A Soul Waiting to Be Reawakened | Christian Wiman and Lio Kuok-Wai | New York Encounter 2024

A Soul Waiting to Be Reawaken

"Expectation is the very structure of our nature, it is the essence of our soul. It is not something calculated: it is given. For the promise is at the origin, from the very origin of our creation. He who has made man has also made him as ‘promise.’ Structurally man awaits; structurally man is a beggar; structurally life is promise."
—Fr. Luigi Giussani, The Religious Sense, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023, page 55

In front of the daily images of wars and gratuitous violence, the epidemic of suicide, the suffocation of ideologies, and the sense of paralysis in front of the future, is this promise really the irreducible essence of our soul? Can it ever be fulfilled? Can it ever be eliminated or just ignored? This year’s Encounter journey to explore these questions starts with poetry and music.