VRNs (07.07.2013)
– Sài Gòn - Thông điệp đầu tiên của Đức Thánh Cha Phanxicô mang tên
“Lumen Fidei” (Ánh sáng đức tin) đã được phát hành hôm thứ Sáu, ngày
05.07.2013, tại một cuộc họp báo tại Vatican. Thông điệp này hoàn thành
bộ ba giáo huấn về ba nhân đức hướng thần (Tin-Cậy-Mến) đã được Đức
Bênêđictô XVI khởi đầu. Thông điệp đầu tiên là “Deus Caritas Est” (Đức
mến) năm 2005 và “Spe Salvi” (Đức cậy) năm 2007.
Thông điệp Lumen Fidei được Đức giáo
hoàng Phanxicô mô tả là được viết bằng “bốn tay”, ám chỉ hai tay của Đức
nguyên giáo hoàng Bênêđictô XVI và của chính ngài, đương kim giáo hoàng
Phanxicô. Tuy nhiên chỉ một mình Đức Giáo Hoàng Phanxicô ấn ký văn kiện
này vào ngày 29.06.2013 vừa qua.
Nhà báo Philippa Hitchen nói với Radio
Vatican: “Đức Thánh Cha Bênêđictô XVI đã viết bản dự thảo, còn Đức Giáo
Hoàng Phanxicô hoàn thành thong điệp. Thông điệp chắc chắn vẫn tiếp tục
những chủ đề yêu thích của Đức Bênêđictô, từ bổ sung đức tin và lý trí,
đến niềm vui của một cuộc gặp gỡ cá nhân với Chúa Kitô. Chắc chắn nằm
trong Năm Đức Tin, năm kỷ niệm 50 năm Công Đồng Vatican II, thong điệp
sẽ tái lập vai trò trung tâm của đức tin ở trung tâm của tất cả các mối
quan hệ của con người”.
Theo Nhà báo Philippa Hitchen, Thông điệp
Ánh sáng đức tin được chia ra bốn phần và một giới thiệu ngắn chứng tỏ
đức tin trong Chúa Kitô Phục Sinh có thể dẫn chúng ta vượt ra ngoài giới
hạn của sự tồn tại cá nhân trong cộng đồng, mà hướng tất cả về tình yêu
của Thiên Chúa. Vượt qua ý niệm “niềm tin mù quáng, cản trở tiến bộ
khoa học và phải được giữ niềm tin ở mức độ cá nhân”. Chúng ta được mời
gọi để tìm lại ánh sáng có thể hướng dẫn tất cả mọi người từ bóng tối
của dục vọng ích kỷ hướng tới một thế giới huynh đệ, căn cứ vào lời hứa
của Thiên Chúa Đấng Tạo Hóa với các tín hữu.
Chương đầu tiên đưa người đọc vào một
tour du lịch tốc hành ngang Cựu Ước và Tân Ước, từ Abraham, người đầu
tiên nghe thấy tiếng gọi của Chúa, thông qua người Do Thái đi về phía
ánh sáng của Đất Hứa, để cái chết của Chúa Giêsu trên thập giá, hành
động cuối cùng của tình yêu của Thiên Chúa đối với nhân loại. Chúng ta
càng cảm động bởi sức mạnh biến đổi của tình yêu. Đức Giáo Hoàng viết:
tốt hơn chúng tôi có thể hiểu mối quan hệ của chúng tôi để tất cả các
anh chị em của chúng ta trong Chúa Kitô.
Chương hai nhấn mạnh vào liên kết cần
thiết giữa đức tin và sự thật, nếu không có niềm tin, chúng ta dường như
không có gì hơn một câu chuyện cổ tích, một ảo ảnh của hạnh phúc, và
khó khăn vẫn ở mãi với chúng ta. Xã hội đương đại, thông điệp đã nói, có
xu hướng nhìn thấy tiến bộ công nghệ và niềm vui cá nhân như sự thật
khách quan duy nhất, xem bất kỳ câu hỏi rộng hơn về nguồn gốc của sự tồn
tại của chúng ta với sự nghi ngờ. Nếu không có tình yêu trong trái tim
của chúng ta, sự thật trở nên lạnh lùng, vô cảm, áp bức, không thể thay
đổi cuộc sống của người khác. Nhưng bằng cách lắng nghe, nhìn thấy và
tin tưởng vào sự hiện diện của Chúa Kitô trong cuộc sống của chúng ta
ngày hôm nay, chúng ta có thể mở rộng tầm nhìn và tìm cách tốt hơn để
phục vụ công ích. Ánh sáng đức tin của chúng ta trong Chúa Kitô cũng có
thể đóng góp cho cuộc đối thoại với người ngoài Kitô giáo và người không
tin hiệu quả hơn, cho thấy cách những người tìm kiếm Thiên Chúa hoặc
tìm kiếm sự thật sẽ được ánh sáng chiếu soi.
Chương thứ ba là trung tâm của thông điệp
hướng về Giáo Hội như là nơi ánh sáng đức tin được bảo vệ và được
truyền từ các thế hệ kế tiếp nhau. Thông qua các Bí tích Thánh Tẩy và
Thánh Thể, qua việc tuyên xưng Kinh Tin Kính, cầu nguyện với kinh Lạy
Cha và tuân theo Mười Điều Răn. Giáo Hội dạy ngôn ngữ của đức tin và lôi
kéo chúng ta vào mối tương quan của Ba Ngôi Thiên Chúa tình yêu, vì vậy
ai tin là không bao giờ một mình.
Chương cuối cùng tập trung vào đức tin và
công ích, đồng thời cho thấy ánh sáng của đức tin có thể thúc đẩy hòa
bình và hòa giải, và dạy tôn trọng các thụ tạo của Thiên Chúa. Thông
điệp nhắc đến những khu vực cần được ánh sáng đức tin chiếu sáng, bắt
đầu với gia đình dựa trên căn bản hôn nhân, được hiểu như một sự kết hợp
ổn định giữa người đàn nam và người nữ. Đức Giáo Hoàng viết đức tin
không thể loại bỏ đau khổ trong thế giới của chúng ta, nhưng nó có thể
đi cùng chúng ta và mang lại một cảm giác mới của hy vọng trong tình yêu
Thiên Chúa.
Đức Thánh Cha kết thúc thông điệp bằng
lời cầu nguyện với Đức Maria, Mẹ Chúa Giêsu và biểu tượng của đức tin,
những người có thể đưa chúng ta đến ánh sáng của tình yêu Thiên Chúa.
PV. VRNs
viết theo News.va
VRNs (July 07th, 2013)
– Vatican – “Mother, help our faith! Open our ears to hear God’s word
and to recognize his voice and call. Awaken in us a desire to follow in
his footsteps, to go forth from our own land and to receive his promise.
ENCYCLICAL LETTER
TO THE BISHOPS PRIESTS AND DEACONS
Mời bạn đọc thêm:
ENCYCLICAL LETTER LUMEN FIDEI
VRNs (July 07th, 2013)
– Vatican – “Mother, help our faith! Open our ears to hear God’s word
and to recognize his voice and call. Awaken in us a desire to follow in
his footsteps, to go forth from our own land and to receive his promise.
Help us to be touched by
his love, that we may touch him in faith. Help us to entrust ourselves
fully to him and to believe in his love, especially at times of trial,
beneath the shadow of the cross, when our faith is called to mature.
Sow in our faith the joy of the Risen One. Remind us that those who believe are never alone.
each us to see all things
with the eyes of Jesus, that he may be light for our path. And may this
light of faith always increase in us, until the dawn of that undying day
which is Christ himself, your Son, our Lord!
ENCYCLICAL LETTER
LUMEN FIDEI
OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF
FRANCIS
TO THE BISHOPS PRIESTS AND DEACONS
CONSECRATED PERSONS
AND THE LAY FAITHFUL
ON FAITH
1. The light of Faith: this is how
the Church’s tradition speaks of the great gift brought by Jesus. In
John’s Gospel, Christ says of himself: “I have come as light into the
world, that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness” (Jn 12:46). Saint Paul uses the same image: “God who said ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts” (2 Cor 4:6). The pagan world, which hungered for light, had seen the growth of the cult of the sun god, Sol Invictus,
invoked each day at sunrise. Yet though the sun was born anew each
morning, it was clearly incapable of casting its light on all of human
existence. The sun does not illumine all reality; its rays cannot
penetrate to the shadow of death, the place where men’s eyes are closed
to its light. “No one — Saint Justin Martyr writes — has ever been ready
to die for his faith in the sun”.[1] Conscious
of the immense horizon which their faith opened before them, Christians
invoked Jesus as the true sun “whose rays bestow life”.[2] To
Martha, weeping for the death of her brother Lazarus, Jesus said: “Did I
not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” (Jn 11:40).
Those who believe, see; they see with a light that illumines their
entire journey, for it comes from the risen Christ, the morning star
which never sets.
An illusory light?
2. Yet in speaking of the light of faith,
we can almost hear the objections of many of our contemporaries. In
modernity, that light might have been considered sufficient for
societies of old, but was felt to be of no use for new times, for a
humanity come of age, proud of its rationality and anxious to explore
the future in novel ways. Faith thus appeared to some as an illusory
light, preventing mankind from boldly setting out in quest of knowledge.
The young Nietzsche encouraged his sister Elisabeth to take risks, to
tread “new paths… with all the uncertainty of one who must find his own
way”, adding that “this is where humanity’s paths part: if you want
peace of soul and happiness, then believe, but if you want to be a
follower of truth, then seek”.[3] Belief
would be incompatible with seeking. From this starting point Nietzsche
was to develop his critique of Christianity for diminishing the full
meaning of human existence and stripping life of novelty and adventure.
Faith would thus be the illusion of light, an illusion which blocks the
path of a liberated humanity to its future.
3. In the process, faith came to be
associated with darkness. There were those who tried to save faith by
making room for it alongside the light of reason. Such room would open
up wherever the light of reason could not penetrate, wherever certainty
was no longer possible. Faith was thus understood either as a leap in
the dark, to be taken in the absence of light, driven by blind emotion,
or as a subjective light, capable perhaps of warming the heart and
bringing personal consolation, but not something which could be proposed
to others as an objective and shared light which points the way. Slowly
but surely, however, it would become evident that the light of
autonomous reason is not enough to illumine the future; ultimately the
future remains shadowy and fraught with fear of the unknown. As a
result, humanity renounced the search for a great light, Truth itself,
in order to be content with smaller lights which illumine the fleeting
moment yet prove incapable of showing the way. Yet in the absence of
light everything becomes confused; it is impossible to tell good from
evil, or the road to our destination from other roads which take us in
endless circles, going nowhere.
A light to be recovered
4. There is an urgent need, then, to see
once again that faith is a light, for once the flame of faith dies out,
all other lights begin to dim. The light of faith is unique, since it is
capable of illuminating every aspect of human existence. A
light this powerful cannot come from ourselves but from a more
primordial source: in a word, it must come from God. Faith is born of an
encounter with the living God who calls us and reveals his love, a love
which precedes us and upon which we can lean for security and for
building our lives. Transformed by this love, we gain fresh vision, new
eyes to see; we realize that it contains a great promise of fulfilment,
and that a vision of the future opens up before us. Faith, received from
God as a supernatural gift, becomes a light for our way, guiding our
journey through time. On the one hand, it is a light coming from the
past, the light of the foundational memory of the life of Jesus which
revealed his perfectly trustworthy love, a love capable of triumphing
over death. Yet since Christ has risen and draws us beyond death, faith
is also a light coming from the future and opening before us vast
horizons which guide us beyond our isolated selves towards the breadth
of communion. We come to see that faith does not dwell in shadow and
gloom; it is a light for our darkness. Dante, in the Divine Comedy,
after professing his faith to Saint Peter, describes that light as a
“spark, which then becomes a burning flame and like a heavenly star
within me glimmers”.[4] It
is this light of faith that I would now like to consider, so that it
can grow and enlighten the present, becoming a star to brighten the
horizon of our journey at a time when mankind is particularly in need of
light.
5. Christ, on the eve of his passion, assured Peter: “I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail” (Lk 22:32).
