3. Limits and absolute

"Those who count the stars", said Giono, "will always find the same number", which is to say that where it is a question of stars, no one - apart from some rare astronomers - ever tries to count them. If I contemplate those luminous bodies which twinkle in the night sky, it is above all to experience an emotion, something corresponding to the fundamental question: "What am I doing here below?"

"The only opportunity for the ant to see the sky, is if he gets turned over by accident!" Chance, fatigue or accident, there are moments when this little bit of nothingness that I am, comes in contact with the infinite. Some want to close the window. The cold air causes shivers down the spine. Fundamental questions are suffocating. These people want "to live the good life", simply that! No more self- examinings, but "take life as it comes" is their philosophy. They are overwhelmed by these questions which cause a kind of schizophrenia: reflection. The solution for such persons is to smash the mirror, and allow the consciousness of the self to evaporate like a perfume, dissolve itself like a cloud in a vast expanse of sky, and lose its too limited ego, to find itself once more in a vast Cosmos. But in what sort of Cosmos do I realise my potential? In a feeling of lofty mysticism? In transcendental ideas? Or in a frantic search for knowledge so as to merge into a kind of pantheism of people and things?

Here we are confronted with those famous limitations which irritate us, and which as we have already said, place obstacles in our way and in our desire to be the centre of everything, to be "as" God.

The ambiguity of the spiritual experience revolves around this point. Mystical experience is a myth, a snare, a prison, if it is not the meeting with another, hence, the recognition of my own limitations, an opening up and a welcoming of what is not me. Otherwise, the great All into which I am assimilated is no other than myself perhaps even nothingness I must die to my individualistic claims, in order to be born by another in a relationship of love, which will render me completely human. My limitations are not a drawback still less are they sinfulbut take on a positive role permitting me to reach the goal of my possibilities and to take hold of myself completely, in order to become wholly gift.

Ideas have to be turned upside down: the absolute does not reside in quantity, but in density and in totality. What does it matter how big the spark is, if its objective is to ignite the powder? One day I was born and began to exist, a tiny living creature making its way into history. To get rid of my limitations would have been to kill me, but I assume those limitations, and this acceptance, It gives birth to my prayer, the prayer of an unpretentious one, the prayer of a child.

For a Christian then, the absolute becomes real in a relationship with someone, somebody who sees, who knows, a witness with whom one can converse, with whom one can enter into a relationship.... Source of my being, God upholds my life. Jeremiah puts it well: what would be the point of making cisterns into which I might hope to conserve life? No, life cannot be put into a freezer, nor can it be preserved. It is not held on to by the accumulation of diplomas, titles, decorations or properties. A person who suffers from a cardiac problem, cannot store up heart beats for future need.

The absolute is not found in what Hegel rightly terms "false infinity". It is not attained by climbing up the social ladder, by aiming at being the greatest, the strongest, the one who makes most noise! The absolute is found in our relationship to the particular, and even to detail. For example, the desire to find fulfilment M a multitude of amorous relationships and to collect sexual partners as one might collect butterflies, can only lead to disappointment. Contrariwise, the absolute is attained m a unique relationship, when the love of a man and a woman becomes so strong and so authentic, that it is recognised as a sign of Christ's union with His Church, a witness to the love of God and of humanity.

It is in the relation to the particular that the absolute is found, which explains why one sheep that is lost and is found again, is worth more than ninety nine which do not go astray. One sinner repents, and there is a feast, for he associates all the others with love's victory. A little bread, a little wine, represent the life we offer, and our energies as gift, so that we may become members of Christ's Body, His presence in the world. The absolute is to be found in less than nothing; it causes us to reach the essential at the heart of our limitations and of our human condition.