Catholic and Proud

Cardinal Edmund Szoka dies at 86

2014-08-23T13:17:00.000-07:00

Detroit, Mich., Aug 22, 2014 / 12:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Cardinal Edmund Casimir Szoka, who had served as Archbishop of Detroit and president of the Vatican City State, died of natural causes at the age of 86 at the local Providence Park Hospital.

“We mourn the loss of a dedicated shepherd. For sixty years, Cardinal Szoka gave himself totally to his priestly service of Christ and his Church.”

“He has gone home to the Heavenly Father with our prayers. May the Lord give him the reward of his labors,” said Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron, current archbishop of Detroit.

Born on Sept.14, 1927, Edmund Casimir Szoka grew up in Grand Rapids as the child of Polish immigrants. He attended St. Joseph Seminary and was ordained a priest on June 5, 1954 in Marquette. He served his first years as an assistant priest at St. Francis in Manistique, Michigan.

Cardinal Szoka attended the Faculty of Canon Law at the Pontifical Urban University at Rome from 1957-1959. After returning to the states, he served again in the diocese of Marquette until 1971.

On June 11, 1971 he became the first bishop of the newly created diocese of Gaylord in Michigan. Ten years later, in May 1981, he was named Archbishop of Detroit, where he closed and merged many parishes within the diocese.

Cardinal Szoka served on the administrative council of the provincial seminary at St. John in Plymouth, as well as St. Cyril and Methodius seminary near Orchard Lake. During this time, he was also elected president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Pope John Paul II appointed Archbishop Szoka as cardinal in 1988, after which he was selected to oversee the economic affairs at Vatican City State.

He was also appointed President of the Governatorate of Vatican City State and of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State by Pope John Paul II, where he served until 2006.

Just after he turned seventy-nine, Cardinal Szoka resigned and officially retired from active ministry on Sept.15, 2006 with Pope Benedict XVI’s approval. Following his retirement, he lived in Northville, Michigan until his death o n Aug. 20, 2014.

This year he celebrated the 60th anniversary of his priesthood.

Archbishop Szoka's funeral will take place at the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Detroit, where mass will be celebrated on Tuesday morning at 11:00 am. He will be buried at the Holy Sepulcher Cemetery in Southfield.

Prayers urged as black mass organizer claims consecrated Host

2014-08-10T19:44:00.001-07:00

The purported use of a consecrated Host at a planned satanic black mass at an Oklahoma City civic center would be a “terrible sacrilege” that requires a prayerful response, the local archbishop emphasized.

Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City in an Aug. 4 message lamented that the city-run Civic Center Music Hall was selling tickets for the event “as if it were merely some sort of dark entertainment.”

Rather, he said, the ritual was “deadly serious” and “a blasphemous and obscene inversion of the Catholic Mass.”

“Using a consecrated Host obtained illicitly from a Catholic church and desecrating it in the vilest ways imaginable, the practitioners offer it in sacrifice to Satan. This terrible sacrilege is a deliberate attack on the Catholic Mass as well as the foundational beliefs of all Christians,” the archbishop continued.

The occult group Dakhma of Angra Mainyu has scheduled a black mass at the Oklahoma City Civic Center Music Hall Sept. 21. A black mass is a sacrilegious ceremony that invokes Satan and mocks the Mass, involving the desecration of the Eucharist, generally by stealing a consecrated Host from a Catholic church and using it in a profane sexual ritual.

The event organizer Adam Daniels said the purported Eucharistic Host was “mailed to us by (a) friend.”

“That is all I'm going to say about how it was attained,” he told the Catholic news site Aleteia Aug. 6.

“As far as I know, the host mailed to me is consecrated,” he said.

Daniels added that the event was intended “to educate the public about my religion.”

Attendance at the event is restricted to those ages 16 and over. The sponsoring group has said the event is modified to comply with laws regarding “nudity, public urination, and other sex acts.”

Daniels had attempted to hold a mock exorcism at the same music hall in 2010 as part of a different Satanist group. However, the group expelled him after learning he was a convicted sex offender.

In July, an official with the city music hall defended the decision, citing the hall’s neutrality policy. She told CNA that as long as no laws were broken during the event itself, the city hall was not concerned with whether laws may be broken in obtaining a consecrated host ahead of time. She said that similar events scheduled in previous years had poor or no attendance.

Archbishop Coakley said that there are no indications the city intends to prevent the event from taking place. He encouraged Oklahomans to contact the office of Oklahoma City mayor Mick Cornett.

“I am especially concerned about the dark powers that this Satanic worship invites into our community and the spiritual danger that this poses to all who are involved in it, directly or indirectly,” the archbishop said. “Since it seems this event will not be cancelled, I am calling on all Catholics of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City to counteract this challenge to faith and decency through prayer and penance.”

The archbishop has asked that every parish add the well-known prayer to St. Michael the Archangel at the end of every Mass from Aug. 6, the Feast of the Transfiguration, through Sept. 29, the Feast of the Archangels. He has also asked each parish to hold a Holy Hour with Benediction from Aug. 15, the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, through Sept. 21.

The archbishop will hold a Holy Hour, an outdoor Eucharistic Procession and Benediction at Oklahoma City’s St. Francis of Assisi Church at 3 p.m. Sept. 21, the same day the satanic event is scheduled to take place.

“We will pray to avert this sacrilege and publicly manifest our faith in the Lord and our loving gratitude for the gift of the Holy Eucharist, the source and summit of our lives,” Archbishop Coakley said.

Tulsa’s Bishop Edward Slattery and Bishop Carl A. Kemme of Wichita, Kan., have also called on the faithful to respond to the threatened desecration with their prayers.

For its part, the occult group sponsoring the black mass has organized rituals it believes will counter Catholic prayers.

A controversy over another purported black mass took place in May 2014, when the Harvard Extension School’s Cultural Studies Club had planned to host a similar event on the Harvard University campus. However, that event was “postponed indefinitely” by the club amid outcry among students and member of the local community. The event reportedly took place off-campus with a small group of individuals instead.

In Korea, Pope Francis to visit cemetery for aborted babies

2014-08-10T19:29:00.000-07:00

Cemetery in Kkottongnae, South Korea. Credit: Andy Prima Kencana/www.andyprima.com.

During his upcoming trip to South Korea, Pope Francis will pray for the unborn at the “Cemetery for Aborted Children” as part of his visit to the Kkottoghnae Home for the sick.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi also noted in an Aug. 8 press conference that the Pope will deliver his addresses in English and will follow local customs such as removing his shoes before entering certain places.

The Kkttongnae Home located in the Diocese of Cheongju in South Korea was created in 1976 by Father John Oh, the founder of the Kkottongnae Brothers and Sisters of Jesus. The priest was inspired by a beggar named Choi Gwi Dong to feed 18 other sick beggars despite his own physical handicaps.

It offers assistance to the homeless, disabled individuals and alcohol addicts. Currently it can serve around 5,000 people.

The Cemetery for Aborted Children is located behind the home and includes a statue of the Holy Family surrounded by cross representing the unborn.

Announced by the Vatican in March, the Pope’s Aug. 13 – 18 trip follows an invitation from the president of the Korean Republic, Park Geun-hye, and the bishops of Korea.

Following the motto “Rise Korea, clothe yourself in light, the Lord’s glory shines upon you,” the Pope’s visit begins with his departure from Rome the evening of Wednesday, Aug. 13.

Church of England’s Impending Ordination of Women Bishops Poses Ecumenical Challenge

2014-07-11T15:12:00.000-07:00

The Pope and the archbishop of Canterbury emphasized areas where their churches can work together when they met last month, but progress towards future unity appears blocked.

Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury joins a crowd of hundreds of Church of England women priests on the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, prior to a special service on May 3 celebrating the 20th anniversary of the ordination of women.


Meeting of the Archbishop of Canterbury and Pope Francis

In a sign of the current good relations between the Catholic Church and the Church of England, the meeting at the Vatican on June 16 between Pope Francis and Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby was warm — but clouds still loom over the prospect of any unity between the two churches in the foreseeable future.

Pope Francis emphasized the ways in which Catholics and Anglicans can work together, highlighting “the effort to achieve greater social justice, to build an economic system that is at the service of man and promotes the common good. Among our tasks as witnesses to the love of Christ is that of giving a voice to the cry of the poor, so that they are not abandoned to the laws of an economy that seems at times to treat people as mere consumers.”

