Filling the Void?
Moderator: First of all, I'd like to thank you very much for being here with us tonight. It's a precious opportunity because I think that each of us has the same question at heart: What helps us to live? Life, in fact, spares us nothing, no drama.
I'd like to start with a question inspired by some recent readings. There's an influencer, Steven Basalari, who says, "I am sickened by the superficiality that pervades relationships. A void masked by euphoria. A constant race to fill time with nothing." He's echoed by the rapper Marracash, who often repeats, "I fill time, and I don't fill the void," even at the height of his success. And then there's Taylor Swift, who after winning two consecutive Grammy Awards, at the height of her career, confessed that she said to herself, "It was everything you wanted, it was what you worked for. You get to the top, you look around and think, ‘Oh my God, what now? Shouldn't I have someone to call?'" She finds herself completely alone.
When I read these testimonies, I thought, "This shows that the human heart is well made; it is made for something great." My question is: Why do we find it so difficult to take our hearts seriously and follow them?
Julián Carrón: This is a question that each person must answer for themselves. Why don't we take our hearts seriously? Only when a person begins to give space to this question does he begin to realize what the real problem of living is. Many of the disappointments we constantly experience, as the examples you mentioned show, arise from the fact that we struggle to understand who we are. Before every disappointment, there's a problem of knowledge.
If we understood that we are made for infinity—something we often repeat, perhaps in a formal way—we wouldn't be surprised. If we're made for infinity, what mystery is there in the fact that not even two consecutive Grammy Awards can fill our hearts? Who among you would be surprised if a jug got angry because it was unable to fill a glass with infinite capacity? It's almost elementary in its simplicity.
Those who understand the nature of the glass do not get angry with the jug. The fact that we, like so many of our contemporaries, are surprised by this means that we lack familiarity with our own nature. And this lack of awareness makes us angry, makes us feel uncomfortable, almost "malformed."
That's why I've always been struck by a quote from Chesterton: "The problem with the wise is not so much that they don't understand the answer, but that they don't understand the riddle."
They don't understand the problem. They get angry with the jug because they don't understand the nature of the glass. If we don't understand the true nature of our person, we'll always look for another drop—work, affection, success, a dream—which will not solve the problem but will make us even more skeptical because we don't understand why it's not enough.
What a difference from St. Augustine! He, too, like us, groped for an answer, but at a certain point, he became fully aware of the true nature of what we are. And it was precisely in that awareness that he began to find peace. He said to God, "You show the greatness you wanted to give to human beings in the fact that nothing less than You is enough for us." When one understands this, one does not stop searching, but one stops getting angry. One begins to realize the greatness for which one was made. The more one is aware of this, the more one understands why Leopardi said that "everything was too little for the capacity of the soul." We have been given the tools to understand this.
When we observe how men before Christ viewed their own humanity, we see that they constantly oscillated between euphoria and depression. They sensed the signs of greatness, but unable to achieve it by their own efforts, they became depressed. They couldn't imagine how such a small creature could have such unlimited drive.
This difficulty in understanding who we are is what makes us uncomfortable. And perhaps it is precisely this discomfort, so stubborn and irrepressible, that will ultimately force us to recognize what St. Augustine had already understood. We've been given a key to understanding that this disproportion does not exist because we are badly made but because we are made by God and for God. I beg you on my knees to look at yourselves in this way, because this is the only thing that can help you understand the constant roller coaster ride of life. We have the opportunity to understand why things are not enough for us: it's not a misfortune but the greatest gift we've been given because we are destined for a fullness that, although not within our reach, can be given to us by Another. This is the struggle we all face today, believers and non-believers alike.
Moderator: I’d like to ask you another question, which ties in with something you said in Perugia. Faced with all the things we "must" do or be—"we must be better," "we must love our children more"—you said, "When I hear all these things we must do, I ask myself: But who is the subject that will do them?" You said that if we Christians do not live an experience capable of generating this subject, our words remain only just appeals, good desires that do not find a real foothold in us. You emphasized that the crucial problem is the "generation of the subject," its self-awareness. Could you elaborate on this point? Why is the generation of the self so decisive?
Julián Carrón: It is decisive because, without being generated, we can't live up to our aspirations with our own energies alone. As I said before, our condition is one of structural disproportion: we have a desire for infinite greatness, but we do not have the resources to achieve it. This is the paradox of existence. If we don’t understand this, we end up thinking that we have to generate the answer ourselves, with our performance and our moralism. This is why I ask: Who will do all the things we "have to do"? Where is the subject capable of accomplishing them?
