The Restless Heart
English. Spanish. Italian.
Julián Carrón - Why Our Endless Desire Reveals the True Meaning of Advent.
Fr. Giovanni - Good day, everyone. Let us greet Don Julian, welcome him, and thank him warmly for his presence. When he comes, I always see so much friendship around him, so many people who greet him with such affection and fraternity, and this is a beautiful sign. I, too, greet you in this friendship, in this fraternity. I welcome you on behalf of the whole community, and I thank you for the generosity of the time you are giving us today. You will help us enter the season of Advent with this retreat. You have chosen a theme that we share, and for which we thank you sincerely. Starting with St. Augustine, we read: “You sought us when we were not seeking You, and You sought us so that we might seek You.” And with these words, as we were saying, Augustine encapsulates the heart of our experience of faith. God takes the initiative, reaching out to us even when we are distracted, unaware, and distant. It is precisely through His search that He awakens in us the desire to seek Him in turn. This is the theme that Father Julian will help us explore. It is, therefore, that of a God who seeks man even before man notices Him. A grace that anticipates us, surprises us, amazes us, arouses freedom, moves us, fulfills us, and gives us fullness. Before we chose God, it was God who chose us, who anticipated us in the beauty of this mercy that makes us reborn. And so, thank you. Let us enter into this season. After Father Julian’s talk, there will be time for questions. We also greet our friends who are online, who could not be present, but who can see us online. When Father Julian concludes His meditation, this online communication will be disconnected to allow for a different time, where we can ask questions and interact freely.
Julián Carrón - Good morning. I thank Fr. Giovanni for this invitation to prepare myself for Advent, because having to speak to everyone is an opportunity for oneself. And so, thank you very much for this generous welcome.
1. Never a Repetition
Every year, Advent finds us at the moment each of us is living; therefore, it is never a repetition of the previous year. Advent knocks on the door of our “I” at the point where it is today. This time, therefore, becomes an opportunity to look at ourselves with tenderness. “How am I now?” It is an opportunity to stop and look amid all the turmoil that often clutters our lives. We can allow ourselves a moment of tenderness towards ourselves. What is the most obvious indicator of how we are? Our desire. Just as longing for a loved one is the thermometer of love. What prevails in us today? What do we discover in ourselves when we pause? When we have a moment of clarity and attention to ourselves? It is easy to find out. Just look at our hearts. “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,” says Jesus in the Gospel. Our hearts reveal to us what our treasure is—what we value most. It reveals where our heart is truly oriented: our attention, our thoughts, and our desires are focused on what we consider most precious. In short, what we devote our time, energy, and concern to reveals our true essence, our heart. Advent is a time to pause and look within ourselves, to be surprised by our daily lives and ask: “But where is our heart?”
2. The Great Danger of Our Time
The great danger of our time is that banality is enough for us.
We live in a time when man risks losing not only faith and reason, but above all desire itself, the taste for the infinite, the thrill of mystery, the longing for something greater than oneself. Today, banality is a form of defense, a way of not feeling too much and not letting ourselves be hurt by reality. But in doing so, man—each one of us—becomes impoverished, dull, and content with the superficial. We see this when we encounter a witness, such as the writer and monk Van der Meer, who tells us: “No one has my anxiety; no one seeks a word of salvation. They live on the surface. They do not know the torment of nostalgia. They do not know the desire for great things.” What longing must have assailed him to be able to say this! The great danger is not so much evil, which can be an opportunity to start again, as the habit of the usual and the mediocre. It is the renunciation of what the heart desires, the settling for banality. I am amazed at how many people are satisfied with the little things that fill their lives. I think of a recent conversation with someone who was amazed at those who, upon waking up, feel the full drama of life. Because she, on the other hand, said that “the idea of my incompleteness assails me very rarely.” We can be like so many who live comfortably, dulled, content with little. And then life becomes flat, insipid, colorless.
Life, Don Giussani said, is like a current that has ceased. Few of us take real initiative concerning the needs of our hearts. Thus, in a humanity that has returned to darkness and dissatisfaction, we too allow ourselves to be invaded by the reduction of the demands of our “I”. But this complacency is not without consequences. We see it in the discomfort, in the underlying malaise with which we compromise, accustomed to not looking at it, as if we were convinced that this is how life is now. We must resign ourselves within the limits of nature. “Finibus naturae contenti” (Content within the limits of nature), said Cicero—be satisfied with what you can obtain within the limits of the natural condition, but reducing the concept of nature to its limits. This neglects the boundless desire that constitutes us and invites us to seek beyond the limits of our nature. He described this wisdom of the Greeks, which makes sense and closes: “Can we resign ourselves to the irremediable in order to avoid cruel disappointment? Let us be content to adhere with all our being to things as they are. Let us cultivate our little garden.” But then he adds: “Even among the Greeks, however, the divine temptation always reappears.”
