There are fools who have seen the madonna and fools who never have seen the madonna. I myself am a fool who has never seen the madonna. All is there: to see the madonna, or not to see her. San Giuseppe da Copertino, guardian of pigs, made his wings whilst looking after his own clumsiness. And in the nights of prayer he would gain the altars of the virgin, mouth open, flying. Fools who see the madonna have improvised wings, they can even fly, rest on the ground, like a feather. Fools who do not see the madonna do not have wings. Negated to flight, they fly nonetheless, then instead of resting they fall back like someone with lead around their ankles wanting to get rid of it, deciding to cut his own feet and dragging himself towards saviour under the scorn of the guardians who rightly trust his imminent hemorrhage to stop him. But those who see, do not see that they see, those who fly are themselves, the flight. Who flies does not know oneself, a done miracle annihilates them, more than seeing the madonna, they are themselves the madonna they see. This is the ecstasy of a paradoxical demented identity which empties the orator of his subject and in exchange deceives him to the objectification of his self, into another object. (...) being saint is to loose control, to renounce weight, and weight is to measure one's own dimension. (...) who has never thought of death, might be immortal. (...) But the fools who see the madonna do not see her. Like two eyes staring at two eyes through a wall, a miracle is transparency, sacrament is this madness, because a blinding faith has shut these eyes. (...) And the eyes saw sight. A glance. Either man is so blind, or god is objective. The fools who see, see in a vision of themselves, with the variants which faith brings: if worm, they see themselves butterfly again, if puddle, clouds, if sea sky. And in front of this alter ego they kneel as if in front of God. They confess to a second sin. Divine is everything they have unconsciously learned of themselves. They have seen the Madonna. Saints. The fools who do not see the madonna hate themselves, they seek elsewhere, in their neighbour, in women- in the comfort of day to days of prayer- and this brings to a myriad of altars. Passionate of communicative, they do not bring God to others to receive themselves, they bring themselves to others to receive God. Humility is the prime condition. Our contemporaries are stupid, but to bow down at the feet of someone more stupid than them means to pray. This is how we pray today. As always. Keeping company with the more talented does not mean nearing oneself to the absolute no matter what. To be kinder than the kind. To finally be the biggest fool. Religion is an ancient word. For now let us call it education.
(Carmelo Bene, from Our Lady of the Turcs, my own translation)
