The Metaphysics Of A Look Full Of Temptation

We need the temptation of time stopped in place to sail further and further, with the spirit, to the glory of divine greatness.

The day their eyes met and suddenly said the first vague and unspeakable things the eyes mimic, Cosette did not understand at first. She thoughtfully returned home to Ouest Street, where Jean Valjean had come, as usual, to spend six weeks. The next day, when he awoke, he thought of that unknown and icy young man who had been so careless for a long time, who seemed to be paying attention to her now, and it did not seem to him that this attention would have pleased him. Rather, she was a little angry with this contemptuous and handsome man. She was rebelling against him. It seemed to him that he would take revenge once, and he enjoyed himself as a child. She knew she was beautiful and felt confused that she had a gun. Women sometimes play with their beauty, just as children play with knives. And they hurt themselves with it.

The reader remembers Marius’ hesitations, his turmoil, his fears. He remained on the bench and did not approach. That annoyed Cosette. One day she said to Jean Valjean:

- Dad, let’s walk over there.

Seeing that Marius was not coming to her, she went to him. In such circumstances, all women resemble Muhammad. Strangely, the first sign of true love in a young man is shyness and in a girl is boldness. It’s amazing, and yet nothing is more natural. The two sexes try to get closer and clothe each other with one another’s traits.

That day Cosette’s gaze drove Marius mad, Marius’ gaze disturbed Cosette. Marius walked away confidently, while Cosette walked away uneasily. From that day they fell in love.*

Is your way of expressing your feelings a gaze cast far away, towards learning a life lesson (always present through remembrance) that produces a match between what is inside you and what is outside of you?

A gaze cast in the direction of love, thus seeking the meaning of life, can be a proof of human endeavor to know another part of human nature, aimed at dreaming, at story, at sharing laborious but satisfying life experiences. We must go even further, and I will say that the meaning of life, like the beauty to which we relate through the experiences had in dream moments, lies within the relationship between the feeling of inner peace and the feeling of a duty to spiritual values, such as patience, faithfulness, truth, compassion, and virtue.

Love is, at the same time, the deed of a Deity who arranges together everything that happens according to a reason full of mystery and wisdom. Whether or not we are able to realize love as an opening of life to divine greatness and goodness, full of mercy, depending on our spiritual availability to transform ourselves inwardly, to give ourselves fully, divinely, to the passing moment, what comes, from yesterday to today and further into tomorrow.

Nice and reasonable, isn’t it? Perhaps God himself is in the details of the moment that never seems to pass, in the decision of the moment to be a seed for some fruitful, much greater plans.

But especially depending on the determination to lean with a greater openness on things or people that fit into our universe, we can relate to God, integrating the feelings and aspects that surround our lives in a light of meaning on which we give to the events in which we are involved. From these events emerges the essential content of a spirituality based on the development of personality at the level of “significant role” that we occupy in a world of plurality, of unexpected changes.

Nothing accidentally passes before change. As someone rightly said, probably from the point of view of the supply of beauty no one is born under an unfortunate star; we just need to know how to read the sky.

A life lesson (always present through remembrance) that produces a match between what is inside you and what is outside of you can be formulated as follows: “Never try to make yourself understood before asking someone to listen to you as one would listen to God.”

What is love, first of all, than the gaze cast in the direction of a God who cares for mankind, who continues to offer forgiveness until the end of time. Love is the reward of forgiving and saving the soul from the threat, action, or possession of evil.

Divine greatness in this consists: in the forgiveness of sins, and the attainment of happiness, to those who fulfill God’s plans.

The Metaphysics Of A Gaze Full Of Temptation refers to the feeling of closeness to God by winning perfect love. Here, I think it is good to remember the message of Alexandre Dumas, the last sentence at the end of the novel, “The Count of Monte Cristo”:

“Remember that until the day when God is willing to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom will be summed up in these two words: wait and hope.”

* Note: Victor Hugo - The Miserables, State Literature Publishing House for Literature and Art, 1960.