Here is a list of the readings we have chosen (you will find a reference to the full text in the notes):

First reading: Genesis 2:16-24 ¹
Psalm: 84 (85) ²
Second reading: 1 Corinthians 12:31b-14:1a ³
Gospel: Mark 10:1-12 ⁴

We would first like to clarify that the aim here is not to provide a commentary on these texts, but rather to share a reflection that emerged in the context of our journey toward marriage. It is the reflection itself that selected and embraced those writings in which it saw its own reflection. Therefore, these texts will not be approached with the goal of offering an exhaustive exegesis (which we are certainly not qualified to do), but rather we will focus only on the aspects most relevant to the path we wish to propose here, in the hope that it may inspire new insights and thoughtful critique.

A question

Let us now pose a question, the central one that will recur throughout this reflection. It took this form precisely because we decided to get married according to the religious rite: Is there anything we can really call “true”? In particular, we’re talking about the concrete beliefs we experience on a regular basis – the things we’re certain about, confident in, take for granted, and use, consciously or not, as starting points for our reasoning and everyday decisions. Do truths exist in our daily lives?

Unfortunately, every time we hope to talk about something that really concerns everyone (surely each of us must think that something is actually true now and then), it seems that we inevitably end up drifting away from the living reality that, deep down, is what really interests us. And indeed, it’s quite clear that one can live perfectly well without ever asking such questions, which, on the other hand, become necessary when one tries to write a text like this. So why write it at all, and risk boring some poor reader, assuming there is one? Well, for now, let’s just say that we think it’s very nice and fun.

Idolatry and the Text

In the Old Testament writings that we have been exploring over the past few months – texts that also allow us to sketch out a history of the people of Israel, at least as far as the first millennium BC is concerned, and which we can therefore place with relative certainty around the 6th century, during the Babylonian exile – the question becomes pressing. One could almost say it’s the central issue. As Moni Ovadia explains,⁵ the primary essence of Judaism is anti-idolatry. It is an almost obsessive constant In the Hebrew Bible: one must not succumb to the temptation to worship foreign gods, let alone deities belonging to ancient cults within the same Semitic culture; (human) sacrifice⁶ must be abandoned and the laws of the true God – the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – must be followed. It is no coincidence that this is the first word of the Decalogue heard by Israel in the desert of Sinai.⁷ Every time a nation or an important person violates this fundamental commandment, a series of endless catastrophes begins.⁸ Not only that, but the tragedy is compounded when the God of Israel himself is reduced to a kind of «great idol»⁹ and people think they can manipulate him for their own ends – this always ends in disaster.¹⁰ On the face of it, the work of these exiled scribes and intellectuals is clear: the people were in serious trouble and, without a temple or a land of their own,¹¹ they needed to preserve their identity and remain united under a single covenant. Hence the need for a written testimony, a sacred book. And even if we stop here, we must recognise that this was an act with extraordinary consequences: what other people in the history of mankind have continued to see themselves as such, despite a millennia-old reality of diaspora?

But perhaps there is something more to be contemplated in all this – something deeper to be explored in the theme expressed in these texts: the truth opposed to idolatry and superstition. That is, the specificity of the One God, which the Jewish people were the first to inaugurate. And in what sense should we understand that when the Ancient Testament, and later the New Testament, speak of Truth, they’re really addressing the very question that we ask about truths in everyday life, what the great mystics of two and a half millennia ago glimpsed and tried to pass on, and which still occupies the minds of contemporary thinkers. Now, especially for a person of our time, how can one not ask: how can a religious mindset completely reject all idols and still remain coherent? How can one truly and honestly remain steadfast in the belief that the God we worship is the one, the Truth, not explained or proven, but revealed and handed down, without that belief itself becoming an idol, a divine projection of our own needs? In other words, according to the authors of the Old Testament texts, where does superstition end and faith begin?

First of all, we need to put aside all those responses that try to reduce the debate to the supposed moral superiority of the God of Israel over the gods worshipped by foreign peoples, claiming that the One is truly God because He alone desires the good of all, whereas the pagan gods were brutal and savage. This thesis is contradicted by the massacres of entire cities ordered by God, which abound in the book of Joshua and many others.¹² And although a few key passages offer an early glimpse,¹³ the full revelation of non-violence – consistently and precisely affirmed by Jesus in the Gospels – has not yet arrived at this point. Indeed, the language through which God speaks through the ancient prophets is often marked by a level of violence towards their enemies that clashes strongly with our modern sensibilities. And yet it should not be ignored or reduced to allegory.

Father Giuseppe Barzaghi, contemporary theologian, in the Thomistic tradition, conceives¹⁴ theology as a philosophical science based on the truths revealed in the sacred texts of Christianity. It doesn’t examine their foundations – they are to be accepted or rejected outright (either you have faith or you don’t: take it or leave it) – but it takes them as certainties on which to build a subsequent logical reasoning, a reasoning that seeks to clarify the reality in which we live precisely in the light of these truths. But how could an honest line of reasoning not question its own foundation? What does it actually mean to believe? Is it simply to be convinced that we are on the right side? Once again, how can we distinguish ourselves from the idolaters with whom we have been so insistently taught not to associate? What is truly remarkable is that it is often the Scriptures themselves that confront us with these very questions. As already mentioned, it is precisely when God is reduced to an idol – a mere concept to be blindly obeyed – that people suffer their most crushing defeats. In fact, the danger often lies in accepting and observing certain truths of faith without further questioning their meaning, in transmitting them without renewing them, in convincing ourselves that we have access to an original certainty or to the most correct interpretation, and in clinging to them with the certainty of being right in contrast to everyone else. These are the dogmas and fundamentalisms (and this is a danger that affects absolutely everyone and in every field, not only the religious one) that take shape – sometimes with greater, sometimes with lesser consequences – in our convictions, in what we consider to be truly true in our daily lives, no matter how refined the reasoning that produced them may be. If one wants to investigate the truth of a given proposition, one must in fact work backwards until one finds a foundation in the reasoning that produced it – in other words, an unquestionable immovable God: an idol.

