The Motionless Flight: Spiritual Diary

By Divo Barsotti and David W. Fagerberg

"[This book ]presents through Barsotti’s eyes an acute analysis of the society of his time, with sudden flashes of insight into what the Church required in order to be renewed and able to face the future. Researchers who are anxious to delve into the secret about how to continue this historical journey along the way that was opened to us by the Master know that we are often easily exposed to the temptation of discouragement. We can affirm that Divo Barsotti is one – perhaps they are only a few? - who today possesses the secret of remaining encouraged, because he was able to receive it and make it personal in a daily experience of living encounter with God. Tenaciously – indeed, "at all costs" – Barsotti kept this gift over his whole lifetime and, with a hidden ministry of great importance and extraordinary breadth, he presented it to those who have enjoyed the comforting and demanding gift of his spiritual fatherhood" (Padre Agostino Ziino, Community of the Sons and Daughters of God).
"Here the door opens to the work of Barsotti. God's word is not primarily teaching and theology but action and life: it is a creative act that is accomplished. And life is not just something “physical,” “ontological,” but free action, spiritual, self-giving gift by the eternal Spirit and with this it is Word. Christ transmits this unity of Word and life to His Church: His Word is an event in the liturgy, in the sacrament, in the Eucharist, but each of these express the sacramental character of the Church and also of the world itself, created and redeemed. The Word is God's action in Sacred Scripture. It is not a “book” but the resonating, throughout the world, of the historical presence of the Word of God" (Hans Urs von Balthasar).
"Barsotti’s “successful performance” in numerous fields of theology was recognized immediately by popes, theologians, seminarians, and laity when they heard him speak or read his works. I continue to hope for additional volumes to be translated so that the English-speaking world will discover the man who produced 160 books over his lifetime; who taught sacramental theology and spiritual theology for 30 years in Florence; who preached papal retreats and was friends with Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI; who was friends with, and often visited by, many of the most significant theologians of the 20th century (von Speyr, Danielou, Bouyer, de Lubac, Evdokimov, Beauduin, Hausherr, Merton, Ratzinger, Giussani) including, of course, von Balthasar, who for the last six months of his life served as Barsotti’s spiritual director. Barsotti’s objective works appeared under many genres: fundamental theoretical writings, liturgical theology, spiritual exegesis on the mystery of salvation, mystagogy, pastoral care, mystical writings, and poetry. He was a “successful performer,” indeed" (David W. Fagerberg), University of Notre Dame).
"I have to prepare myself, I must not become tired of this silence, of this impotence: tomorrow, - whenever the Lord wills, His Love, like an impetuous wind too long compressed, with greater force will be outpoured upon the world with greater force" (Divo Barsotti).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chorabooks
• Release date: Jan 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9789887999171

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Persons

Preface

Padre Agostino Ziino

In 1957 Divo Barsotti published his spiritual diary La Fuga Immobile [The Motionless Flight] from the years 1944-1946 for the Edizioni di Comunità in Milan. Three years earlier La Lotta con l'Angelo. Diario di un’anima [The Fight with the Angel: Diary of a Soul], Barsotti’s reflections from before he was thirty years old, had been published anonymously in Florence. [1] The young Tuscan priest (born in the little village called Palaia in 1914) was already well known in ecclesiastical circles for his activities in journalism, having been involved with L'Osservatore Romano in the early 1940s and later with other journals of Christian education and formation such as Vita cristiana , Città di vita , Il Focolare , Ricerca , and Humanitas . His name became even more known for his first substantial liturgical, exegetical and spiritual works, most of which were translated within a few years into French, Spanish, German, and Polish. [²] For example, Cristianesimo Russo (Russian Christianity, Florence, 1948), Il Mistero Cristiano nell'Anno Liturgico (The Christian Mystery in the Liturgical Year, Florence, 1951), Il Dio di Abramo (The God of Abraham), L'Esperienza di Dio nella Genesi (The Experience of God in Genesis, Florence, 1952), Il Mistero Cristiano e la Parola di Dio (The Christian Mystery and the Word of God, Florence, 1954), La Rivelazione dell'Amore (The Revelation of Love, Florence, 1955), Liturgia e Teologia (Liturgy and Theology, Milan, 1956). These titles reveal the fields of theological knowledge and, more precisely, the experience of the mystery of God, on which Barsotti's attention would be increasingly focused, and in whose service he would deepen his profound and broad personal reflection, producing a vast amount of writing over the course of the the second half of the last century.