He then told him to strengthen his brothers and sisters in that same
faith. Conscious of the duty entrusted to the Successor of Peter, Benedict XVI proclaimed the present Year of Faith,
a time of grace which is helping us to sense the great joy of believing
and to renew our wonder at the vast horizons which faith opens up, so
as then to profess that faith in its unity and integrity, faithful to
the memory of the Lord and sustained by his presence and by the working
of the Holy Spirit. The conviction born of a faith which brings grandeur
and fulfilment to life, a faith centred on Christ and on the power of
his grace, inspired the mission of the first Christians. In the acts of
the martyrs, we read the following dialogue between the Roman prefect
Rusticus and a Christian named Hierax: “‘Where are your parents?’, the
judge asked the martyr. He replied: ‘Our true father is Christ, and our
mother is faith in him’”.[5] For
those early Christians, faith, as an encounter with the living God
revealed in Christ, was indeed a “mother”, for it had brought them to
the light and given birth within them to divine life, a new experience
and a luminous vision of existence for which they were prepared to bear
public witness to the end.
6. The Year of Faith was inaugurated on the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. This is itself a clear indication that Vatican II was a Council on faith,[6] inasmuch
as it asked us to restore the primacy of God in Christ to the centre of
our lives, both as a Church and as individuals. The Church never takes
faith for granted, but knows that this gift of God needs to be nourished
and reinforced so that it can continue to guide her pilgrim way. The
Second Vatican Council enabled the light of faith to illumine our human
experience from within, accompanying the men and women of our time on
their journey. It clearly showed how faith enriches life in all its
dimensions.
7. These considerations on faith — in
continuity with all that the Church’s magisterium has pronounced on this
theological virtue[7] — are meant to supplement what Benedict XVI had
written in his encyclical letters on charity and hope. He himself had
almost completed a first draft of an encyclical on faith. For this I am
deeply grateful to him, and as his brother in Christ I have taken up his
fine work and added a few contributions of my own. The Successor of
Peter, yesterday, today and tomorrow, is always called to strengthen his
brothers and sisters in the priceless treasure of that faith which God
has given as a light for humanity’s path.
In God’s gift of faith, a supernatural
infused virtue, we realize that a great love has been offered us, a good
word has been spoken to us, and that when we welcome that word, Jesus
Christ the Word made flesh, the Holy Spirit transforms us, lights up our
way to the future and enables us joyfully to advance along that way on
wings of hope. Thus wonderfully interwoven, faith, hope and charity are
the driving force of the Christian life as it advances towards full
communion with God. But what is it like, this road which faith opens up
before us? What is the origin of this powerful light which brightens the
journey of a successful and fruitful life?
CHAPTER ONE
WE HAVE BELIEVED IN LOVE
(cf. 1 Jn 4:16)
(cf. 1 Jn 4:16)
Abraham, our father in faith
8. Faith opens the way before us and
accompanies our steps through time. Hence, if we want to understand what
faith is, we need to follow the route it has taken, the path trodden by
believers, as witnessed first in the Old Testament. Here a unique place
belongs to Abraham, our father in faith. Something disturbing takes
place in his life: God speaks to him; he reveals himself as a God who
speaks and calls his name. Faith is linked to hearing. Abraham does not
see God, but hears his voice. Faith thus takes on a personal aspect. God
is not the god of a particular place, or a deity linked to specific
sacred time, but the God of a person, the God of Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob, capable of interacting with man and establishing a covenant with
him. Faith is our response to a word which engages us personally, to a
“Thou” who calls us by name.
9. The word spoken to Abraham contains
both a call and a promise. First, it is a call to leave his own land, a
summons to a new life, the beginning of an exodus which points him
towards an unforeseen future. The sight which faith would give to
Abraham would always be linked to the need to take this step forward:
faith “sees” to the extent that it journeys, to the extent that it
chooses to enter into the horizons opened up by God’s word. This word
also contains a promise: Your descendants will be great in number, you
will be the father of a great nation (cf. Gen 13:16; 15:5;
22:17). As a response to a word which preceded it, Abraham’s faith would
always be an act of remembrance. Yet this remembrance is not fixed on
past events but, as the memory of a promise, it becomes capable of
opening up the future, shedding light on the path to be taken. We see
how faith, as remembrance of the future, memoria futuri, is thus closely bound up with hope.
10. Abraham is asked to entrust himself
to this word. Faith understands that something so apparently ephemeral
and fleeting as a word, when spoken by the God who is fidelity, becomes
absolutely certain and unshakable, guaranteeing the continuity of our
journey through history. Faith accepts this word as a solid rock upon
which we can build, a straight highway on which we can travel. In the
Bible, faith is expressed by the Hebrew word ’emûnāh, derived from the verb ’amān whose root means “to uphold”. The term ’emûnāh can
signify both God’s fidelity and man’s faith. The man of faith gains
strength by putting himself in the hands of the God who is faithful.
Playing on this double meaning of the word — also found in the
corresponding terms in Greek (pistós) and Latin (fidelis) — Saint Cyril of Jerusalem praised the dignity of the Christian who receives God’s own name: both are called “faithful”.[8] As
Saint Augustine explains: “Man is faithful when he believes in God and
his promises; God is faithful when he grants to man what he has
promised”.[9]
11. A final element of the story of
Abraham is important for understanding his faith. God’s word, while
bringing newness and surprise, is not at all alien to Abraham’s
experience. In the voice which speaks to him, the patriarch recognizes a
profound call which was always present at the core of his being. God
ties his promise to that aspect of human life which has always appeared
most “full of promise”, namely, parenthood, the begetting of new life:
“Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall name him Isaac” (Gen 17:19).
The God who asks Abraham for complete trust reveals himself to be the
source of all life. Faith is thus linked to God’s fatherhood, which
gives rise to all creation; the God who calls Abraham is the Creator,
the one who “calls into existence the things that do not exist” (Rom 4:17), the one who “chose us before the foundation of the world… and destined us for adoption as his children” (Eph 1:4-5).
For Abraham, faith in God sheds light on the depths of his being, it
enables him to acknowledge the wellspring of goodness at the origin of
all things and to realize that his life is not the product of non-being
or chance, but the fruit of a personal call and a personal love. The
mysterious God who called him is no alien deity, but the God who is the
origin and mainstay of all that is. The great test of Abraham’s faith,
the sacrifice of his son Isaac, would show the extent to which this
primordial love is capable of ensuring life even beyond death. The word
which could raise up a son to one who was “as good as dead”, in “the
barrenness” of Sarah’s womb (cf. Rom 4:19), can also stand by his promise of a future beyond all threat or danger (cf. Heb 11:19; Rom 4:21).
The faith of Israel
12. The history of the people of Israel
in the Book of Exodus follows in the wake of Abraham’s faith. Faith once
again is born of a primordial gift: Israel trusts in God, who promises
to set his people free from their misery. Faith becomes a summons to a
lengthy journey leading to worship of the Lord on Sinai and the
inheritance of a promised land. God’s love is seen to be like that of a
father who carries his child along the way (cf. Dt 1:31).
Israel’s confession of faith takes shape as an account of God’s deeds in
setting his people free and acting as their guide (cf. Dt 26:5-11),
an account passed down from one generation to the next. God’s light
shines for Israel through the remembrance of the Lord’s mighty deeds,
recalled and celebrated in worship, and passed down from parents to
children. Here we see how the light of faith is linked to concrete
life-stories, to the grateful remembrance of God’s mighty deeds and the
progressive fulfilment of his promises. Gothic architecture gave clear
expression to this: in the great cathedrals light comes down from heaven
by passing through windows depicting the history of salvation. God’s
light comes to us through the account of his self-revelation, and thus
becomes capable of illuminating our passage through time by recalling
his gifts and demonstrating how he fulfils his promises.
13. The history of Israel also shows us
the temptation of unbelief to which the people yielded more than once.
Here the opposite of faith is shown to be idolatry. While Moses is
speaking to God on Sinai, the people cannot bear the mystery of God’s
hiddenness, they cannot endure the time of waiting to see his face.
Faith by its very nature demands renouncing the immediate possession
which sight would appear to offer; it is an invitation to turn to the
source of the light, while respecting the mystery of a countenance which
will unveil itself personally in its own good time. Martin Buber once
cited a definition of idolatry proposed by the rabbi of Kock: idolatry
is “when a face addresses a face which is not a face”.[10] In
place of faith in God, it seems better to worship an idol, into whose
face we can look directly and whose origin we know, because it is the
work of our own hands. Before an idol, there is no risk that we will be
called to abandon our security, for idols “have mouths, but they cannot
speak” (Ps 115:5). Idols exist, we begin to see, as a pretext
for setting ourselves at the centre of reality and worshiping the work
of our own hands. Once man has lost the fundamental orientation which
unifies his existence, he breaks down into the multiplicity of his
desires; in refusing to await the time of promise, his life-story
disintegrates into a myriad of unconnected instants. Idolatry, then, is
always polytheism, an aimless passing from one lord to another. Idolatry
does not offer a journey but rather a plethora of paths leading nowhere
and forming a vast labyrinth. Those who choose not to put their trust
in God must hear the din of countless idols crying out: “Put your trust
in me!” Faith, tied as it is to conversion, is the opposite of idolatry;
it breaks with idols to turn to the living God in a personal encounter.
Believing means entrusting oneself to a merciful love which always
accepts and pardons, which sustains and directs our lives, and which
shows its power by its ability to make straight the crooked lines of our
history. Faith consists in the willingness to let ourselves be
constantly transformed and renewed by God’s call. Herein lies the
paradox: by constantly turning towards the Lord, we discover a sure path
which liberates us from the dissolution imposed upon us by idols.
14. In the faith of Israel we also
encounter the figure of Moses, the mediator. The people may not see the
face of God; it is Moses who speaks to YHWH on the mountain and then
tells the others of the Lord’s will. With this presence of a mediator in
its midst, Israel learns to journey together in unity. The individual’s
act of faith finds its place within a community, within the common “we”
of the people who, in faith, are like a single person — “my first-born
son”, as God would describe all of Israel (cf. Ex 4:22). Here
mediation is not an obstacle, but an opening: through our encounter with
others, our gaze rises to a truth greater than ourselves. Rousseau once
lamented that he could not see God for himself: “How many people stand
between God and me!”[11] … “Is it really so simple and natural that God would have sought out Moses in order to speak to Jean Jacques Rousseau?”[12] On
the basis of an individualistic and narrow conception of conscience one
cannot appreciate the significance of mediation, this capacity to
participate in the vision of another, this shared knowledge which is the
knowledge proper to love. Faith is God’s free gift, which calls for
humility and the courage to trust and to entrust; it enables us to see
the luminous path leading to the encounter of God and humanity: the
history of salvation.
The fullness of Christian faith
15. “Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day; he saw it and was glad” (Jn 8:56).
According to these words of Jesus, Abraham’s faith pointed to him; in
some sense it foresaw his mystery. So Saint Augustine understood it when
he stated that the patriarchs were saved by faith, not faith in Christ
who had come but in Christ who was yet to come, a faith pressing towards
the future of Jesus.[13] Christian faith is centred on Christ; it is the confession that Jesus is Lord and that God has raised him from the dead (cf. Rom 10:9).
All the threads of the Old Testament converge on Christ; he becomes the
definitive “Yes” to all the promises, the ultimate basis of our “Amen”
to God (cf. 2 Cor 1:20). The history of Jesus is the complete
manifestation of God’s reliability. If Israel continued to recall God’s
great acts of love, which formed the core of its confession of faith and
broadened its gaze in faith, the life of Jesus now appears as the locus
of God’s definitive intervention, the supreme manifestation of his love
for us. The word which God speaks to us in Jesus is not simply one word
among many, but his eternal Word (cf. Heb 1:1-2). God can give no greater guarantee of his love, as Saint Paul reminds us (cf.Rom 8:31-39).
Christian faith is thus faith in a perfect love, in its decisive power,
in its ability to transform the world and to unfold its history. “We
know and believe the love that God has for us” (1 Jn 4:16). In the love of God revealed in Jesus, faith perceives the foundation on which all reality and its final destiny rest.