These sentiments were echoed by Archbishop Welby, who said Christians must “love, above all, those tossed aside — even whole nations — by the present crises around the world.”

Yet unspoken was a decision the Church of England is expected to take this month that would seriously damage the prospect of any future unity between the Catholic Church and the Worldwide Anglican Communion.

It is a near certainty that the Church of England’s General Synod, taking place in York July 11-15, will see the Anglicans push ahead with the creation of women bishops.

During his tenure as president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Cardinal Walter Kasper commented in 2006 that such a move would “call into question what was recognized by the Second Vatican Council (Unitatis Redintegratio, 13), that the Anglican Communion occupied ‘a special place’ among churches and ecclesial communities of the West.” Cardinal Kasper warned that “restoration of full church communion … would realistically no longer exist following the introduction of the ordination of women to episcopal office.”

Speaking to the Register, Father Tony Currer, secretary to the Anglican and Methodist dialogues at the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, said that while the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) has made great strides in addressing theological differences, two issues have emerged “which make progress towards full visible unity extremely difficult.”

“The first concerns the ordination of women; the second is that of human sexuality and ethical teaching,” he commented. “It has to be admitted that it is extremely difficult to see a way forward on these issues at the moment.”

Father Currer added that the Church’s dialogue is with the whole Anglican Communion, not only the Church of England. Many elements of that communion are acting similarly to the Church of England on these issues, he said, “which constitutes a very significant obstacle to the full visible unity that we continue to seek.”

Anglican Perspective

Serenhedd James, visiting tutor in ecclesiastical history at the University of Oxford’s St. Stephen’s House — an Anglican theological foundation in the Catholic tradition of the Church of England — told the Register, “The admission of women to the historic episcopate in the Church of England will, no doubt, make ecumenical conversations more difficult.”

He noted the same caveat as Father Currer: that women bishops already minister elsewhere in the Anglican Communion, but maintained that the Church of England’s move will not necessarily derail the ecumenical dialogue, “although it may make it harder to find common ground on sacramental issues, especially as those women then begin to ordain others.”

Instead, James said he saw more significant problems likely to emerge over moral issues. Although he said there is “a good deal of common ground” between Catholics and Anglicans, he commented that “it is no secret that there is dissent in the Church of England on a number of issues among members of both clergy and laity — most recently and vocally on the matter of same-sex marriage — and Rome knows this.”

He added, “Should the House of Bishops at some point in the future depart from traditional church teaching on the dignity of human life — for example on issues like abortion on demand and euthanasia — then that would no doubt be viewed as a problem.”

Areas of Shared Commitment

Nevertheless, all involved in such ecumenical discussions are keen to stress that the likely episcopal ordination of women does not mean a total breakdown in relations between the Catholic Church and the Church of England.

Professor Paul Murray, dean of Durham University’s Center for Catholic Studies, who was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI to ARCIC and as a consultor to the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, told the Register that Pope Francis and Archbishop Welby “share a passionate commitment to the social gospel in the face of such contemporary issues as human trafficking.”

He added, “With Pope Francis and Archbishop Welby, the Catholic and Anglican communions are both blessed with charismatic evangelists. Even recognizing the significant theological and ecclesial difficulties that continue between the traditions around such sensitive matters as ordained female ministry, this represents the most remarkable moment of opportunity for real progress in the relations between Catholicism and Anglicanism.”

James, who is also a regular contributor to the Anglican newspaper Church Times, concurred. “It’s clear that the two churches are willing to work together on domestic issues: the eradication of poverty, to take one example. The image of the cardinal-archbishop of Westminster standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the archbishop of Canterbury on social issues is a powerful one.”

Other areas where the two churches are already working together are in attempts to tackle human trafficking and campaigning for freedom of worship in the face of religious extremism.

Thus, although the ordination of women bishops in the Church of England may prove an insurmountable hurdle to full reunion, a future relationship based on practical cooperation remains. It may not be a fully corporate union, but the potential for working together as a united Christian voice in an indifferent, sometimes hostile, secular environment is significant, according to participants in the Catholic-Anglican dialogue.

Said Father Currer, “We are committed to continue to talk to one another and to explore our differences in charity. To do anything else would be to give up on Christian unity and to allow ourselves to simply grow apart. As St. Pope John Paul II taught in Ut Unum Sint, this is not a legitimate option for a Christian, because ‘to believe in Christ means to desire unity.’”

Another Satanic Mass ! Archbishop Coakley Asks Oklahoma City Civic Center to Reconsider Black Mass

2014-07-05T17:39:00.004-07:00

OKLAHOMA CITY — Just a few months after a black mass reenactment was planned — and then canceled — at Harvard University, another has been scheduled to take place at the Oklahoma City Civic Center on Sept. 21, prompting calls for organizers to reconsider.

Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City issued a statement July 1, saying that the archdiocese is “astonished and grieved that the Civic Center would promote as entertainment and sell tickets for an event that is very transparently a blasphemous mockery of the Mass.”

“For more than 1 billion Catholics worldwide and more than 200,000 Catholics in Oklahoma, the Mass is the most sacred of religious rituals,” the archbishop said.

“It is the center of Catholic worship and celebrates Jesus Christ’s redemption of the world by his death and resurrection. In particular, the Eucharist — which we believe to be the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ — is the source and summit of our faith.”

Connected to witchcraft and demonic worship, a black mass is a sacrilegious ceremony structured as a parody of the Catholic Mass. Invoking Satan, the ritual is centered around the desecration of the Eucharist, which is generally done by stealing a consecrated host from a Catholic church and using it in a profane sexual ritual or defecating and urinating on it.

The black mass is offensive to more than just Catholics, Archbishop Coakley noted. It is “a Satanic inversion and distortion of the most sacred beliefs not only of Catholics, but of all Christians.”

He called on community leaders and Civic Center event planners in “a spirit of hope,” asking them to “reconsider whether this is an appropriate use of public space.”

“We trust that community leaders — and, in particular, the board members of the Oklahoma City Civic Center — do not actually wish to enable or encourage such a flagrantly inflammatory event and can surely remedy this situation,” he said.

In May, a student group at Harvard attempted to host a black mass re-enactment, to be carried out by the Satanic Temple of New York. However, the event was canceled at the last minute amid a huge outcry from the Archdiocese of Boston and the Harvard community. A petition against the black mass drew 60,000 signatures, and some 2,000 people attended a Eucharistic procession and Holy Hour on the night that the event had been scheduled.

Notably, the Satanic Temple of New York has submitted plans to Oklahoma City for a public monument of an enthroned Satan surrounded by two children to counter a monument of the Ten Commandments on the statehouse lawn.

The local archdiocese plans to respond in peaceful, prayerful and respectful protest to the black mass scheduled in September, should plans continue to move forward, Archbishop Coakley said.

“In the meantime, I call on all Catholics in central and western Oklahoma — as well as all men and women of goodwill — to pray for a renewed sense of the sacred and, in particular, to pray that the Lord might change the hearts and minds of the organizers of this event.”

Sex, Sex and More Sex, can one be free?

2014-07-05T14:35:00.002-07:00

An old friend of mine could not understand how a human being can survive without sex. Considering i was undergoing my first process of initial conversion he said "I really want to change for good, but the problem is, i cannot stop sex"

My words prove little help to him as in his heart he believed it was impossible to break free.

Years into my formation, i began speaking with people who had similar belief and i discovered that majority of the youth with ample sexual engagement had the same belief.

Then i realized the trick of the enemy : he makes people depend so much on sin that it seems impossible to live without it. But really, is it possible that YOU, yes, YOU can give up a sin you are so attached to? Be it sex, stealing, lying, drug, or any other sin?

YES, YOU CAN. However, you must first believe in the power of God; you must trust in God's ability to free you. I too was delivered from a life of sinful addictions. Indeed, i still sin, but i no longer relax in sin, i have begun the bloody unending war against all sins without any exceptions. You can also begin yours, it could take time before you begin to see victory, but to me, beginning this war is victory since it meant throwing the devil away from one's life. He will make noise, fight back and threaten, but at least, he will do that from outside your life.

Chastity isn't an outdated virtue, it hold all other virtues together, carefully rooted in humility. I pray for all youth, to learn to live properly, however you need to work your way out of sexual sins, or work hard to remain chaste if you have no attachment to this sin already.