In recent years, many scholars and researchers have begun a more systematic study of Barsotti's personality, [³] highlighting various cultural and spiritual components relating to the main axis of his interior life and also his life as a man of the Church, which was both the search for God as well as the experience of God in faith. [⁴] There seems to be more and more renewed interest in his theological writings, and even more so in his personal spiritual experience. Anyone who encounters Padre Barsotti’s personal style, either through his writings or in direct conversation – a language that is both very personal and often paradoxical – will recognize him more and more readily as God's true and precious witness and also will discover that he is a master the Church’s entire Tradition, which he absorbed in a singular way and is still proposed by him today with the extraordinary audacity and freshness of a man in his nineties, [⁵] clear-headed in his reasoning, with an acute ability to read and decipher the tormented reality of our world. [⁶]

It is not my goal to present here in all its complexity the figure of this great old man, and even less to attempt to quantify the value of his presence in this our Church, which a short time ago crossed the threshold of the new millennium. Barsotti always felt himself to be a devoted son of the Church, and had a passionate devotion to her that, at certain stages of his long life, was also dramatically tested. Others have begun to reread and arrange his earliest writings and the varied wealth of wisdom he has given not only to the Church of today but also for all time. They find his writing to be as fresh as ever today, especially in all of his youthful insights. For this reason, there are still many who continue to walk through the journey of personal knowledge of the man Divo Barsotti, personally finding him still today in the house of San Sergio among the hills of Settignano, where he has lived since the 1950s with some members of its community.

It is precisely this Community of the Sons and Daughters of God, which he founded and guided for many years, [⁷] who had the idea of proposing the publication of this spiritual diary, The Motionless Flight, on the occasion of his 90th birthday . It is a fundamental text by which to enter the interior world of the mystic Barsotti, a man completely open to God and, at the same time, an acute observer of the today of history. We have chosen to publish the text just as it came from the author's pen, without weighing it down with notes or comments. Although such notes might have contextualized the author's discourse and intuitions about Italy and the Church immediately following the Second World War, the immediacy and the radical nature of his discourse, with its appealing and evocative ability to express what was happening around him, seem to us to be essential elements in allowing the reader to experience his particular lesson of life and faith.

We have also republished the Preface that Hans Urs von Balthasar - one of the great friends of Barsotti who accompanied him in the different phases of his spiritual journey - wrote in the 60's for the German edition of The Motionless Flight. [⁸] The pages of the great Swiss theologian take us to the heart of Barsotti’s meditation, tracing the contours of Barsotti’s thought in order to help us understand all that he later wrote with a precision that is still enlightening and valid today.

This new edition of his second diary is therefore a gift that the community presents to its father. But we would not ask for the involvement of Edizioni San Paolo if we did not believe that The Motionless Flight was still a gift to all of us today, after more than 50 years have passed. It presents through Barsotti’s eyes an acute analysis of the society of his time, with sudden flashes of insight into what the Church required in order to be renewed and able to face the future. Researchers who are anxious to delve into the secret about how to continue this historical journey along the way that was opened to us by the Master know that we are often easily exposed to the temptation of discouragement. We can affirm that Divo Barsotti is one – perhaps they are only a few? - who today possesses the secret of remaining encouraged, because he was able to receive it and make it personal in a daily experience of living encounter with God. Tenaciously – indeed, at all costs – Barsotti kept this gift over his whole lifetime and, with a hidden ministry of great importance and extraordinary breadth, he presented it to those who have enjoyed the comforting and demanding gift of his spiritual fatherhood.