16. The clearest proof of the reliability
of Christ’s love is to be found in his dying for our sake. If laying
down one’s life for one’s friends is the greatest proof of love (cf. Jn 15:13),
Jesus offered his own life for all, even for his enemies, to transform
their hearts. This explains why the evangelists could see the hour of
Christ’s crucifixion as the culmination of the gaze of faith; in that
hour the depth and breadth of God’s love shone forth. It was then that
Saint John offered his solemn testimony, as together with the Mother of
Jesus he gazed upon the pierced one (cf. Jn 19:37): “He who saw
this has borne witness, so that you also may believe. His testimony is
true, and he knows that he tells the truth” (Jn 19:35). In Dostoevsky’s The Idiot,
Prince Myskin sees a painting by Hans Holbein the Younger depicting
Christ dead in the tomb and says: “Looking at that painting might cause
one to lose his faith”.[14] The
painting is a gruesome portrayal of the destructive effects of death on
Christ’s body. Yet it is precisely in contemplating Jesus’ death that
faith grows stronger and receives a dazzling light; then it is revealed
as faith in Christ’s steadfast love for us, a love capable of embracing
death to bring us salvation. This love, which did not recoil before
death in order to show its depth, is something I can believe in;
Christ’s total self-gift overcomes every suspicion and enables me to
entrust myself to him completely.
17. Christ’s death discloses the utter
reliability of God’s love above all in the light of his resurrection. As
the risen one, Christ is the trustworthy witness, deserving of faith
(cf. Rev 1:5; Heb 2:17), and a solid support for our faith. “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile”, says Saint Paul (1 Cor 15:17).
Had the Father’s love not caused Jesus to rise from the dead, had it
not been able to restore his body to life, then it would not be a
completely reliable love, capable of illuminating also the gloom of
death. When Saint Paul describes his new life in Christ, he speaks of
“faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20).
Clearly, this “faith in the Son of God” means Paul’s faith in Jesus,
but it also presumes that Jesus himself is worthy of faith, based not
only on his having loved us even unto death but also on his divine
sonship. Precisely because Jesus is the Son, because he is absolutely
grounded in the Father, he was able to conquer death and make the
fullness of life shine forth. Our culture has lost its sense of God’s
tangible presence and activity in our world. We think that God is to be
found in the beyond, on another level of reality, far removed from our
everyday relationships. But if this were the case, if God could not act
in the world, his love would not be truly powerful, truly real, and thus
not even true, a love capable of delivering the bliss that it promises.
It would make no difference at all whether we believed in him or not.
Christians, on the contrary, profess their faith in God’s tangible and
powerful love which really does act in history and determines its final
destiny: a love that can be encountered, a love fully revealed in
Christ’s passion, death and resurrection.
18. This fullness which Jesus brings to
faith has another decisive aspect. In faith, Christ is not simply the
one in whom we believe, the supreme manifestation of God’s love; he is
also the one with whom we are united precisely in order to believe.
Faith does not merely gaze at Jesus, but sees things as Jesus himself
sees them, with his own eyes: it is a participation in his way of
seeing. In many areas in our lives we trust others who know more than we
do. We trust the architect who builds our home, the pharmacist who
gives us medicine for healing, the lawyer who defends us in court. We
also need someone trustworthy and knowledgeable where God is concerned.
Jesus, the Son of God, is the one who makes God known to us (cf. Jn 1:18).
Christ’s life, his way of knowing the Father and living in complete and
constant relationship with him, opens up new and inviting vistas for
human experience. Saint John brings out the importance of a personal
relationship with Jesus for our faith by using various forms of the verb
“to believe”. In addition to “believing that” what Jesus tells us is
true, John also speaks of “believing” Jesus and “believing in” Jesus. We
“believe” Jesus when we accept his word, his testimony, because he is
truthful. We “believe in” Jesus when we personally welcome him into our
lives and journey towards him, clinging to him in love and following in
his footsteps along the way.
To enable us to know, accept and follow
him, the Son of God took on our flesh. In this way he also saw the
Father humanly, within the setting of a journey unfolding in time.
Christian faith is faith in the incarnation of the Word and his bodily
resurrection; it is faith in a God who is so close to us that he entered
our human history. Far from divorcing us from reality, our faith in the
Son of God made man in Jesus of Nazareth enables us to grasp reality’s
deepest meaning and to see how much God loves this world and is
constantly guiding it towards himself. This leads us, as Christians, to
live our lives in this world with ever greater commitment and intensity.
Salvation by faith
19. On the basis of this sharing in
Jesus’ way of seeing things, Saint Paul has left us a description of the
life of faith. In accepting the gift of faith, believers become a new
creation; they receive a new being; as God’s children, they are now
“sons in the Son”. The phrase “Abba, Father”, so characteristic of
Jesus’ own experience, now becomes the core of the Christian experience
(cf. Rom 8:15). The life of faith, as a filial existence, is
the acknowledgment of a primordial and radical gift which upholds our
lives. We see this clearly in Saint Paul’s question to the Corinthians:
“What have you that you did not receive?” (1 Cor 4:7). This was
at the very heart of Paul’s debate with the Pharisees: the issue of
whether salvation is attained by faith or by the works of the law. Paul
rejects the attitude of those who would consider themselves justified
before God on the basis of their own works. Such people, even when they
obey the commandments and do good works, are centred on themselves; they
fail to realize that goodness comes from God. Those who live this way,
who want to be the source of their own righteousness, find that the
latter is soon depleted and that they are unable even to keep the law.
They become closed in on themselves and isolated from the Lord and from
others; their lives become futile and their works barren, like a tree
far from water. Saint Augustine tells us in his usual concise and
striking way: “Ab eo qui fecit te, noli deficere nec ad te“, “Do not turn away from the one who made you, even to turn towards yourself”.[15] Once I think that by turning away from God I will find myself, my life begins to fall apart (cf. Lk 15:11-24).
The beginning of salvation is openness to something prior to ourselves,
to a primordial gift that affirms life and sustains it in being. Only
by being open to and acknowledging this gift can we be transformed,
experience salvation and bear good fruit. Salvation by faith means
recognizing the primacy of God’s gift. As Saint Paul puts it: “By grace
you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is
the gift of God” (Eph 2:8).
20. Faith’s new way of seeing things is
centred on Christ. Faith in Christ brings salvation because in him our
lives become radically open to a love that precedes us, a love that
transforms us from within, acting in us and through us. This is clearly
seen in Saint Paul’s exegesis of a text from Deuteronomy, an exegesis
consonant with the heart of the Old Testament message. Moses tells the
people that God’s command is neither too high nor too far away. There is
no need to say: “Who will go up for us to heaven and bring it to us?”
or “Who will go over the sea for us, and bring it to us?” (Dt 30:11-14).
Paul interprets this nearness of God’s word in terms of Christ’s
presence in the Christian. “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend
into heaven?’ (that is, to bring Christ down), or ‘Who will descend into
the abyss?’ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead)” (Rom 10:6-7).
Christ came down to earth and rose from the dead; by his incarnation
and resurrection, the Son of God embraced the whole of human life and
history, and now dwells in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. Faith
knows that God has drawn close to us, that Christ has been given to us
as a great gift which inwardly transforms us, dwells within us and thus
bestows on us the light that illumines the origin and the end of life.
21. We come to see the difference, then,
which faith makes for us. Those who believe are transformed by the love
to which they have opened their hearts in faith. By their openness to
this offer of primordial love, their lives are enlarged and expanded.
“It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20). “May Christ dwell in your hearts through faith” (Eph 3:17).
The self-awareness of the believer now expands because of the presence
of another; it now lives in this other and thus, in love, life takes on a
whole new breadth. Here we see the Holy Spirit at work. The Christian
can see with the eyes of Jesus and share in his mind, his filial
disposition, because he or she shares in his love, which is the Spirit.
In the love of Jesus, we receive in a certain way his vision. Without
being conformed to him in love, without the presence of the Spirit, it
is impossible to confess him as Lord (cf. 1 Cor 12:3).
The ecclesial form of faith
22. In this way, the life of the believer
becomes an ecclesial existence, a life lived in the Church. When Saint
Paul tells the Christians of Rome that all who believe in Christ make up
one body, he urges them not to boast of this; rather, each must think
of himself “according to the measure of faith that God has assigned” (Rom 12:3).
Those who believe come to see themselves in the light of the faith
which they profess: Christ is the mirror in which they find their own
image fully realized. And just as Christ gathers to himself all those
who believe and makes them his body, so the Christian comes to see
himself as a member of this body, in an essential relationship with all
other believers. The image of a body does not imply that the believer is
simply one part of an anonymous whole, a mere cog in great machine;
rather, it brings out the vital union of Christ with believers, and of
believers among themselves (cf. Rom 12:4-5) Christians are “one” (cf. Gal 3:28),
yet in a way which does not make them lose their individuality; in
service to others, they come into their own in the highest degree. This
explains why, apart from this body, outside this unity of the Church in
Christ, outside this Church which — in the words of Romano Guardini —
“is the bearer within history of the plenary gaze of Christ on the
world”[16] —
faith loses its “measure”; it no longer finds its equilibrium, the
space needed to sustain itself. Faith is necessarily ecclesial; it is
professed from within the body of Christ as a concrete communion of
believers. It is against this ecclesial backdrop that faith opens the
individual Christian towards all others. Christ’s word, once heard, by
virtue of its inner power at work in the heart of the Christian, becomes
a response, a spoken word, a profession of faith. As Saint Paul puts
it: “one believes with the heart … and confesses with the lips” (Rom 10:10).
Faith is not a private matter, a completely individualistic notion or a
personal opinion: it comes from hearing, and it is meant to find
expression in words and to be proclaimed. For “how are they to believe
in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a
preacher?” (Rom 10:14). Faith becomes operative in the
Christian on the basis of the gift received, the love which attracts our
hearts to Christ (cf. Gal 5:6), and enables us to become part
of the Church’s great pilgrimage through history until the end of the
world. For those who have been transformed in this way, a new way of
seeing opens up, faith becomes light for their eyes.
CHAPTER TWO
UNLESS YOU BELIEVE,
YOU WILL NOT UNDERSTAND
(cf. Is 7:9)
YOU WILL NOT UNDERSTAND
(cf. Is 7:9)
Faith and truth
23. Unless you believe, you will not understand (cf. Is 7:9).
The Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint translation
produced in Alexandria, gives the above rendering of the words spoken by
the prophet Isaiah to King Ahaz. In this way, the issue of the
knowledge of truth became central to faith. The Hebrew text, though,
reads differently; the prophet says to the king: “If you will not
believe, you shall not be established”. Here there is a play on words,
based on two forms of the verb ’amān: “you will believe” (ta’amînû) and “you shall be established” (tē’āmēnû).
Terrified by the might of his enemies, the king seeks the security that
an alliance with the great Assyrian empire can offer. The prophet tells
him instead to trust completely in the solid and steadfast rock which
is the God of Israel. Because God is trustworthy, it is reasonable to
have faith in him, to stand fast on his word. He is the same God that
Isaiah will later call, twice in one verse, the God who is Amen, “the
God of truth” (cf. Is 65:16), the enduring foundation of
covenant fidelity. It might seem that the Greek version of the Bible, by
translating “be established” as “understand”, profoundly altered the
meaning of the text by moving away from the biblical notion of trust in
God towards a Greek notion of intellectual understanding. Yet this
translation, while certainly reflecting a dialogue with Hellenistic
culture, is not alien to the underlying spirit of the Hebrew text. The
firm foundation that Isaiah promises to the king is indeed grounded in
an understanding of God’s activity and the unity which he gives to human
life and to the history of his people. The prophet challenges the king,
and us, to understand the Lord’s ways, seeing in God’s faithfulness the
wise plan which governs the ages. Saint Augustine took up this
synthesis of the ideas of “understanding” and “being established” in
his Confessions when he spoke of the truth on which one may
rely in order to stand fast: “Then I shall be cast and set firm in the
mould of your truth”.[17] From
the context we know that Augustine was concerned to show that this
trustworthy truth of God is, as the Bible makes clear, his own faithful
presence throughout history, his ability to hold together times and
ages, and to gather into one the scattered strands of our lives.[18]
24. Read in this light, the prophetic
text leads to one conclusion: we need knowledge, we need truth, because
without these we cannot stand firm, we cannot move forward. Faith
without truth does not save, it does not provide a sure footing. It
remains a beautiful story, the projection of our deep yearning for
happiness, something capable of satisfying us to the extent that we are
willing to deceive ourselves. Either that, or it is reduced to a lofty
sentiment which brings consolation and cheer, yet remains prey to the
vagaries of our spirit and the changing seasons, incapable of sustaining
a steady journey through life. If such were faith, King Ahaz would be
right not to stake his life and the security of his kingdom on a
feeling. But precisely because of its intrinsic link to truth, faith is
instead able to offer a new light, superior to the king’s calculations,
for it sees further into the distance and takes into account the hand of
God, who remains faithful to his covenant and his promises.
