The Conversion of Romano Guardini  1905 Alligned with Pascal 1654

Since the intellectually fashionable tend nowadays to declare  themselves “spiritual” but not “religious,” I’m always on the  lookout for experiences that bring the two elements together.  To  this purpose, I finally tracked Fr. Romano Guardini’s (1885‐1968)  famous account of his own conversion.  Besides being edifying, it  arguably represents one of the most important ecclesial events of  the 20th Century.  As a priest and theologian, Guardini deeply  influenced thinkers as diverse as Josef Pieper, Walter Kasper, and  Joseph Ratzinger.  I might add that the latter, in the Nature and Mission of Theology, describes Guardini’s motive for converting to  the Church as the spiritual core his own ecclesiology.  There  Ratzinger attributed to Guardini (at least in part) his own  conviction that the “Church is the sole guarantee that the  obedience we owe to the Truth is concrete.”  The following passage is set in Guardini’s university days (1905),  during a vacation in Staltach, which our author describes as “a little village on Starnberger See.”  There he shared an attic  apartment with his childhood friend, Karl Neundörfer.  By this   point, exposure to Kantian Idealism had shattered the simple faith  of Guardini’s youth.  But …  Then came a turning point. What had drawn me away from faith had not been real reasons against it, but the fact that the reasons for it no longer spoke to me. Faith as a conscious act had grown ever weaker and had finally died out. Still, I think that one’s unconscious relation to the reality of Christ is never entirely sundered. It was also important that I held no grudge against the Church or against any ecclesial personality, and that the hardship of a scrupulous conscience, which was then closely bound up with the Church’s education, had never turned into a rebellion. The religious [dimension] was becoming stronger–now from within. And that led me immediately, as it happened, to draw close to the Christian faith. I can no longer say which particular deliberations had contributed to this; however, an awareness came over me, which shaped and aligned the whole inner event, and which has remained for me ever since the authentic key to faith. I remember like yesterday the hour when this awareness became decision. It was in my little attic room on GonsenheimerStrasse. Karl Neundörfer and I had just spoken about the questions that exercised us both, and my last word went: “Everything will come down to the statement: ‘Whoever holds on to his soul will it, but whoever gives it away will gain it’.” My interpretation, based in this translation of Mt. 10:39, says what it all came down to for me. It had gradually become clear to me that a law existed, according to which a person—when he “holds on to his soul,” that is, when he remains in himself and accepts as valid only what immediately illumines him—loses his authenticity. If he wants to arrive at the Truth and in the Truth arrive at his true self, then he must let go of himself. This insight had surely had its precursors, though they escape me now. Upon hearing these words Karl Neundörfer retired to the adjacent room, from which a door opened onto a balcony. I sat in front of my table, and the reflection progressed: “To give my soul away—but to whom? Who is in the position to require it from me? So to require it that, in the requiring, it would not again be I who lay hold of it? Not simply ‘God.’ For whenever a person wants to deal only with God, then he says ‘God’ but means himself. There must also be an objective authority [Instanz], which can draw out my answer from self-assertion’s every refuge and hide-out. But there is only one such entity: the Catholic Church in her authority and concreteness [Präzision]. The question of holding on or letting go is decided ultimately not before God, but before the Church.” It struck me as if I carried everything—literally “everything”, my whole existence—in my hands, in a scale at perfect balance: “I can let it fall to the right or to the left. I can hold on to me soul our give it away…” And then I let the scale sink to the right. The moment was completely calm. There was neither agitation, nor radiance, nor experience of any kind. It was just a completely clear insight: “So it is”—and the imperceptibly gentle movement—“so it should be!” Then I went out to my friend and told him.

        The Conversion: Leap (from “Pascal for Our Time,” 21-21)

     The leap was the greatest of all moves because it’s moving from  one level of existence to another. “It is one and the same man who is to exist on each of these levels, but he does not get from the lower to the higher by simply continuing to live. He does not automatically develop from one level to another; this would only be possible if they differed from one another in a purely quantitative manner. Rather, the difference is qualitative and man attains the higher level – higher in its differentness – only by deciding and daring. It is thus not a matter of approach and transition, but of choice and leap. On his momentary, variously determined level of existence, man comes to a ‘brink.’ The level has been lived through to its end. At first dimly, then ever more clearly and urgently, he becomes aware that there is something higher – until he feels himself faced with the decision, whether or not he will take the risk…. It is given to him to the extent to which he dares…. Then he becomes aware of what ‘person’ really means, it solitude, its responsibility, its earnestness, and that it is something different, something higher than any immediate structure of life and culture. He thereby comes to the brink of his hitherto existing level of existence; he divines the new level and its demand upon him. In order to satisfy the demands, he must let go of the present level and ‘leap’ to the next. He must leap, because he receives no guarantee from his old position that he will gain a foothold on the new one, for the new one is of a higher level; his eyes are opened to a new and superior reality; a new power of evaluation awakens, and he is able to appreciate and to love on a higher level. Thus the existence of a truly living man is divided according to existential levels and the risks which lie before each level; according to ‘stages’ which in each case bear their own values within themselves, pose their special problems, and in which corresponding possibilities of the given, concrete man are realized.”[1]

The year of grace 1654
Monday, November 23, day of Saint Clement, pope and martyr,
and others in the martyrology.
Vigil of Saint Chrysogonus, martyr, and others.
From about ten-thirty in the evening to about half an hour after midnight.

Fire.
God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and savants.
Certitude, certitude; feeling, joy, peace.
God of Jesus Christ. Deum meum et Deum vestrum.
“Thy God shall be my God.”
Forgetting the world and everything, except God.
He is only found by the paths taught in the Gospel.
Grandeur of the human soul.
“Just Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you.”
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
I separated myself from him: Dereliquerunt me lantern aquae vivae.
“My God, will you abandon me?”
May I not be eternally separated from him.
“This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and him whom you have sent, Jesus Christ.”
Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
I separated myself from him; I fled him, renounced him, crucified him.
May I never be separated from him!
He is only kept by the paths taught in the Gospel.
Total and sweet renunciation.
Total submission to Jesus Christ and to my director.
Eternally in joy for a day of trial on earth.
Non obliviscar sermones tuos. Amen.

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[1] Romano Guardini, “Pascal For Our Time,” Herder and Herder (1966 ) 20-21.