All of us in a certain way, more or less consciously, enjoy today in the Church the fruit of the battles and hardships experienced by those who, like Barsotti, became personally involved in those battles and hardships during years that were difficult and transformative for the Church. For this reason, we are convinced that rediscovering this truth, at least by means of reading through the demanding itineraries undertaken with generous strength by those who are identified as the fathers of our recent past, is a gift for everyone, a precious grace in order to continue to grow in the courageous faith of Christ, which is becoming increasingly the only hope for the world.

---

[1] La lotta con l’angelo. Diario di un’anima, LEF, Firenze 1954. The work was republished in 2000 by Paccagnella Editore, San Lazzaro di Savena (BO). In the space of fifty years, Divo Barsotti has published ample excerpts of his spiritual diary, that to date amount to 18 volumes.

[2] For an overview of the vast body of Barsotti's works, see G. Gioia, Bibliografia ragionata delle opere di Divo Barsotti, in Ho Theologos 20 (2002), pp. 367-417.

[3] Italian Church Historian G. Penco has defined him as without doubt...the most important Italian author of our century in the field of spirituality, finding in his body of works the highest expression of spiritual mastery since the end of the Second World War ( Storia della Chiesa in Italia, II, Jaca Book, Milano 1978, p. 657).

[4] See E. Grasso, Fondamenti di una spiritualità missionaria secondo le opere di don Divo Barsotti, Università Gregoriana Editrice, Roma 1986; C. Carvello, L’Eucaristia negli scritti di Divo Barsotti. Saggio di teologia e spiritualità liturgica, Ed. del Seminario, Caltanissetta 1986; AA.VV., Cerco Dio solo. Omaggio a Divo Barsotti, edited by S. Tognetti, G. Guarnieri, L. Russo, Comunità dei Figli di Dio, Settignano (Firenze) 1994, with contributions by H. U. von Balthasar, E. Grasso, S. Nistri, M. Luzi, G. Dossetti, S. Piovanelli, M. G. Caprini, G. Mazzanti, G. Biffi, G. Guarnieri, R. Gregoire, A. Maggiolini, B. Calati, G. Della Croce, A. Cattari, M. Donadeo; AA.VV., Divo Barsotti. Testimone di Dio nell’Italia del Novecento, a cura di C. Naro e L. Russo, Paccagnella Editore, S. Lazzaro di Savena (Bologna) 2001, with contributions by C. Naro, A. Raspanti, C. Carvello, A. Ziino, M. Naro, M. Tenace, B. Petrà, P. Ricci Sindoni, M. Baldini; AA.VV., Amore alla Parola. L’esegesi spirituale di Divo Barsotti, a cura di M. Naro, Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli (Catanzaro) 2003, with contributions by M. Naro, A. Raspanti, A. Ziino, P. Renner, G. Morandi, B. Petrà.

[5] This introduction was written for the Italian edition, published when Divo Barsotti was still alive (translator's note).

[6] Pietro Borzomati, in his paper Per una storia della spiritualità in Italia at the study Seminar, promoted by seven Italian universities in collaboration with the Italian Conference of Bishops' Cultural Project, celebrated in Assisi (October 23-25 2003) with the title Il cattolicesimo italiano dal 1958 ad oggi, presented Divo Barsotti as one of three main important figures to understand the spiritual roots of a vast part of Italian Catholicism, putting him together with Saint John XXIII and Saint Pius of Pietralcina; see L’Osservatore Romano, November 14 2003, p. 3.

[7] For an introduction to the Community of the Sons and Daughters of God see M. Torcivia, Guida alle nuove comunità monastiche italiane, Piemme, Casale Monferrato 2001, pp. 211-236.

