The Religious Sense Quotes

“Life is hunger, thirst, and passion for an ultimate object, which looms over the horizon, and yet always lies beyond it. When this is recognized, man becomes a tireless searcher.”
― Luigi Giussani, The Religious Sense

“And here is the alternative in which man risks himself, even if almost unconsciously: either you face reality wide open, loyally, with the bright eyes of a child, calling a spade a spade, embracing its entire presence, even its meaning; either this, or you place yourself in front of reality, defend yourself against it, almost with your arms flung in front of your eyes to ward off unwelcomed and unexpected blows.”
― Luigi Giussani, The Religious Sense

“It is primarily the love of ourselves as destiny, the affection for our own destiny that can convince us to undertake this work to become habitually detached from our own opinions and our own imaginations (not to eliminate but to detach ourselves from them!), so that all of our cognitive energy will be focused upon a search for the truth of the object, no matter what it should be. This love is the ultimate inner movement, the supreme emotion that persuades us to seek true virtue.”
― Luigi Giussani, The Religious Sense

“So here is the paradox, freedom is dependence upon God. It is a paradox, but it is absolutely clear. The human being – the concrete human person, me, you – once we were not, now we are, and tomorrow will no longer be: thus we depend. And either we depend upon the flux of our material antecedents, and are consequently slaves of the powers that be, or we depend upon What lies at the origin of the movement of all things, beyond them, which is to say, God.”
― Luigi Giussani, The Religious Sense

“The more one is truly human, the more one is able to trust, because one understands the reasons for believing in another.”
― Luigi Giussani, The Religious Sense

“It is the religious sense – a “radical engagement of the self with life” – that alone enables us to fulfil the promise of the scripture that we might have life and might have it more abundantly. How sad it is that our quest for self-mastery and a widespread sense of emptiness and loss-of-meaning go hand-in-hand, yet we often fail to see the connection.”
― Luigi Giussani, The Religious Sense

“I identify this heart with what I have called elementary experience; that is, it is something that tends to indicate totally the original impetus with which the human being reaches out to reality, seeking to become one with it. He does this by fulfilling a project that dictates to reality itself the ideal image that stimulates him from within.”
― Luigi Giussani, The Religious Sense

“Indeed, as we have seen, God is the most immediate implication of self-consciousness.”
― Luigi Giussani, The Religious Sense

“the greatest danger which today’s humanity need fear is not a catastrophe which comes from out there somewhere, a stellar catastrophe, neither is it famine, nor even disease; rather it is spiritual malady, which is the most terrible malady because the most directly human among the scourges is to remain “without the taste for life.”5 In such a situation, the individual finds himself ever more vulnerable within the social fabric. This is the most dangerous outcome of solitude.”
― Luigi Giussani, The Religious Sense

“The truly interesting question for man is neither logic, a fascinating game, nor demonstration, an inviting curiosity. Rather, the intriguing problem for man is how to adhere to reality, to become aware of reality.”
― Luigi Giussani, The Religious Sense

“As I see it, only two types of men capture entirely the grandeur of the human being: the anarchist and the authentically religious man. By nature, man is relation to the infinite: on the one hand, the anarchist affirms himself to an infinite degree, while, on the other, the authentically religious man accepts the infinite as his meaning.”
― Luigi Giussani, The Religious Sense

“Perfino l’amore tra l’uomo e la donna ha la saldatura profonda non nell’impeto della giovane età: la saldatura di quell’amore è in un’«altra» cosa, che si oggettiva nel bambino, nel figlio o, diciamo più genericamente, in un compito. Ma quando un figlio ci fosse, il compito che cos’è? È, più o meno confuso, più o meno nebuloso o consapevole, il destino del figlio, il suo cammino d’uomo; è questo senso che preme e detta l’atteggiamento di emozione reale, di impegno sicuro, di sentimento amoroso nella sua semplicità e nella sua totalità. Senza un’altra cosa che eccede il rapporto, il rapporto non starebbe. Occorre una ragione per il rapporto, e la ragione vera di un rapporto deve connetterlo con il tutto.”
― Luigi Giussani, Il senso religioso (Saggi)