3. Why Am I Not Satisfied?
“But why am I not satisfied with what is before me, true, palpable, real?” Van der Meer wondered again. “Why does my spirit invoke the infinite? Eternity? I cannot imagine the end. Infinity appears to me as an abyss whose bottom my stone will never touch. Reason understands neither one nor the other. It is foolish to seek an answer. It is a waste of time. But then why do these problems assail me furiously, like a storm?” And we see many signs of our inability to be content with what he called the “organic spark of restlessness embedded in the depths of humanity.” As Ungaretti's striking verses say: “Enclosed among mortal things / (even the starry sky will end) / why do I long for God?” We see it in the most normal people, even in those who have achieved success, such as the singer Taylor Swift, who wins the Grammy Awards for the second time in a row and says: “It was the best. My life had never been better.” I remember thinking afterwards: “It was everything you wanted. It was everything I wanted; it was what you worked for. You reach the top and look around and say, ‘Oh my God, what now?’” It can happen to anyone to wake up at night, as another person said, surprised by this thought, even if they have reached the top in their work.
And then, faced with this inability of the person to achieve the fullness to which they aspire, Guardini astutely observes that they are often devalued, their fragility being argued, since their concrete power to be continually contradicts their claim. They want them to give up their pretensions and simply become like a plant or an animal. People even tire of themselves, feel the oppression of responsibility for the inadequacy and wickedness of their being, and try to renounce it by dispersing themselves in relationships of relief. Their own determination is boredom, annoyed at having to be nothing other than themselves. They want to escape from themselves by disguising themselves in reflected figures, in masks. They are afraid of their loneliness and immerse themselves in the dissolving communion of the species and nature.
They try to forget themselves. They throw themselves into the things that pass, into the river of eternal birth and death. They sell and betray themselves in pleasure, in work for its own sake, in deterioration, in evil. And yet the truth stands out enormously: “I am I.” Hard, beautiful, terrible, creator of destiny, root of all responsibility. This is our greatness. It gives everything its splendor and its gravity. Guardini concludes by saying: “Only the self (each one of us) can renounce being truly itself.” The self is the most powerful resource we have for living Advent. No decision to settle for less can subjugate our nature to resignation. We cannot reduce who we are to the measure we want; it is not in our hands. The disproportion is structural. Everything would be easier if we could do so. But the fact of how we are made is stubborn. It proves even more powerful than our own stubbornness in trying to reduce it. This is the victory of experience over any attempt we make to subdue it. How wise it is to recognize, as Giussani said, that “reality becomes transparent in experience.” It is there, in the experience of each of us, that the nature of who we are, of our self, emerges with all its power, and what impressive testimonies are given to us by those who remind us of this!
“Nostalgia and hope seem to be the last resources of the human heart,” said María Zambrano, “and in both we perceive the same fact: that human life is felt by its protagonist as incomplete and fragmentary. That is, it refers to something that is missing; it never presents itself as a complete whole. Being half-quiet,” Rilke. And we can affirm this, too. Yet it seems that all this is not enough. Man experiences beauty and precisely because of this feels deep down that something is missing, says Pope Leo. It is a paradoxical situation. We come to terms with our limitations and at the same time with the irrepressible urge to try to overcome them. We feel deep down that we are always missing something. But the ultimate reason for this lack is not that we are badly made, that we have a manufacturing defect.
No one, like St. Augustine, has been able to summarize the concept more masterfully: “You, God, show quite clearly the greatness You wanted to attribute to rational creatures, because nothing less than You is enough for their blissful peace and happiness.” (Capital letters). This is our greatness. The experience that nothing less than Him is enough for us is precisely the most striking sign of our greatness. This restlessness that drives us to seek meaning beyond appearances, beyond the usual limits, leads a great observer of our time, the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, to say: “Many people find themselves in a situation of great loneliness today, and a profound question arises in their hearts: ‘What do I really believe in? What is the center of my life? What do I want to spend my life on?’” Many people find it very difficult to answer these questions, so today, in a context completely different from that of past eras, religious experience also takes the form of a common search. The emergence of people who are searching, of “seekers of meaning,” is what he calls them. When all our strategies for reducing desire are exhausted, what remains is the heart that urges, unyielding, waiting.
