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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)
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)
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 Jn 1:1).
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)
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" (Ex
20:2). 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)
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" (Heb
12:2).
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" (Heb 11:10), 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!
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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