25. Today more than ever, we need to be
reminded of this bond between faith and truth, given the crisis of truth
in our age. In contemporary culture, we often tend to consider the only
real truth to be that of technology: truth is what we succeed in
building and measuring by our scientific know-how, truth is what works
and what makes life easier and more comfortable. Nowadays this appears
as the only truth that is certain, the only truth that can be shared,
the only truth that can serve as a basis for discussion or for common
undertakings. Yet at the other end of the scale we are willing to allow
for subjective truths of the individual, which consist in fidelity to
his or her deepest convictions, yet these are truths valid only for that
individual and not capable of being proposed to others in an effort to
serve the common good. But Truth itself, the truth which would
comprehensively explain our life as individuals and in society, is
regarded with suspicion. Surely this kind of truth — we hear it said —
is what was claimed by the great totalitarian movements of the last
century, a truth that imposed its own world view in order to crush the
actual lives of individuals. In the end, what we are left with is
relativism, in which the question of universal truth — and ultimately
this means the question of God — is no longer relevant. It would be
logical, from this point of view, to attempt to sever the bond between
religion and truth, because it seems to lie at the root of fanaticism,
which proves oppressive for anyone who does not share the same beliefs.
In this regard, though, we can speak of a massive amnesia in our
contemporary world. The question of truth is really a question of
memory, deep memory, for it deals with something prior to ourselves and
can succeed in uniting us in a way that transcends our petty and limited
individual consciousness. It is a question about the origin of all that
is, in whose light we can glimpse the goal and thus the meaning of our
common path.
Knowledge of the truth and love
26. This being the case, can Christian
faith provide a service to the common good with regard to the right way
of understanding truth? To answer this question, we need to reflect on
the kind of knowledge involved in faith. Here a saying of Saint Paul can
help us: “One believes with the heart” (Rom 10:10). In the
Bible, the heart is the core of the human person, where all his or her
different dimensions intersect: body and spirit, interiority and
openness to the world and to others, intellect, will and affectivity. If
the heart is capable of holding all these dimensions together, it is
because it is where we become open to truth and love, where we let them
touch us and deeply transform us. Faith transforms the whole person
precisely to the extent that he or she becomes open to love. Through
this blending of faith and love we come to see the kind of knowledge
which faith entails, its power to convince and its ability to illumine
our steps. Faith knows because it is tied to love, because love itself
brings enlightenment. Faith’s understanding is born when we receive the
immense love of God which transforms us inwardly and enables us to see
reality with new eyes.
27. The explanation of the connection
between faith and certainty put forward by the philosopher Ludwig
Wittgenstein is well known. For Wittgenstein, believing can be compared
to the experience of falling in love: it is something subjective which
cannot be proposed as a truth valid for everyone.[19] Indeed,
most people nowadays would not consider love as related in any way to
truth. Love is seen as an experience associated with the world of
fleeting emotions, no longer with truth.
But is this an adequate description of
love? Love cannot be reduced to an ephemeral emotion. True, it engages
our affectivity, but in order to open it to the beloved and thus to
blaze a trail leading away from self-centredness and towards another
person, in order to build a lasting relationship; love aims at union
with the beloved. Here we begin to see how love requires truth. Only to
the extent that love is grounded in truth can it endure over time, can
it transcend the passing moment and be sufficiently solid to sustain a
shared journey. If love is not tied to truth, it falls prey to fickle
emotions and cannot stand the test of time. True love, on the other
hand, unifies all the elements of our person and becomes a new light
pointing the way to a great and fulfilled life. Without truth, love is
incapable of establishing a firm bond; it cannot liberate our isolated
ego or redeem it from the fleeting moment in order to create life and
bear fruit.
If love needs truth, truth also needs
love. Love and truth are inseparable. Without love, truth becomes cold,
impersonal and oppressive for people’s day-to-day lives. The truth we
seek, the truth that gives meaning to our journey through life,
enlightens us whenever we are touched by love. One who loves realizes
that love is an experience of truth, that it opens our eyes to see
reality in a new way, in union with the beloved. In this sense, Saint
Gregory the Great could write that “amor ipse notitia est“, love is itself a kind of knowledge possessed of its own logic.[20] It
is a relational way of viewing the world, which then becomes a form of
shared knowledge, vision through the eyes of another and a shared vision
of all that exists. William of Saint-Thierry, in the Middle Ages,
follows this tradition when he comments on the verse of the Song of
Songs where the lover says to the beloved, “Your eyes are doves” (Song 1:15).[21] The
two eyes, says William, are faith-filled reason and love, which then
become one in rising to the contemplation of God, when our understanding
becomes “an understanding of enlightened love”.[22]
28. This discovery of love as a source of
knowledge, which is part of the primordial experience of every man and
woman, finds authoritative expression in the biblical understanding of
faith. In savouring the love by which God chose them and made them a
people, Israel came to understand the overall unity of the divine plan.
Faith-knowledge, because it is born of God’s covenantal love, is
knowledge which lights up a path in history. That is why, in the Bible,
truth and fidelity go together: the true God is the God of fidelity who
keeps his promises and makes possible, in time, a deeper understanding
of his plan. Through the experience of the prophets, in the pain of
exile and in the hope of a definitive return to the holy city, Israel
came to see that this divine “truth” extended beyond the confines of its
own history, to embrace the entire history of the world, beginning with
creation. Faith-knowledge sheds light not only on the destiny of one
particular people, but the entire history of the created world, from its
origins to its consummation.
Faith as hearing and sight
29. Precisely because faith-knowledge is
linked to the covenant with a faithful God who enters into a
relationship of love with man and speaks his word to him, the Bible
presents it as a form of hearing; it is associated with the sense of
hearing. Saint Paul would use a formula which became classic: fides ex auditu, “faith comes from hearing” (Rom 10:17).
Knowledge linked to a word is always personal knowledge; it recognizes
the voice of the one speaking, opens up to that person in freedom and
follows him or her in obedience. Paul could thus speak of the “obedience
of faith” (cf. Rom 1:5; 16:26).[23] Faith
is also a knowledge bound to the passage of time, for words take time
to be pronounced, and it is a knowledge assimilated only along a journey
of discipleship. The experience of hearing can thus help to bring out
more clearly the bond between knowledge and love.
At times, where knowledge of the truth is
concerned, hearing has been opposed to sight; it has been claimed that
an emphasis on sight was characteristic of Greek culture. If light makes
possible that contemplation of the whole to which humanity has always
aspired, it would also seem to leave no space for freedom, since it
comes down from heaven directly to the eye, without calling for a
response. It would also seem to call for a kind of static contemplation,
far removed from the world of history with its joys and sufferings.
From this standpoint, the biblical understanding of knowledge would be
antithetical to the Greek understanding, inasmuch as the latter linked
knowledge to sight in its attempt to attain a comprehensive
understanding of reality.
This alleged antithesis does not,
however, correspond to the biblical datum. The Old Testament combined
both kinds of knowledge, since hearing God’s word is accompanied by the
desire to see his face. The ground was thus laid for a dialogue with
Hellenistic culture, a dialogue present at the heart of sacred
Scripture. Hearing emphasizes personal vocation and obedience, and the
fact that truth is revealed in time. Sight provides a vision of the
entire journey and allows it to be situated within God’s overall plan;
without this vision, we would be left only with unconnected parts of an
unknown whole.
30. The bond between seeing and hearing
in faith-knowledge is most clearly evident in John’s Gospel. For the
Fourth Gospel, to believe is both to hear and to see. Faith’s hearing
emerges as a form of knowing proper to love: it is a personal hearing,
one which recognizes the voice of the Good Shepherd (cf. Jn 10:3-5);
it is a hearing which calls for discipleship, as was the case with the
first disciples: “Hearing him say these things, they followed Jesus” (Jn 1:37).
But faith is also tied to sight. Seeing the signs which Jesus worked
leads at times to faith, as in the case of the Jews who, following the
raising of Lazarus, “having seen what he did, believed in him” (Jn 11:45). At other times, faith itself leads to deeper vision: “If you believe, you will see the glory of God” (Jn 11:40).
In the end, belief and sight intersect: “Whoever believes in me
believes in him who sent me. And whoever sees me sees him who sent me” (Jn 12:44-45).
Joined to hearing, seeing then becomes a form of following Christ, and
faith appears as a process of gazing, in which our eyes grow accustomed
to peering into the depths. Easter morning thus passes from John who,
standing in the early morning darkness before the empty tomb, “saw and
believed” (Jn 20:8), to Mary Magdalene who, after seeing Jesus (cf. Jn 20:14)
and wanting to cling to him, is asked to contemplate him as he ascends
to the Father, and finally to her full confession before the disciples:
“I have seen the Lord!” (Jn 20:18).
How does one attain this synthesis
between hearing and seeing? It becomes possible through the person of
Christ himself, who can be seen and heard. He is the Word made flesh,
whose glory we have seen (cf. Jn 1:14). The light of faith is
the light of a countenance in which the Father is seen. In the Fourth
Gospel, the truth which faith attains is the revelation of the Father in
the Son, in his flesh and in his earthly deeds, a truth which can be
defined as the “light-filled life” of Jesus.[24] This
means that faith-knowledge does not direct our gaze to a purely inward
truth. The truth which faith discloses to us is a truth centred on an
encounter with Christ, on the contemplation of his life and on the
awareness of his presence. Saint Thomas Aquinas speaks of the Apostles’oculata fides — a faith which sees! — in the presence of the body of the Risen Lord.[25] With
their own eyes they saw the risen Jesus and they believed; in a word,
they were able to peer into the depths of what they were seeing and to
confess their faith in the Son of God, seated at the right hand of the
Father.
31. It was only in this way, by taking
flesh, by sharing our humanity, that the knowledge proper to love could
come to full fruition. For the light of love is born when our hearts are
touched and we open ourselves to the interior presence of the beloved,
who enables us to recognize his mystery. Thus we can understand why,
together with hearing and seeing, Saint John can speak of faith as
touch, as he says in his First Letter: “What we have heard, what we have
seen with our eyes and touched with our hands, concerning the word of
life” (1 Jn1:1). By his taking flesh and coming among us, Jesus
has touched us, and through the sacraments he continues to touch us
even today; transforming our hearts, he unceasingly enables us to
acknowledge and acclaim him as the Son of God. In faith, we can touch
him and receive the power of his grace. Saint Augustine, commenting on
the account of the woman suffering from haemorrhages who touched Jesus
and was cured (cf. Lk 8:45-46), says: “To touch him with our hearts: that is what it means to believe”.[26] The
crowd presses in on Jesus, but they do not reach him with the personal
touch of faith, which apprehends the mystery that he is the Son who
reveals the Father. Only when we are configured to Jesus do we receive
the eyes needed to see him.
The dialogue between faith and reason
32. Christian faith, inasmuch as it
proclaims the truth of God’s total love and opens us to the power of
that love, penetrates to the core of our human experience. Each of us
comes to the light because of love, and each of us is called to love in
order to remain in the light. Desirous of illumining all reality with
the love of God made manifest in Jesus, and seeking to love others with
that same love, the first Christians found in the Greek world, with its
thirst for truth, an ideal partner in dialogue. The encounter of the
Gospel message with the philosophical culture of the ancient world
proved a decisive step in the evangelization of all peoples, and
stimulated a fruitful interaction between faith and reason which has
continued down the centuries to our own times. Blessed John Paul II, in his Encyclical Letter Fides et Ratio, showed how faith and reason each strengthen the other.[27] Once
we discover the full light of Christ’s love, we realize that each of
the loves in our own lives had always contained a ray of that light, and
we understand its ultimate destination. That fact that our human loves
contain that ray of light also helps us to see how all love is meant to
share in the complete self-gift of the Son of God for our sake. In this
circular movement, the light of faith illumines all our human
relationships, which can then be lived in union with the gentle love of
Christ.
