COME ON, HUMANS, ONE MORE EFFORT!address is ungendered. It is two-gendered because it does not let us know the sex of the
person, male or female, being addressed. Perhaps this uncertainty about the gender of the
addressee is essential to the structure of address.
What, now, is the address structure of universal love? Love, Badiou reminds us,isthe
universal address, which faith alone does not constitute.^17 I wholeheartedly underwrite
this definition (even if, as we shall see, I shall edge it in the direction of St. Joseph rather
than St. Paul), and I stress the copula. If the act of faith is addressed, loveisits address
and its address to all. This dry and thoroughly unsentimental definition of love does
justice to the loathing that may be inspired by Christianity, precisely because it presents
itself as a religion of love. Who, even among practicing Christians, has never been irked
by the intolerable certainty of those who know that they are doing good, by the dignified
contrition of sanctimonious persons and the ostentatious self-sacrifice of charitable folk,
by the inanity of ‘‘everyone is good, everyone is kind’’ broadcast by a schmaltzy Christian-
ity, by the masochistic pride of those who offer the left cheek when someone has struck
the right one, by the superiority of those who offer unilateral forgiveness—in a word, by
the whole Christian paraphernalia of fawning modes of behavior, which reek of cassock
and holy water? They are the outcome of the false belief in a reserve of infinite love
spilling out, through pure goodness, over sinful humankind. In this respect, it matters
little that the convinced Christian situates it in God and not in himself; the mere fact that
he takes himself to be the dispenser is enough to make his claim a suspect one. This
rightful loathing can be contrasted, by way of antidote, with the wholesomeness of the
precept ‘‘Love thy neighbor as thyself.’’ It reminds us, in the words of the proverb, that
‘‘charity begins at home.’’ This is the basis. But if love is the address to all of the act of
faith, wherein lies the proof of this universal address? In being in each and every instance
singular, as if the declaration of faith placed in the freedom of an individual other was
earmarked for a universal or indeterminate other. Love is not watered down in the univer-
sal (perhaps the difference between love and its mediocre translation by ‘‘charity’’ lies
herein); it is felt for beings of flesh and blood taken one by one.
Joseph’s acquiescence in Mary’s pregnancy is an act of faith sustained by love. He
loves Mary, not humankind in general. And it is because he loves her that he trusts her.
Faith in Mary comes first, faith in God second. This is what the syllogism evoked earlier
expressed as a joke. In the second stage, which coincides with Joseph’s assumption of his
purely symbolic paternity, his love for Mary is the address of his faith in God, and God,
because he is One, is ‘‘for all.’’^18 Joseph’s singular love for Mary thus becomes the univer-
sal address of his faith in God. But I am jumping the gun. Everything started with the
dispatch of the archangel Gabriel, with God’s address to Mary. It issues from a God who
is not yet the God of Christians and who has chosen Mary among all women. Mary
acquiesces in this choosing with a humility that is not just that of her feminine condition
but also that of her people. As I have already suggested, the Jewish act of faith consists in
the reception of and acquiescence in the mystery of one’s being chosen. For both sexes,
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