Awakenings

The event organized a few weeks ago by the guys from It's Time to Think “The Awakening” - in the context of the debate about the “return of God” or the “Catholic turn” - reminded me of the film Awakenings, which for some reason I don't remember was shown to me at school, back in the early nineties. The film tells the true story of Dr. Malcolm Sayer (Robin Williams), a neurologist who applies a new drug, L-dopa, to awaken catatonic patients who were victims of an epidemic of encephalitis lethargica decades earlier. The plot centers on the temporary “awakening” of Leonard (Robert De Niro) and other patients, exploring the joy of coming back to life and the tragic relapse when the treatment stops working.

Was Dostoevsky right?

The awakening that the It's Time to Think they wanted to provoke is not the religious, but the cultural, the communitarian, the intellectual. A generational awakening, which does not fit into the already hackneyed frameworks of the new right wing, or of the new forms of religious fervor, but which undoubtedly rhymes with them in that no one saw it coming, and in that they do not repeat formulas of the past.

But, as is logical, when we talk about everything that matters “with our underpants off” we end up talking about God. That is what Dostoevsky said happened in any conversation between young Russians in a tavern: “they argue about the immortality of the soul and the existence of God.”. 

I do not know if the thinkglaos from It's Time to Think (the meetings for dialogue with speakers and networking with friends) or the event itself at the Awakening have something in common with a nineteenth-century Russian tavern. But I am persuaded that the soul of young people is always the same, agitated by fears, longings and hopes, even if many want to narcotize it with immediately satisfied desires. But talking about God does not turn something into an institutionally religious reality, explicable in terms of pre-existing structures and plans.

The law of invisible beginnings

I return to the title of the article and the film that inspires it, which cast on this phenomenon the suspicion that it is something temporary, a dopamine rush threatened with corruption and premature death. 

When I was given the floor before that party of more than 6,000 young people, I briefly told them about the “law of invisible beginnings” and how behind it all there was a history of personal friendship and organic growth. That deployment was not, therefore, a flower of a day, but a sign of a certain maturity and extension of a movement that is called to continue spreading silently, promoting the initiative and commitment of many young people, beyond the logic of the parties, beyond the also flourishing dynamics of the religious realities. And without pretending to replace either the one or the other.

Strong emotions, associated with success, fame, numbers, superficially communitarian, vociferous, have their days numbered. But they can be put at the service of a more powerful, sincere and resistant dynamism: that of friendship, of open dialogue, of the cultivation of silence and interiority. A very positive sign in this concrete awakening of Vistalegre was the absence of egos, the independence in the face of partisan interests, the openness of the proposal, now channeled by a hub of new initiatives. This was not an end in itself, nor was it a platform for personal ends, nor was it a longa manus of Machiavellian minds.

An idea of Ratzinger

Given the context, I saw no need to cite my source on the “invisible origins” and slow-growth laws of great things. But this magazine is the right place to reveal it: a lecture by Joseph Ratzinger on the new evangelization. I can't resist picking out some passages from a succulent paragraph:

“Great things always start from the small grain and mass movements are always ephemeral (...). In other words: great realities begin with humility (...). The law of invisible origins tells us a truth - a truth present precisely in the action of God in history: “I did not choose you because you are great, on the contrary- you are the smallest of the people; I chose you because I love you...” God says to the people of Israel in the Old Testament and thus expresses the fundamental paradox of salvation history. Certainly, God does not count on great numbers; external power is not the sign of his presence. Many of the parables of Jesus indicate this structure of divine action and thus respond to the concerns of the disciples, who were expecting other successes and signs from the Messiah - successes similar to those offered by Satan to the Lord: All these - all the kingdoms of the world - I give you... (Mt 4, 9). An old proverb says “success is not a name of God”. The new evangelization must submit to the mystery of the mustard seed and not pretend to quickly produce the great tree. We either live too much with the security of the already existing big tree or with the impatience to have a bigger, more vital tree - rather, we must accept the mystery that the Church is, at the same time, a big tree and a very small mustard seed”.

Beyond appearances, fashions, and the limitations of all that is human - also of what is done by young people - I trust that there will be not one, but many awakenings. Although it is inevitable that some of them will be ephemeral, imperfect, disappointing. I am sure, in any case, that they will make mistakes, but they will be new mistakes. We will see not one twist, but many twists. No one should be obsessed with acting with a clear idea of the final outcome, or predicting the big picture of what is to come. 

This is what happened - as Benedict XVI himself explained at the Bernardine College in Paris - with the medieval monks: “it was not in his intention to create a culture or even to preserve a culture of the past. His motivation was much more elemental. His objective was: quaerere Deum, to seek God. In the confusion of a time when nothing seemed to be left standing, the monks wanted to dedicate themselves to the essential: to work with tenacity to find that which is worthwhile and endures forever, to find Life itself. They were looking for God. They wanted to move from the secondary to the essential, to what is only and truly important and reliable.”.