[8] D. Barsotti, Die regungslose Flucht. Ein geistliches Tagebuch, Johannes Verlag, Einsiedeln 1960. The book was also translated into Flemish by Desclée de Brouwer in 1962 and into French by the Editions Mame in 1964.

Introduction

Hans Urs Von Balthasar

Divo Barsotti was born in 1914 in Palaia (Pisa) and grew up there among seven brothers and sisters. After studying in his diocese, he was ordained as a priest on July 18, 1937, in the Cathedral of San Miniato in Pisa. During the next three years he taught theology, Church history and patrology in the Pisa seminary. Unhappy with this activity, and possessing an inquisitive search for the sense and meaning of a divine vocation, he asked to be excused from his office and returned for some years (1941-45) to his family, from where he occasionally offered to substitute for other priests. These were years spent in adhesion to the will of God and to the new way. This is the period upon which he reflects in his two later published diaries. The first and shorter diary is La lotta con l'Angelo (The Fight with the Angel: A Diary of a Soul, LEF, Florence 1954), comprising the years 1941-42, and the second and longer diary is La fuga immobile (The Motionless Flight, Edizioni di Comunità, Milan 1957) comprising the years 1944-46.

The second diary, which gathers together and clarifies the chaotic insights and judgments of the former, is here presented in German. In 1945 we find Barsotti living with some religious sisters in a suburb of Florence. In 1950 he held the chair of asceticism and mysticism at the seminary in Florence, then took the spiritual care of an association of graduates in the same city and founded an association of lay faithful approved by the bishop of Florence: the Comunità dei Figli di Dio [ Community of the Children of God], which is flourishing even now. Barsotti lived with a few companions in a kind of hermitage near Settignano (Florence); its community is characterized by being structured in various degrees of belonging, [1] from those who live in the world (such as the Tertiary Orders) to those who live fully according to the evangelical precepts, to those who live in small communities and even some who live in solitude. Barsotti's extensive literary work, which is still growing, justifies these widely varied ways of life.

Like Hugo Ball, he is not afraid of the word flight and finds his starting point and orientation in radical separation from the world, in the abandonment of everything, and then, from this place with God, is able once again to embrace everything, even the extreme manifestations of secular life. In view of this absolute distance from the world, Barsotti recovers the universality of divine salvation and sees that it is not necessary to build small institutions of salvation either in the world or alongside it, but rather it is necessary to save the whole world. The means of this is and always remains the Cross, the Death and Resurrection of Jesus: hidden life with Christ in God, participation in the " mysterium salutis" that is performed in an indivisible and Trinitarian way in the truly unique act of salvation of Christ. This act fills the history of the Church and the history of the world, and is the perennial present that gives consistency and validity to every fleeting moment of human time, to every fallen human work.

Action in the world makes sense only if it makes present this one act; only by participating in this one event, according to which God is in the world and for the world, can something happen in the world. The God in the world event, that is, Jesus Christ, is inseparably Word and life (and in this is the proof of his divinity). Word as life and life as Word: this is formally the mysterium.

Here the door opens to the work of Barsotti. God's word is not primarily teaching and theology but action and life: it is a creative act that is accomplished. And life is not just something physical, ontological, but free action, spiritual, self-giving gift by the eternal Spirit and with this it is Word. Christ transmits this unity of Word and life to His Church: His Word is an event in the liturgy, in the sacrament, in the Eucharist, but each of these express the sacramental character of the Church and also of the world itself, created and redeemed. The Word is God's action in Sacred Scripture. It is not a book but the resonating, throughout the world, of the historical presence of the Word of God.

From this starting point we can divide Barsotti's literary work into four groups, whose intimate connection is evident from this premise.

1) The fundamental theoretical writings, especially two that complement each other: Il mistero cristiano nell'anno liturgico (The Christian Mystery in the Liturgical Year, LEF 1950, French Cerf 1954) and Il mistero cristiano e la parola di Dio (The Christian Mystery and the Word of God, LEF 1953, Extended Edition in French, Cerf 1954; in German Christliches Mysterium und Wort Gottes, Benziger 1957). Both see k to integrate each other, totally: the mystery of the liturgy would like to resume its ancient and universal amplitude, surpassing Casel, [²] whose work is assimilated.