Let’s be clear. The point here is not to argue that there is no truth, nor to suggest that we should embrace un-reason and become skeptics, pragmatists or empiricists. Nor should we stop asking the question, stop investigating, or resign ourselves to a sterile silence. And so here we are again, back at the beginning.

Seeing the Movement

The challenge is more demanding: it is to sense the presence of a truth that we cannot grasp or express, yet which draws us in. We catch glimpses of its signs and hear its voice. While many philosophers and scientists, especially since Aristotle (4th century B.C.),¹⁵ have sought to frame the components of the real, de-fining and enclosing them within fixed and ordered systems of knowledge (or at least there is a strong tendency to interpret them in this way), their more ancient colleagues, from Greece to the Far East, have always warned us against such presumption. Instead, they have revealed to us a truth in constant movement; indeed, as Enzo Bianchi often repeats,¹⁶ a «truth that always goes before us», opening up a path. They urge us to constantly renew our questions and never to expect answers, because, as a Kabbalistic saying goes, «the questions that matter have no answer; the others do not deserve one».¹⁷ And anyone who thinks he has reached the end of a path, who thinks he has really grasped something true, should know that he is in fact fully in error. As St Paul writes: «He who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know».¹⁸ In the same spirit, Japanese Buddhist mystics, precisely to resist the temptation of certainties, have handed down the famous Zen warning: «If you meet the Buddha, kill him».¹⁹

Some reflections on our Gospel passage: Mark 10:1–12²⁰

It’s no coincidence that we chose readings from both the Old and New Testaments in which this teaching is reaffirmed. At the beginning of chapter ten in the Gospel of Mark, for example, Jesus is questioned about the legitimacy of divorce, a theme that remains strikingly relevant today, just as it was two thousand years ago, as evidenced by the centrality of this passage in two of the synoptic Gospels.²¹ As Jesus was teaching the crowd, «some Pharisees came to test him and asked if it is lawful for a man to divorce – it might be more accurate to say, “to dissolve the bond with” – his wife»,²² citing the fact that Moses had allowed it as justification. Jesus’ response is rather stern: «Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you».²³ And here lies the scandal: Jesus challenges a law that had been given to the people by Moses himself! He explains the reasons behind it, argues his case, and urges us to reflect. He tries to help people grasp the deeper meaning of the law and encourages them not to act out of inertia, clinging literally and rigidly to what is written. It may seem strange to interpret the passage this way, especially since so many have suffered from overly rigid interpretations of it. Jesus continues by quoting Genesis: «But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’. So they are no longer two, but one flesh». And he concludes: «Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate».²⁴ For how many centuries have divorces been rendered impossible—condemning many human beings to marital hell—because of the words in this passage? And besides, what would be new or radical here if Jesus were simply replacing one law with another?

Fortunately, the reflections of the Waldensian theologist Paolo Ricca help us find our way: he strongly affirms that it is crucial never to mistake Jesus for a lawgiver.²⁵ It is significant to note that, in the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus actually engages in dialogue with the people around him. He does not favor monologues, nor does he proclaim absolute truths; instead, he always places himself in a position where he is open to a possible counterpoint from his listeners. The central theme here, even before marriage – after all, the first man and woman in Jewish mythology were not married – is the couple. Jesus does not respond to the Pharisees by approving or disapproving a rule to be blindly followed in specific situations; rather, he urges them to reflect. He shifts the conversation from a legalistic framework to a deeper reflection on the fruitfulness of this kind of relationship, one that, perhaps more than any other, can foster personal and interpersonal growth. While the evangelist undoubtedly had in mind a man and a woman, today we can extend this teaching to include every kind of couple: any relationship in which two people place themselves face to face, looking into each other’s eyes and entering into a direct, reciprocal relationship (which, in fact, originally emerges in the text of Genesis 2, which we will explore further on). And no one in a loving relationship would ever accept being told, “I love you – for a while”. The challenge of duration is inherent in the relationship itself. It is what gives it strength and momentum from the very beginning, and increasingly so as the partners grow in awareness. It is what drives both to step into the relationship with the greatest possible flexibility, and thus, with the greatest fruitfulness for those who undertake it with courage.

This does not mean that “sclero-cardia” – translated as hardness of heart, that is rigid stubbornness or inflexibility – cannot also exist when a relational bond is prevented from being dissolved simply on principle. Jesus excludes nothing. And in the last lines of this passage, apart from emphasizing a sense of equality between man and woman – something not yet fully achieved in the law of Moses – it is interesting to note how the sin of adultery (which today we certainly do not associate with divorce itself, although the risk of adultery in other forms still remains) is presented as something that can indeed be committed, but against the person, «against her», rather than as a transgression of an inscrutable divine law.