THEN A FOLLOWUP ARTICLE:

After my previous writeup on sex, i have gathered that its very important to give a followup on how to actually quit the life of sexual immorality; keeping oneself until marriage, or at least how to begin to fight the sin. I have prepared a few tips/guidelines for those who are in need of practical steps to quitting sex.

1. The first thing to do is breakup with your partner: Many people who have complained of this sin, and who have failed to become free from it have agreed that one of the reasons is they they fail to breakup with their illicit sexual partner. This is where violence comes in. When it is about your soul and your salvation, its not so bad to hurt someone (as long as you are breaking up to be with Jesus). You cannot keep pitying someone who leads you to sin or who poses great temptation to you. No matter how hard its going to be upon someone, just break free and run. The devil shall use this fake sympathy to keep some people "Chained" to their sexual partners one way or another.

When you have broken free, STAY AWAY ! Sometimes the temptation might come to have a chit chat with him/her, from there you might find yourself becoming weak in your heart again and going back to a life you have left off.

The Devil can also tell you "Just one visit" "Just one phone call" etc. That "One" can ruin everything you have struggled to build in a long time. The reason why you MUST FIGHT this person's image as violently as possible is because you have had a certain "bond" with him/her. Once you are around, your body must respond from your heart at least, this is nature, this is unavoidable chemistry; this could mean serious emotional drive to go back.

2. FILL YOURSELF WITH SOMEONE NEW ! When you have cast out the lover from your heart, you cannot leave it empty, Jesus has to come in and fill that void. If no one fills this void, its hardly possible for it to stay empty for long. Build strong bonds with Jesus and his Mother through prayer and good works. Join pious societies that will help you, have quality friends who will support you in this journey.

3. STAY AWAY FROM BAD FRIENDS: When i say "Bad" i do not mean you should think anyone literally bad. What i mean here is to avoid all those who might influence you to the life you have abandoned. Sometimes their influence over you might be stronger than you can notice, this is why you need to cut off or curtail your relationships with them. Make new and positive friends who discuss God and other positive circular topics.

4. FOR FIANCES: all the advice given above to "quit" and "cut" are mainly for relationships with people who are either not old enough for marriage or who are not ready for it for other reasons. As for those who are already engaged, or men who are seeking a wife: you will not drop dead if your relationship is kept clean. You will be guaranteeing the place of God in your relationship if you let him guide your hearts towards each other for his sake. Reforming a premarital courtship already tainted with sexual habits can be daunting, however it is not impossible. For this is suggest the person talks it over with the partner, let them decide on how to see each other from then on, in public places where they will not be tempted, let them involve God in their chats, in their lives. If the partner agrees, thanks to God, if not, the person in question should weigh his/her options critically, and apply a little more pressure. I strongly advice that when this becomes even harder, the person should meet his/her spiritual guide or confessor or a good Priest.

May the Lord set us free from Sin and show us the beauty there is in holiness. Amen !

Add more practical ways to quit sex if you know any other means, help those who are in need.

WE CAN BE CHASTE !!! YES WE CAN !!!

SHARE !

Pope Francis Announces He May Renounce the Papacy One Day: 6 Things to Know and Share

2014-06-18T22:58:00.000-07:00

1) Where did Pope Francis make his remarks?

In an interview with the Spanish-language newspaper La Vanguardia.

2) How did the subject come up?

The reporter asked Pope Francis about what he thought of Pope Benedict’s resignation, as follows:

What do you think of the renunciation of Benedict XVI?

Pope Benedict has made a very significant act. He has opened the door, has created an institution, that of the eventual popes emeritus. 70 years ago, there were no emeritus bishops. Today how many are there? Well, as we live longer, we arrive to an age where we cannot go on with things.

Pope Francis thus sees Benedict XVI’s act as setting a precedent for future popes that mirrors the way in which bishops have similarly begun to have retirements in recent decades. Note that Francis refers to Benedict having “created an institution.”

Francis’s use of the plural (“eventual popes emeritus”) may even envision the idea of more than one former pope being alive at the same time. Indeed, in light of what he says next, he may be thinking of himself and Benedict XVI sharing this status at some point.

3) What does he say next?

He announces he may also renounce the papacy one day:

I will do the same as him, asking the Lord to enlighten me when the time comes and that he tell me what I have to do, and he will tell me for sure.

Pope Francis is thus not at the point of resigning, but he anticipates doing so “when the time comes,” if the Lord makes this clear to him.

4) Does he have plans for what to do in retirement?

Apparently so. Benedict XVI has chosen to live in seclusion at the Vatican, though there was initially some discussion of his returning to Germany. Benedict’s eventual decision to remain at the Vatican is apparently motivated by a desire not to cause problems for his successor by remaining out of the public eye.

This is not the only possible choice, though, and Pope Francis seems to envision a different retirement. The interview continues:

You have a room reserved in a retirement home in Buenos Aires.

Yes, it’s a retirement house for elderly priests. I was leaving the archdiocese at the end of last year and had already submitted my resignation to Benedict XVI when I turned 75. I chose a room and said, “I want to come to live here.” I will work as a priest, helping the parishes. This is what was going to be my future before being Pope.

Pope Francis thus appears intent on returning as pope emeritus to the same form of pastoral service that he was planning to undertake as a bishop emeritus.

5) When will this happen?

That cannot be known. It depends on how much time and strength God gives Pope Francis.

It cannot even be known that it will happen, for events could overtake these plans and he might, like most popes historically, end up remaining in office until his passing.

6) How will Pope Benedict be remembered for his act of renouncing the papacy?

Barring anything unforeseen, he will one day be declared a saint, and the grounds for sainthood will include the heroic virtue of being the first pope in centuries to renounce the papacy. Many recent popes have considered resignation, but Benedict XVI was the first one in centuries to actually do it.

A previous pope to resign—Celestine V—is also a saint, and for the same reason. He was canonized in 1313—17 years after his death—by his successor, Clement V, and in that case also his humility in walking away from the office of pope for the good of the Church played a prominent role in the decision to canonize. Indeed, Celestine V is the only 13th century pope who is a saint.

We’ve had more sainted popes recently. In the 20th century, we had St.s Pius X, John XXIII, and John Paul II—who may soon be joined by Pius XII and Paul VI.

This is in part due to the fact that the popes we’ve had recently have been much holier than many of those in the Middle Ages (Benedict IX, anyone?).

However, it is very likely that Benedict XVI—who had the courage and humility to walk away from the office of pope for what he perceived to be the good of the Church—is likely to be the first sainted pope of the 21st century.

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authored by Jimmy Akins (www.secretinfoclub.com)

Unpardonable Sins (sins against the Holy Spirit)

2014-06-07T10:37:00.000-07:00

Aggie Mnene asked : Are there sins that cannot be pardoned?

ANSWER: "but anyone who blasphemes the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven. This is a sin with eternal consequences." Mark 3:29.

IMPLICATION: The above text are words of Christ on this subject, showing that there are "Unpardonable sins", which are sins against the Holy Spirit. Sometime ago i asked a priest "Does this mean that God REFUSES to forgive this sin" ?

The priest could not give a satisfactory conclusive reply, until one day after years of research and prayer, i stumbled upon an explanation.

HERE IS WHAT I LEARNT: God does not REFUSE forgiveness. Rather, when one sins against the Spirit of God, he CASTS GOD OUT of himself and SHUTS THE HEART TO HIS LIGHT. So that such a person is UNABLE TO ASK for mercy anymore. The "Unpardonable" does not mean God changes from "Forgiving Father" to an "Unforgiving Judge", so that he turns his face from someone weeping and begging for mercy, NO !!!. He is Always FORGIVING. Even those who are in Hell cannot ask for pardon, that is why they cannot be forgiven.

The GRACE of remorse/contrition is very expensive gift of the Holy Spirit, given unto the sincerely repentant ones. I tell you, there are many Catholics today who have shut their hearts to God's grace by continuous abuse of Sacraments for instance and other sins; they personally kill the voice of their consciences by refusing God's light/call to repentance so many times, that those sins become "Normal" and even "A way of life" to them.

For this grace is meant to rise our sensitivity to sin and make us weep for our sins, but for someone who is dead in sin, he cannot possibly weep or feel really sorry for his sin. He may even boast about his sins to his friends and feel like a "big Shot".

This is what it means to commit an "Unpardonable" sin. Whenever such a sinner opens his heart to God's light, he sees his sorry state, and confesses with all his heart, God Forgives him for sure, for he promised "Even if your sins be as red as scarlet, i shall make you as white as wool".