There is only one unique mysterium: God in Christ for us, which becomes real to us in the fact that the Church is an act that arises and is made concrete as a sacrament. Part of this aspect is addressed in the small book Teologia e liturgia (Theology and Liturgy (Corsia dei Servi, Milan 1956).

The main work, Il mistero cristiano e la parola di Dio, describes the act as word and makes a bridge between the spiritual exegesis of the Church Fathers and modern scientific exegesis. It is heavily indebted to French theology, especially Louis Bouyer and his significant work La Bible et l'Evangile (The Bible and the Gospel), but also to Henri de Lubac and his interpretation of Origen in Histoire et Esprit, as well as the numerous inspired exegetes of France at present. The great merit of these two works is to have once again made the whole concrete and historical salvation mystery present and practicable, in particular for having restored to the Old Testament its strength as being current event. It has focused theology around the interpretative function of this historical reality and so filled the liturgy with this immense content, thereby enlarging and strengthening Christian awareness in an awe-inspiring manner. One can easily imagine how much this was necessary in Barsotti’s homeland, where the liturgical movement had almost no impact and where exegesis and theology have so much to recover in many areas.

To these principal works that provide us with the key to reading all the other Barsottian works, we must add a further, which only apparently stands apart: Cristianesimo russo (Russian Christianity, LEF 1948). Like the first published book, this is a fundamental one.

The Barsotti hermitage is named Casa San Sergio. The whole enterprise of Barsotti is contained in the sign of Russian piety, from its Byzantine and Greek-patristic origins to Sergius, Seraphim of Sarov, Theophane the hermit, John of Kronstadt and Chomjakov, Dostoevsky, Leontev, Soloviev, Berdjajev. It is a piety that is born of the paradoxical clash between flight from the world and the embrace of the world, between absolute contemplation and salvific action that springs from it. According to Barsotti, Russian piety is missing from lived-out Catholicism (although the shortcomings of Russian piety do not escape him at all), and only in Christ, from whom both rivers originate, is there hope that the East and the West will meet again. Culture alone will never provide a basis for reunion: Culture is only an intermediate value in the service of politics or religion; it can help to divide or to unite, but in itself it is not dividing or uniting. No other book has been written with such affection, since, for Barsotti, Russian piety is both an affair of the heart and a strategic position between East and West, between God and the world, between liturgical contemplation and industrial secularism.

2) The second group of works expounds on the mystery of salvation: it brings theology back to spiritual exegesis. Here the great stages of the history of salvation are interpreted in a theological way, theology is filled out by salvific event, and the fullness of the mystery is proven in the historical fact. With precision we find that the spiritual exegesis of Scripture is not added as a second interpretation to the literal and historical one, but it is nothing more than the deepening of historical-literal interpretation. Every event in Scripture, and especially in Jesus' life is eternal, pre-existent before it is accomplished; and once it is accomplished, it lasts forever.

The Old Testament is just as much Mysterium Christi as Christ Himself is and also as the Age of the Church is. Spiritual Exegesis is based on a typology that is essential; it is Christological if you consider salvation in the Old Testament; it is sacramental if you look at Christian life; it is eschatological, if one searches for the sense of mystery oriented to eternity. At the service of this theological exegesis is an interpretation of Genesis ( Il Dio di Abramo, l'esperienza di Dio nella Genesi (The God of Abraham: The Experience of God in Genesis) LEF 1952), in which the themes of creation as theophany and as God's covenant with men are developed in a deeply, richly, and boldly; then a spiritual interpretation of the Exodus, [³] dealing with the theme, ubiquitous in Scripture, of leaving a foreign country, of walking through the sea and the desert to the Promised Land. In addition, there is the great work La rivelazione dell'amore (The Revelation of Love, LEF 1955; published in French by Alsatia, 1958), in which the Old Covenant is interpreted as an ever more luminous manifestation of the mystery of love, more like the preparation for the incarnation of Jesus and not as a law that places itself as an obstacle on the road. An interpretation of the Apocalypse is also in preparation. [⁴]