33. In the life of Saint Augustine we
find a significant example of this process whereby reason, with its
desire for truth and clarity, was integrated into the horizon of faith
and thus gained new understanding. Augustine accepted the Greek
philosophy of light, with its insistence on the importance of sight. His
encounter with Neoplatonism introduced him to the paradigm of the light
which, descending from on high to illumine all reality, is a symbol of
God. Augustine thus came to appreciate God’s transcendence and
discovered that all things have a certain transparency, that they can
reflect God’s goodness. This realization liberated him from his earlier
Manichaeism, which had led him to think that good and evil were in
constant conflict, confused and intertwined. The realization that God is
light provided Augustine with a new direction in life and enabled him
to acknowledge his sinfulness and to turn towards the good.
All the same, the decisive moment in Augustine’s journey of faith, as he tells us in the Confessions,
was not in the vision of a God above and beyond this world, but in an
experience of hearing. In the garden, he heard a voice telling him:
“Take and read”. He then took up the book containing the epistles of
Saint Paul and started to read the thirteenth chapter of the Letter to
the Romans.[28] In
this way, the personal God of the Bible appeared to him: a God who is
able to speak to us, to come down to dwell in our midst and to accompany
our journey through history, making himself known in the time of
hearing and response.
Yet this encounter with the God who
speaks did not lead Augustine to reject light and seeing. He integrated
the two perspectives of hearing and seeing, constantly guided by the
revelation of God’s love in Jesus. Thus Augustine developed a philosophy
of light capable of embracing both the reciprocity proper to the word
and the freedom born of looking to the light. Just as the word calls for
a free response, so the light finds a response in the image which
reflects it. Augustine can therefore associate hearing and seeing, and
speak of “the word which shines forth within”.[29] The
light becomes, so to speak, the light of a word, because it is the
light of a personal countenance, a light which, even as it enlightens
us, calls us and seeks to be reflected on our faces and to shine from
within us. Yet our longing for the vision of the whole, and not merely
of fragments of history, remains and will be fulfilled in the end, when,
as Augustine says, we will see and we will love.[30] Not
because we will be able to possess all the light, which will always be
inexhaustible, but because we will enter wholly into that light.
34. The light of love proper to faith can
illumine the questions of our own time about truth. Truth nowadays is
often reduced to the subjective authenticity of the individual, valid
only for the life of the individual. A common truth intimidates us, for
we identify it with the intransigent demands of totalitarian systems.
But if truth is a truth of love, if it is a truth disclosed in personal
encounter with the Other and with others, then it can be set free from
its enclosure in individuals and become part of the common good. As a
truth of love, it is not one that can be imposed by force; it is not a
truth that stifles the individual. Since it is born of love, it can
penetrate to the heart, to the personal core of each man and woman.
Clearly, then, faith is not intransigent, but grows in respectful
coexistence with others. One who believes may not be presumptuous; on
the contrary, truth leads to humility, since believers know that, rather
than ourselves possessing truth, it is truth which embraces and
possesses us. Far from making us inflexible, the security of faith sets
us on a journey; it enables witness and dialogue with all.
Nor is the light of faith, joined to the
truth of love, extraneous to the material world, for love is always
lived out in body and spirit; the light of faith is an incarnate light
radiating from the luminous life of Jesus. It also illumines the
material world, trusts its inherent order and knows that it calls us to
an ever widening path of harmony and understanding. The gaze of science
thus benefits from faith: faith encourages the scientist to remain
constantly open to reality in all its inexhaustible richness. Faith
awakens the critical sense by preventing research from being satisfied
with its own formulae and helps it to realize that nature is always
greater. By stimulating wonder before the profound mystery of creation,
faith broadens the horizons of reason to shed greater light on the world
which discloses itself to scientific investigation.
Faith and the search for God
35. The light of faith in Jesus also
illumines the path of all those who seek God, and makes a specifically
Christian contribution to dialogue with the followers of the different
religions. The Letter to the Hebrews speaks of the witness of those just
ones who, before the covenant with Abraham, already sought God in
faith. Of Enoch “it was attested that he had pleased God” (Heb 11:5),
something impossible apart from faith, for “whoever would approach God
must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him” (Heb 11:6).
We can see from this that the path of religious man passes through the
acknowledgment of a God who cares for us and is not impossible to find.
What other reward can God give to those who seek him, if not to let
himself be found? Even earlier, we encounter Abel, whose faith was
praised and whose gifts, his offering of the firstlings of his flock
(cf. Heb 11:4), were therefore pleasing to God. Religious man
strives to see signs of God in the daily experiences of life, in the
cycle of the seasons, in the fruitfulness of the earth and in the
movement of the cosmos. God is light and he can be found also by those
who seek him with a sincere heart.
An image of this seeking can be seen in the Magi, who were led to Bethlehem by the star (cf. Mt 2:1-12).
For them God’s light appeared as a journey to be undertaken, a star
which led them on a path of discovery. The star is a sign of God’s
patience with our eyes which need to grow accustomed to his brightness.
Religious man is a wayfarer; he must be ready to let himself be led, to
come out of himself and to find the God of perpetual surprises. This
respect on God’s part for our human eyes shows us that when we draw near
to God, our human lights are not dissolved in the immensity of his
light, as a star is engulfed by the dawn, but shine all the more
brightly the closer they approach the primordial fire, like a mirror
which reflects light. Christian faith in Jesus, the one Saviour of the
world, proclaims that all God’s light is concentrated in him, in his
“luminous life” which discloses the origin and the end of history.[31] There
is no human experience, no journey of man to God, which cannot be taken
up, illumined and purified by this light. The more Christians immerse
themselves in the circle of Christ’s light, the more capable they become
of understanding and accompanying the path of every man and woman
towards God.
Because faith is a way, it also has to do
with the lives of those men and women who, though not believers,
nonetheless desire to believe and continue to seek. To the extent that
they are sincerely open to love and set out with whatever light they can
find, they are already, even without knowing it, on the path leading to
faith. They strive to act as if God existed, at times because they
realize how important he is for finding a sure compass for our life in
common or because they experience a desire for light amid darkness, but
also because in perceiving life’s grandeur and beauty they intuit that
the presence of God would make it all the more beautiful. Saint Irenaeus
of Lyons tells how Abraham, before hearing God’s voice, had already
sought him “in the ardent desire of his heart” and “went throughout the
whole world, asking himself where God was to be found”, until “God had
pity on him who, all alone, had sought him in silence”.[32] Any-one
who sets off on the path of doing good to others is already drawing
near to God, is already sustained by his help, for it is characteristic
of the divine light to brighten our eyes whenever we walk towards the
fullness of love.
Faith and theology
36. Since faith is a light, it draws us
into itself, inviting us to explore ever more fully the horizon which it
illumines, all the better to know the object of our love. Christian
theology is born of this desire. Clearly, theology is impossible without
faith; it is part of the very process of faith, which seeks an ever
deeper understanding of God’s self-disclosure culminating in Christ. It
follows that theology is more than simply an effort of human reason to
analyze and understand, along the lines of the experimental sciences.
God cannot be reduced to an object. He is a subject who makes himself
known and perceived in an interpersonal relationship. Right faith
orients reason to open itself to the light which comes from God, so that
reason, guided by love of the truth, can come to a deeper knowledge of
God. The great medieval theologians and teachers rightly held that
theology, as a science of faith, is a participation in God’s own
knowledge of himself. It is not just our discourse about God, but first
and foremost the acceptance and the pursuit of a deeper understanding of
the word which God speaks to us, the word which God speaks about
himself, for he is an eternal dialogue of communion, and he allows us to
enter into this dialogue.[33] Theology
thus demands the humility to be “touched” by God, admitting its own
limitations before the mystery, while striving to investigate, with the
discipline proper to reason, the inexhaustible riches of this mystery.
Theology also shares in the ecclesial
form of faith; its light is the light of the believing subject which is
the Church. This implies, on the one hand, that theology must be at the
service of the faith of Christians, that it must work humbly to protect
and deepen the faith of everyone, especially ordinary believers. On the
other hand, because it draws its life from faith, theology cannot
consider the magisterium of the Pope and the bishops in communion with
him as something extrinsic, a limitation of its freedom, but rather as
one of its internal, constitutive dimensions, for the magisterium
ensures our contact with the primordial source and thus provides the
certainty of attaining to the word of Christ in all its integrity.
CHAPTER THREE
I DELIVERED TO YOU
WHAT I ALSO RECEIVED
(cf. 1 Cor 15:3)
WHAT I ALSO RECEIVED
(cf. 1 Cor 15:3)
The Church, mother of our faith
37. Those who have opened their hearts to
God’s love, heard his voice and received his light, cannot keep this
gift to themselves. Since faith is hearing and seeing, it is also handed
on as word and light. Addressing the Corinthians, Saint Paul used these
two very images. On the one hand he says: “But just as we have the same
spirit of faith that is in accordance with scripture — ‘I believed, and
so I spoke’ — we also believe, and so we speak” (2 Cor 4:13).
The word, once accepted, becomes a response, a confession of faith,
which spreads to others and invites them to believe. Paul also uses the
image of light: “All of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the
Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the
same image” (2 Cor 3:18). It is a light reflected from one face
to another, even as Moses himself bore a reflection of God’s glory
after having spoken with him: “God… has shone in our hearts to give the
light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor 4:6).
The light of Christ shines, as in a mirror, upon the face of
Christians; as it spreads, it comes down to us, so that we too can share
in that vision and reflect that light to others, in the same way that,
in the Easter liturgy, the light of the paschal candle lights countless
other candles. Faith is passed on, we might say, by contact, from one
person to another, just as one candle is lighted from another.
Christians, in their poverty, plant a seed so rich that it becomes a
great tree, capable of filling the world with its fruit.
38. The transmission of the faith not
only brings light to men and women in every place; it travels through
time, passing from one generation to another. Because faith is born of
an encounter which takes place in history and lights up our journey
through time, it must be passed on in every age. It is through an
unbroken chain of witnesses that we come to see the face of Jesus. But
how is this possible? How can we be certain, after all these centuries,
that we have encountered the “real Jesus”? Were we merely isolated
individuals, were our starting point simply our own individual ego
seeking in itself the basis of absolutely sure knowledge, a certainty of
this sort would be impossible. I cannot possibly verify for myself
something which happened so long ago. But this is not the only way we
attain knowledge. Persons always live in relationship. We come from
others, we belong to others, and our lives are enlarged by our encounter
with others. Even our own knowledge and self-awareness are relational;
they are linked to others who have gone before us: in the first place,
our parents, who gave us our life and our name. Language itself, the
words by which we make sense of our lives and the world around us, comes
to us from others, preserved in the living memory of others.
Self-knowledge is only possible when we share in a greater memory. The
same thing holds true for faith, which brings human understanding to its
fullness. Faith’s past, that act of Jesus’ love which brought new life
to the world, comes down to us through the memory of others — witnesses —
and is kept alive in that one remembering subject which is the Church.
The Church is a Mother who teaches us to speak the language of faith.
Saint John brings this out in his Gospel by closely uniting faith and
memory and associating both with the working of the Holy Spirit, who, as
Jesus says, “will remind you of all that I have said to you” (Jn 14:26).
The love which is the Holy Spirit and which dwells in the Church unites
every age and makes us contemporaries of Jesus, thus guiding us along
our pilgrimage of faith.