Precisely because we don’t understand this disproportion, we continue to refer to our own abilities. But all our strength will never be able to fill our greatness. It is like a child: he can't solve the problem of his loneliness or his lack on his own. For him, however, the solution is very easy: as soon as he wakes up, he calls his mother and enters into a relationship with her. For an adult, on the other hand, being so "childlike"—that is, allowing oneself to be generated—is a challenge. The question is not a performance but allowing oneself to be generated by a Presence. When the child welcomes his mother's presence, all his fear disappears.
Life would be so easy. Jesus himself is amazed: "I praise you, Father, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to little children." For the "wise," this solution is too simple. They can't conceive that life is as easy as it is for a child. And so, despite the evidence, we continue to insist on our attempt, on our performance.
Here, however, another problem arises. When a child wakes up, it encounters the physical presence of its mother. We, on the other hand, often encounter nothing when we wake up, and we say to ourselves, "I am alone." This is the drama. Alone, we have to draw on energy we do not have to face the weight of our worries and things to do. Without a moment's respite, without tenderness toward ourselves, we do not allow a Presence to enter. For many, Christ is not a real presence, even if they participate in religious gestures and activities.
Fr. Giussani said that morning prayer consists in looking squarely at the whole range of our worries, without fleeing, challenging them with a Presence. It's not a matter of reciting an empty formula. The fundamental question is: Is what I follow a real Presence or not? When the Son of Man returns, will he still find faith on earth? Will he find anyone who recognizes him as a living Presence, capable of enabling a different existence?
If this Presence does not become so familiar as to generate a different self, we remain like everyone else: individualistic, self-sufficient, trapped in our Promethean attempt to achieve fulfillment on our own. When all we need to do is open the door and let him in, like a child. "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." Until these two things—the disproportion of our nature and the response as a Presence to be welcomed—are understood in their correlation, we will never escape moralistic attempts. The whole mystery of life lies in understanding these connections. The rest is a consequence.
Question: Last night, watching the video of the final assembly of the youth retreat, I was so filled with the correspondence between that announcement and the truth of myself that I felt I understood everything about life. This morning, however, I woke up and felt something was missing. I realized immediately that my effort, the application of what I had understood, would not be enough. I needed someone else to respond to my desire for fulfillment, and so I went to Mass to find Him again.
However, the whole day was like waiting for that Presence to surprise me again. When your message arrived, on the one hand, I was delighted, but on the other, I felt an almost conflicting reaction: a kind of concern, as if I were thinking, "Not even tonight can I relax and mind my own business." I didn't want to miss the opportunity that the Mystery was offering me. I was a little scandalized by this inner struggle between the need for fulfillment and the desire for peace. My question is: Is this struggle part of our nature? Will it always be like this? And how do you experience it?
Julián Carrón: This struggle is an integral part of the game. If, when you wake up in the morning, you no longer feel that urgency, it would mean that what you experienced the night before was of no interest to you. It's like someone who has just fallen in love: they can't wish that this "struggle," this tension, would disappear when they wake up because it would be a contradiction of the experience they had. On the contrary, they want to wake up precisely to let in again that presence that makes them more themselves.
Therefore, we must not see this struggle as a misfortune or a price to pay but as the inevitable consequence of having found something so meaningful that it affects us as soon as we regain consciousness after sleep. If you lacked this, who could convince you that you are truly in love?The fundamental question each of us must ask ourselves is: Can I live without Him? If the answer is yes, then we begin to look for other answers through our own performance, our own strategy, our own effort. But if the answer is no, then we begin to understand what is the only answer appropriate to our greatness. Many, like the people of Israel in the desert, prefer the quiet submission of the "onions of Egypt" to the boldness and toil of freedom. They prefer to be submissive rather than have the audacity to desire all that their hearts desire. But this can never be enough for the greatness for which we were made.
Question: I hate my sister. I hate her deeply, and this feeling grows every day to the point that I want to cut off all ties with her and even force my wife not to see her. I know I can't live like this, but that's how I feel. The question isn't precise, but it's a cry for help: How can I deal with this?
Julián Carrón: Precisely because you are not "good," nor can you be so on your own, you find yourself in this situation. Do you see? We always come back to the same point. You are not capable of loving your sister. You are not able to. But the fact that you are not able does not mean that you do not want to be different. And this desire belongs to you; no one can take it away from you. No one can prevent you from letting in a Presence that changes you so much that it generates you to the point of making you capable of loving.