Errors and People, Truth and Land

So far we’ve talked a lot about making errors, and we’ve cited numerous Old Testament passages in which the people of Israel make them in abundance. It’s a truly original literary device that links ancient Israel with the disciples of Jesus: both are closest to God – the elected people, the chosen disciples – but both do nothing but make errors. Perhaps «the most beautiful passage in the whole Bible»²⁶ is the one that immediately follows the Gospel passage just mentioned: Mark 10:13-16, where some children are brought to Jesus and the disciples immediately try to turn them away and scold them. But «when Jesus saw this, he was indignant»²⁷ and rebuked them firmly. The disciples walk beside him, and yet they simply can’t grasp the logic of the revelation. The stern rebukes they often receive from Jesus can be seen as a gentler version of the plagues and devastating defeats in battle that were regularly inflicted on the people of Israel when they offended the Divine. Ultimately, these books seem to be nothing more than a series of errors and stumbles – and it’s quite unusual for a people to choose to pass on this as the core of their history to future generations.

To return to our original question: in relation to what can something be defined as a mistake at all? Logically, in relation to something that is right – that is, a truth. But truth precedes us on the path; it cannot be grasped, and therefore mistake cannot be fully defined as such either. In fact, to err cannot be reduced to simply making a mistake. Rather, it describes a kind of wandering: when one errs, one may not follow a straight or safe path – but more importantly (and this is the key), one does not stand still! The etymological game is simple: error is movement – from Latin error, -oris, derived from errare that means “to wander” -, and the truth described here is also in movement. Those who believe they are right – who find the Buddha without killing him – remain fixed in their convictions, stop the journey and stop questioning. Error, with all its risks, is the only tool for the search for truth. God’s first words to Abraham are: «Leave your country, your people and your father’s house and go to the land I will show you».²⁸ The disciples of Jesus at least had the great merit of «leaving everything and following him».²⁹ The Promised Land in the Old Testament, like the Kingdom of Heaven in the New, is what draws people forward – allegories of truth and justice. But these are never fully attained, and one must never believe that they have been. In Buddhist terms, the very idea of having achieved a final goal is itself the height of illusion, still – perhaps even more so – in error…

But an error that lacks self-awareness can lead to far more serious consequences. Is it not the case that in our time, now that Israel has settled in what it believes to be its land, it is living one of the saddest chapters in its history?

Returning to God: Psalm 84 (85) ³⁰

So the people err – and with them all the disciples of every time and place. And perhaps, if one agrees to «play the game of freedom»,³¹ one can indeed become part of the people of Israel. But from errors also come injustices and tragedies, guilt and sin. Only those who do nothing never make errors – or, as our conservatory teachers used to say, “If you don’t want to make errors, never give a concert”. And yet, despite all the encouragement, “making errors” is exhausting. The shame is heavy, and continuing to “give concerts” can sometimes become a truly uncomfortable choice. Likewise, the errors we make seem increasingly difficult to bear, the responsibilities too heavy. Frankly, it would be nice if someone could just tell us what’s right and what’s wrong, without all this wandering around. The sight of our errors – and the fear of making many more – can make us feel incapable, leading us to immobility. The world seems full of hatred, almost angry with us, and this threatens to stop that «healthy daily resistance to the difficulties and evils of the world»³² which keeps us searching in spite of everything.

It is rare to find such a powerful expression of the awareness of our wandering as that of Psalm 85. These lines convey a state of doubt that is always present in those who wander uncertainly.

«Will you be angry with us forever?
Will you prolong your anger to all generations?
Will you not revive us again,
so that your people may rejoice in you?»

What is proposed here is not to seek refuge in a new opinion – religious or not, however intellectually refined – in order to recover from apathy, fear or suffering: not to find a correct and firm position to defend, like obedient sentinels who no longer question their own certainties, worshipping them as a “god of the gaps”³³ that reassures us. It is instead precisely by cultivating a taste for wandering that the struggle and the journey continue: in the attempt to stop seeing what is right and wrong in one’s own actions and in those of others, and instead to interpret daily life as a search for that authentic justice which can never be considered truly achieved, a door is opened to a new feeling, one that is also profoundly described in the Psalter: forgiveness. God forgives. And like a faithful friend or an often angry parent who threatens many punishments but never carries them out,³⁴ the Lord described in the Bible never abandons us.

«Lord, you were favorable to your land;
you restored the fortunes of Jacob.
You forgave the iniquity of your people;
you pardoned all their sin.
You withdrew all your wrath;
you turned from your hot anger».

This is the feeling to cultivate: turning away from anger – that is, shifting attention from what we consider wrong, shameful, or sometimes incomprehensible in ourselves and in others, to our gaze itself, which must strive to judge less and welcome more. Only in this way is an honest form of forgiveness possible, one that is distinct from mere condescending indulgence. Emmanuel Carrère writes: «Another definition of meditation – if I’m not mistaken, we’re on the fifth – is to welcome what is irritating in life, rather than to flee from it. […] It is also, sixth definition, learning not to judge, or at least to judge less, a little less».³⁵

In the face of pain or restlessness that touches us – as after a quarrel within a couple, when tensions silently accumulate – it is always difficult to take the first step towards resuming dialogue. Just as we hope that God will listen to us and return to us, so we must always awaken and listen attentively, in order to feel once again the pull of the truth that urges us to go on in spite of the difficulties. To accept the difficult coexistence with the paradox of a truth that is always in movement, and – without ever fully reaching it – to always return to God, to the Kingdom, to the Promised Land.

«Let me hear what God the Lord will speak,
for he will speak peace to his people,
to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts.
[…]
The Lord will give what is good,
and our land will yield its increase.
Righteousness will go before him
and will make a path for his steps».