39. It is impossible to believe on our
own. Faith is not simply an individual decision which takes place in the
depths of the believer’s heart, nor a completely private relationship
between the “I” of the believer and the divine “Thou”, between an
autonomous subject and God. By its very nature, faith is open to the
“We” of the Church; it always takes place within her communion. We are
reminded of this by the dialogical format of the creed used in the
baptismal liturgy. Our belief is expressed in response to an invitation,
to a word which must be heard and which is not my own; it exists as
part of a dialogue and cannot be merely a profession originating in an
individual. We can respond in the singular — “I believe” — only because
we are part of a greater fellowship, only because we also say “We
believe”. This openness to the ecclesial “We” reflects the openness of
God’s own love, which is not only a relationship between the Father and
the Son, between an “I” and a “Thou”, but is also, in the Spirit, a
“We”, a communion of persons. Here we see why those who believe are
never alone, and why faith tends to spread, as it invites others to
share in its joy. Those who receive faith discover that their horizons
expand as new and enriching relationships come to life. Tertullian puts
this well when he describes the catechumens who, “after the cleansing
which gives new birth” are welcomed into the house of their mother and,
as part of a new family, pray the Our Father together with their
brothers and sisters.[34]
The sacraments and the transmission of faith
40. The Church, like every family, passes
on to her children the whole store of her memories. But how does this
come about in a way that nothing is lost, but rather everything in the
patrimony of faith comes to be more deeply understood? It is through the
apostolic Tradition preserved in the Church with the assistance of the
Holy Spirit that we enjoy a living contact with the foundational memory.
What was handed down by the apostles — as the Second Vatican Council
states — “comprises everything that serves to make the people of God
live their lives in holiness and increase their faith. In this way the
Church, in her doctrine, life and worship, perpetuates and transmits to
every generation all that she herself is, all that she believes”.[35]
Faith, in fact, needs a setting in which
it can be witnessed to and communicated, a means which is suitable and
proportionate to what is communicated. For transmitting a purely
doctrinal content, an idea might suffice, or perhaps a book, or the
repetition of a spoken message. But what is communicated in the Church,
what is handed down in her living Tradition, is the new light born of an
encounter with the true God, a light which touches us at the core of
our being and engages our minds, wills and emotions, opening us to
relationships lived in communion. There is a special means for passing
down this fullness, a means capable of engaging the entire person, body
and spirit, interior life and relationships with others. It is the
sacraments, celebrated in the Church’s liturgy. The sacraments
communicate an incarnate memory, linked to the times and places of our
lives, linked to all our senses; in them the whole person is engaged as a
member of a living subject and part of a network of communitarian
relationships. While the sacraments are indeed sacraments of faith,[36] it
can also be said that faith itself possesses a sacramental structure.
The awakening of faith is linked to the dawning of a new sacramental
sense in our lives as human beings and as Christians, in which visible
and material realities are seen to point beyond themselves to the
mystery of the eternal.
41. The transmission of faith occurs
first and foremost in baptism. Some might think that baptism is merely a
way of symbolizing the confession of faith, a pedagogical tool for
those who require images and signs, while in itself ultimately
unnecessary. An observation of Saint Paul about baptism reminds us that
this is not the case. Paul states that “we were buried with him by
baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by
the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:4).
In baptism we become a new creation and God’s adopted children. The
Apostle goes on to say that Christians have been entrusted to a
“standard of teaching” (týpos didachés), which they now obey from the heart (cf. Rom 6:17).
In baptism we receive both a teaching to be professed and a specific
way of life which demands the engagement of the whole person and sets us
on the path to goodness. Those who are baptized are set in a new
context, entrusted to a new environment, a new and shared way of acting,
in the Church. Baptism makes us see, then, that faith is not the
achievement of isolated individuals; it is not an act which someone can
perform on his own, but rather something which must be received by
entering into the ecclesial communion which transmits God’s gift. No one
baptizes himself, just as no one comes into the world by himself.
Baptism is something we receive.
42. What are the elements of baptism
which introduce us into this new “standard of teaching”? First, the name
of the Trinity — the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit — is invoked
upon the catechumen. Thus, from the outset, a synthesis of the journey
of faith is provided. The God who called Abraham and wished to be called
his God, the God who revealed his name to Moses, the God who, in giving
us his Son, revealed fully the mystery of his Name, now bestows upon
the baptized a new filial identity. This is clearly seen in the act of
baptism itself: immersion in water. Water is at once a symbol of death,
inviting us to pass through self-conversion to a new and greater
identity, and a symbol of life, of a womb in which we are reborn by
following Christ in his new life. In this way, through immersion in
water, baptism speaks to us of the incarnational structure of faith.
Christ’s work penetrates the depths of our being and transforms us
radically, making us adopted children of God and sharers in the divine
nature. It thus modifies all our relationships, our place in this world
and in the universe, and opens them to God’s own life of communion. This
change which takes place in baptism helps us to appreciate the singular
importance of the catechumenate — whereby growing numbers of adults,
even in societies with ancient Christian roots, now approach the
sacrament of baptism — for the new evangelization. It is the road of
preparation for baptism, for the transformation of our whole life in
Christ.
To appreciate this link between baptism
and faith, we can recall a text of the prophet Isaiah, which was
associated with baptism in early Christian literature: “Their refuge
will be the fortresses of rocks… their water assured” (Is 33:16).[37] The
baptized, rescued from the waters of death, were now set on a “fortress
of rock” because they had found a firm and reliable foundation. The
waters of death were thus transformed into waters of life. The Greek
text, in speaking of that water which is “assured”, uses the word pistós, “faithful”.
The waters of baptism are indeed faithful and trustworthy, for they
flow with the power of Christ’s love, the source of our assurance in the
journey of life.
43. The structure of baptism, its form as
a rebirth in which we receive a new name and a new life, helps us to
appreciate the meaning and importance of infant baptism. Children are
not capable of accepting the faith by a free act, nor are they yet able
to profess that faith on their own; therefore the faith is professed by
their parents and godparents in their name. Since faith is a reality
lived within the community of the Church, part of a common “We”,
children can be supported by others, their parents and godparents, and
welcomed into their faith, which is the faith of the Church; this is
symbolized by the candle which the child’s father lights from the
paschal candle. The structure of baptism, then, demonstrates the
critical importance of cooperation between Church and family in passing
on the faith. Parents are called, as Saint Augustine once said, not only
to bring children into the world but also to bring them to God, so that
through baptism they can be reborn as children of God and receive the
gift of faith.[38] Thus,
along with life, children are given a fundamental orientation and
assured of a good future; this orientation will be further strengthened
in the sacrament of Confirmation with the seal of the Holy Spirit.
44. The sacramental character of faith
finds its highest expression in the Eucharist. The Eucharist is a
precious nourishment for faith: an encounter with Christ truly present
in the supreme act of his love, the life-giving gift of himself. In the
Eucharist we find the intersection of faith’s two dimensions. On the one
hand, there is the dimension of history: the Eucharist is an act of
remembrance, a making present of the mystery in which the past, as an
event of death and resurrection, demonstrates its ability to open up a
future, to foreshadow ultimate fulfilment. The liturgy reminds us of
this by its repetition of the word hodie, the “today” of the
mysteries of salvation. On the other hand, we also find the dimension
which leads from the visible world to the invisible. In the Eucharist we
learn to see the heights and depths of reality. The bread and wine are
changed into the body and blood of Christ, who becomes present in his
passover to the Father: this movement draws us, body and soul, into the
movement of all creation towards its fulfilment in God.
45. In the celebration of the sacraments,
the Church hands down her memory especially through the profession of
faith. The creed does not only involve giving one’s assent to a body of
abstract truths; rather, when it is recited the whole of life is drawn
into a journey towards full communion with the living God. We can say
that in the creed believers are invited to enter into the mystery which
they profess and to be transformed by it. To understand what this means,
let us look first at the contents of the creed. It has a trinitarian
structure: the Father and the Son are united in the Spirit of love. The
believer thus states that the core of all being, the inmost secret of
all reality, is the divine communion. The creed also contains a
christological confession: it takes us through all the mysteries of
Christ’s life up to his death, resurrection and ascension into heaven
before his final return in glory. It tells us that this God of
communion, reciprocal love between the Father and the Son in the Spirit,
is capable of embracing all of human history and drawing it into the
dynamic unity of the Godhead, which has its source and fulfillment in
the Father. The believer who professes his or her faith is taken up, as
it were, into the truth being professed. He or she cannot truthfully
recite the words of the creed without being changed, without becoming
part of that history of love which embraces us and expands our being,
making it part of a great fellowship, the ultimate subject which recites
the creed, namely, the Church. All the truths in which we believe point
to the mystery of the new life of faith as a journey of communion with
the living God.
Faith, prayer and the Decalogue
46. Two other elements are essential in
the faithful transmission of the Church’s memory. First, the Lord’s
Prayer, the “Our Father”. Here Christians learn to share in Christ’s own
spiritual experience and to see all things through his eyes. From him
who is light from light, the only-begotten Son of the Father, we come to
know God and can thus kindle in others the desire to draw near to him.
Similarly important is the link between
faith and the Decalogue. Faith, as we have said, takes the form of a
journey, a path to be followed, which begins with an encounter with the
living God. It is in the light of faith, of complete entrustment to the
God who saves, that the Ten Commandments take on their deepest truth, as
seen in the words which introduce them: “I am the Lord your God, who
brought you out of the land of Egypt” (Ex20:2). The Decalogue
is not a set of negative commands, but concrete directions for emerging
from the desert of the selfish and self-enclosed ego in order to enter
into dialogue with God, to be embraced by his mercy and then to bring
that mercy to others. Faith thus professes the love of God, origin and
upholder of all things, and lets itself be guided by this love in order
to journey towards the fullness of communion with God. The Decalogue
appears as the path of gratitude, the response of love, made possible
because in faith we are receptive to the experience of God’s
transforming love for us. And this path receives new light from Jesus’
teaching in the Sermon on the Mount (cf. Mt 5-7).
These, then, are the four elements which
comprise the storehouse of memory which the Church hands down: the
profession of faith, the celebration of the sacraments, the path of the
ten commandments, and prayer. The Church’s catechesis has traditionally
been structured around these four elements; this includes the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which
is a fundamental aid for that unitary act with which the Church
communicates the entire content of her faith: “all that she herself is,
and all that she believes”.[39]
The unity and integrity of faith
47. The unity of the Church in time and
space is linked to the unity of the faith: “there is one body and one
Spirit… one faith” (Eph 4:4-5). These days we can imagine a
group of people being united in a common cause, in mutual affection, in
sharing the same destiny and a single purpose. But we find it hard to
conceive of a unity in one truth. We tend to think that a unity of this
sort is incompatible with freedom of thought and personal autonomy. Yet
the experience of love shows us that a common vision is possible, for
through love we learn how to see reality through the eyes of others, not
as something which impoverishes but instead enriches our vision.
Genuine love, after the fashion of God’s love, ultimately requires
truth, and the shared contemplation of the truth which is Jesus Christ
enables love to become deep and enduring. This is also the great joy of
faith: a unity of vision in one body and one spirit. Saint Leo the Great
could say: “If faith is not one, then it is not faith”.[40]
What is the secret of this unity? Faith
is “one”, in the first place, because of the oneness of the God who is
known and confessed. All the articles of faith speak of God; they are
ways to know him and his works. Consequently, their unity is far
superior to any possible construct of human reason. They possess a unity
which enriches us because it is given to us and makes us one.
Faith is also one because it is directed
to the one Lord, to the life of Jesus, to the concrete history which he
shares with us. Saint Irenaeus of Lyons made this clear in his struggle
against Gnosticism. The Gnostics held that there are two kinds of faith:
a crude, imperfect faith suited to the masses, which remained at the
level of Jesus’ flesh and the contemplation of his mysteries; and a
deeper, perfect faith reserved to a small circle of initiates who were
intellectually capable of rising above the flesh of Jesus towards the
mysteries of the unknown divinity. In opposition to this claim, which
even today exerts a certain attraction and has its followers, Saint
Irenaeus insisted that there is but one faith, for it is grounded in the
concrete event of the incarnation and can never transcend the flesh and
history of Christ, inasmuch as God willed to reveal himself fully in
that flesh. For this reason, he says, there is no difference in the
faith of “those able to discourse of it at length” and “those who speak
but little”, between the greater and the less: the first cannot increase
the faith, nor the second diminish it.[41]
Finally, faith is one because it is
shared by the whole Church, which is one body and one Spirit. In the
communion of the one subject which is the Church, we receive a common
gaze. By professing the same faith, we stand firm on the same rock, we
are transformed by the same Spirit of love, we radiate one light and we
have a single insight into reality.
