ROME
Chiesa
by Sandro Magister
ROME, May 11, 2012 – “Windows open on the mystery”: this is the title of the conference with which, two days ago, the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross broke the silence on one of the greatest theologians of the twentieth century, the French Jesuit Jean Daniélou, made a cardinal by Paul VI in 1969.
A silence that lasted almost forty years, and began with his passing away in 1974.
In effect, the memory of Daniélou is today reduced, for many, to the mystery of his death by heart attack, one May afternoon, at the home of a prostitute on the fourth floor of Rue Dulong 56 in Paris.
When in reality the true mystery on which Daniélou opened the windows to many, in his activity as a theologian and a spiritual man, is that of the triune God. One of his greatest works was entitled “An essay on the mystery of history.” A history not governed by chance, nor by necessity, but filled with the “magnalia Dei,” by the grandiose wonders of God, each more astonishing than the last.
Today, few of his books are still available for purchase. And yet they are still of extraordinary richness and freshness. Simple and yet very profound, as few theologians have been able to do over the last century, apart from him and that other champion of clarity named Joseph Ratzinger.
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