eternal children who need
a hand to guide us. The meaning of things—for us, who
have not created them, nor who have made ourselves—cannot
be demonstrated in an impossible, cold, logical concatenation
of everything, but in the warmth of a relationship that supports
us for the time necessary for its unveiling, which—in
any case—at least in this life, will never be total.
A destiny that is simply fate does not take away tragedy:
it sharpens it, because it makes the pain not only necessary,
but also irredeemable. This is what the Gospel verse refers
to, “Unless you repent, you will all perish as they
did.” That is, you will die without meaning. The problem
of the meaning of death is the same as that of birth, and
of all of life. It is the problem of whether there is a ‘you’ to
cling to, to be saved by, in the face of the catastrophes
that crash down on us, and those, just as dreadful, that
we ourselves produce. There is in fact a kind of criminal
association between the violence of nature and the maliciousness
of man, who thinks he can manage alone. Christ proposes himself
as the ‘you’ to whom man can cling, the response
of a God who is more than a philosopher, who does not define
the human condition, its contradiction and its suffering,
but has pity on it and shares it, defeating death with an
incommensurably greater act of love. It is toward this act
of love that all the initiatives of solidarity and dedication
strive, all these efforts that—precisely in the midst
of tragedy that seems to flood everything—emerge as
a survival instinct that seeks to become an indomitable hope.
If an affirmation can be drawn from the cataclysm that has
struck us, it is that the world of nature and of men—of
individuals and of peoples—is not sufficient unto itself.
It needs a God who never abandons us, a Presence who is friend,
who is strong, who rescues us in life when it seems lost.
This for me is the experience of faith, which does not abolish
evil, but does, however, attack its aspect of despair.
Thank you.
Giancarlo Cesana, of Communion and Liberation