4. Waiting
Waiting is ineradicable, indeed, inevitable. Giussani says: “The situation in which we live—of denial of presence, absolute weakness, and renunciation of reason—leaves the melancholic ambiguity of experience emotionally intact in man.” As Adorno says: “Man expects the truth of things to emerge despite everything, within appearance, beyond it, the image of salvation.” For this reason, he concludes: “The expectation of salvation is inevitable.” We may or may not recognize it, but we cannot fail to encounter it in our lives. It manifests itself in many ways, in many symptoms, and it is present in us without our being able to suppress or erase it. It is pathetic to deny it. Faced with this endless tension, however, man is tempted to defend himself. The suffering of desire can be unbearable. And so, the temptation is that peace is the ideal of a peace achieved at the price of eliminating desire itself, in the Buddhist or Stoic view. Disturbance arises from wanting, from attaching oneself to things, and liberation consists in no longer desiring anything. The second noble truth of Buddhism says, in fact: “The origin of suffering is desire.” But the fact of wanting to eliminate desire because it is too unbearable shows that expectation resists any attempt to suppress it in order to make life more bearable. Because sooner or later, it is inevitable that we will have to deal with it.
Guardini comes to our aid again, speaking of melancholy: “Melancholy is too painful. It is too deep and has its roots too deeply in our human nature for us to abandon it to the hands of psychiatrists. We consider it intimately connected with the depths of our human essence.” For him, boredom is also a sign of our greatness, that boredom that often accompanies a rather busy life, which has only one meaning. He says: "In things, we passionately and everywhere seek something that things do not possess. We seek, we strive to find in them that weight, that seriousness, that ardor, and that accomplished strength that we thirst for and that is not possible. Things are finite. Everything that is finite is defective. And this is a disappointment for the heart that longs for the Absolute. The disappointment spreads and becomes a feeling of great emptiness. There is nothing worth existing for.” But Guardini continues: “For my part, I believe that beyond any medical or pedagogical consideration, the meaning of melancholy lies in this: that it is an indication of the existence of the Absolute. The infinite bears witness to itself in the depths of the heart. Melancholy is the price of the birth of the eternal in man. It is the restlessness of man who senses the proximity of the infinite.”
Desire, therefore, does not speak to us of an absence; desire is not a lack of something, says Lévinas, but “of something of the infinite.” Human desire never closes; it is an infinite opening to the Other (with a capital letter). Man cannot desire God, says Lewis, without God Himself already being present in the waiting. Lack is the form in which God makes Himself perceptible. But even that restlessness that senses the proximity of the divine belongs to our nature. We always decide in the face of it; it is never automatic. Viktor Frankl, a concentration camp survivor, says: “Everything can be taken from a man (he knew this well) except one thing. What can remain in the concentration camp? The last of human freedoms: to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.” No one can take this away from us, but neither can they spare us from it. In this situation, in this choice, our freedom is at stake. It is a game that is played within us. No one can pass it on to anyone else. “
Only the self,” we said earlier, quoting Guardini, “can renounce the ““I.” Waiting does not mean being helpless, doing nothing. On the contrary, it is a profound activity that engages all of us, as Pavese said: “Waiting is still an occupation. It is not waiting for anything that is terrible.” It is a matter of realizing that desire is not a mistake to be corrected, but the trace of infinity in man. Indeed, as Simone Weil says, “waiting is already participation in what is happening.” Human life reveals itself to those who live it with awareness as a journey marked by lack, even and especially when man achieves what he desires. Something in him remains open, unfinished. This lack is not a defect, as we said, but a trace of greatness, a sign that the human heart is made for more than the world can offer. For this reason, the desire that arises from lack is the truest force of life, the most important resource for celebrating Advent. It becomes waiting, that is, patient and trusting availability towards what is not yet seen, but which is intuited as necessary for one's fulfillment.
5. The Event We Are Waiting For
Waiting and the Event of Christmas are often contrasted. Encounter-search, finding-seeking, coming-waiting are contrasted. “With His coming, religious meaning is overcome,” we often hear. If Christmas represents the fulfillment of this waiting, why does the Church continue to celebrate Advent? What need compels us? Without exploring this paradox, the season of Advent risks losing its meaning. It remains only an empty ritual that we do not really take seriously. We are not immune to the risk that Advent will be reduced to a ritual from which we ultimately expect nothing meaningful, and to the risk that Christmas will be only a memory that has no impact on the present.