The path indicated by Paul: 1 Corinthians 12,31b-14,1a ³⁶

It is this last verse of the Psalm that moves us most: on our pilgrimage, full of errors, where we must never think we are right, someone has gone before us, leaving breadcrumbs for us to follow. Wandering is not a matter of aimless drifting, but must always be directed towards the search for awareness. And just as, on a mountain path, when we fear we’ve wandered too far, we see a sign painted on a tree that reassures us, so we can turn our emotions towards the teachings of the great souls who have walked – and wandered – before us. One of these ways, which Saint Paul calls «the most excellent», is the way of charity. In fact, he writes: «I will show you a way», not «I will give you a law».³⁷

«[…] Charity is not envious, it does not boast, it is not proud, it does not seek its own interests, it is not easily offended, it does not keep a record of wrongs…» writes the Apostle Paul. It does not judge – that is, it tries as much as possible to avert its gaze from those inner convictions that make us see things as causes for envy, anger, pride, self-interest, and so on. It is precisely this “self” aspect that is questioned and painstakingly deconstructed. Charity (which in the Christian tradition is synonymous with selfless love) is superior to all the other profoundly important virtues listed at the beginning of the passage (the gift of tongues, knowledge, even religious devotion itself) because, more than any other, it leads to «that self-effacement, that perfect detachment»³⁸ which renounces all judgement, all claims to objective truth or definitive judgement. Now, the more our ego is humbled, the more we work to dismantle our own convictions and supposed knowledge, the more a space is opened – an emptiness that allows for movement. And indeed, charity «always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres»: words that encourage movement, not so much in the sense of “good deeds”, which are at most the inevitable consequence of such a path (as we will see in the example granted in the following paragraph), but rather in the daily commitment to intelligent meditation aimed at dismantling all forms of idolatry, which are always bearers of judgment and unjust exclusion; for charity «does not delight in injustice, but rejoices with the truth».³⁹

Know this well: to be empty of all creatures is to be full of God; to be full of all creatures is to be empty of God ⁴⁰

The first speech of father Felice

Those who, despite their high school misadventures, bravely pick up Manzoni’s famous novel – The Betrothed – will find in its final chapters one of the most powerful portrayals (in written word) of the feeling of charity. Renzo is searching for his beloved in the Lazaretto – a small village outside Milan where lepers were confined during the plague – when, walking through the alleys crowded with plague victims, he notices a small procession of the cured. All of them, following a preacher, are finally on their way back to Milan. The Capuchin friar, in the first of his two speeches, said:

«Let us spare a thought for the thousands who have departed from there – and with his finger raised over his shoulder, he pointed behind him to the gate leading to the cemetery known as San Gregorio, which at that time was, one might say, a vast grave – let us cast a glance around at the thousands who remain here, uncertain of their fate; let us look at ourselves, so few, who are leaving safely. Blessed be the Lord! Blessed in justice, blessed in mercy, blessed in death, blessed in health! Blessed in this choice He has made of us! Oh! Why has He willed it, my children, if not to preserve for Himself a small people corrected by affliction and inflamed with gratitude? If not so that, now feeling more vividly that life is His gift, we may value it as it deserves, being given by Him? If not so that the memory of our sufferings may make us compassionate and helpful to our neighbors? Meanwhile, these others, with whom we have suffered, hoped, feared; among whom we leave friends, relatives; and who are all, ultimately, our brothers; those among them who see us pass through their midst, while perhaps they receive some comfort in thinking that someone does indeed leave here safely, may they be edified by our demeanor. God forbid they should see in us a noisy joy, a worldly joy at having escaped the death with which they are still struggling. Let them see that we depart giving thanks for ourselves, and praying for them; and may they say: even outside of here, these will remember us, they will continue to pray for us poor souls. Let us begin from this journey, from the first steps we are about to take, a life entirely of charity. Those who have regained their former strength, give a brotherly arm to the weak; young people, support the elderly; you who are left without children, look around you, how many children are left without a father! Be a father to them! And this charity, covering your sins, will also sweeten your sorrows».⁴¹

The Lazaretto clearly serves as a metaphor for the human condition: in fact, where is the difference between man and animal, if not in the fact, as Professor Carlo Sini explains,⁴² that we know (or perhaps delude ourselves into thinking we know) that we must die, and that this inevitably makes us all afflicted? What is man, from the very beginning, if not the one who first saw and then began to tell and share, through an ever more elaborate language, this certainty that makes us all «brothers in death, that is, brothers in life?» Indeed, it is precisely because we see death that we know we are alive! Animals, it could be said, do not have life, but rather existence; whereas «man lives because he knows that he can lose this possession, like all other possessions. Where this knowledge exists, there is man, and there is no man without this certainty».⁴³

Already in this first sermon of the friar, a never-ending question emerges: why are we still alive, while «thousands who have departed from there», from the cemetery, that is, they have already died prematurely? And why is it that we, specifically, are offered the chance to live a life spared from the most horrific suffering, while «thousands and thousands remain here», in the lazaretto, hovering each day between life and imminent death, or worse? In other words, why this profound and incomprehensible injustice? For the author, there is only one way to make sense of such a paradox: to transform the incomprehensible into mission. To always offer a brotherly arm, to support the elderly, to be fathers and mothers to the little ones who need them… To begin, «from the first steps we are about to take, a life entirely of charity». And let us not pretend that we haven’t seen or that we don’t remember! «God forbid they should see in us a noisy joy, a worldly joy at having escaped the death» because, in the end, who can really escape it?

