LANGUAGES OF STONE & LANGUAGES OF FIRE:
FROM BABEL TO PENTECOST
As a child I was always fascinated by foreign languages, even before truly studying them. There was something mysterious in listening to people speaking languages I could not understand. It was not simply the fact of “not understanding.” On the contrary, that very inability to understand revealed to me that there were countless things about life of which I was completely unaware.
At the time I was convinced that behind those words there were hidden meanings and worlds accessible only to adults. And precisely for that reason, hearing an unknown language filled me more with wonder than with frustration.
Most people learn a language for practical reasons: work, travel, necessity. But for others there exists a different impulse, more difficult to explain. It is the desire to come into contact with different ways of thinking and feeling, as though every language offered access to another dimension of reality, or even to another state of consciousness.
In truth, this already happens within the language we know. If we listen to someone speaking about subjects unfamiliar to us, we find ourselves once again before something enigmatic. The words are familiar, but not what they truly refer to.
At that point we can react in different ways: admit that we understand nothing and move on, hastily pretend we understand everything, or allow what escapes us to awaken the desire to go deeper. And it is precisely here that language begins to fulfill one of its most authentic functions: making communication and dialogue possible.
Every form of learning passes through this process. At first we possess only a limited vocabulary, which allows us merely to grasp fragments. We may understand the general sense of a conversation while completely misunderstanding certain words or expressions. At other times a simple but decisive question arises: “What does this word really mean?”
Slowly, some words begin to open possibilities of understanding that previously we could not even glimpse. Language thus becomes not only an instrument for communicating what we already know, but also a doorway toward the unknown.
When entering an entirely foreign language, the experience becomes even more radical. Everything initially appears obscure. Some words seem familiar and help orient us; others, although resembling our own, mean something entirely different. There are even the so-called “false friends”: terms that appear understandable but instead lead to profound misunderstanding.
At this point one fact becomes unmistakably clear: a great part of human conflict arises from language itself. Not so much because people speak different languages, but because they attribute different meanings to the same words. An expression intended as a compliment in one culture may become offensive in another, while something sacred to some may appear absurd or scandalous to others.
This inevitably recalls the biblical story of the Tower of Babel: human beings who initially spoke one language eventually become incapable of understanding one another (cf. Gen 11).
Perhaps for this reason, over time, I began to perceive a certain parallel between languages and religions. Religions too possess their own symbolic and linguistic universes: sacred words, formulas, images and rituals.
For centuries Western Christianity used Latin as its sacred and liturgical language. In Islam ritual prayer remains inseparable from Arabic, just as Biblical Hebrew is central within Judaism. Entering a religious tradition means entering a specific symbolic and linguistic world.
And here something resurfaced that I had already sensed during early adolescence. One day, in a bookstore, I came across a small volume on the history of religions. I still vividly remember the fascination it immediately exerted on me. It was not only the topic itself, but the whole atmosphere surrounding it: the format, the cover, the symbols, and above all the sense of mystery and wonder it seemed to radiate. For days I returned to the shop, picking it up and putting it back without daring to open it, almost afraid of breaking a spell. Eventually I bought it.
I remember clearly the feeling of carrying it home. It seemed as though I were holding a secret map in my hands, an entrance into something immense and unknown.
Then I began reading the first pages. Every line amplified the sensation of finally approaching something vast and remote. But suddenly that feeling broke apart.
Without warning, the author abruptly stated something whose meaning was essentially this: yes, it may be useful to know other religions, but only one truly possesses the fullness of truth — Christianity. Reading those lines caused me deep discomfort. Not because I was against Christianity — quite the opposite — but because the journey seemed closed before it had truly begun. As if someone had revealed the ending of a long story while I was still opening its first pages.
What struck me even more was another question. Even assuming that one religion were truly the most complete or profound, why should it need to proclaim this so insistently? Should not the human and spiritual quality of a religion speak for itself?
Over time I came to understand that, at least for me, the issue does not lie in establishing which religion is “the best.” I no longer experience spiritual research as a competition between religious systems. Rather, I feel that every tradition preserves a different language through which human beings attempt to approach, name or encounter what they perceive as sacred, absolute or divine.
I was deeply struck, in this regard, by one of Pope Francis’ final public statements, in which he compared religions to different languages through which human beings seek to approach God (cf. Pope Francis, Address to participants in the international congress “Men and Religions”, September 23, 2024). What touched me most was not so much the formula itself, but the attempt to shift attention away from opposition and toward the possibility of listening.
After all, in ordinary life, nobody seriously believes that learning several languages means betraying one’s mother tongue. It is possible to love one’s native language deeply while remaining fascinated by other sounds, expressions and ways of naming the world. Perhaps something similar can also occur in the encounter between different spiritual traditions.
This does not mean dissolving differences into a vague syncretism, nor abandoning one’s own religious identity. For some people fidelity to a single tradition represents a profound and definitive vocation. For others there exists instead the need to cross multiple spiritual languages, or to remain within an open-ended search. Probably different sensibilities exist, just as there are monolingual, bilingual and naturally multilingual individuals.
These reflections resonate in a particular way as Pentecost approaches. In the Acts of the Apostles, men and women from different peoples are astonished because, although they speak different languages, each person understands the others in his or her own tongue (cf. Acts 2:6-11).
After Babel — where humanity loses the ability to understand itself because of linguistic division — Pentecost evokes the opposite movement: not the abolition of differences, but the possibility of transforming them into listening, communication and encounter. Perhaps authentic dialogue begins precisely here.
What I find difficult to accept is not the sincere conviction that one’s religion may be the truest for the person who lives it. That is sacred and deeply personal. What troubles me instead is the idea that faith must constantly express itself through declarations of superiority over others.
In the First Letter of Peter there is a passage that has always struck me deeply: Christians are invited to behave with respect toward all people, allowing above all the quality of their lives to bear witness to what they believe (cf. 1 Pet 2:12; 3:15-16).
And perhaps this is the essential point. A faith does not persuade because it proclaims its superiority, but because it becomes incarnate in the way a person looks, listens, lives and relates to others.
Image: A. Acerbani, Pentecost (1845), oil on metal plate, detail.
Franco Santoro is once again available for individual consultations, meetings, and personal or group work according to his traditional interspiritual, symbolic-analogical and person-centered approach, for anyone who may genuinely feel the need for it.
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