Who will generate this new subject in you? You, with your energy and your determination? You are realizing that you can't get out of this on your own. So why do you insist on moralistic behavior? Jesus said it clearly: "Without me, you can do nothing," not even love your sister. So stop beating yourself up. You are not capable of it and never will be. There is only one possibility: that a gratuitous superabundance of tenderness, a Presence, enters into you and makes you discover that then you are capable of loving. Not because of your skill but because He changes you from within, He generates you.
As Fr. Giussani taught us when speaking of charity, it is only under the pressure of being moved by God's gratuitous and boundless love for us that we can, in turn, love others. If you do not leave this possibility open, you will go to your grave with this hatred. But there is another way. As soon as this possibility creeps into you, smile instead of remaining stubbornly closed. Use the hatred you feel as a resource: every time it emerges, use it as an opportunity to let Him in. Make your hatred another path for Him.
Question : You spoke of self-awareness and a personal relationship with the Mystery, like a child with his mother. But here we are, 250 people, and there is evidence of a companionship among us. For example, being close to friends who have faced great trials has greatly increased my desire for meaning. The invitation I extended to them to come here was like saying, "I have nothing else to offer you but to come and see what is happening to me, together with these friends who help me not to censor my desire and who have tenderness for my limitations." My question is: What is this friendship, this companionship, for you? Is it just a collection of “I's” looking at Someone who holds them together, or is there something more?
Julián Carrón: When you meet a friend who is going through a difficult time, what do you offer them? Not a speech, but a place, a presence offered to their freedom, where they can experience that Presence.
The companionship we are given is not a collection of isolated individuals. We discover this by living, when each of us is challenged by life. What keeps you company in that moment? Not just anyone. As von Balthasar says, modern man is so isolated that he only encounters other isolated people. There are people who, even though they are close to us, understand nothing of what we need.
For this reason, true companionship is discovered through experience. Tonight, before you go to sleep, ask yourself, "When I was in need today, what truly kept me company?" It could be a phrase, a gesture, a word, a presence. And you will see that many things and many words disappear at that moment.
The example is that of the woman with the hemorrhage in the Gospel. In the midst of a crowd pressing in on Jesus, only she recognized the Presence that could respond to her unique and desperate need. For her, at that moment, companionship was that Presence, not the crowd around her.
Companionship, therefore, is not something we decide at a table: we recognize it. We recognize it because it is the only thing that meets our true need. And when you begin to recognize what gives you companionship, then you can begin to become companionship for another because you will not offer them anything other than what you yourself need. Everything is revealed in experience if we are loyal to it. Experience cries out who and what proves to be company for us when life urges.
Question: Two things have struck me a lot lately. The first was when I went to visit a sick child in the hospital and felt inadequate. The second was a comment you made about Marracash's song "Vittima" (Victim), in which you said that being a victim means blaming circumstances, that is, using reason in a rationalistic way. I realized that for me this meant measuring reality based on what I was capable of doing or saying instead of accepting reality as it emerged.
When I stopped measuring, I began to see that the Mystery was already present where I thought I had to bring it. This gave me an incredible sense of freedom. Now I see it with my teenage son too: I used to worry about his future, but now I discover that he has a direct relationship with the Mystery, which I can neither measure nor control. Recognizing that he is "His" is incredibly peaceful.
Julián Carrón: This testimony simplifies everything. You felt the same disproportion when faced with the sick child and when faced with your son. Our inability does not mean that we should do nothing. It means that what you bring to that child or to your son is you: a "nothing," yes, but a generated nothing. You bring a gaze. You don't know when and how that gaze will generate something, but it is what you bring. That is what Jesus did: he sowed his gaze, and then it was up to each person's freedom to let it in to change their life.
We often complicate our lives because we think we have to bring who knows what solutions. We forget, as St. Paul says, that we "carry a treasure in clay jars" so that it may be evident that the power does not come from us but from Another. What Jesus brought was more than physical healing—the sick people he healed died anyway—it was his Presence.
If we understand this, we become free. We bring ourselves as a free gift, without pretensions. This is what people of our time need. If we do not first live this familiarity with the Mystery, we can't be a presence in the darkness of others. We become like salt that has lost its flavor: what use is it anymore?
Moderator: We thank Julián infinitely.
Unrevised notes by the speaker/author. Source YouTube Video (Translation from an Italian YouTube dialogue)