This establishes a fundamental and perhaps widely accepted principle: «there is no community without charity».⁴⁴ It is precisely to the extent that we are able to face the suffering we have all experienced, in the name of this common condition of mortality, and along the «most excellent way» of charity, offered to all and without conditions, that we can truly feel like brothers: «brothers in death, that is, brothers in life». Perhaps this is what Manzoni meant when he wrote: «Blessed is the Lord in death».

The second speech of father Felice

If the friar’s first monologue is already full of meaning and difficult to follow, the second, although only a few lines long, is no less demanding. In fact, in front of all the sick people and with Renzo listening in disbelief, he throws himself to his knees and, wrapping a rope around his neck, continues as follows:

«For me and for all my companions, who, without any merit of our own, have been chosen for the high privilege of serving Christ in you, I humbly ask forgiveness if we have not worthily fulfilled such a great ministry. If laziness or the disobedience of the flesh has made us less attentive to your needs, less prompt to your calls; if unjust impatience, if guilty tedium has sometimes made us appear before you with a bored and severe face; if at times the miserable thought that you needed us has led us not to treat you with all the humility that was appropriate; if our frailty has led us to some action that has caused you scandal; forgive us!»⁴⁵

The idea, whether conscious or not, that one is worth more than another because he or she needs us is not a community idea, and it is a risk that must always be borne in mind. Whoever chooses to embody the principles of charity, and therefore of community, does so «without any merit» and with all the human weaknesses – «unjust impatience, guilty tedium, […]» – that inevitably mark any such embodiment. In every journey, even the most excellent, it is important to recognize that we are still erring and, as the author affirms in this passage, to be even ready to ask for forgiveness. And yet, here the friar passes the torch to us, inviting us to embody in turn the reasons for charity, because they are the foundation of every human community.

How did those early hominids – who thousands of years ago began to bury their dead, thus initiating a path towards humanization – come to develop self-awareness and a consciousness of the «greatest of all evils»?⁴⁶ Why do we, in particular, live and not simply exist, unaware, like all the other animals and plants on this earth, that one day this personal self-awareness – who I am, who you are – will disappear? We have been asking these questions since the dawn of humanity, but neither mystics, nor philosophers, nor scientists, nor intellectuals have ever been able to contain this mystery within the bounds of knowledge. Many names have been given to it throughout history. For some, also today, it responds to the name of God. But even those who leave «the great mystery»⁴⁷ unnamed, if they are willing to look at it and try to accept it, without letting certainties or idolatrous superstitions – truths – take its place in their daily lives, can, as the author of these pages urges, transform it into a purpose: to see in it the high privilege of serving others, despite all the hardships this may entail. This is what the friars do with the sick in the hospital, with whom they share the plague, «and these are not just fine words»; it is also what is required of us. Even in the face of mortal illness, «we must thank the Lord and be content: do what we can, make an effort, help each other – and then be content. For adversity is not suffering or being poor; adversity is doing evil».⁴⁸

The way of charity, the way of community, the way of mutual help. But a way that leads where? For the last time, we allow the author to answer. At the end of these brief monologues, Manzoni, with a final artistic touch, reveals the name of the monk who has been speaking all along: his name is Felice (that means joyful, happy, fortunate). He is a happy man because he embodies the only true happiness, that which lies in the preservation of the values of the community. All other forms of happiness are merely possessions to which we can have temporary access at best, because they are tied to my self and your self, both of which we will one day lose… His actions – born of a path marked by detachment and self-emptying – were carried out, as far as possible, in the name of community and life. The greatest happiness lies in the service of others: “My areté – ἀρετή -, my virtue, consists in having spoken well, in having acted well, towards those beside me. The little I could do, accompanied by many errors, I did. And this allows me to be happy».⁴⁹

A raft: faith as a journey

According to this interpretation, we can now begin to answer the questions about truth and faith that we posed at the beginning: while superstition is that which presents itself as already known knowledge – a fixed point in any cognitive or contemplative journey (however noble it may be) – and thus replaces the great mystery and calms the soul, faith is as intense as it is witness to an incessant and often restless movement that never settles for answers. The mystery must be explored and cultivated, seen and listened to with care, and we must always return to it in the spirit of the project just described – returning to God, to his design, intended here not as a will to improve the world, but as a examination of our own gaze, so that it may become ever more capable of seeing the One God in all things – if we do not wish to fall back into idolatrous stagnation. At this point, another parallel naturally arises with an image common to the faith traditions – understood in the same sense – of the Far East: the image of the raft.

A traveller, says the Buddha, finds himself in a dark and dangerous forest. When he reaches a river, he sees on the other side a bright and safe part of the forest where he can continue his journey with fewer risks. So he decides to build a small raft and attempt the crossing. Once he had crossed the river and reached the far bank, instead of burdening himself by carrying the raft on his shoulders, he left it on the bank. «Buddhism – explains Hervé Clerc, perhaps forgetting the true depth of European mysticism – is the only doctrine that urges its followers not to cling to any doctrine, including Buddhism itself: ⁵⁰

«So it is, O my disciples,” the Buddha continues, “with my teaching: it is like a raft, made for the crossing, not for you to carry it everywhere with you. Once this is understood, you must abandon all mental constructs (dhamma), the true ones, and even more so, the false ones (adhamma)»⁵¹

The message is clear: let go of frameworks – all frameworks – and never, as Thich Nhat Hanh writes,⁵² mistake the raft for the shore. Let us repeat it once more: the teaching must not be reduced to a conquered truth if we are to retain the taste of the freedom we have so painstakingly sought by distancing ourselves from the self, renouncing superstition, killing the Buddha. The “perfect humility” and “perfect detachment” described by Meister Eckhart, Dante’s contemporary monk and philosopher, must extend to religion itself. They cannot be bound to or find their unmoving foundation in any book, because, as St. John of the Cross writes, «not only does faith not produce knowledge or science, but it actually deprives the soul of all knowledge and understanding».⁵³ From everything – truly everything – that we consider to be objective and established truth, there must be a movement of authentic disengagement and liberation.

