that calls every finite singular to be. The fruitful response is as much giving further (work, begetting) as it is personally responding to the destiny that the original giver prepares for everyone and that unfolds gradually through the historical existence of the person. Throughout this itinerary the person has constant negative and positive intimations of death. The negative encounters are all those instances in which the risk of giving meets an ungrateful rejection of the gift or a denial of further giving. But the risk of giving does not derive simply from possible negative outcomes. Giving always requires the detachment of the giver from the gift and the receiver so that they can be themselves and respond to the giver gratuitously. The giver’s detachment is not a withdrawal, but, endowed with the form of giving, is a waiting for the response to come and to do so gratuitously. The “risking” indicates the totality of the giving that respects the irreducible otherness of the gift and thus waits for a gratuitous response that may not come.
The positive intimations of death can be perceived if we realize that death, beyond its meaning of biological extinction and interruption of the original giving, reminds the person of the gift of his own existence. Death reminds the receiver of the constant being allowed to be. In this regard, death reveals anew the truth of birth: finite gift’s ontogenic dependence on the source that begets the human being at every moment. One advantage of lived time is that it affords the possibility to see the unity of existence as a gift under the never-ending light of the mystery—even if most of the time this unity passes unnoticed. Perhaps more forcefully than birth itself, death discloses that life is a gift that calls for further giving, but a giving that in reality, since it is a response to the presence that calls, coincides with permitting oneself to be taken. Our contemporary culture holds up sudden death as the ideal way to die. Yet, while in some cases death may occur abruptly, normally speaking one is called to receive it, that is, to learn to give oneself over to the origin of one’s own existence. Through death, one is asked to give oneself over completely. This could seem an unacceptable expropriation if we lose sight of the fact that the logic of gift that sustains existence is one of love. In love, one wishes to give oneself over completely to the beloved. Death, of course, has the flavor of a punishment and threatens to be the last word on existence. Yet it also brings us to the truth of the gift: the complete entrusting of oneself to the paternal origin. If giving were not ultimately an allowing to be taken, an offering, it would be determined by a limited, self-imposed measure that, as has often been lamented, undoes the gift from within. The wealth of the gift is to give itself completely—a donation that can be described as utter poverty. In order to be true the gift has to be complete; it cannot admit any measure. This is also why previous, discrete moments of giving were perceived as true only when one abandoned oneself in the giving. Those moments also taught that to hand oneself over to the other, as in marriage, has the unexpected though desired fruit of being given back along with the one to whom one has entrusted oneself. This is why in dying, too, one permits oneself to be taken and hopes that this ultimate gift may be finally confirmed. In this regard, death encompasses both moments that must be viewed in and through the other: giving oneself and allowing oneself to be taken. Understanding death in this way, we discover a new sense of limit. Limit, or finitude, which after Christian revelation is no longer a sign of perfection, emerges not as an end and total solitude, but as relation with the paternal origin. If originary experience allowed us to see the gift-ness of the person and of what is present, we now need to ask how recognition of the original giver, and hence the unity with and difference from him, takes place.
6. The Exigent Character of Life
The previous sections attempted to show, with the help of Giussani, that originary experience touches on the encounter with the presence of the other, a sign that is the unity of logos and gift. The gift of the singular sets man on the path toward the affirmation of the transcendent giver of the gift, of whom the sign is a word. As the analysis of gift through the reality of the family indicated, the person comes to recognize through his own experience that the origin of his existence cannot be fully identified with his progenitors or the natural biological mechanisms. Originary experience leads man to discover from within life itself a “structural disproportion” between him, the sign, and the ultimate giver, which, in light of such disproportion, cannot but be acknowledged as the divine paternal mystery. Before examining this further, there is a methodological implication to note: the human person’s call to acknowledge the original giver means that the core of the doctrine of the analogy between God and finite being—which will be developed formally in the next chapter—consists in the dramatic relation between God and the human person. If the gift is freely given to itself so that it can be itself in responding to the giver, the analogy of being between God and the concrete singular takes place within the horizon of what can be called, with Balthasar, an analogia libertatis. This analogy of freedom, having its apex and condition of possibility in Christ, contains an analogia personarum according to which each person discovers his or her unique face in the response to the call of the paternal giver.50
The encounter with truth, which we call here originary experience, takes the concrete form of the encounter between the wonder-causing self-presentation of being in the sign’s dual unity (gift-logos) and the original needs that constitute the human heart. Giussani says that originary experience invites us to perceive the presence of being, but in addition, that experience also reveals what constitutes the gift of one’s being: the “heart,” that is, “a complex of needs and ‘evidences’ which throws man into comparison with all that is.”51 Giussani orders the original evidences, needs, and exigencies that constitute the human heart in four fundamental categories: truth, justice, happiness, and love.52 The first category of truth is man’s search for the meaning of everything; that is, for the idea or form that gives things their identity and relation with the whole, with the ultimate: “the need for truth always implies singling out the ultimate truth, because one can only define a partial truth in relation to the ultimate. Nothing can be known without a quick, implicit comparison, if you like, between the thing and totality. Without even a glimpse of the ultimate, things become monstrous.”53 Giussani places great importance on this first category, to the extent that it is the ground for his understanding of reason. Here again, it is experience that yields the adequate nature of reason: “reason is that singular event of nature in which it [reason] reveals itself as the operative need to explain reality in all its factors so that man may be introduced to the truth of things.”54 The totality indicated here is not quantitative. It regards the ultimate meaning of all that exists, a meaning that the concrete singular itself is not. Thus the need for meaning, awakened by the sign, always opens to the threshold of the infinite mystery.55
Without the affirmed perspective of the divine origin as “the unitary meaning which nature’s objective and organic structure calls the human conscience to recognize,” human justice is impossible; love becomes sentimental, barren possessiveness; and happiness (satis factus) is a momentary illusion.56 Positively stated, the original needs of truth, love, justice, and happiness always seek a totalizing response, a response that does not stop short of the ultimate. They therefore root man in the relation with the mystery of which the constitution of reality, and indeed of man himself, speaks. Originary experience reveals that the gift of our being has the task of affirming the ultimate mystery, the all-encompassing meaning that gives man and the cosmos to themselves.
Giussani does not speak of man’s needs and exigencies in the search for the ultimate in terms of “rights” or of a “claim” on God. Man is interiorly ordered to the vision of God in whom alone he finds fulfillment. Nevertheless, these needs, precisely as needs, do not present a claim on this vision. Man is not on an equal footing with God, who remains other. Giussani contends that the original needs express themselves as questions, not claims. These questions seek a “total answer, an answer which covers the entire horizon