God bless you all. I hope we understood this one.

ITS THE WORK OF THE DEVIL

2014-06-07T10:31:00.000-07:00

Many of us run from things we're responsible for, we attribute a lot to "the handwork of the devil" indeed sometimes Satan can turn at our accusations and scream "Oh Lord, I'm innocent"

Like Eve we say " the serpent made me eat it" and like Adam we indirectly blame God sometimes "the woman, whom YOU GAVE ME, handed me some and I ate".

If only we can learn to sincerely say "forgive me Lord, I have sinned, through my fault". Forgiveness and healing would've been easier.

Let us not blame others for our faults. Let us own up whenever we make a mistake and ask for pardon. We'll become better that way. Leave the devil alone and he'll leave you.

Who loves the devil anyway? Then stop calling him every time, focus on Jesus.

Or is Christ not enough for you?
He is enough for me !

LOVE; WHAT IT IS, WHAT IT IS NOT

2014-03-12T09:15:00.001-07:00

Love is transformational, its intense heat is geared towards Change and Union. The force that comes from God BINDS; calls together, causes a "Communio" a "Koinonia" a "Communion" of persons with persons, of persons with God.

This is what Love is: The giving of self, the 'loss' of an identity; the entire submission to another, the rediscovery and newness of identity in/with another.

Love is not just possessing but being possessed. That One is possessed by another, and the other by the One; that in possessing they actually aren't possessive, but most humbly submit themselves to be melted and remoulded regularly into One Body, and One Spirit.

This is what love is: Humility and service, forgetfulness and docility, purity of intention and generosity, faith and trust, and finally childlike trust and something of (not literally) risky "stupidity"; one of trusting entirely and without reserve. This is what love is.

Love is not a mere feeling meant to be played with by the young and inexperienced, the fire burns !

Love is not possession as though one is a commodity.
Love is not lies and deceit, love is not fear of being lied to/cheated.
Love is not distrust and fear of loss.
Love is not impurity and covetous selfishness.
Love is not material things or qualities in a person.
Love is not for a while; a trial run; a momentary stuff meant to be discarded later.

Love is powerful flames, it burns, transforms, and illumines
Love is eternal union, nothing quenches it
Love is purity, no ill can taint it
Love is above the lovers, cannot be controlled at will by each; a law they both submit to !

Indeed what 90% (or just to be fair 70%) of people have is either lust or childish infatuation, if people knew how sacred love is, they'd recognize that Only the Almighty can confer the gift of perfect/selfless Self-giving. Which is a grace that comes ONLY FROM GOD, and is an INDISPENSABLE sign of love; of true love.

Show me where two people love themselves thus, and i will point you where the Seraphim* camp beside them !

Just thinking:)

_______________________________________________________________________
*The Seraphim (or singular : Seraph) is the highest of the Nine Choirs of Angels. According to tradition, they are the ones who stand closest to God's throne, they have been described by Pseudo Dionysius as "Fiery" since they BURN WITH THE LOVE OF GOD.

I wish that all men may be set ablaze with true Love of God and neighbor, what a world we'd have !, where all are but a single Flame, directed upwards !

WITCHES AND WIZARDS; DO NOT PASS WITHOUT READING AND SHARING !

2014-03-08T17:43:00.001-08:00

Sometimes i wonder what people think prayer is. Someone prays for 2 hours, and more than 90% of his/her words is directed TO SATAN "I come against you, i bind you, holy Ghost fire".

I have not written to condemn it, i have only written to give something of a food for thought.

1. Jesus said "Pray thus 'Our Father'" and inferring from this, ALL our prayers are to be directed HEAVENWARD not to HELL.

2. When you talk to the devil, God is no longer in the picture.

3. The devil is not interested whether you have accidents or not, so casting him from the road isn't ideal, he is interested in advising you to sin against God, so if causing accident will make you lose faith in God, maybe he will have reasons to do that then. He is interested in YOUR SOUL, not your material problems. He only will use your bad situations to encourage you to lose faith in God.

4. Some people who believe in witches and wizards find it hard to sleep, whilst their neighbors who are not as superstitious sleep soundly. WHY?

5. The battle you engage in belongs to God, Only He can actually defeat the enemy in such a combat, not you. Many people who have seen the devil himself DID NOT SURVIVE. I assure you, were the devil to appear, you will not stand a chance before him. You may either collapse or lose sanity. The attention is to be on God, and on heaven. You may say "God protect me from Satan" and not "Satan i come against you", the first one is speaking to God, the second one is directed to the devil.

6. When some people say "Satan Holy Ghost fire", he is probably laughing at their faces. God is not at war with the devil, God is at war with sin. When you refuse to repent, you are making yourself God's enemy and this is what the devil wants. So scream all the "Die Satan die" or "holy Ghost fire" Satan will not die. He will always be near you to tempt you to sin. If you doubt, then i wonder why you still get tempted even WHILE YOU PRAY. This is because a demon who is not somewhere HE SHOULD NOT BE, cannot leave for you. Meaning: When a demon possesses a person, he is where he is not supposed to be, when someone with the gift of exorcism gives the command in God's name, they flee. But you cannot tell the devil, who "goes around seeking for people to devour" to stop working. What then do you want him to do? To lie down and sleep in hell? HE WILL KEEP WORKING no matter how many times you shout. The better thing to do is to be sure you have no ties with him, that your relationship is with God. The Devil then will have no hold on your life, you will be free !

I too have had my share of superstition, i too know what it feels like calling the devil. I suffered grievously for it, God taught me a lesson i cannot forget. Then i thought i was praying, i did not know i was offending God by being proud. Right now my prayer is "Lord i love you, make me love you more, protect me from THINGS I DO NOT KNOW, for i TRUST IN YOUR LOVE FOR ME".

And i assure you, since then, i have not been carried by any witch, i am still alive !

Remember that such fear is from the devil.

May the Lord protect his people. Amen.

SHARE AND SHARE AND SHARE.

This is not condemnation, only giving my view. God bless you !

After this was published on Facebook and criticized by some of our followers, the following reply was published:

WITCHES AND WIZARDS; MY GENERAL RESPONSE

I am indeed amazed that some people are unable to read well and judge objectively. I separate personal views from official Catholic Teachings, for this reason i said I DO NOT CONDEMN BUT GIVE AN OPINION. Some people jumped upon it and said I MISLEAD. Well, what can i say than hope they are wrong?

I sincerely hope that by directly condemning my opinion, and accusing me of misleading people that you are actually being mature, and leading people to God through your uncharitable and hurtful comments. (i.e. for some of the comments not all)

LET ME ADDRESS SOMETHING FOR THOSE WHO WISH TO LEARN

Our misunderstanding stems from the fact that some of us DO NOT KNOW CATECHISM the same way. It is not my level of Doctrinal knowledge that the other person has, and it is not his own understanding that i too possess.

After some time of reflection on the replies given by people, with all the quality contrary views (Which i honestly respect), and other heartbreaking comments (Which honestly makes me doubt if some of us here are Catholics at all), i have discovered that our problem is understanding basic Catechism.

LET ME TALK ON BAPTISM.

"But as many as received him, to them he gave power to become sons of God" (Jn 1:12), older scripts render the word "power" as "grace", pointing directly to BAPTISM, not some kind of 'authority' per se.

WHAT BAPTISM IS; HOW IT MATTERS IN THE TOPIC

Baptism washes Original sin, makes us Members of the Church. But the most miraculous part is that IT INFUSES DIVINE LIFE in our souls, making us Children of God. This "life" is called "grace". So that when you lose it to mortal sin (AND ONLY MORTAL SIN), you are no longer in the "state of GRACE", and you are no longer worthy of eternal life. However, when you fall sick, have accident, lose your job, this "Divine Life" is still there until you COMMIT A MORTAL SIN. What i was saying all along is simple:

What the devil wants is for you to lose this LIFE OF CHRIST IN YOU, the IDENTITY THAT MAKES YOU REALLY DIVINE, which is GRACE. Without this identity, you are nothing; you will not go to heaven. YOU CAN STILL BIND AND CAST AND DEMONS OBEY, “Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, CAST OUT DEMONS in Your name, and done many WONDERS in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I NEVER KNEW you; depart from Me, you who practice LAWLESSNESS!’” (Matthew 7:22-23).

