Reading the letter from the Vatican produced by Imedia after Françoise Nyssen's visit with Pope Francis1 .
It is always a surprise to discover, like this morning, an interview with a person, known or not, representative of our time, admitting that his meeting with Pope Francis was one of the most significant moments of his life, but not getting any action from it. As if this meeting should be one moment among many others in the ocean of memories.
The loss of faith rooted in modern man by comfort
We thus see people touched by grace in their daily lives, savoring an encounter, a moment, feeling that this encounter or this moment does not belong to them in any way but that they can enjoy it, intuiting that it comes from a provoked abandonment. by the vagaries of life, experiencing the force that emanates from this encounter or this moment, while drawing no action from it. They declare: “this is the happiest moment of my life!” » and will never do anything to reproduce it or try to understand what caused it! This remains an impenetrable mystery; this inaction embodies the passivity of modern man in the face of his life and the little faith he has in his ability to transform it. This loss of faith is now rooted in modern Western man, which is how he will fight for orange peels and completely miss the point. François Nyssen admits at the end of the interview: “I myself am not baptized, but when I left, I promised the Pope that I would pray for him.” What does that mean? The confusion is total.
How many couches collapse under the weight of words or silences that gather together in the sole hope of suffocating the soul?
Two things are missing for the alchemy to take place. First, education in the inner life. Françoise Nyssen was not baptized. She is interested in religion since she asks for an audience with the Pope and publishes dear Sébastien Lapaque… Moreover, she has always lived in books, so she knows the interiority and the power of this other life. Yet nothing about her confirms this feeling. She looks at him as something outside her, as something foreign, as an exoticism, one would be tempted to say. An attractive exoticism, with a strong power of “seduction” (or nostalgia?), but not enough to change everything and to adhere to it. She doesn't feel the lack in her, even if she sees the point of it very well. She is full. Let's think back to Ernst Jünger's phrase in “The Rebel's Treatise 2 ”: “Every comfort comes at a price. The status of domestic animal entails that of animals for slaughter. » We no longer have a thirst to discover ourselves, because we are full of ourselves. The passage of psychoanalysis in the modern world and the place it has taken replacing sacrament, penance and interior life marks a sterilization of our deep being and the messages that our soul expresses more and more sporadically. How many couches collapse under the weight of words or silences that gather together in the sole hope of suffocating the soul? She herself no longer sees the use of it, because she no longer feels love which, when expressed today, is transformed into interest or curiosity ... We are spectators of our life. We watch it helplessly and cowardly. The whole message of Christ encourages us to do the opposite, to turn the table over in order to be free. Oh ! He knew well that we would continue to be weak, however did He imagine that we would be so with so much self-sacrifice, with so much devotion?
Do men always thirst for God?
So the quest, the thirst, the desire is simply missing. And François Nyssen's interview is empty of it. She suggests cooking on the Pope's plane, but there is no question of interior life. She does not want to change even though she sees the effects in Lapaque's books, in the Pope's eyes, or elsewhere, fleetingly when the soul unfolds and pushes the interior furniture a little to signify its presence. No, she will not change because she likes what she is and she is not thirsty, even if she sees people she likes drinking from it, and finally because she does not believe that that can change something in his life! And that’s the most serious part! This sin against the Spirit! Secondly, let no one ask him to drink there! Pope Francis wants, he has repeatedly repeated and shown, not to force anyone and to respect everyone on the path of faith. Not even a little encouragement? Some time ago I heard a historian and theologian explain that during the meeting between Saint Francis of Assisi and the Sultan of Egypt, Sultan Al-Malik al-Kamil, "we were not sure that the saint asked the sultan for his conversion. For a bit, we would be led to believe that he took the risk of going to see him to talk to him about the landscapes of Assisi... You have to live in the 21st century to hear such nonsense! Worse, take credit for it. Faith appears worldly, too, and we must realize that it has adhered with all its pores to modern life and that nothing has been done to prevent it, quite the contrary; she drowns in comfort and the condition of a domestic tool that can be useful from time to time... You never know... It's in the old pot , it seems.
The virility of discomfort as the only refuge
Two lacks for a non-encounter: the lack of education to seek God in all things and that of no longer proclaiming His word. The fifth joyful mystery through the recovery of Jesus in the temple, and the third luminous mystery, the proclamation of the Kingdom of God. Reciting the rosary every day of one's life can be compared to the illumination of a medieval manuscript; one can no longer imagine one without it after turning one of its pages. It would have been interesting to offer a rosary to Françoise Nyssen and to instruct her on its use and to invite her to recite it. If it does not lead back to God, every word is worldly. “I myself am not baptized, but when I left, I promised the Pope that I would pray for him. » Here is the very example of a worldly and decaying word. Pray, but who? Great saints have often repeated: “If you pray without naming God, without being certain that you are addressing God, you are praying to the devil. » Now, the demon is worldly. He is even the inventor of the concept. In this silky world, only the virility of discomfort conceals freedom, it is valid for everyone, man or woman, it is the ultimate means of reaching and showing oneself worthy of God's love.
More than fifty years ago, the Catholic Church gave itself a new Mass which broke in a way never seen before with the tradition of the Church. The reformers, however, did not expect the traditional Mass to continue for them. They were even convinced of the contrary. abolition of the traditional Roman mass 
In ancient Greece, men know each other and recognize each other in the eyes of their family, their loved ones, their community. Women reserve the mirror for themselves, which is about beauty, femininity and seduction. Reflection is everywhere. "There is no place that does not see you" summarizes Rilke. Can we exist without worrying about our reflection? Can we be aware of ourselves without knowing ourselves? Can one be aware of oneself without being recognized? One can have a self-image, but it can be very far from oneself. Thus man should not see himself in the mirror for fear of being absorbed by his image. This image that manages to make us forget that we are there. If we think what we see, if it resonates with us, we dream it too. Our image escapes us as soon as we see it. Thus the woman adjusts herself in the mirror when the man could get lost there, drown there. The dream, binomial of memory, conceals time and numbs it. What did we see and when? The gaze and the imagination interpenetrate and cannot be dissociated. To see and to know oneself merges among the Greeks. To see, to know oneself... but not too much, because if man is a marvel, in the sense of an incident, of a fascinating fracture within the living as the chorus of Antigone says, he also conceals his own terror, he exterminates and tortures himself, and he is indeed the only "animal" in this case.