The Archetype of the Virility

Translation of this article: http://www.scuolaecclesiamater.org/2015/04/larchetipo-della-virilita.html

The Archetype of the virility is the child. It can seem a paradox, because the child is linked to ideas of tenderness, fragility, naivety, but in reality this sentence conceals a big truth. Jesus says in the Gospel that “Amen I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven”. Become, or to better explain, become again: this is almost a need to enjoy the state of beatific vision. Jesus teaches, but above all embodies the divine word and gives testimony to the truth. He gives the example with His Incarnation, high point of the history: a king-child lies in a manger, warmed up only by an ox and a donkey. He was worshipped by shepherds, then by the Magi, lastly hated and searched by Herod for be killed.

The italian psychologist Claudio Risè, a Jung scholar, finds one of the possible archetypes of the Man in the Puer, that is the latin word for “child” (Claudio Risè, Il maschio selvatico 2, Ed. Paoline, Cinisello Balsamo, 2015). The Divine Infant doesn’t talk, but he’s in contact with the nature, with the straw of the manger and the breath of the animals around. His worshippers are people in contact with nature like him: the shepherds and the Magi, that are not magus, but priests and astronomers. Herod is the symbol of adult man, he’s the senex (“old man”) counterposed to the puer. He’s grown up, but he’s not-mature, vicious, actually chained by his passions, by fear and by unnecessary superfluity of the civilization. He hates Jesus and he’s ready to kill hundreds of children to kill him. But the child is an infant, that etymologically means “unable to speak”. The life of the child is destinated to the curious exploration of himself, then of the world around him. It’s not a curiosity end in itself (St. Augustin calls it concupiscentia oculorum, “concupiscence of the eyes”), but it’s curiosity finalised to knowledge and wisdom. The language is a dimension following the knowledge, not preceding it.

While the child is growning up, something damages his original, authentic innocence: Herod wants him death, alike the various superfluities of civilization, that become the end and not the means of virility: finally they become the instrument of his suicide. The fear holds the boy, destroying his healthy curiosity. The man is oppressed by prestations in the society, in the civic life, faraway the nature, in the school, even in the relationships with the other sex. When we see Jesus we understand the sense of his sentence: Became again children. When the Jews asked to Jesus questions concerning life (today we call them bioethic questions), he was used to introduce his answers saying απ’ἀρχῆς (ap’archès), that in greek means “from the beginning”. When the Jews asked about the legitimacy of the divorce, Jesus answered: “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator made them male and female and for this reason a man shall leave his father and his mather and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flash?” (Matthew 19,4-5).
St. Paul writes: “Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived [with the intellect] in what he has made” (Romans 1,20).

Aristotle says that the nature of things are substance, word that means “standing firm” under changes. Where can we see the substance? Pauls writes: In the beginning, with our intellect. There we can see our substance, without superfluities built by the homo senex. In the beginning there is God’s project, there are the things as they should be. Also for this reason, the child is the archetype of virility: because he’s in the beginning of the life. In the Mass’ Introibo, the priest sings: “I will go unto the altar of God, to God, who gives joy to my youth”. The words of the priest are words of the Church. His youth is essential to go unto the altar of God and enjoy him. We need to be owner of ourselves, we need to be wise and expert of our nature: in other words, we need to know who we are. Know yourself, it’s the Socratic motto. Introibo ad altare Dei, ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam: anyone can say these words, regardless of his age. We need to be young, to be children to conquer the Kingdom of Heaven.