Simply put : A Christian who does not really obey God well can command the devil and he obeys, but someone who knows God does not necessarily need to command the devil, but to "OBEY THE WORDS OF MY FATHER WHO IS IN HEAVEN" (Mt 7:21). This "Life" is ALL the devil wants, he wants you to lose it, he wants you to believe whatever you think "works for you" and go to hell after. He can go any length to make you believe something you should not, to make you remove your attention from the real treasure which is this LIFE.

UNION WITH GOD IS GOAL OF CHRISTIANITY

The real reason we are Christians is because Christ Came. The reason Christ came is to save us from sin; by conferring upon us his mercy and grace; purchasing our freedom, and conferring upon us his own Nature, which is DIVINE LIFE OF GRACE. When the Christian is in UNION WITH CHRIST, the battle is OVER !

When he is separated, come thunder come fire, he is not God's property.

Prayer means RAISING OUR HEARTS AND MINDS TO GOD, i.e. Loving communion with Him.

Let me provide a help, PICTURE yourself in front of God's throne, with the devil beside you, who do you turn and speak to, God who shines in great light and power? or the devil who tries to get your attention by making noise? IF your answer is that when you see God very close to your face, you'd still lift your voice to shout at Lucifer than have a Love Talk with God, then continue doing what you do, But if your answer is that his beauty will attract you, his loving face lure you to come closer to him, your mouth moving with words of admiration of his love, his glory, his beauty and splendor, moving with words of forgiveness and mercy, with sighs of joy and love. If this is your attitude in such an occasion, an attitude which means that you SPEAK TO GOD, even in sighs and silence, and almost forget the noise the devil makes in the background, trusting that "My Lover belongs to me, and I belong to my Beloved" Songs of Solomon 6:3, trusting that if the devil comes behind with a 'knife', that God will protect you, trusting that even before the devil attempts anything God already knows, and will keep you from harm, trusting like a little Child NOT MEASURING THE OUTCOME OF THIS TOTAL SURRENDER. This is what a mature faith will do, a faith rooted deeply in a LOVE AFFAIR with God, not just a person who still considers himself a WARRIOR, but the one who considers himself a LOVER.

If you agree with the above attitude, and still shout at the devil it means you have little or no faith in God's protection and jealous love. You think God will let him take you away even though you have been faithful in LOVE. You still PICTURE God as being far off, and you are left to battle "Principalities and powers" (Which battle actually means REMAINING IN GRACE).

Faith makes us "see" God close to us, makes us see Christ IN US and love makes us see him IN OTHERS, when the three Theological Virtues are present in your soul, you are invincible to the enemy. The Devil can use NATURAL occurrences to tempt you, but he cannot do you real harm. ALL TIES WITH THE DEVIL BEGINS BY COMMITTING SIN, and BEING DISOBEDIENT, and ALL TIES WITH GOD IS KEPT BY FAITH, HOPE and LOVE. When you are tied to God, you need not fight, you only need to LOVE MORE, since the more you love (As St John says) the more you resemble God, and the more you resemble God, the more you are shielded in his great light, away from the reach of the enemy's darkness, the more you are transformed into LIGHT ITSELF. If you doubt this, then keep doing what you wish, however, i am speaking to people who are willing to have an attitude of the Church Fathers and Saints, who have ALL TAUGHT THE SAME thing about prayer and being in union with Christ. The Mystics say that when you have loved God (and i believe this too), you are transformed into a FIRE OF LOVE, into God who is CONSUMING FIRE. This FIRE is LOVE, for GOD IS LOVE. If you want to be free from the devil, then LOVE, LOVE AND LOVE. Say prayers that foster this love, spend all your time professing this love to Jesus, that profession is enough to gain you both eternal and temporal salvation. This is what True Catholic Faith teaches. When i was still in the monastery, we'd pray seven times everyday, waking up at 2:30am, just to sing praises to God, confess our Love in "Prayer of the Heart", in order to live throughout the day in service and love. We'd study in order to pray better, work better, but most importantly LOVE MORE !

So when an average Christian stands, commanding the devil, and a holy man who LOVES kneels and simply sighs lovingly to God, the Lover's sigh reaches heaven 100X faster, and puts the devil into confusion more. Because this sigh is ENTIRELY FROM LOVE, the only language the devil does not know since he himself CANNOT LOVE. This is the type of prayer that Mary herself would pray, St Padre Pio, Bernard of Clairvaux, Lawrence, Gregory the Great, ALL DOCTORS, ALL FATHERS OF OLD, ALL SAINTS !

Read their lives, books etc, your sense of Faith will change for the better. When you have understood how their lives were transformed by this Flame of Love (Which St John of the Cross wrote about), your life will be set ablaze with this Love, when you have kept in touch with Papal Encyclicals, Exhortations and other Documents of the Church, you will then know HOW THE CHURCH PRAYS. Not when you simply learn from just one priest or just one brother, ITS BETTER TO GO TO THE FOUNTAIN DIRECTLY, letting the Church herself teach you, rather than draw conclusions on your own. Your conclusions can be good and can lead to God, but the Church's directive leads you 100X faster.

This is what i conclude with. Let everyone believe what he can understand, i am not condemning anything or anyone AT ALL, but let those who understand what this means learn something new. And those who even though they do not like me or my thoughts, but have come to see i speak maturely, let them drop their prides, and acknowledge that all precious stones may be precious, but DIAMONDS LAST FOREVER !

ALL PRAYERS ARE PRECIOUS, but the one that flames from the heart of a lover is usually simple, less theatrical , but MOST POWERFUL !

Therefore FIRE PRAYERS may be Gold, but LOVE-TALK / LOVE-UNION with God is DIAMOND!

Wake me up from sleep @ Midnight, all i can think of is JESUS MY LOVE, call me a child, call me a novice, i agree, i may be worse. Only that I am not just a Christian, i am A LOVER drunk with the FINEST WINE OF GOD'S LOVE !

SHARE !

Freedom and Fear; breaking free from sin

2014-03-08T17:37:00.000-08:00

One of the things that eat deep into our hearts is FEAR. We are scared of very many things; even things that do not exist. One of the major obstacles to the spiritual life is this vice's second face:Cowardice.

So many Christians are afraid of changing their lives, they do not know what life will be like if they were to live without being attached to certain things, including sins.

At one time in our lives, the Holy Spirit offers us a chance to run away from the bondage of sin, but due to this crippling fear of the "Unknown" we choose to remain in the "known" even though we are not perfectly happy in it; we choose to remain in the sin toward which we have formed strong love for. We dread the thought of living without telling a lie; how can i succeed in my business without cheating? we ask ourselves. We cannot think of the possibility of surviving a day/week without sex; we cannot imagine life without an illegitimate sex partner, we believe we might drop dead if we denied ourselves the deadly pleasure of illegitimate sexual intercourse.

However, since the mind is prone to exaggeration, this in turn affects the way we evaluate things. We believe lots of things to be this way whilst they are that way; we ascribe qualities to things we have not even seen. We decide even God's nature, crafting our own gods in our little heads. We imagine that the spiritual life is going to be dreary, unadventurous, sad, annoying and extremely depressing. Worst of all, we reject any truth that tries to correct our many lies.

As a living testimony, i say, i have never been happier in my life than when i quit my active attachment to sin, and began a sincere journey into the Mystery of God; Jesus let me into his heart and i realized how foolish i have been all along. I believed the pleasures i enjoyed could never be equaled with anything, i believed my heart could not survive without the companionship of a lover. But then, immediately after my initial conversion, i couldn't imagine being with any other lover but the Lord and his Mother.

Then i began to understand how impossible it is to repent, exactly because we humans DO NOT WANT TO LET GO, not because God does not grant the grace needed. We are scared to come out in the Light, preferring to hide in our darkness; the shadow of this light is mostly as far as we can go. We prefer to remain locked in a city we ourselves have built, rejecting the possibility of having any better city, even the one built by God himself is to us tiring and depressing. We run to seek out happiness, to suck it from every empty container, to scrape if from every little waste we find, feeding from every refuse dump just to sap even rotten/wasted happiness. We have been invited to soar up high like the eagle, gaining interior peace, becoming free as the children of God should be, we choose rather to remain in our own yokes; to remain slaves to our own passions, we loathe anything or anyone that advices us to change, we threaten anything that disturbs our ears with the Lord's message to repentance, we eliminate anything that troubles our consciences; anything that threatens our little world of clay. We may accept his promises of blessings and protection, we may listen to his consoling words, but never to his summons to a true change of heart.