“The community is the dimension and condition necessary for the human seed to bear fruit. For this reason, we can say that the true, the most intelligent persecution, is not the one employed by Nero and his amphitheatre of wild beasts or the concentration camp. The most ferocious persecution is the modern state’s attempt to block the expression of the communital dimension of the religious phenomenon.”
― Luigi Giussani, The Religious Sense

“The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.” And, because of this, he was able to denounce that suffocating lack of consolation that comes from that myopia. “I answer, the man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life.”
― Luigi Giussani, The Religious Sense

“When they cry
“Man overboard!”
the oceanliner, as big as a house,
stops all at once
and the man
they fish out with the ropes.
But when
a man’s soul is overboard,
when he drowns
from horror
and from desperation
not even his own household
stops
but distances itself.”
― Luigi Giussani, The Religious Sense

“Whenever the humble sense of human thought’s essential reform-ability is not understood, a metamorphosis is ushered in: philosophy becomes ideology. And this metamorphosis is realized to the extent to which it can be considered “normal” to impose a certain conception of life. It is in this way that the violence of power makes its appearance.”
― Luigi Giussani, The Religious Sense

“An Eskimo mother, a mother from Tierra del Fuego, and a Japanese mother all give birth to human beings, recognizable as such both by their exterior aspects and their interior stamp. Thus, when they will say “I,” they will use this expression to refer to a multiplicity of elements derived from diverse histories, traditions, and circumstances; but undoubtedly when they say “I” they will also use this term to indicate an inner countenance, a “heart,” as the Bible would say, which is the same in each of them, even if translated in the most diverse ways. I identify this heart with what I have called elementary experience; that is, it is something that tends to indicate totally the original impetus with which the human being reaches out to reality, seeking to become one with it. He does this by fulfilling a project that dictates to reality itself the ideal image that stimulates him from within. MAN, THE ULTIMATE JUDGE? We have said that the criterion for judging our own relation to ourselves, to others, to things, and to destiny is totally immanent,”
― Luigi Giussani, The Religious Sense

“Mi ha mostrato ciò vividamente una delle novelle giovanili di Thomas Mann. Il grande genio esprime sì la cultura dominante, ma è impossibile che non faccia trapelare l’inquietudine rimanente in essa, e l’inadempienza ultima di essa. Il titolo di quella novella è Il piccolo signor Friedemann.”
― Luigi Giussani, Il senso religioso (Saggi)

“La prima premessa aveva insistito sulla necessità di un realismo; il realismo è imposto dalla natura e dalla situazione dell’oggetto. La seconda premessa insiste sulla preoccupazione e l’amore a una razionalità, e questo intende mettere in luce il soggetto della operazione, la modalità delle sue movenze. Ma, di fronte a una domanda del tipo: «Come si fa a fidarsi di una persona?» rimane aperto il problema, non per l’aspetto che riguarda la sanità di una dinamica della ragione, ma per il fatto che fidarsi di un’altra persona introduce un fattore d’atteggiamento della persona che noi chiamiamo con un termine usuale «moralità». La terza premessa vuol parlare dell’incidenza della moralità all’interno della dinamica del conoscere.”
― Luigi Giussani, Il senso religioso (Saggi)

“Identifico in questo cuore ciò che ho chiamato esperienza elementare: qualcosa cioè che tende a indicare compiutamente l’impeto originale con cui l’essere umano si protende sulla realtà, cercando di immedesimarsi con essa, attraverso la realizzazione di un progetto, che alla realtà stessa detti l’immagine ideale che lo stimola dal di dentro.”
― Luigi Giussani, Il senso religioso (Saggi)

“In the Gospel, there is a sentence that expresses the same ethical imperative in a more fascinating way: “Blessed are the poor in spirit: the reign of God is theirs” (Matt. 5:3). But who are the poor? The poor are those who have nothing to defend, who are detached from those things that they seem to possess, so that their lives are not dedicated to affirming their own possession.”
― Luigi Giussani, The Religious Sense