Christmas is indeed the fulfillment of the messianic expectation of the Old Testament. The Incarnation marks the moment when God enters history to respond to that expectation. In this sense, the expectation is fulfilled, and the Messiah has come. However, the Church continues to celebrate Christmas not only because it still awaits the definitive fulfillment in the Second Coming in glory, but also because in Christian liturgy, remembering is not simply recalling a past event, but making it present and participating in it. Celebrating Christmas means allowing Christ to be born again, more deeply in our hearts. This birth does not happen once and for all; it is never finished. It always requires a new acceptance, a conversion, a response in the circumstances in which we find ourselves today. The annual celebration is an invitation to renew this response in the present and to verify what and how real its impact is in the present. Christmascelebrates an accomplishment that continues to be accomplished, and in order for it to continue to be accomplished today in each of us, waiting is required. Without waiting, Christmas becomes something already known. No wonder, just formalism.
I was amazed by the story of two friends who were about to get married. Before the declaration, he told me everything. He was alive, on fire with the recognition of the good that she is. His life was invested with the presence of the one he wanted to marry. He declared his love with great joy, but shortly afterwards he confessed, almost surprised: “Perhaps it's as if everything were already known.” Even the presence of the beloved who made me most excited, without waiting, without questioning, becomes a habit. It becomes already known, even if it is right in front of us. The risk is also ours this year. Now, therefore, Advent is not a formality in preparation for Christmas. Waiting, therefore, is crucial. So that Christmas does not become a devout memory, so that Christmas happens as an event in the present, my waiting and your waiting today are necessary.
“This is the beginning,” said Don Giussani, “a sensitivity to one's own nature as a human being. Your and my nature as human beings.” And therefore: “the less one feels the demands, needs, interests, and ideal aspirations that make up the physiognomy of every human being, the more one is in search of a path that can respond.” Without the drama of our ever-present self urging a response, the celebration of Christmas becomes a ritual that leaves no trace in life, leaving only a desert behind. Nothing happens without us, without us caring about our humanity. How can we avoid it being a repetition of a ritual, even if it is heartfelt? Some reflections by St. Augustine in the Confessions can help us. I was struck by hisinsight. He notes that man, who carries his mortality with him, which is proof of his sin—this man, however, a small part of creation, wants to praise You, St. Augustine. Because we all know the story of his life. At a certain point, when he writes the Confessions, he begins to be surprised to find himself with this desire to praise God, to thank Him.
This desire is not at all obvious to him. That is why he says, years after his conversion, he is surprised to find within himself the desire to praise God. For him, this is the starting point of the Confessions. But how can man desire to praise God if he is in such a bad way, being mortal and sinful, so often distracted? St. Augustine's answer could not be more liberating for each of us. Turning to God, he says: “It is You (with a capital letter) who reawakens him to take pleasure in praising You. Not to fulfill an obligation. Not to comply with a commandment, no, to take pleasure in praising You, because You made us for Yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” St. Augustine's familiarity with his humanity leads him to be surprised that God cares so much about pulling him out of forgetfulness, out of formalism, to rescue him from his torpor, from his habit, so that he may take pleasure in praising Him. In practice, we poor people can only perform an informal gesture if He reawakens in us the desire to praise Him. Because, being made for Him, our hearts can only rest in Him.
Because the more one is reawakened by the beloved, the more one takes pleasure in being with them, in resting in their presence. Otherwise, even the relationship becomes suffocating. Our hearts have been made restless, desirous, so that they may find their full satisfaction in their relationship with God. Without this relationship, for which the heart is made, restlessness finds satisfaction, because the heart is made for You to satisfy it, inflame it, and make it radiant. This is rest, St. Augustine means. Instead, rest is sometimes understood in another way. Rest should not be understood, therefore, as is often the case, as the cessation of desire. He writes: “The more we taste the mystery of God, the more we are attracted to it, without ever being completely satisfied.” For this reason, St. Augustine, in the 10th book of the Confessions, captures this inexhaustible yearning of our hearts and expresses it with these words, recently quoted by Pope Leo: “And You gave Your fragrance, and I breathed and yearned for You.