Catholics ARISE !! STAND FROM YOUR SINS !!! Jesus is calling you today, Jesus loves you. Come on into this love union with Jesus, nothing can be sweeter than it ! Every other thing shall begin to make more sense when you are in God. The whole of creation will serve to bring his word to your soul. Then you shall taste a love so powerful you can never sleep at night in sorrow or pain, a love so powerful you can never be afraid of even the Lord's anger anymore since you have great confidence in his love and mercy upon you, a love so powerful you will be lost in God, lost in his immensity, become just like Jesus, and confuse even the devil himself with this new identity. A love so powerful that you will be transformed into the Living Flame of the Lord's light, you will begin to breathe the fire of his love, spiting tiny little fires of love everywhere you go, caring for all of creation as the Lord intended, bringing light to those in darkness, announcing the message of freedom to all in captivity, raising those who have fallen asleep in sin, and bringing all men who encounter you to the God of your heart; setting all things ablaze ! Since you are already aflame with God's Spirit, you cannot help but set everything you touch on fire with God.

YOU, yes YOU can become like Jesus. Only start right now. Not tomorrow, HERE and NOW, part ways with your sins, throw the devil away from your house, give him all his property and he will depart, but if you keep as little as a pin that belongs to him, he will always have the right into your heart.

Brethren i really wish i can make you understand the urgency of this message. I wish you can see through my heart right now, these words have made me feel like a woman in labour, i wish that in giving it out, it might be born in Your HEART; that in your heart may dwell these and similar words of God, drawing all men to salvation through repentance and adherence to God in his Church.

HELP US SHARE AS MANY TIMES AS YOU CAN. CALL OTHERS TO REPENTANCE !

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LOVERS WILL ALWAYS LIE, THIS IS WHY !

2014-03-08T17:34:00.000-08:00

Now that you are alive, you have friends for whom you live, friends who you consider soul mates. You have family for whom you live, who have shared your life; in whose life you share as well.

You, like every normal human being crave company. WE all want to be loved, we crave to love even more. We want to be valued, we also want to pour our lives on someone or on people. The Love we experience here is very powerful, so much so that in marriage its act of consummation (Conjugal Union) gives life to another Living person.

However, in the midst of all the company, beneath all that love lies a certain kind of necessary, unavoidable betrayal. Far from the normal interpretation of betrayal, this one is even more devastating, since at one time, we feel so alone and so abandoned. That moment it death. When we die, we feel detached, torn from all the things we once enjoyed, torn from family, friends, torn from a marital partner whom we love dearly. We feel "Alone", the more we have been pledged eternal "Unending love", the more the pain we shall experience. This pain will be there if we have no friend to walk with us, no hand to hold us, no lips to speak words of love and comfort to us, no shoulder to lean upon when we are weary on our eternal journey. These earthly friends become separated from us in a certain sense. We can no longer share their lives like we used to.

In the midst of all these confusion is a friend whose hands is long enough to reach us even in the underworld, whose feet has walked those paths, whose power conquered the darkness therein, Jesus is his name. If our lives have been one of friendship and service to the Lord, we shall be sure his power and mercy will lead us to our homeland. No friend is more important than Jesus, for at last, when our feet are prepared to walk the longest distance of all, he will be there to walk each step with us.

Why then would someone ever replace pleasing Jesus with pleasing men who have no true love for us? Men who would lie to take advantage of us, men who even though they are faithful to us are unable to keep their promise of "loving you forever" of "always being there" since if we do not die and leave they die and abandon us. Men who would only weep, wipe their eyes and quickly replace us with someone probably better than us.

What a friend we have in Jesus !!!

JESUS COME IN TO STAY, COME INTO MY LIFE LORD JESUS !

SHARE, TOUCH SOMEONE'S HEART TODAY !

Pope Francis: 'Person of the Year'

2013-12-13T21:57:00.001-08:00

2013-12-11 Vatican Radio

Pope Francis has been named Time Magazine's ‘Person of the Year’ for 2013. He is the third Roman Pontiff to receive this honour after John XXIII in 1962 and John Paul II in 1994.

The Head of the Holy See’s Press Office, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, issued the following statement:

“The decision didn’t come as a surprise given the great resonance and attention surrounding the election of Pope Francis right from the start of the new pontificate. The fact that one of the most prestigious awards to be attributed by the international press should go to someone who promotes spiritual, religious and moral values as well as call for peace and greater justice in an incisive manner is a positive sign. As for the Pope himself, he’s not someone who seeks fame and success, because he has put his life at the service of announcing the Gospel of the love of God for mankind. It is pleasing to the Pope that this service should appeal and give hope to women and men. And if this choice of ‘Person of the Year’ should mean that many people have understood this message - at least implicitly - the Pope is really happy about this."

Pope Francis: Friday homily focuses on scandal of preaching

2013-12-13T21:48:00.000-08:00

Pope Francis celebrated Mass in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae residence in the Vatican this Friday morning, focusing his remarks on the attitude of some Christians who seem to be “allergic” to preachers and overly critical of those who proclaim the Gospel, suggesting that they are often afraid of letting the Holy Spirit into their lives and are therefore prone to profound sadness.

In his remarks to the faithful following the readings of the day, Pope Francis focused on the day's Gospel, drawn from that according to St Matthew (11:16-19). There, Jesus compares the generation of his time to always unhappy children, explaining that they were, “not open to the Word of God.” Their refusal, he explained, was not of the message, but of the messenger. “They reject John the Baptist,” he said, who came, “neither eating nor drinking ,” saying of him that he was “a man possessed.” They reject Jesus because they say, “He is a glutton, a drunkard, a friend of publicans and sinners.” They always have a reason to criticize the preacher:

“The people of that time preferred to take refuge in a more elaborate religion: in the moral precepts, such as the group of Pharisees; in political compromise, as the Sadducees; in social revolution, as the zealots; in gnostic spirituality, such as Essenes. They were [happy] with their clean, well-polished system. The preacher, however, was not [so pleased]. Jesus reminded them: ‘Your fathers did the same with the prophets.’ The people of God have a certain allergy to the preachers of the Word: they persecuted the prophets, [even] killed them.”

The Pope went on to say that these people claimed to accept the truth of revelation, “but the preacher, preaching, no. They prefer a life caged in their precepts, in their compromises, in their revolutionary plans or in their [disembodied] spirituality.” They are those Christians, who are always discontented with what preachers say:

"These Christians are closed, they are trapped, sad ... these Christians are not free. Why? Because they are afraid of the freedom of the Holy Spirit, which comes through preaching. This, then, is the scandal of preaching, of which St. Paul spoke: the scandal of preaching that ends in the scandal of the Cross. That God should speak to us through men with limits , sinful men, scandalizes: and what scandalizes even more is that that God should speak to us and save us by way of a man who says he is the Son of God but ends [his life] as a criminal. That scandalizes.”

“These sad Christians,” said Pope Francis, “do not believe in the Holy Spirit , do not believe in the freedom that comes from preaching, which admonishes you, teaches you – slaps you , as well – but it is the very freedom that makes the Church grow.”:

“Seeing these children who are afraid to dance, to cry, [who are] afraid of everything, who ask for certainty in all things, I think of these sad Christians, who always criticize the preachers of the Truth, because they are afraid to open the door to the Holy Spirit. Let us pray for them, and pray also for ourselves, that we do not become sad Christians, cutting off the freedom of the Holy Spirit to come to us through the scandal of preaching.”

Communion of Saints; Praying through Mary

2013-12-11T03:40:00.000-08:00

Praying through Mary is not expressly written in the Bible, it is rather an outcome of a mature understanding of the "Communion of Saints". We the Church believe, as taught by St Paul, that "we are one body, one Spirit in Christ". To the mind of the Church, this has a certain literalness in terms of religious actions. So that when you do good, the entire body is healthy and is affected and when you sin, you affect the entire body. When you pray as well the other members (parts) of this body is equally affected.

Christ came to the world as man and God, establishing his authority and dominion as Lord of the Living, both because he lived, died and resurrected. But also Lord of the dead because through this resurrection he conquered death. Since life springs from him only, and since he has walked the roads of the underworld, he himself has power that penetrates the grave.

This power is also inherited by his Body the Church, so that she is never torn apart or broken by death. NO ! She is actually strengthened by the death of a faithful since her glory shines as more members are glorified.

