From Word To Word

The gesture, the act that I perform for the other, is sacramental.  Though it is nothing in itself, neither is it purely formal, and when it is performed in the proper spirit, it becomes what it always purported to be, comes to bear what it always claimed to bear: a giving. This moment of becoming, of coming to bear, of giving, is not and cannot ever be seized or grasped, because it is inaugurated and accomplished only by a proper spirit. Neither can this moment be guaranteed, because the giver and the recipient of the gesture are incapable in themselves of producing or grasping the proper spirit through which it finds its accomplishment. Nevertheless, the sacramental nature of the gesture resides within any act as its potentiality, and this potential underwrites the very possibility, not of ethics as such, but of ethical response in the world.