The Crack in Everything
Ignacio Carbajosa - We are witnessing a boom in the demand for religion. Is it just a passing fad? Or could it be the same demand to "see Jesus" that the Greeks had in their time?
A few weeks ago, the Spanish radio station SER interviewed Rosalía, one of the most famous singers of the moment. With her album Lux, she surprised the world by revealing her own religious quest.
The station is known for its anti-clerical editorial line and its Enlightenment view of religion. Despite this, the host, Carles Francino, introduced the interview with Leonard Cohen’s Anthem, quoting the famous lines: "Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in."
At the same time, the film Los domingos (by director Alauda Ruiz de Azúa) was released. It tells the story of the upheaval in a typical Spanish family caused by their 17-year-old daughter’s desire to enter a cloistered convent.
Between Rosalía’s album and the film’s release, much has been written about the "Catholic revival" (as the newspaper El País—owned by the same group as the SER network—calls it) or, more generally, the "return to religion." All of this is supported by statistics reflecting a shift among young people under the age of 35.
Is there a crack? Is a crack really opening up in a society increasingly suffering the consequences of a life without ultimate meaning? For some, these are nothing more than expressions of a generic, secular spirituality. For others, it is merely a sentimental surge, a fad, something fleeting. How are we to judge these signs?
In his Gospel, the disciple John recounts the first time some Greeks approached Jesus. They went through Philip, whose Greek name betrayed his origins. "We want to see Jesus" (Jn 12:21).
This is a little-known passage, rarely quoted, but one that did not go unnoticed by Fr. Giussani, who was always attentive to Jesus' reactions in the Gospel accounts: "Jesus was moved." In fact, "it was the first time that the great, albeit unconscious, expectation of the world was expressed." It is no coincidence that the Greek world represented the dominant culture of that era—the Gentiles.
For Fr. Giussani, the curiosity of those early Greeks to see Jesus was of the same nature as the expectation of the chosen people. It is akin to what Moses said to God on the mountain: "Let me see your glory." It is moving to think that this request by Moses—which expresses the most radical, perhaps confused, need of all humanity—finds acceptance in the face of that Child whom the shepherds adored in the cave in Bethlehem.
The prohibition against making images that Moses received on the mountain did not mortify the chosen people's need to see and touch; rather, it concealed a greater plan. It is as if God were saying: "Do not make images of me, because you will never find a craftsman capable of capturing who I am in a sculpture. I myself will give you my image." In the fullness of time, God gave us His true image in His Son: indeed, Jesus Christ is "the image of the invisible God" (Col 1:15).
It is striking that the emotion pervading us today when we contemplate the face of God in a child ultimately stems from that other emotion with which that same Child, now grown, looked upon the Greeks who sought His face. This is, without a doubt, the great news: The One who looks with radical sympathy on all our restless humanity has been born... and He is moved by the rich creativity with which we seek to appease that restlessness.
The "Greeks" of our time are not, fundamentally, very different from those of the past. Perhaps they are more "creative"? But what makes the difference in looking at the various expressions of the search for meaning remains this Event that we celebrate today: a gaze of emotion upon our thirst has entered the world.
Merry Christmas, Greek world! Your intuition, your desire, your unconfessed need are not a curse. Like the star of Bethlehem, they place you on the threshold of the unexpected, from which an invitation arises: "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest" (Mt 11:28).