Stay, for I am hungry and thirsty. I am chaste and burning with desire for Your peace.” A satisfaction so fitting and desirable that we never cease to seek it, precisely because of the enjoyment we experience. How different Christian life is when it is perceived in this way! As Dante says of Beatrice's shining eyes: “Full of wonder and joy, my soul tasted that food which, sated with itself, said to Senta Pio / and the more satiated it is, the more it awakens thirst.”
Christ entered history and our lives to reawaken this search for Him, without which we cannot be ourselves. St. Augustine, as we know, went through all the trials and tribulations of his human journey. This is why he expresses it in such a moving way: “You sought us while we did not seek You. And You sought us so that we might seek You.” Or again: “We seek with the desire to find, and we find with the desire to seek again.” And at the end of the Confessions, he says: “I invoke You, my God, my mercy, who made me and did not forget that I had forgotten You. I invoke You in my soul that You may prepare it to receive You with the desire that You inspire.” It is He who prepares us to receive Him at Christmas. He arouses the desire to receive Him. So it is not enough to be made; those who forget must be constantly prepared to receive Him again. God prepares us to recognize Him, to receive Him, reawakening our desire for Him.
How different, then, is Advent lived in this way from the usual, empty ritual! This is why Augustine invokes Himbecause He has been preceded: “You preceded me before I invoked You. Insisting more and more and with more diverse appeals, so that I might hear You from afar and bring me to invoke You who were calling me. For before I was, You were, and I was nothing because You granted me existence.” Jesus never ceases to seek us, insisting more and more and with more and more different appeals, so that we may seek Him, listen to Him, turn to Him, invoke Him, because the desire to invoke Him is the sign that Jesus has succeeded in reawakening in those who listen to Him the desire for Him. Therefore, a memory of the past is not enough to move man in the present. “Christianity, being a present reality,” insists Giussani, “has as its instrument of knowledge the evidence of an experience.” We know that it is evidence, not a memory, because it is present and reawakens us. Just as He entered into the womb, just as He began His journey on earth by entering into the womb of a woman, so He enters into the depths of our recognition and into the depths of our love, which continues to be present here and now.
The mystery made flesh enters into experience as a factor of solid human experience: in my relationship with my mother, in my relationship with this girl, in my relationship with your friend, in my relationship with my enemy, in my relationship with all the people who slip past me on the street when I go to take the subway. Inside, inside the experience I am having, inside this self, I recognize You as the substance of everything. And how can we see that someone is participating in this event, the event of Christ that we celebrate at Christmas? By the desire that a person has within themselves. I have found nothing that describes it more brilliantly than this sentence by Nicolas Cabasilas: “They are men who have within themselves a desire so powerful that it surpasses their nature. They are surprised by a desire so absent that they cannot explain it. And they yearn and desire more than is fitting for man to aspire to. These men have been struck by the Bridegroom Himself. He Himself has sent them a burning ray of Hisbeauty. The extent of the wound already reveals the torment, and the intensity of the desire gives a glimpse of Who (with a capital letter) is the One who has shot the arrow.” Those who realize the dynamism that Christ sets in motion cannot help but rejoice.
Hearing this, as when Father Giussani says, aware of what he generates: “Guys, don't be afraid, don't be afraid, don't be afraid of not succeeding, of not making it. Just as you did not make yourself, so you do not fulfill yourself. It is Anotherwho fulfills you. How do you live? It is Another who made you; it is Another who awakens you to being moment by moment. You are Another. Therefore, do not be afraid of not succeeding. For this reason, there is no need to be satisfied. Do not be afraid of not succeeding like the Greeks. Because it is Another who acts in you. His capacity is so powerful that you must force yourself to withdraw. You must deny it; you must tell the truth. And then He too will stop at the threshold of your freedom. But don't be afraid, because the more time passes in your life, the more you will feel the depth of the emotion of returning to childhood at 30, 40, or 50 years of age. Don't be afraid of being overwhelmed, of being absorbed by Another, of being conquered.
Don't be afraid, because what the Other wants and works in you—the change He wants to work in you, in me—is to make you become yourself.” “You sought us while we were not seeking You. And You sought us so that we would seek You.” This is how we become companions on the road with so many of our contemporaries who are searching, as Taylor says, “seekers of meaning.” The greatness of the Christian faith, unmatched by any other position, is this: Christ has answered the human question. Therefore, those who accept the faith and live it and those who, not having faith, drown in the question, despair in the question, suffer the question, have a common destiny.