These glorified members since they are still attached to Christ's body also help in its nourishment. So that when they praise God by chants, or pray to Him, the effects reach the entire body; the effect reach you and me. So even without asking for it, the saints pray for us. And we can raise our hearts to them since we're bound; one body and spirit in Christ to aid us in our needs.

Points to take in about the Blessed Trinity

2013-12-09T15:34:00.000-08:00

1. There are only 3 Persons in God. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

2. They possess equal Power and Majesty; Co-eternal (none existed before the other, none is more powerful)

3. God is in constant work inside and outside Him. (Work here means "Activity" not Labour)

4. The Work within (Called: OPERA AD INTRA) is Father eternally begetting the Son, and the two Spirating/breathing forth the Holy Spirit or the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and Son.

5. The Work outside (OPERA AD EXTRA) is summed up in: CREATION, REDEMPTION, and SANCTIFICATION.

6. The Persons act in perfect unity. Though there are some actions ascribed to PERSONS in God: e.g. the Father Creates, the Son Redeems, and the Holy Spirit Sanctifies. However, the Father does not create without his Son (WORD), the Son does not redeem without His Father, and the Holy Spirit does not sanctify without the Father and the Son.

7. The Action of the Blessed Trinity within is one of Great Power; Power born of Love and Unity. The overflow of this Love and Power gave birth to the three Exterior works of God (Opera Ad extra). God's Opera ad intra, is the fount from whence flows everything good. God is Love himself, and so every action of God is rooted solely in love

8. The Mystery of the Blessed Trinity does not mean we CANNOT KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THIS, it means we cannot understand PERFECTLY. For instance WE KNOW there are 3 Persons but cannot UNDERSTAND PERFECTLY what this means.

9. The Blessed Trinity is One in Nature, Power, Existence, Authority, Majesty, and EVERYTHING but their Personhood. They are One in all things but only DISTINCT (Do not use "Different") in their Person.

# You may Add your own Points from Catholic Doctrine/Theology. Or you may ask questions.

Proof of the Immaculate Conception

2013-12-09T15:06:00.001-08:00

A good sister asked for "evidence" for the validity of the immaculate conception dogma.

We briefly Explained:

Evidence is simply that God dwells in the holiest of places and if he ever came into the womb of Mary (which he did), he must have prepared it free from every stain of sin. Her womb, like heaven became unstained with even the slightest taint of original or actual sin.

Again if Jesus were to save us from sin, he too would not be affected by original sin. If Mary were affected by original sin, then Christ too would have suffered this too and would therefore be unable to save Us since he himself would be in this sin with us. However if Christ would save he needed be outside this pit of sin to draw us away from it. And Mary's immaculate conception was a way for Christ to be free from this sin and be in good position to draw us from it.

Plus, he also has revealed this truth to the Church over the years.

WHEN THE INQUIRER ARGUED "So the Dogma is based on assumption?"

We Replied : the explanation i have previously given you is pretty enough for someone who asks question to understand. I mentioned "revelation" in my explanation so i do not know where your "assumption" comes from. Probably you need to read the text better.

The matter is very clear, God has given us power to discern what he will and won't do, this kind of argument is drawn from REASON. God also has given us the gift to believe what he says to us even if we do not understand them, this is called FAITH.

The Dogma of the immaculate conception is both supported by reason and revealed by God himself (Faith). The Faith of the Church is that God being all Good, Perfect cannot have any taint of sin,and since he has all the power, he actually makes it that sin has no place in his incarnation, this is simple logic. He also has revealed this truth to his Church by the Magisterial Authority bestowed upon her and by the Apparition of Lourdes which confirms it.

Therefore, What we have merely thought as possible throughout the history of the Church, God himself has confirmed by the gift of revelation.

God bless.

Answer to a Protestant on Absolution of Sins by Priests

2013-12-09T05:13:00.001-08:00

The Priest Forgives sins through the Power of Christ acting in him; he is a sharer in the Divinity of Christ. You say i have spoken abomination? I tell you, you yourself do not understand the meaning of Sacaramental Power. At baptism, a human being acts in the Name of Christ and His Church in infusing divine life in an infant. You say the priest should not be made to look as if he can do what only God can (which is forgiving sin), yet it is clear that God wants man to participate in things he alone can do. The humanity of Christ introduces the possibility of God sharing in man's actions and Man sharing in God's. When at baptism a Priest, or even you yourself say "I baptize you" what does this mean? You give life to another soul !

And bear in mind that ONLY God can give life, yet you can also give this life because you share in it; because God has given you the power to give this life. "Giving life" here simply means acting in the stead of Christ in the sacramental celebration.

So when a priest says "I absolve you" let it not marvel you, for the Lord breathed on the Apostles in the scriptures and said "Receive the Holy Spirit, whatever sins you forgive are forgiven, whatever sin you retain, are retained" (See Jn 20: 22/23)

Mind you he said "YOU FORGIVE" not "You tell them i forgive" he said "YOU FORGIVE" showing it is actually the Priests who carry out this mission of forgiveness in his place.

If you say its a lie, then why did Christ speak those words in the first place? or was the Gospel lying as to its meaning?

Confession has been practiced right from the beginning of Christianity, Msgr. Louis Gaston de Segur even traced its origin to the Jews before Christ. The Jews confessed their sins to the priest who in turn would offer atonement sacrifice for the penitent. There are many documents written by early Christians containing teachings on confession and absolution from priests. They seemed to have no problem with this, until some "KNOW-IT-ALL" protestants began to redefine teachings that has always been clear; confusing people who have little or no instruction. They BROKE away from orthodox Christian practice in their quest to be more christian, they believed they were wiser and better than billions who have died for this faith; that they were the "chosen" ones to whom God revealed a "secret" teaching.

Never doubt unless you have researched well on this else you will be like many others who have rejected sublime truths simply because "they did not like them" not because they were unreasonable or false or contradictory.

God bless you

Eucharistic Miracle Siena, Italy -- 1730

2013-11-15T04:55:00.001-08:00

The second Eucharistic miracle of Siena has roots in the 13th century when special services and festivities were introduced in honor of the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. These observances became traditional and were still conducted at the time of the miracle. So it was that on August 14, 1730, during devotions for the vigil of the feast, while most of the Sienese population and the clergy of the city were attending these services, thieves entered the deserted Church of St. Francis. Taking advantage of the friars' absence, they made for the chapel where the Blessed Sacrament was kept, picked the lock to the tabernacle and carried away the golden ciborium containing consecrated Hosts.

The theft went undiscovered until the next morning, when the priest opened the tabernacle at the Communion of the Mass. Then later, when a parishioner found the lid of the ciborium lying in the street, the suspicion of sacrilege was confirmed. The anguish of the parishioners forced the cancellation of the traditional festivities for the feast of Our Lady's Assumption. The Archbishop ordered public prayers of reparation, while the civil authorities began a search for the consecrated Hosts and for the scoundrel who had taken them.

Two days later, on August 17, while praying in the Church of St. Mary of Provenzano, a priest's attention was directed to something white protruding from the offering box attached to his prie dieu. Realizing that it was a Host, he informed the other priests of the church, who in turn notified the Archbishop and the friars of the Church of St. Francis.

When the offering box was opened, in the presence of local priests and the representative of the Archbishop, a large number of Hosts were found, some of them suspended by cobwebs. The Hosts were compared with some unconsecrated ones used in the Church of St. Francis, and proved to be exactly the same size and to have the same mark of the irons upon which they were baked. The number of Hosts corresponded exactly to the number the Franciscan friars had estimated were in the ciborium -- 348 whole Hosts and six halves.

Since the offering box was opened but once a year, the Hosts were covered with the dust and debris that had collected there. After being carefully cleaned by the priests, they were enclosed in a ciborium and placed inside the tabernacle of the main altar of the Church of St. Mary. The following day, in the company of a great gathering of townspeople, Archbishop Alessandro Zondadari carried the Sacred Hosts in solemn procession back to the Church of St. Francis.

During the two centuries that followed it has sometimes been wondered why the Hosts were not consumed by a priest during Mass, which would have been the ordinary procedure in such a case. While there is no definite answer, there are two theories. One explanation is that crowds of people from both Siena and neighboring cities gathered in the church to offer prayers of reparation before the sacred particles, forcing the priests to conserve them for a time. The other reason the priests did not consume them might well have been because of their soiled condition. While the Hosts were superficially cleaned after their discovery, they still retained a great deal of dirt. In such cases it is not necessary to consume consecrated Hosts, but it is permitted to allow them to deteriorate naturally, at which time Christ would no longer be present.

