Ilove to spend the summer holidays at my paternal house in my native city. They are days of silence, of a fresh serene encountering afresh with myself and of great readings. On this occasion, I love also to prepare my meals. Being used to take meals in my community, Rome, or to eat outside because of my commitments, I consider as a beautiful possibility that of choosing what to eat and of cooking it. Early in the morning, I go out for shopping: here is bread, pasta –of many different shapes- the seasoning, meat, vegetables and the inevitable fruit. I surely do not miss ice cream in this hot season. Everything looks like a rainbow of very strong sensations and sweet scent.

As lunchtime draws near, I get ready to reach the stoves and put water to boil, I add salt, oil, prepare the frying pan for the meat and wash fruit or vegetables.

This is one of the most waited for appointments of my holidays. It gives me the occasion of re-discovering the taste of a particular dish, of a special flavour, of a singular touch given to this or that dish, all things causing a great joy in me. In fact, if they are similar from the viewpoint of calories they give, who could ever deny the abyssal difference existing between a savoury dish and an insipid one?

Who would compare the disappointing surprise of finding at the communitarian table always the same dish and the satisfaction of being able to taste a more congenial one?

O course, whoever has some experience with stoves, knows how all this is not simple or to be taken for granted. We require experience, a pinch of fantasy and desire of newness. 

Do not get surprised if I think that we can find something analogous also in the kingdom of the spirit. We can truly find in it something like a law of taste, of savour, of special touch that our soul is called to discover and to bring to perfection.

The taste of the spirit

Well, yes, also our soul receives the call to develop a certain affinity with the savour of the world. We know that not all things are identical, not all things have the same value, not all things possess an equal goodness. This is valid for the world of things as well as for the variegated world of persons, with whom we create relations.

Therefore, it is necessary to increment –as in the culinary art- a particular attitude to catch  and to correspond with the numberless differences, which characterise other persons and things in this world.

Just for this –for an attentive, noble and dignified relation with the other- we need the fundamental experience of study: to develop the “taste” of the spirit, that is, the fine art of catching and respecting the weight and value of reality.

In fact, authentic study is not finalised to accumulate a series of information in our head, or simply to treasure up the knowledge of the books. Study is useful to feel the taste of the world. It is useful to know the world. The verb “to know”, at first sight, sounds as a real synonym of the verb “to study”, but it is not so. If we want to discover it, let us accept the help of its illumining French version: connaissance – deriving from the verb connaître. Literally translated, this verb would more or less sound like the verb “conascere”. Therefore, “to know” is “conascere”. The French language helps us discover the deep relation between the two verbs and related nouns, concealing in the womb of the verb connaître (and of the word connaissance), a verb that says “to come to light”. Therefore, to know is like to be born once more, with a new conscience: to be born with a new vision of life.  

In few words, authentic knowledge is the onset of familiarity/relation with the world.

For this reason, we must not consider the experience of study as part or phase of our life, the part bound with our initial formation. No, study is –or should be- a constant part of our journey towards the world, of our becoming ever more intimate and expert.

What happens to those who allow themselves to be co-legated with reality by study?

The touch of wisdom

In truth, study possesses the extraordinary power of moulding our existence, by routing it along the way of wisdom. 

- of such wisdom as it manifests itself in distinguishing and appreciating the otherness, in the awareness that two identical human gestures do not exist;

- of such wisdom as it does not despise divergences and does no nurture any cult for an entirely white or black world, or for a compulsory convergence of dissimilar opinions;

- of such wisdom as it does not allow itself to be deceived by the common belief that “we are all equal” and that things are the same all over the world, never neglecting the fact that our existence rests on many tiny differences, which we must honour, pursuing the ambivalence of every phenomenon;

- of such wisdom as it is born from the daily commitment to keep our vision always clean, limpid, eliminating all that could blur it; in fact much of the human unhappiness is born just from looking  with sick eyes or bad eyes –this is the etymology of the word “envy”- at others with all that they realise.

On the other hand, he who is wise watches his eyes and does not envy anymore: he tries to see well, to read well, to describe well and finally to speak well of what happens to him, of his problems, potentialities, desires, fighting against the omnipotent temptation of approximation. In this way he is able of speaking well and, finally of blessing (bene dicere) his existence and the surrounding life. Often, on the contrary, many of us speak badly of self and of others, because we see badly (envy) and thus we curse (male dicere).

To host in order to host ourselves

Finally, study leads us to the science that realises itself as hospitality, openness of heart and mind. In fact, the wise man learns how to know the greatness of life, its immeasurable potentialities (are we not born from the union of two very tiny cells?). He knows its equally helpless frailty (could an invisible tiny virus not kill us in an instant?), and just in this it foresees the gaps of energy and recuperation, which are present in the most desperate situations.  For this reason the wise man embraces life, loves it, in the conviction that we must not deny to anyone the possibility of improving, above all to ourselves.  He knows how to welcome others and himself. This is the most difficult thing in life: to love one another, which is something quite different from unique attachment to oneself.

The ever newer force of irony emerges from all this. Irony is the most fascinating aspect of wisdom. The wise man knows how to mock himself. He knows how to tease himself and others, because he can measure what a thing is and what he can do. He has learned to look at himself from the other (he is not God) and to acknowledge the positive truth of his being (he is not nothingness). He knows that tentative and errors accompany every existence. Therefore, with a smile, he shakes off every temptation and desperation, to go ahead with his journey. 

To learn the taste

Asked about the characteristics that a good religious should possess, the famous General of the Jesuits, Father Arrupe, answered saying that he should know a foreign language, should know how to swim and finally that he should know how to eat. 

Out of this metaphor, a clever religious –as well as every man and every woman who wish to correspond fully with the adventure of life- should be able to make his neighbours out of different spiritual worlds; to move in foreign environments, like that of water. Finally, he should cultivate the “taste” –of the palate and of the spirit- as a capacity of catching the differences and of appreciating the quality: for himself and for others.

Armando Matteo
National ecclesiastic Assistant of FUCI
c/o Casa Assistenti
Via F. Marchetta Selvaggiani, 22 - 00165 Roma