In the closing reflections at this point of the dissolution of the modern, Guardini saw rightly that “An affirmation and a cultivation of the personal can endure for a time perhaps after Faith has been extinguished, but gradually they too will be lost” (p. 99). Perhaps he didn’t see how long it would endure as transformed through sentimentalism, through the romantic impulses deeply embedded in Western culture. Slowly, however, the personal becomes identified with status or “value” that undercuts the personhood of the poor such as children or those without homes. Thus we feel that we will become less a person unless we “make a difference” or “do something meaningful”. Guardini writes, “A similar loss reveals itself in contemporary man’s feeling that personal values inhere in special talents or social position. Gone is that reverence toward the person qua person, toward his qualitative uniqueness which cannot be conceptualized or repressed for any man even if he has been typed and measured in every other respect” (p. 99).

Perhaps surprisingly, Guardini did not think that the decoupling of the modern from the Christian was solely negative: “It is good that modern dishonesty was unmasked. As the benefits of Revelation disappear even more from the coming world, man will truly learn what it means to be cut off from Revelation . . . As unbelievers deny Revelation more decisively, as they put their denial into more consistent practice, it will become the more evident what it really means to be a Christian” (pp. 100—101). Perhaps, however, Guardini did not again see adequately how humans would attempt to turn revelation into an idol within human experience to sustain it. Perhaps he did not see how the modern could produce a simulacra of revelation by collapsing it within a range of immanence, moving revelation within human consciousness as an experience, how this would both capitulate to the loss of the human person while attempting vainly to sustain it at the same time. Formed deeply by the evangelical, catholic, and orthodox faith, Guardini perhaps could not imagine a non-revelatory sense of Revelation, a concept of revelation found within the human subjectivity. He wrote, “Since Revelation is not a subjective experience but a simple Truth promulgated by Him Who also made the world, every moment of history which excludes that Revelation is threatened in its most hidden recesses” (p. 100). It is this objective sense of Revelation, not a subjective human ‘value’ or “purpose” or “meaning”, that Guardini wrote, “To be a Christian, however, demands an attitude toward Revelation” (p. 104).

It is this Christological center of all things, the “simple Truth promulgated by Him Who also made the World” that distinguishes, in the slow dissolution of the modern, the objective value of the human person, because in Jesus, God has taken on the human person and sanctified it forever. The human person cannot be reduced to a means for a greater end; it cannot be sought to be “engineered” into a unified system of the mass consumer or the proletariat. In the human person, each human person, we meet that which God has taken on completely and fully into God’s own Life without annulling it in any way, regardless of “value” or “status” conferred on to the person by others within the world. Indeed, we refuse to devalue, to de-personalize those who are actively engaged in the de-personalizing project of the dissolution of the modern.
Guardini saw this rightfully as the pass away from Christendom, an opportunity for the uniqueness of the witness of the church to come apparent: “The Faith of Christian men will need to take on a new decisiveness. It must strip itself of all secularism, all analogies with the secular world, all flabbiness and eclectic mixtures” (p. 104). The dissolution of the modern means that the historical Christian tradition, as embodied in contemporary settings, will make the witness of the church that stands within this tradition evident. Long before Hauerwas and Willimon wrote Resident Aliens, Guardini likewise saw: “This danger within the new world will also have its cleansing effect upon the new Christian attitude, which in a special way must possess both trust and courage” (p. 105). It is not the accommodated congregational parish life that holds the future. As the modern dissolves, so will it fade into the color of the surrounding environment. Thus, “we can surmise that the character and conduct of coming Christian life will reveal itself especially through its old dogmatic roots. Christianity will once again need to prove itself deliberately as a faith which is not self-evident; it will be forced to distinguish itself more sharply from a dominantly non-Christian ethos. At that juncture the theological significance of dogma will begin a fresh advance; similarly will its practical and existential significance increase. . . . The absolute experiencing of dogma will, I believe, make men feel more sharply the direction lf life and the meaning of existence itself . . . . In this manner, the Faith will maintain itself against animosity and danger” (p. 106).

Guardini concludes by showing the fundamental “illiberalism” of the church, not in terms of fascism such as emerges today of either the right or the left, but an “illiberalism” that does not seek self-authenticity, but rather obedience: “Knowing that the very last thing is at stake, that he has reached that extremity which only obedience could meet—not because man might become heteronom but because God is Holy and Absolute—man will practice a pure obedience. Christianity will arm itself for an illiberal stand directed unconditionally toward Him Who is Unconditioned. Its illiberalism will differ from every form of violence, however, because it will be an act of freedom, an unconditional obedience to God; nor will it resemble an act of surrender to physical or psychic powers which might command one. No, man’s unconditional answer to the call of God assumes within that very act the unconditional quality of the demand which God makes of him and which necessitates maturity of judgment, freedom and choice. . . . This trust is not based at all upon an optimism or confidence either in a universal order of reason or in a benevolent principle inherent to nature. It is based in God Who really is, Who alone is efficacious in His Action. It is based in this simple trust: that God is a God Who acts and Who everywhere prevails” (p. 107).

This week I had a dear friend who has moved away tell me that I had “messed” the person up, making the person unfit for either the right or the left in American culture. I mourned and understood. Even sixty years ago Guardini could see this coming: “Loneliness in the faith will be terrible. Love will disappear from the face of the public world (Matthew xxiii, 12), but the more precious will that love be which flows from one lonely person to another, involving a courage of the heart born from the immediacy of the love of God as it was made known in Christ” (p. 108-09). Tomorrow morning in our distribution that lonely love will appear bodily, visible in the world. For several hours the saints and other friends who gather will work hard. Something humbling will happen as each person in their uniqueness receives from God gifts for life in this temporal world. The list is amusing: 7 pallets of paper towels, Cheezits, sparkling Welch's white grape juice cocktail, potatoes, vitamin water, and snack crackers from Second Harvest Food bank and 3 pallets from St. Vincent's of onions, raspberries, plums, juice, to go with the bread from Von’s and the assorted goods from two Albertson’s stores – last week we even had meet some types of meet for the first 400 through the line. There will be problems, I know – there always are. But there will be joy as we receive those who God brings to us as Christ, who by the Spirit sanctifies us in these gifts of persons that God has already sanctified by creating them in God’s image, an image fulfilled in Jesus, for us to receive, give thanks, and love.