30 shortly before his death and which, to some degree, communicates the life of his soul.34 In the light of the reality of creation, Pallotti is to a certain degree speechless. To start with, he believes: The mystical is not how the world, but the fact that the world exists.35 To put into words the dimensions of the reality of creation transcends his and all human possibilities. A term that he employs repeatedly serves him as a code word to escape this inability. It is the term infi nity, be it as a noun or be it as an adjective or as a mathematical sign. The following text from the fi rst chapter of the aforementioned writing is an example thereof: My God! From all eternity and in all eternity you are infi nitely happy within yourself. You need no one. Why, therefore, did you form the loving decision from all eternity to create heaven and earth? Oh, my God, the faith tells me: You are infi nite goodness and as such You wish to pour Yourself out infi nitely. From all eternity, with infi nite love, you determined, full of mercy, the indescribable work of creating the world, in order to pour Yourself out entirely into your creatures, You, the Eternal, the Infi nite, the Unmeasurable, the Incomprehensible.36 As incomprehensible and beyond all spoken communication that this God seems to him – and apparently encounters him – he thus becomes the goal of all his praying and activity. The yearning for the infi nite God is characterised by Francesco Amoroso as the foundational element of Pallotti’s spirituality.37 It is already documented in the younger years and is a recurring theme throughout the writings. The statement about the infi nite God in his love and mercy, expresses at the same time – the opposite side of the coin – the created reality of the human being. God wanted to pour himself into his creatures. Therefore, God himself is present in them. Consequentially, we can deduce that the human person is in some fashion capable to comprehend and receive at least something of God’s care in its infi niteness. This thought, too, especially in its development of the presence of God in human beings, is a guideline in the faith and life of Pallotti. The numerous textual examples in which Pallotti speaks thereof, that the human being is created in the image and likeness of God, shows this, for example, in the following: 34 Ibid., p. 22 f. 35 Ludwig WITTGENSTEIN, Tractatus logico-philosophicus, Frankfurt a. M. 2003, p. 6, 44. 36 Vinzenz PALLOTTI, Gott, die unendliche Liebe, p. 60. 37 Francesco AMOROSO, Griff ins Grenzenlose. Der geistliche Weg des hl. Vinzenz Pallotti, Limburg 1986, p. 14.
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