«The essence of the Sangha is freedom; the essence of the Five Precepts, the Eight Precepts, the Two Hundred and Twenty-Seven Precepts is freedom. This is how the Buddha intended it: ‘Just as the taste of salt pervades the ocean, the taste of liberation pervades my teaching’». ⁵⁴

The Discovery of Death and the human Relationship: Genesis 2:16-24 ⁵⁵

Returning to Father Felice’s speeches, we find that in the last reading we have chosen – which will in fact be, in our celebration, the first – our mortal condition is evoked for the first time in the Bible: in Genesis 2:16-17, «the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die’».⁵⁶ It is precisely in the context of this original act of knowledge – the one that, in the following chapter, will lead the first couple to leave their prehistoric and hedonistic state and begin a journey of humanization – that the human being, according to Hebrew myth, discovers his own mortality. In other words, it is from this interpretation of the self, from this first erring (we trust, by now, that the term has lost any negative connotation), that human history begins to diverge from the cyclical existence of animals, in which «he man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed»,⁵⁷ and enters into a life marked by death. From the interpretation of existence as a collection of “selves” temporarily alive, an interpretation that begins with a first experience of knowledge in defiance of the same laws that still govern the animal world, from which we have irreversibly distanced ourselves – how, we do not know, but it must have been something very small, just a bite of an apple -, man begins to define what is good and what is evil, precisely in the light of his newly revealed mortality.

It is no coincidence, we believe, that immediately after this anticipation of the events of the next chapter, the text offers the first description of a true human relationship – a community. It is as if this discovery, this journey that will formally begin in Genesis 3, is already being carefully prepared. First of all, it is significant that Adam begins to «give names» to the things around him: in this we can already see the emergence of language, and therefore of knowledge. After all, what does it mean to give a name to something if not to recognize oneself as different from the things that surround us, things that need to be de-fined by a name, i.e. a function, a meaning, an essence, a not-me? And it is the Lord himself who «brought [the animals] to man to see what he would call them»: the mystery begins to take shape. But at the same time something else happens, something that will serve as a lasting reminder to human being that he is not separate from the world around him, not a one, a truths. Only God, in fact, can be One. Instead, Adam, that first earthly being⁵⁸ still without gender, is gently put to sleep, and from his side (the Hebrew word צֵלָע – tzela – usually translated with rib, but can also mean part or side) God draws a new figure, «who shall be called Ishah (אִשָּׁ֔ה), for out of Ish (אִישׁ) she was taken».⁵⁹ And so woman (yes, in the text she is named first…) and man are born as we know them today, at the end of creation, like the already multiple creatures of the world.

A journey side by side

Beginning with the expulsion from Eden, what follows is not a solitary wandering, but rather, we might say, a journey in pairs. We believe that no prescriptive or legislative intent should be read into this: married life or a one-on-one relationship is not to be preferred to any other condition, nor (especially today) should specific requirements be imposed on the components of this relationship – requirements that would inevitably lead to forms of exclusion. As we suggested in the section dedicated to the Gospel, our focus is not on particular types of couple, but on the idea of couple itself in its broadest interpretation: a hermit and the natural world in which they are immersed can be the two elements of a couple, as can a person and his or her vocation, or a beloved text. A monk and his community, a mother and her daughter, etc… Any relationship in which «one kisses while looking into the eyes of the other»,⁶⁰ in other words, a personal bond and a journey made side by side, in which a person can cultivate and deepen the awareness of always being in a state of mutual exchange, constantly permeated, even in the depths of his being, by what surrounds him, can help us gradually to dismantle those superstitions that prevent us from having faith. It is necessary to constantly question the truths we think we have safely tucked away in our pockets, in order to hear the other’s version of the story. There is no place for an absolute, epistemological truth, either in the metaphysical field⁶¹ – for if that which most unites us in all our reasoning, the awareness of death, stems from a mystery, how can it possibly have a solid foundation? -, or in the everyday, at the risk of loneliness and idolatrous stagnation.

From a commentary by Rabbi Benedetto Carucci-Viterbi on the text of Genesis 2, which we briefly explored, it was fascinating to discover that a true journey as a couple is also found in the text itself, the one that begins with the stern expulsion from Eden in Genesis 3 and culminates in a book that is stylistically very similar and therefore rich in parallels: the Song of Songs. What we find are two contrasting models: in the first, clearly shaped by a patriarchal society, God says to the woman: «your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you».⁶² As long as one person dominates the other, as long as one half of the couple exercises power over the other, there can be no true dialogue – only one truth prevails, and there is no room for a path of humanization. Instead, in chapter 7 of the Song of Songs we read what is probably a response to the older Genesis text: «I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me».⁶³ Here the relationship is finally restored: there is no longer one mind dominating the other, but both standing on equal ground, in mutuality. When all perspectives accept the need to step back, to recognize their own inevitable straying, and to enter into a state of walking together, side by side – in the awareness that truth can never be fully attained but must always be sought – then we begin to see a mutual inter-dependence, a life based not on identity but on relationship. We move a little away from our personal selves in order to listen to the other, to discover how each of us is above all the product of a constant exchange with everything around us. In the end, we come to see ourselves as truly «one flesh» in God.⁶⁴

