Romano Guardini: Spiritual Writings

I've always admired and often quoted Romano Guardini's observation that the Church is the cross on which Christ is crucified. This wariness of ecclesial institutionalism has always struck me as both prudent and in the best tradition of Jesus' own anti-establishmentarian sensibilities. But I must confess that, until Robert Krieg's excellent little book, I've never had much success in actually reading Guardini's writings. I've typically found them just a bit too pious, too Sunday-schoolish, for my taste. One reason for this, I now realize, is that I was reading them without knowing anything about their author. Krieg's illuminating Introduction to his collection of Guardini's spiritual writings showcases what a maverick this Italian-German priest actually was. His ordination to the priesthood was delayed a half year because his bishop thought him too rebellious; he refused to jump on the neo-Scholastic bandwagon fashionable in his time, instead embracing the phenomenological method propounded by Husserl and used by Heidegger and Scheler; he stalwartly kept the huge youth organization for German Catholics he led unencumbered by the official hierarchy; and although his old age and declining health prevented him from an active role in Vatican II, and even though he was wary of some of the directions it took, his writings influenced many of the Council's biggest players. Moreover, Guardini struggled with depression all his life, especially in his youth and in his final years. His suffering added depth to his writings and no doubt encouraged his interest in authors such as Pascal and Rilke. Knowing something about Guardini's life enables the reader (or at least this one!) to better appreciate his writings. True, some of them haven't aged as well as others, still coming across as rather syrupy and quaint. But others take on a new vitality. My favorite section in Krieg's collection is Chapter 1, where he provides representative samples of Guardini's defense of Christian humanism. Guardini's analysis of the self as necessarily relational, self-acceptance as the most difficult spiritual task any of us face, and the need to encounter the world with fresh, unfiltered vision (the phenomenological influence), are not only insightful but sometimes poignant. ("I see the cypress, and an encounter occurs between the cypress and me. If I approach the cypress appropriately, who knows how the cypress may respond? Is it only 'make believe' when in folk tales a tree sees people and speaks to them?" p. 54). This is extremely good stuff, just as relevant today as when Guardini lived and wrote.