3) The third group of works, which we will not consider individually here, translates fundamental thoughts into texts that are easier to understand, intended for pastoral use in the care of souls. These are conferences, retreats, and spiritual exercises that interpret the content of the Christian mystery in a number of ways for practical life: Loquere Domine (LEF 1953, published in French by Orante 1953), Nella presenza di Dio (In the Presence of God, LEF 1954), La via del ritorno (The Way of Return LEF 1957), Dalla grazia alla gloria (From Grace to Glory, LEF 1957) and numerous small contributions in magazines.

4) The last group is made up of diaries, along with a brief description of a trip to the Holy Land ( Pellegrino in Terra Santa - Pilgrim in the Holy Land, Locusta, Vicenza, 1958). The diaries, especially La fuga immobile, were written before Cristianesimo Russo and show the origins of this Christian vision of the world. We are therefore grateful for the publication of this diary, because Barsotti’s theoretical works reveal many literary influences that are not immediately obvious, since they derive from Barsotti’s own primordial experience, and also from his many subsequent cultural experiences. The diary reveals his primordial experience.

The fact that Barsotti has abandoned his regular career to pursue a future that is not seen as very desirable in the clerical world - and not without dangers - reveals his intolerance of regimented ecclesiastical realities and his will - which may be recognized as a will obedient to a call - to renew Christianity at its most fundamental stages. Unlike La Pira, Carlo Bo, Danilo Dolci and others, he seeks this renewal not in the social sphere, but, as we have seen, within the original mystery.

Returning to the desert to experience God, and God alone, he is similar to Charles de Foucauld, to whom he frequently and willingly appeals. More active and more gifted than de Foucauld in the literary field, Barsotti must again and again formulate this experience, analyze it by means of concentric circles, and, beginning from the initial oppositions and paradoxes, gradually approach the center of the mystery and illuminate it. In his diary there appears unfiltered the original vehemence and disruptive force of his thought, an elemental force of love, of the will in self-giving which for the moment is exercised and expands as if in a void: it is a Christian radicalism which is supernatural and pure.

Three radicalisms can be distinguished which, by blending with each other, act as driving forces. The first is the experience of being as activity or act; therefore the Aristotelian-Thomistic teaching of the actus is radicalized in the direction of Eckhart and Fichte and approaches the understanding in the thought of the young Karl Barth. It is only on the basis of what is fully realized that we can explain what is still in tension and potentiality: in the Christian sense, God is the fullness in the void of all creatures, and Jesus Christ Incarnate is the fullness of God who assumes in Himself all that is unfinished, vain, and fallen in the world - He heals it and brings it to the Father. And if God wants to be all in all – not only in Himself but also in the emptiness of the creature – then indeed (as Barsotti rightly dares to affirm) He wants to be so by means of the loving creature, and thus the maternal virginity of Mary becomes an active principle in which each creature is called to participate.

Already from this we can see the radicality of Barsotti's theological thought: its mystical spirituality is always fed (like that of Eckhart) from the deepest and boldest perspectives of Biblical revelation and dogmatic meditation. But when the disruptive force of the first explosion makes its own energy felt, it immediately makes any compromising equilibrium impossible. From this point of departure, every now and then there is doubt about the validity and dominance of certain institutions in the face of the breakthrough event, or in the face of what is only impersonal in the face of desiring greater dialogue, or in the face of the intrinsic value of what is potency in favor of a sort of absolute domain of the actus purus. The creature and the world exist in so far as they are part of this act (in the Platonic sense), otherwise they do not exist – they are empty, vanity, not-me. This radicalism leads, as in the above-mentioned thinkers, to an absolute primacy of the supernatural; as in Eckhart, the act of creation appears inserted in the act of the generation of the Word and the Incarnate Son is the only cause of all created natures: the world finds in Christ its reason to be and to exist.