What sensitivity is needed to feel like a companion to those who are searching? To share the same feeling (Idem sentire) with those who are searching, one's companions. What happens, then, when His presence, Hisunique gaze, bursts into our lives? The first consequence is affection for oneself and the discovery of love, tenderness towards oneself, amazement, admiration, veneration, respect, and love for oneself. The first consequence of affection for Christ is a return to oneself. We must not always run away to try to endure life. It is love, esteem, veneration, and tenderness towards oneself, towards this something that is not mine, but from which everything starts because it is myself—something that I do not do, but that You do. We do not need to run away, to distract ourselves, because being with ourselves is unbearable.
I think of a friend who for many years has lived every day alongside her seriously ill husband, taking care of him. She said she always fantasized about the things she likes to do and cannot do, such as traveling abroad. It so happened that her grandchildren gave her a trip to a place she would have loved very much because of its buildings: Dubai. Because it's part of her job. Before she left, everyone encouraged her: “Don't you think you deserve it? It will do you good to get away, to take your mind off things.” And she said: “The more they said it, the more it annoyed me. So I left with a great desire not to take my mind off things, but to be there with all the urgency I feel every morning.” This made me attentive, and allowed me not to lose any of the impact of reality and to enjoy all the grandeur I saw. It was important to realize, for once, not in the daily grind, but in a moment of absolute beauty—that of travel—that the real pleasure for me is the relationship between reality and my humanity, not distracted, but wide open to the urgency of meaning.
She was able to verify that the problem of living emerges even more powerfully when the dream comes true, because there we see that if the dream is able to respond to the urgency, we understand. I remember one day when we were in Tuscany in front of a breathtaking view and someone said, “But after a while I get bored.” Why does one get bored if the breathtaking view is so beautiful? Because even a breathtaking view feels the “You.” And it bores us. The whole breathtaking view and the rarefaction of a journey refer us back to the One who can satisfy us. Without this “You,” everything we experience is too little. Only those who go along with it can be overwhelmed with gratitude: “What a blessing that You are here.” Christ is only for this joy. We could be a contribution to everyone, to the world. It is what so many are groping for. It is this gaze that has reached us that allows us to coincide with ourselves without running away. It is the fulfillment of what the prophet Isaiah said, to whom the Church refers us during Advent: “Behold, I am doing a new thing; do you not perceive it?”
There are those who perceive this newness. Someone writes to me: “The experience of fullness is not the ‘next step’ after something else. Is it not that first I experience sadness and then consolation? Is it not that first I experience discomfort and then fullness? My experience is that I would never want to live a life without feeling human, because it is there that I encounter Who (with a capital letter) fills me. Not who will fill me, but the present experience. For several mornings now, the very first thought when I open my eyes is: ‘You are doing this for me now.’ It seems like nothing, but everything changes. Giving space to this fills my self-awareness with the relationship that constitutes me.
And I can only bear witness to what I am experiencing by living it. It is within that I encounter the One who fills me.” Christ reveals Who Heis, not with a speech, not with words, but within each one of us, in the fullness with which He fills us. A loved one is the most obvious sign that we experience His presence here and now. “The desire for You. The desire not to leave You.” Because: “Christianity, being a present reality, has as its instrument of knowledge the evidence of an experience.” For this reason, it is this evidence of experience that can take away our fear of not succeeding. “No fear of not succeeding. It is He. I make all things new.”
And this is how He reaches us today to respond to our desire for fullness and to reawaken the desire for Christmas: “You sought us while we were not seeking You. And You sought us so that we might seek You.” Like a person who, upon meeting a friend she hasn't seen in a long time, is so fascinated that she wants to be with her, to follow what she looks at, what she follows. “I felt this nostalgia for a life that I saw vibrating in that person.
Now, why has this longing to always live like this been reawakened? I am envious, because I would always like to have that free and pure heart to follow my desire without telling myself lies.” This is what makes those who have been touched by the presence of Christ cry out: “Come, Lord Jesus,” during Advent. He puts such people before us to reawaken in us the desire for His presence. “Let us not lose ourselves, because too much time is time that does not love You. Sweet love, Jesus, above all love. Love that loves You does not remain idle. Rest is not the cancellation of desire. Love that loves You does not remain there to sweetly savor, but now lives desirous, as if it were more tightly bound to Love. That is how much joy is for You. Those who do not feel it cannot speak of how sweet it is to taste Your flavor.” Happy Advent and Merry Christmas to all.
Advent Retreat | Pratocentenario Parish - Milan 11.16.2025.
Unrevised notes by the author and translated by the staff of Epochal Change Digital Cultural Center.