48. Since faith is one, it must be
professed in all its purity and integrity. Precisely because all the
articles of faith are interconnected, to deny one of them, even of those
that seem least important, is tantamount to distorting the whole. Each
period of history can find this or that point of faith easier or harder
to accept: hence the need for vigilance in ensuring that the deposit of
faith is passed on in its entirety (cf. 1 Tim 6:20) and that
all aspects of the profession of faith are duly emphasized. Indeed,
inasmuch as the unity of faith is the unity of the Church, to subtract
something from the faith is to subtract something from the veracity of
communion. The Fathers described faith as a body, the body of truth
composed of various members, by analogy with the body of Christ and its
prolongation in the Church.[42] The
integrity of the faith was also tied to the image of the Church as a
virgin and her fidelity in love for Christ her spouse; harming the faith
means harming communion with the Lord.[43] The
unity of faith, then, is the unity of a living body; this was clearly
brought out by Blessed John Henry Newman when he listed among the
characteristic notes for distinguishing the continuity of doctrine over
time its power to assimilate everything that it meets in the various
settings in which it becomes present and in the diverse cultures which
it encounters,[44] purifying
all things and bringing them to their finest expression. Faith is thus
shown to be universal, catholic, because its light expands in order to
illumine the entire cosmos and all of history.
49. As a service to the unity of faith
and its integral transmission, the Lord gave his Church the gift of
apostolic succession. Through this means, the continuity of the Church’s
memory is ensured and certain access can be had to the wellspring from
which faith flows. The assurance of continuity with the origins is thus
given by living persons, in a way consonant with the living faith which
the Church is called to transmit. She depends on the fidelity of
witnesses chosen by the Lord for this task. For this reason, the
magisterium always speaks in obedience to the prior word on which faith
is based; it is reliable because of its trust in the word which it
hears, preserves and expounds.[45] In
Saint Paul’s farewell discourse to the elders of Ephesus at Miletus,
which Saint Luke recounts for us in the Acts of the Apostles, he
testifies that he had carried out the task which the Lord had entrusted
to him of “declaring the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27).
Thanks to the Church’s magisterium, this counsel can come to us in its
integrity, and with it the joy of being able to follow it fully.
CHAPTER FOUR
GOD PREPARES A CITY FOR THEM
(cf. Heb 11:16)
(cf. Heb 11:16)
Faith and the common good
50. In presenting the story of the
patriarchs and the righteous men and women of the Old Testament, the
Letter to the Hebrews highlights an essential aspect of their faith.
That faith is not only presented as a journey, but also as a process of
building, the preparing of a place in which human beings can dwell
together with one another. The first builder was Noah who saved his
family in the ark (Heb 11:7). Then comes Abraham, of whom it is
said that by faith he dwelt in tents, as he looked forward to the city
with firm foundations (cf. Heb 11:9-10). With faith comes a new
reliability, a new firmness, which God alone can give. If the man of
faith finds support in the God of fidelity, the God who is Amen (cf. Is 65:16),
and thus becomes firm himself, we can now also say that firmness of
faith marks the city which God is preparing for mankind. Faith reveals
just how firm the bonds between people can be when God is present in
their midst. Faith does not merely grant interior firmness, a steadfast
conviction on the part of the believer; it also sheds light on every
human relationship because it is born of love and reflects God’s own
love. The God who is himself reliable gives us a city which is reliable.
51. Precisely because it is linked to love (cf. Gal 5:6),
the light of faith is concretely placed at the service of justice, law
and peace. Faith is born of an encounter with God’s primordial love,
wherein the meaning and goodness of our life become evident; our life is
illumined to the extent that it enters into the space opened by that
love, to the extent that it becomes, in other words, a path and praxis
leading to the fullness of love. The light of faith is capable of
enhancing the richness of human relations, their ability to endure, to
be trustworthy, to enrich our life together. Faith does not draw us away
from the world or prove irrelevant to the concrete concerns of the men
and women of our time. Without a love which is trustworthy, nothing
could truly keep men and women united. Human unity would be conceivable
only on the basis of utility, on a calculus of conflicting interests or
on fear, but not on the goodness of living together, not on the joy
which the mere presence of others can give. Faith makes us appreciate
the architecture of human relationships because it grasps their ultimate
foundation and definitive destiny in God, in his love, and thus sheds
light on the art of building; as such it becomes a service to the common
good. Faith is truly a good for everyone; it is a common good. Its
light does not simply brighten the interior of the Church, nor does it
serve solely to build an eternal city in the hereafter; it helps us
build our societies in such a way that they can journey towards a future
of hope. The Letter to the Hebrews offers an example in this regard
when it names, among the men and women of faith, Samuel and David, whose
faith enabled them to “administer justice” (Heb 11:33). This expression refers to their justice in governance, to that wisdom which brings peace to the people (cf. 1 Sam 12:3-5; 2 Sam 8:15).
The hands of faith are raised up to heaven, even as they go about
building in charity a city based on relationships in which the love of
God is laid as a foundation.
Faith and the family
52. In Abraham’s journey towards the
future city, the Letter to the Hebrews mentions the blessing which was
passed on from fathers to sons (cf. Heb 11:20-21). The first
setting in which faith enlightens the human city is the family. I think
first and foremost of the stable union of man and woman in marriage.
This union is born of their love, as a sign and presence of God’s own
love, and of the acknowledgment and acceptance of the goodness of sexual
differentiation, whereby spouses can become one flesh (cf. Gen 2:24)
and are enabled to give birth to a new life, a manifestation of the
Creator’s goodness, wisdom and loving plan. Grounded in this love, a man
and a woman can promise each other mutual love in a gesture which
engages their entire lives and mirrors many features of faith. Promising
love for ever is possible when we perceive a plan bigger than our own
ideas and undertakings, a plan which sustains us and enables us to
surrender our future entirely to the one we love. Faith also helps us to
grasp in all its depth and richness the begetting of children, as a
sign of the love of the Creator who entrusts us with the mystery of a
new person. So it was that Sarah, by faith, became a mother, for she
trusted in God’s fidelity to his promise (cf. Heb 11:11).
53. In the family, faith accompanies
every age of life, beginning with childhood: children learn to trust in
the love of their parents. This is why it is so important that within
their families parents encourage shared expressions of faith which can
help children gradually to mature in their own faith. Young people in
particular, who are going through a period in their lives which is so
complex, rich and important for their faith, ought to feel the constant
closeness and support of their families and the Church in their journey
of faith. We have all seen, during World Youth Days, the joy that young
people show in their faith and their desire for an ever more solid and
generous life of faith. Young people want to live life to the fullest.
Encountering Christ, letting themselves be caught up in and guided by
his love, enlarges the horizons of existence, gives it a firm hope which
will not disappoint. Faith is no refuge for the fainthearted, but
something which enhances our lives. It makes us aware of a magnificent
calling, the vocation of love. It assures us that this love is
trustworthy and worth embracing, for it is based on God’s faithfulness
which is stronger than our every weakness.
A light for life in society
54. Absorbed and deepened in the family,
faith becomes a light capable of illumining all our relationships in
society. As an experience of the mercy of God the Father, it sets us on
the path of brotherhood. Modernity sought to build a universal
brotherhood based on equality, yet we gradually came to realize that
this brotherhood, lacking a reference to a common Father as its ultimate
foundation, cannot endure. We need to return to the true basis of
brotherhood. The history of faith has been from the beginning a history
of brotherhood, albeit not without conflict. God calls Abraham to go
forth from his land and promises to make of him a great nation, a great
people on whom the divine blessing rests (cf. Gen 12:1-3). As
salvation history progresses, it becomes evident that God wants to make
everyone share as brothers and sisters in that one blessing, which
attains its fullness in Jesus, so that all may be one. The boundless
love of our Father also comes to us, in Jesus, through our brothers and
sisters. Faith teaches us to see that every man and woman represents a
blessing for me, that the light of God’s face shines on me through the
faces of my brothers and sisters.
How many benefits has the gaze of
Christian faith brought to the city of men for their common life! Thanks
to faith we have come to understand the unique dignity of each person,
something which was not clearly seen in antiquity. In the second century
the pagan Celsus reproached Christians for an idea that he considered
foolishness and delusion: namely, that God created the world for man,
setting human beings at the pinnacle of the entire cosmos. “Why claim
that [grass] grows for the benefit of man, rather than for that of the
most savage of the brute beasts?”[46] ”If
we look down to Earth from the heights of heaven, would there really be
any difference between our activities and those of the ants and bees?”[47] At
the heart of biblical faith is God’s love, his concrete concern for
every person, and his plan of salvation which embraces all of humanity
and all creation, culminating in the incarnation, death and resurrection
of Jesus Christ. Without insight into these realities, there is no
criterion for discerning what makes human life precious and unique. Man
loses his place in the universe, he is cast adrift in nature, either
renouncing his proper moral responsibility or else presuming to be a
sort of absolute judge, endowed with an unlimited power to manipulate
the world around him.
55. Faith, on the other hand, by
revealing the love of God the Creator, enables us to respect nature all
the more, and to discern in it a grammar written by the hand of God and a
dwelling place entrusted to our protection and care. Faith also helps
us to devise models of development which are based not simply on utility
and profit, but consider creation as a gift for which we are all
indebted; it teaches us to create just forms of government, in the
realization that authority comes from God and is meant for the service
of the common good. Faith likewise offers the possibility of
forgiveness, which so often demands time and effort, patience and
commitment. Forgiveness is possible once we discover that goodness is
always prior to and more powerful than evil, and that the word with
which God affirms our life is deeper than our every denial. From a
purely anthropological standpoint, unity is superior to conflict; rather
than avoiding conflict, we need to confront it in an effort to resolve
and move beyond it, to make it a link in a chain, as part of a progress
towards unity.
When faith is weakened, the foundations
of humanity also risk being weakened, as the poet T.S. Eliot warned: “Do
you need to be told that even those modest attainments / As you can
boast in the way of polite society / Will hardly survive the Faith to
which they owe their significance?”[48] If
we remove faith in God from our cities, mutual trust would be weakened,
we would remain united only by fear and our stability would be
threatened. In the Letter to the Hebrews we read that “God is not
ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them”
(Heb 11:16). Here the expression “is not ashamed” is
associated with public acknowledgment. The intention is to say that God,
by his concrete actions, makes a public avowal that he is present in
our midst and that he desires to solidify every human relationship.
Could it be the case, instead, that we are the ones who are ashamed to
call God our God? That we are the ones who fail to confess him as such
in our public life, who fail to propose the grandeur of the life in
common which he makes possible? Faith illumines life and society. If it
possesses a creative light for each new moment of history, it is because
it sets every event in relationship to the origin and destiny of all
things in the Father.
Consolation and strength amid suffering
56. Writing to the Christians of Corinth
about his sufferings and tribulations, Saint Paul links his faith to his
preaching of the Gospel. In himself he sees fulfilled the passage of
Scripture which reads: “I believed, and so I spoke” (2 Cor 4:13).
The reference is to a verse of Psalm 116, in which the psalmist
exclaims: “I kept my faith, even when I said, ‘I am greatly afflicted’”
(v. 10). To speak of faith often involves speaking of painful testing,
yet it is precisely in such testing that Paul sees the most convincing
proclamation of the Gospel, for it is in weakness and suffering that we
discover God’s power which triumphs over our weakness and suffering. The
apostle himself experienced a dying which would become life for
Christians (cf. 2 Cor 4:7-12). In the hour of trial faith
brings light, while suffering and weakness make it evident that “we do
not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord” (2 Cor 4:5). The eleventh chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews concludes with a reference to those who suffered for their faith (cf. Heb 11:35-38);
outstanding among these was Moses, who suffered abuse for the Christ
(cf. v. 26). Christians know that suffering cannot be eliminated, yet it
can have meaning and become an act of love and entrustment into the
hands of God who does not abandon us; in this way it can serve as a
moment of growth in faith and love. By contemplating Christ’s union with
the Father even at the height of his sufferings on the cross (cf. Mk 15:34),
Christians learn to share in the same gaze of Jesus. Even death is
illumined and can be experienced as the ultimate call to faith, the
ultimate “Go forth from your land” (Gen 12:1), the ultimate
“Come!” spoken by the Father, to whom we abandon ourselves in the
confidence that he will keep us steadfast even in our final passage.