Charity and Listening: The Prayer of Solomon

In conclusion, we can now clearly see how the path to be followed, the one indicated to us by Paul, by Mark, by the authors of Genesis and the Psalms in these readings, contains within itself a key to interpretation, a virtue which, more than any other, if cultivated together, can help us not to lose our way: listening. For what are love and charity if not acts of listening? What is love for another person if not listening to him and making a daily effort to be attentive to him? «Simone Weil once said that the purpose of studying is not to learn things we already know, but to sharpen our capacity for attention»,⁶⁵ which she considered to be the first and most important of all human capacities. It is precisely this capacity that allows me, as far as I am able, to recognise that I have my own reasons, but by accepting, «with much effort and many errors», that I do not possess absolute truths in my daily life, I can listen to those of the other, and in this way nourish a relationship. And indeed, if you’ll allow a final play on words: even if there are no truths in everyday life, there is rather the truth of everyday life: this elusive present moment, the here and now, as fleeting as it is close to eternity, in which I can choose whether or not to dedicate myself to cultivating attentiveness to the other. To stand still or to set out on a journey, as Abraham and all people of faith after him did.

We would therefore like to conclude with one of the most beautiful prayers to be found in the more than seventy books that make up the Christian Bible, the one expressed by Solomon when the Lord appeared to him at Gibeon:

