Aug

31

Co-Workers of the Truth 8/31

Posted By reynor | Filed Under Co-Workers of the Truth 

Benedict XVIThe question which human existence not only poses but itself is, the inconclusiveness inherent in it, the bounds which it comes up against and which yet yearn for the unbounded (more or less in the sense of Nietzshe’s assertion that all pleasure yearns for eternity yet experience itself as a moment), this simultaneity of being limited and of yearning for the unbounded and open has always prevented man from resting in himself, made him sense that he is not self-sufficient but only comes to himself by going outside himself and moving toward the quite other hand and infinitely greater. 

The same thing could be demonstrated in the theme of loneliness and security.  Loneliness is indubitably one of the basic roots from which man’s encounter with God grew up.  Where man experiences his solitariness, he experiences at the same time how much his whole existence is a cry for the thou and how ill-adapted he is to be only an I in himself.  This loneliness can become apparent to man on various levels.  To start with it can be comforted by the discovery of a human thou.  But  then there is the paradox that, as Claudel says, every thou found by man finally turns out to be an unfulfilled and unfulfillable promise; that every thou is at bottom another disappontment and that there comes a point when no encounter can surmount the final loneliness: the very process of finding and of having found thus becomes a pointer back to the loneliness, a call to the absolute thou that really descends into the depths of one’s own I. 

But even here it remains true that it is not only the need born of loneliness, the experience that no sense of community fills up all our longing, which leads to the experience of God; it can just as well proceed from the joy of security.  The very fulfillment of love, of finding one another, can cause man to experience the gift of what he could neither call up nor create and make him recognize that in it he receives more than either of the two could contribute.  The brightness and joy of finding one another can point to the proximity of absolute joy and of the simple fact of being found which stands behind every human encounter.

From: Introduction to Christianity, pp.69-70

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