Listening . . . for Another

Guissani writes, "The 'I,' the human being, is that level of nature in which nature becomes aware of not being made by itself. . .experiences its own contingency." The Religious Sense, p. 106. Elsewhere he says that this experience of dependency is the root of prayer, for it leads us to look for another.

Emmanual Levinas, in his book Proper Names (at p.5) writes: "But already immediately after the First World War Gabriel Marcel, in his Metaphysical Journal, challenged 'the classical idea, the eminent value of autarkia, or personal self-sufficiency.'

'The perfect is not what is sufficient unto itself -- or at any rate that perfection is the perfection of a system, not of a being. On what condition can the relationship between a being and what it needs represent a spiritual value? It seems there must be reciprocity, an awakening. Only a relationship of being to being can be called spiritual . . . What counts here is the spiritual exchange between beings; here it is not a question of respect but of love.'

'Here being is not consciousness of self; it is relation to the other than self, and awakening. And the other than self -- is that not the Other [Autri]? And love means, before all else, the welcoming of the other as thou. "

It seems that when we experience ourselves as we really are, as incomplete, we have a hope of awakening, listening to another, and loving. For incompleteness is a lack. Is the other "for use" to complete my incompleteness? No, but to overcome the burden of solitude that autarchy delivers. My "home" is not by myself, but with others, in the absolute Other, God.

And in listening to the other, I can hear the call of vocation.

"For each Christian, God has an Idea which fixes his place within the membership of the Church: this Idea is unique and personal, embodying for each his appropriate sanctity. . . The Christian's supreme aim is to transform his life into this Idea of himself secreted in God, this 'individual law' freely promulgated for him by the pure grace of God."

From Balthasar, Therese of Lisieux: The Story of a Mission, at p.p. xii-xiii. Quoted from Ratzinger's Faith by Tracey Rowland, Ch. 5, "The Structure of Communion," p. 90.

There is freedom and fulfillment, responding to the spirit of grace!

Listen to Roxette sing "Listen To Your Heart" (hang in through the ad)

Listen to Carrie Underwood sing "Do You Hear What I Hear?"

Listen to the Seekers sing "Calling Me Home"