«Lord, my God, give your servant a listening heart»⁶⁶ 

Footnotes

1. Full text: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%202&version=NRSVUE ↩︎
2. Full text: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%2085&version=NRSVUE ↩︎
3. Full text: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians%2013&version=NRSVUE ↩︎
4. Full text: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%2010&version=NIV ↩︎
5. UOMINI E PROFETI, 1 Samuele 4-8“Monarchia rapace”, Gabriella Caramore and Moni Ovadia, 13.03.2011, https://www.gabriellacaramore.it/radio-2-3/leggere-la-bibbia/profeti-anteriori/ ↩︎
6.  UOMINI E PROFETI, Genesi 22 “La legatura di Isacco”, Gabriella Caramore and Benedetto Carucci Viterbi, 3.04.2010, https://www.gabriellacaramore.it/radio-2-3/leggere-la-bibbia/pentateuco-genesi/  ↩︎
7. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments. ↩︎
8. Among the countless examples, we can mention the first chapter of the Fourth Book of Samuel, in which the Israelites—having by then fallen into idolatry—are defeated in battle by the Philistines for the first time. ↩︎
9.  UOMINI E PROFETI, 1 Samuele 4-8“Monarchia rapace” ↩︎
10. When the Ark of the Covenant is brought into the Israelite camp, in an attempt to regain the favor of the deity and take revenge on their enemies, the Philistines defeat them once again, causing even greater losses among the Israelites. ↩︎
11. Once they became a settled people in the land of Canaan following the exodus from Egypt—around the year 1000 B.C. (approximately the time of King David and the unification of the kingdoms)—the tribes of Israel achieved a certain degree of political stability. However, they eventually fell under Babylonian conquest in 586 B.C. When the Babylonian kingdom was later conquered by Cyrus the Great, the Persian king allowed the exiled Jews to return to their land and rebuild the destroyed Temple. Later, under Hellenistic and then Roman rule, the Temple in Jerusalem was once again razed to the ground (in 70 A.D.), and much of the population was forced into diaspora in foreign lands. There would be no State of Israel again until after the Second World War. ↩︎
12. Some significant examples: Leviticus 26:1, Numbers 25, Deuteronomy 20, Psalm 137. ↩︎
13. Famous in this regard are the so-called Songs of the Suffering Servant (Isaiah 42:1–9, 49:1–7, 50:4–11, 52:13–53:12)—peaceful responses from ancient Judaism, likely written in the aftermath of the Babylonian domination, which later became central to the Christian interpretation of Jesus’ passion. ↩︎
14. Le Grazie Milano, Il tomismo anagogico e il dialogo con Emanuele Severino, Giuseppe Barzaghi, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHTzxS1e4UQ ↩︎
15. MECRÌ LABORATORIO DI FILOSOFIA E CULTURA, Simultaneità: l’uno dei molti – 2. La logica di Aristotele, “curated by Carlo Sini, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5Mmmb7olmc&t=52s  ↩︎
16. GENOVA PALAZZO DUCALE, Enzo Bianchi – Le religioni: strumento di violenza o di pace?, 22.02.2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2C5FZLdrjO0 ↩︎
17. FESTIVAL DELLA MENTE SARZANA, Festival della Mente 2012 – Haim Baharier, 11.06.2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUIlxpdL–o ↩︎
18. 1 Cor 8,2 NRSV 1989 ↩︎
19. Scroll: Jiun Onkō (1718-1804), Linji said: If you meet the Buddha, kill him, ink on rice paper (134.6 x 26.7 cm), private collection.
    The Buddha taught a way – a noble path – but he himself warned his followers not to treat it as a fixed doctrine. Instead, he encouraged them not to become attached to his words, but to continue seeking along the path of awareness. ↩︎
20. Full text: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%2010&version=NIV ↩︎
21. The same episode is also narrated in Mt 19,1-9 ↩︎
22. Mc 10, 2 NRSV 1989 ↩︎
23. De 24, 1-4 ↩︎
24. Mc 10, 6-9 NRSV 1989 ↩︎
25.  UOMINI E PROFETI, “I primi e gli ultimi” (Marco 10, 1-31), Paolo Ricca and Gabriella Caramore, 13.01.2013, https://www.preg.audio/p/58b2fcac020686a8d840c92d ↩︎
26. Ibid ↩︎
27. Mc 10, 14 NRSV 1989 ↩︎
28. Gen 12, 1 NRSV 1989 ↩︎
29. Mt 4, 21; Mc 1, 19; Lc 5, 11; Gv 1, 37 NRSV 1989 ↩︎
30. Full text: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%2085&version=NRSVUE ↩︎
31. UOMINI E PROFETI, 1 Samuele 4-8“Monarchia rapace” ↩︎
32. UOMINI E PROFETI, Porgi l’orecchio, ascolta la mia voce – I Salmi (1° puntata), Enzo Bianchi and Gabriella Caramore, 13.04.2008, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEOlj64PdEs  ↩︎
33. Ibid ↩︎
34. Very interesting in this regard: UOMINI E PROFETI, Genesi cap. 3 e 4 “Conoscere il bene e il male”, Benedetto Gabriele Garrone and Gabriella Caramore, 7.03.2010, https://www.gabriellacaramore.it/radio-2-3/leggere-la-bibbia/pentateuco-genesi/ ↩︎
35. EMMANUEL CARRÈRE, Yoga, Adelphi, Milano, 2021, p. 57  ↩︎
36. Full text: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians%2013&version=NRSVUE ↩︎
37. 1 Cor 12,31b NRSV 1989 ↩︎
38. MEISTER ECKHART, Dell’uomo nobile,  cured by Marco Vannini, Adelphi, Milano, 1999, p.133 ↩︎
39. 1 Corinzi 13, 6, NRSV 1989 ↩︎
40. MEISTER ECKHART, Dell’uomo nobile, p. 136 ↩︎
41. ALESSANDRO MANZONI, The Betrothed, translated by Michael F. Moore, Modern Library, 2022. ↩︎
42.  FESTIVALFILOSOFIA, Carità, Carlo Sini, 20.09.2009, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX1zVh7dqEA ↩︎
43. Ibid. ↩︎
44. Ibid. ↩︎
45. ALESSANDRO MANZONI, The Betrothed, translated by Michael F. Moore, Modern Library, 2022. ↩︎
46.  GENOVA PALAZZO DUCALE, Il problema del male, Enzo Bianchi, 24.02.2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r9Z4Xusde0 ↩︎
47. FESTIVALFILOSOFIA, Carità, Carlo Sini, 20.09.2009, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX1zVh7dqEA ↩︎
48. ALESSANDRO MANZONI, The Betrothed, translated by Michael F. Moore, Modern Library, 2022. ↩︎
49.  FESTIVALFILOSOFIA, Carità, Carlo Sini, 20.09.2009, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX1zVh7dqEA ↩︎
50.  HERVÉ CLERC, Le cose come sono – una iniziazione al buddhismo comune, Adelphi, Milano, 2015, p. 52   ↩︎
51.  Alagaddupama sutta, MN 22 in HERVÉ CLERC, Le cose come sono, p. 52 ↩︎
52. Thich Nhat Hahn and DANIEL BERRIGAN, La zattera non è la riva – Dialogo per una consapevolezza buddhista-cristiana, LINDAU, TORINO, 2015 ↩︎
53. European Federation for Freedom of Belief, Che significa credere?, Marco Vannini, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKovw9WuRjo ↩︎
54.  HERVÉ CLERC, Le cose come sono, p. 52  ↩︎
55. Full text: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%202&version=NRSVUE ↩︎
56. Gen 2,16-17 NRSV 1989 ↩︎
57. Gen 2,25 NRSV 1989. In this verse, we continue to prefer the translation of the word וְאִשְׁתּ֑וֹ as: “and his partner”, instead of the expression “and his wife”, which cannot but be anachronistic and, at times, misleading. ↩︎
58. The term Ha’adam (הָאָדָם) is related to the word Adamah (אֲדָמָה), which means earth or soil, indicating his origin from the ground (Genesis 2:7). ↩︎
59. Gen 2,23 NRSV 1989 ↩︎
60.  FESTIVALFILOSOFIA, Il Cantico dei Cantici, Enzo Bianchi, 15.09.2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfAh7K_E7qw ↩︎
61. We do not possess here either the language or the expertise to develop and justify this topic as it truly deserves—namely, the deconstruction of ontology and of a supposed knowable epistemological truth. Nevertheless, we have touched on it briefly, as to avoid the subject would be to shy away from an inevitable consequence of the broader discussion. We would therefore like to point to a course that deeply impressed us in this regard: MECRÌ Laboratory of Philosophy and Culture, Simultaneity: The One of the Many, curated by Carlo Sini, 2017, https://www.mechri.it/archivio-storico/archivio/2017-2018/ ↩︎
62. Gen 3,16 NRSV 1989 ↩︎
63. Son 7,11 NRSV 1989 ↩︎
64. Gen 2,24 NRSV 1989 ↩︎
65.  EMMANUEL CARRÈRE, Yoga, Adelphi, Milano, 2021. p. 62.  ↩︎
66. 1 Ki 3,9 (Translation based on the book Un cœur qui écoute by Sister Jeanne d’Arc, O.P. – Les Éditions du Cerf, 1966). ↩︎