57. Nor does the light of faith make us
forget the sufferings of this world. How many men and women of faith
have found mediators of light in those who suffer! So it was with Saint
Francis of Assisi and the leper, or with Blessed Mother Teresa of
Calcutta and her poor. They understood the mystery at work in them. In
drawing near to the suffering, they were certainly not able to eliminate
all their pain or to explain every evil. Faith is not a light which
scatters all our darkness, but a lamp which guides our steps in the
night and suffices for the journey. To those who suffer, God does not
provide arguments which explain everything; rather, his response is that
of an accompanying presence, a history of goodness which touches every
story of suffering and opens up a ray of light. In Christ, God himself
wishes to share this path with us and to offer us his gaze so that we
might see the light within it. Christ is the one who, having endured
suffering, is “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (Heb12:2).
Suffering reminds us that faith’s service
to the common good is always one of hope — a hope which looks ever
ahead in the knowledge that only from God, from the future which comes
from the risen Jesus, can our society find solid and lasting
foundations. In this sense faith is linked to hope, for even if our
dwelling place here below is wasting away, we have an eternal dwelling
place which God has already prepared in Christ, in his body (cf. 2 Cor 4:16-5:5). The dynamic of faith, hope and charity (cf. 1 Th 1:3; 1 Cor 13:13)
thus leads us to embrace the concerns of all men and women on our
journey towards that city “whose architect and builder is God” (Heb11:10), for “hope does not disappoint” (Rom 5:5).
In union with faith and charity, hope
propels us towards a sure future, set against a different horizon with
regard to the illusory enticements of the idols of this world yet
granting new momentum and strength to our daily lives. Let us refuse to
be robbed of hope, or to allow our hope to be dimmed by facile answers
and solutions which block our progress, “fragmenting” time and changing
it into space. Time is always much greater than space. Space hardens
processes, whereas time propels towards the future and encourages us to
go forward in hope.
Blessed is she who believed (Lk 1:45)
58. In the parable of the sower, Saint
Luke has left us these words of the Lord about the “good soil”: “These
are the ones who when they hear the word, hold it fast in an honest and
good heart, and bear fruit with patience endurance” (Lk 8:15).
In the context of Luke’s Gospel, this mention of an honest and good
heart which hears and keeps the word is an implicit portrayal of the
faith of the Virgin Mary. The evangelist himself speaks of Mary’s
memory, how she treasured in her heart all that she had heard and seen,
so that the word could bear fruit in her life. The Mother of the Lord is
the perfect icon of faith; as Saint Elizabeth would say: “Blessed is
she who believed” (Lk 1:45).
In Mary, the Daughter of Zion, is
fulfilled the long history of faith of the Old Testament, with its
account of so many faithful women, beginning with Sarah: women who,
alongside the patriarchs, were those in whom God’s promise was fulfilled
and new life flowered. In the fullness of time, God’s word was spoken
to Mary and she received that word into her heart, her entire being, so
that in her womb it could take flesh and be born as light for humanity.
Saint Justin Martyr, in his dialogue with Trypho, uses a striking
expression; he tells us that Mary, receiving the message of the angel,
conceived “faith and joy”.[49] In
the Mother of Jesus, faith demonstrated its fruitfulness; when our own
spiritual lives bear fruit we become filled with joy, which is the
clearest sign of faith’s grandeur. In her own life Mary completed the
pilgrimage of faith, following in the footsteps of her Son.[50] In
her the faith journey of the Old Testament was thus taken up into the
following of Christ, transformed by him and entering into the gaze of
the incarnate Son of God.
59. We can say that in the Blessed Virgin
Mary we find something I mentioned earlier, namely that the believer is
completely taken up into his or her confession of faith. Because of her
close bond with Jesus, Mary is strictly connected to what we believe.
As Virgin and Mother, Mary offers us a clear sign of Christ’s divine
sonship. The eternal origin of Christ is in the Father. He is the Son in
a total and unique sense, and so he is born in time without the
intervention of a man. As the Son, Jesus brings to the world a new
beginning and a new light, the fullness of God’s faithful love bestowed
on humanity. But Mary’s true motherhood also ensures for the Son of God
an authentic human history, true flesh in which he would die on the
cross and rise from the dead. Mary would accompany Jesus to the cross
(cf. Jn 19:25), whence her motherhood would extend to each of his disciples (cf. Jn 19:26-27).
She will also be present in the upper room after Jesus’ resurrection
and ascension, joining the apostles in imploring the gift of the Spirit
(cf. Acts 1:14). The movement of love between Father, Son and
Spirit runs through our history, and Christ draws us to himself in order
to save us (cf. Jn 12:32). At the centre of our faith is the
confession of Jesus, the Son of God, born of a woman, who brings us,
through the gift of the Holy Spirit, to adoption as sons and daughters
(cf. Gal 4:4).
60. Let us turn in prayer to Mary, Mother of the Church and Mother of our faith.
Mother, help our faith!
Open our ears to hear God’s word and to recognize his voice and call.
Awaken in us a desire to follow in his footsteps, to go forth from our own land and to receive his promise.
Help us to be touched by his love, that we may touch him in faith.
Help us to entrust ourselves fully to him and to believe in his love, especially at times of trial, beneath the shadow of the cross, when our faith is called to mature.
Sow in our faith the joy of the Risen One.
Remind us that those who believe are never alone.
Teach us to see all things with the eyes of Jesus, that he may be light for our path. And may this light of faith always increase in us, until the dawn of that undying day which is Christ himself, your Son, our Lord!
Open our ears to hear God’s word and to recognize his voice and call.
Awaken in us a desire to follow in his footsteps, to go forth from our own land and to receive his promise.
Help us to be touched by his love, that we may touch him in faith.
Help us to entrust ourselves fully to him and to believe in his love, especially at times of trial, beneath the shadow of the cross, when our faith is called to mature.
Sow in our faith the joy of the Risen One.
Remind us that those who believe are never alone.
Teach us to see all things with the eyes of Jesus, that he may be light for our path. And may this light of faith always increase in us, until the dawn of that undying day which is Christ himself, your Son, our Lord!
Given in Rome, at Saint Peter’s, on 29
June, the Solemnity of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, in the year
2013, the first of my pontificate.
+ FRANCISCUS
[1] Dialogus cum Tryphone Iudaeo, 121, 2: PG 6, 758.
[2] Clement of Alexandria, Protrepticus, IX: PG 8, 195.
[3] Brief an Elisabeth Nietzsche (11 June 1865), in: Werke in drei Bänden, München, 1954, 953ff.
[4] Paradiso XXIV, 145-147.
[5] Acta Sanctorum, Junii, I, 21.
[6] ”Though
the Council does not expressly deal with faith, it speaks of it on
every page, it recognizes its living, supernatural character, it
presumes it to be full and strong, and it bases its teachings on it. It
is sufficient to recall the Council’s statements… to see the essential
importance which the Council, in line with the doctrinal tradition of
the Church, attributes to faith, the true faith, which has its source in
Christ, and the magisterium of the Church for its channel” (Paul VI,
General Audience [8 March 1967]: Insegnamenti V [1967], 705).
[7] Cf., for example, First Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith Dei Filius, Ch. 3: DS 3008-3020; Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei Verbum, 5: Catechism of the Catholic Church, Nos. 153-165.
[8] Cf. Catechesis V, 1: PG 33, 505A.
[9] In Psal. 32, II, s. I, 9: PL 36, 284.
[10] M. Buber, Die Erzählungen der Chassidim, Zürich, 1949, 793.
[11] Émile, Paris, 1966, 387.
[12] Lettre à Christophe de Beaumont, Lausanne, 1993, 110.
[13] Cf. In Ioh. Evang., 45, 9: PL 35, 1722-1723.
[14] Part II, IV.
[15] De Continentia, 4, 11: PL 40, 356.
[16] “Vom Wesen katholischer Weltanschauung” (1923), in Unterscheidung des Christlichen. Gesammelte Studien 1923-1963, Mainz, 1963, 24.
[17] XI, 30, 40: PL 32, 825.
[18] Cf. ibid., 825-826.
[19] Cf. Vermischte Bemerkungen / Culture and Value, ed. G.H. von Wright, Oxford, 1991, 32-33; 61-64.
[20] Homiliae in Evangelia, II, 27, 4: PL 76, 1207.
[21] Cf. Expositio super Cantica Canticorum, XVIII, 88: CCL, Continuatio Mediaevalis 87, 67.
[22] Ibid., XIX, 90: CCL, Continuatio Mediaevalis 87, 69.
[23] ”The obedience of faith (Rom 16:26; compare Rom 1:5, 2 Cor 10:5-6)
must be our response to the God who reveals. By faith one freely
submits oneself entirely to God making the full submission of intellect
and will to God who reveals, and willingly assenting to the revelation
given by God. For this faith to be accorded, we need the grace of God,
anticipating it and assisting it, as well as the interior helps of the
Holy Spirit, who moves the heart and converts it to God, and opens the
eyes of the mind and makes it easy for all to accept and believe the
truth. The same Holy Spirit constantly perfects faith by his gifts, so
that revelation may be more and more deeply understood” (Second
Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei Verbum, 5).
[24] Cf. H. Schlier, Meditationen über den Johanneischen Begriff der Wahrheit, in Besinnung auf das Neue Testament. Exegetische Aufsätze und Vorträge 2, Freiburg, Basel, Wien, 1959, 272.
[25] Cf. S. Th. III, q. 55, a. 2, ad 1.
[26] Sermo 229/L (Guelf. 14), 2 (Miscellanea Augustiniana 1, 487/488): “Tangere autem corde, hoc est credere”.
[27] Cf. Encyclical Letter Fides et Ratio (14 September 1998), 73: AAS (1999), 61-62.
[28] Cf. Confessiones, VIII, 12, 29: PL 32, 762.
[29] De Trinitate, XV, 11, 20: PL 42, 1071: “verbum quod intus lucet “.
[30] Cf. De Civitate Dei, XXII, 30, 5: PL 41, 804.
[31] Cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration Dominus Iesus (6 August 2000), 15: AAS 92 (2000), 756.
[32] Demonstratio Apostolicae Predicationis, 24: SC 406, 117.
[33] Cf. Bonaventure, Breviloquium, prol.: Opera Omnia, V, Quaracchi 1891, 201; In I Sent., proem, q. 1, resp.: Opera Omnia, I, Quaracchi 1891, 7; Thomas Aquinas, S. Th I, q.1.
[34] Cf. De Baptismo, 20, 5: CCL 1, 295.
[35] Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei Verbum, 8.
[36] Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium, 59.
[37] Cf. Epistula Barnabae, 11, 5: SC 172, 162.
[38] Cf. De Nuptiis et Concupiscentia I, 4, 5: PL 44, 413: “Habent quippe intentionem generandi regenerandos, ut qui ex eis saeculi filii nascuntur in Dei filios renascantur”.
[39] Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei Verbum, 8.
[40] In Nativitate Domini Sermo, 4, 6: SC 22, 110.
[41] Cf. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, I, 10, 2: SC 264, 160.
[42] Cf. ibid., II, 27, 1: SC 294, 264.
[43] Cf. Augustine, De Sancta Virginitate, 48, 48: PL 40, 424-425: “Servatur et in fide inviolata quaedam castitas virginalis, qua Ecclesia uni viro virgo casta coaptatur”.
[44] Cf. An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (Uniform Edition: Longmans, Green and Company, London, 1868-1881), 185-189.
[45] Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei Verbum, 10.
[46] Origen, Contra Celsum, IV, 75: SC 136, 372.
[47] Ibid., 85: SC 136, 394.
[48] ”Choruses from The Rock“, in The Collected Poems and Plays 1909-1950, New York, 1980, 106.
[49] Cf. Dialogus cum Tryphone Iudaeo, 100, 5: PG 6, 710.
[50] Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, 58.
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