This can be expressed in a second radicalism whose discussion is the most precious part of this book, and perhaps no Christian has ever lived it so deeply as Divo Barsotti: God is not just Unus in the sense of the Platonists; He is also the " Unicus. God's uniqueness entails, as a consequence for every person created by God according to his image and likeness, the uniqueness of each one in his species (what Thomas affirms about the angels). This uniqueness of every person develops in participating ever more fully in the uniqueness of God. Therefore, not only all that is potential transcends toward the act of God, but every created subjectivity, that is, being itself, exists only to the extent that it actively transcends itself towards the I" of God.

Within the analogia entis, as its extreme application, especially for spiritual beings, is the analogia personalitatis that Barsotti takes seriously to its full implication. God is present for us in Christ, and here the author inserts the traditional thought of the Corpus mysticum - Sponsa mystica: the Church (and in her all believers and finally all mankind) is participation in the I, in consciousness, in the attitude of Jesus Christ towards the Father within the Holy Spirit. But the experience of God's uniqueness has another, negative aspect: it is not possible to participate in the One, the Unique, according to being. If there was such multiplicity, the Unique would be divided; it differs precisely from this multiplicity thanks to its uniqueness.

The thought of Christian philosophy, scandalous for today's Christians, according to which God does not have a real relationship with the world, becomes in Barsotti – perhaps for the first time – a religious-theological experience that requires immediate transposition in Christian praxis. At this point he flows into Mount Athos and again into the most advanced forms of Russian contemplation, whether they are Aeropagic or Evagrian.

This might seem like a modern form of Schelerian personalism, but actually this implies even more. It reopens, in pure primitivity, original Christian and Biblical modes of thought, which have been blocked for a long time and perhaps were always totally inaccessible. It is understandable that the statements in this area are easily misleading; but you cannot talk about them differently without diluting them. If grace is truly to inhabit the fullness and uniqueness of Christ, then this fullness and uniqueness really lives in man, or he lives in it. Grace (and hence its free responsibility) is not divisible. Counterweights can be found everywhere.

Finally, the reader of this book will be amazed by the continuous repetition of a word: life. God is life. He is life so much that all that is not divine dies before his being more-than-alive. God, inasmuch as he gives death, gives his life. Here appears the pathos of the philosophy of Bergson, Nietzsche and Simmel, but always connected with theological-mystical experience, without being compromised by contemporary thinking. Life is the keenness and ardor of love. All that is only static and formal is lifeless, abstract; the abstract corresponds to concepts, but what corresponds to concrete living is the experience or, as is often said, to feel. One who has never experienced the vitality of God does not know what he is saying as a theologian, as a Christian, and as a man. Concepts can only bear witness to an experience, and so everything that is institution and organization in the Church can only be an expression of a true supernatural vitality. When concept and institution are not favorable to vitality, they only damage it.

It belongs to the pathos of philosophy breaking up shells and scraps that even in the Diary they are continually blown away. This is one of the ways Barsotti was led from eremitism (parallel to Foucauld or his followers) to the idea of a community of people: the Church has to overflow beyond the delimiting forms of the world in order to correspond to the meaning of its unlimited form. Starting from life, the author finds new access to his principle of being as act: life is actualized existence. Of course, this does not intend anything immanent and natural, but rather the mystical participation of created being in the uncreated life that flows to us through Christ. In Him we have life.

With these three radicalisms, which in Barsotti are primordial personal experiences and not cultural acquisitions, three dangerous forms of philosophical unilateralism are overcome, placing each of them in their proper field of origin: the supernatural and theology. By doing so, he gives to Christian spirituality, which is often inadequately called mystical ascesis, an unheard-of-splendor, a fresh and springing force.