To the amazement of the clergy, the Hosts did not deteriorate, but remained fresh and even retained a pleasant scent. With the passage of time the Conventual Franciscans became convinced that they were witnessing a continuing miracle of preservation.

Fifty years after the recovery of the stolen Hosts, an official investigation was conducted into the authenticity of the miracle. The Minister General of the Franciscan Order, Father Carlo Vipera, examined the Hosts on April 14, 1780, and upon tasting one of them he found it fresh and incorrupt. Since a number of the Hosts had been distributed during the preceding years, the Minister General ordered that the remaining 230 particles be placed in a new ciborium and forbade further distribution.

A more detailed investigation took place in 1789 by Archbishop Tiberio Borghese of Siena with a number of theologians and other dignitaries. After examining the Hosts under a microscope, the commission declared that they were perfectly intact and showed no sign of deterioration. The three Franciscans who had been present at the previous investigation, that of 1780, were questioned under oath by the Archbishop. It was then reaffirmed that the Hosts under examination were the same ones stolen in 1730.

As a test to further confirm the authenticity of the miracle, the Archbishop, during this 1789 examination, ordered several unconsecrated hosts to be placed in a sealed box and kept under lock in the chancery office. Ten years later these were examined and found to be not only disfigured, but also withered. In 1850, 61 years after they were placed in a sealed box, these unconsecrated hosts were found reduced to particles of a dark yellow color, while the consecrated Hosts retained their original freshness.

Other examinations were made at intervals over the years, the most significant being that of 1914, undertaken on the authority of Pope St. Pius X. For this inquiry the Archbishop selected a distinguished panel of investigators, which included scientists and professors from Siena and Pisa, as well as theologians and Church officials.

Acid and starch tests performed on one of the fragments indicated a normal starch content. The conclusions reached from microscopic tests indicated that the Hosts had been made of roughly sifted wheat flour, which was found to be well preserved.

The commission agreed that unleavened bread, if prepared under sterile conditions and kept in an airtight, antiseptically cleaned container, could be kept for an extremely long time. Unleavened bread prepared in a normal fashion and exposed to air and the activity of micro-organisms would remain intact for no more than a few years. It was concluded that the stolen Hosts had been both prepared without scientific precautions and kept under ordinary conditions which should have caused their decay more than a century before. The commission concluded that the preservation was extraordinary, "…e la scienza stessa che proclama qui lo straordinario."

Professor Siro Grimaldi, professor of chemistry at the University of Siena and director of the Municipal Chemical Laboratory, as well as the holder of several other distinguished positions in the field of chemistry, was the chief chemical examiner of the holy particles in 1914. Afterward, he gave elaborate statements concerning the miraculous nature of the Hosts, and wrote a book about the miracle entitled Uno Scienziato Adora (A Scientific Adorer). In 1914 he declared:

The holy Particles of unleavened bread represent an example of perfect preservation … a singular phenomenon that inverts the natural law of the conservation of organic material. It is a fact unique in the annals of science.

In 1922 another investigation was conducted -- this one in the presence of Cardinal Giovanni Tacci, who was accompanied by the Archbishop of Siena and the Bishops of Montepulciano, Foligno and Grosseto. Again the results were the same: the Hosts tasted like unleavened bread, were starchy in composition and were completely preserved.

In 1950 the miraculous Hosts were taken from the old ciborium and placed in a more elaborate and costly one, which caught the eye of another thief. Thus, despite the precautions of the clergy, another sacrilegious theft occurred on the night of August 5, 1951. This time the thief was considerate enough to take only the container and left the Hosts in a corner of the tabernacle. After counting 133 Hosts, the Archbishop himself sealed them in a silver ciborium. Later, after being photographed, they were placed in an elaborate container which replaced the one that had been stolen.

The miraculously preserved Hosts are displayed publicly on various occasions, but especially on the 17th of each month, which commemorates the day they were found after the first theft in 1730. On the feast of Corpus Christi the Sacred Hosts are placed in their processional monstrance and triumphantly carried in procession from the church through the streets of the town, an observance in which the whole populace participates.

Among many distinguished visitors who have adored the Hosts was St. John Bosco. They were likewise venerated by Pope John XXIII, who signed the album of visitors on May 29, 1954, when he was still the Patriarch of Venice. And although unable to visit the miraculous Hosts, Popes Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius Xl and Pius Xll issued statements of profound interest and admiration.

With a unanimous voice, the faithful, priests, bishops, cardinals and popes have marveled at and worshiped the holy Hosts, recognizing in them a permanent miracle, both complete and perfect, that has endured for over 250 years.

By this miracle the Hosts have remained whole and shiny, and have maintained the characteristic scent of unleavened bread. Since they are in such a perfect state of conservation, maintaining the appearances of bread, the Catholic Church assures us that although they were consecrated in the year 1730, these Eucharistic Hosts are still really and truly the Body of Christ. The miraculous Hosts have been cherished and venerated in the Basilica of St. Francis in Siena for over 250 years.

Cardinal Bartolucci dies age 96

2013-11-11T18:54:00.001-08:00

Pope Francis has sent the following telegram of condolence to the family of Cardinal Domenico Bartolucci, who died today at 96 years of age.

He was a former director of the Sistine Chapel Choir who was created a cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI in the consistory of 20 November 2010.

“Upon receiving the news of the death of the venerated Cardinal Domenico Bartolucci, I wish to express to the foundation that bears his name, to his family and his Florentine diocesan community my most heartfelt condolences. I recall affectionately this dear and highly esteemed priest, an illustrious composer and musician, who exercised his long and intense ministry, especially through religious music, born of and expressing faith. I also remember with great gratitude his fruitful work as director of the Sistine Chapel Choir and his wise … of the precious gift of polyphony, intended to elevate the heart in praise of God. I raise fervent prayers to the Lord that, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, He may welcome his generous servant and distinguished man of the Church in spiritual joy and eternal peace, and impart the comfort of an apostolic blessing to those who mourn his loss”.Cardinal Bartolucci's funeral will be celebrated on 13 November at 3.30 p.m. at the altar of the Chair of St. Peter in the Vatican Basilica.
With his death, the College of Cardinals is now composed as follows: 200 cardinals, of which 109 are electors.

First contribution of 150,000 dollars for aid to the Phipippines

2013-11-11T18:49:00.000-08:00

Pope Francis, through the Pontifical Council “Cor Unum” has decided to send an aid contribution of 150,000 dollars to assist the population of the Philippines, devastated by the passage of the typhoon Haiyan which violently struck the country this weekend, in particular affecting the islands of Leyte and Samar and causing, according to unconfirmed estimates, more than ten thousand deaths.

This sum, which will be distributed by the local Church in the regions most affected by the disaster, will be used to support aid work for the assistance of displaced persons from the flooded areas, and it is intended as a first and concrete expression of spiritual nearness and paternal encouragement on the part of the Supreme Pontiff in relation to the people and territories devastated by the floods.

Pope Francis: heartfelt solidarity with those affected by Philippines typhoon

2013-11-10T20:05:00.000-08:00

Pope Francis has sent a telegram of condolence to the President of the Philippines, expressing his solidarity with those affected by Typhoon Haiyan.

The typhoon, one of the worst on record, is feared to have killed as many as 10.000 people on Leyte island, which bore the brunt of the storm.

Please find below the full text of the telegram, signed by Archbishop Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State.

“Deeply saddened by the destruction and loss of life caused by the super typhoon, His Holiness Pope Francis expresses his heartfelt solidarity with all those affected by this storm and its aftermath. He is especially mindful of those who mourn the loss of their loved ones and of those who have lost their homes. In praying for all the people of the Philippines, the Holy Father likewise offers encouragement to the civil authorities and emergency personnel as they assist the victims of this storm. He invokes divine blessings of strength and consolation for the Nation.”

Pope Francis also prayed for the victims of the typhoon after the Sunday Angelus in St Peter’s Square. He firstly called for silent prayer, and then led the faithful in a recitation of the Hail Mary. Furthermore, he urged those present to help their brothers and sisters in the Philippines concretely, as well as through prayer.

Pope Francis: the Holy Spirit renews our lives

2013-07-06T22:44:00.002-07:00

In his Mass on Saturday morning at the Casa Santa Marta, Pope Francis said being Christian “does not mean doing things, but allowing oneself to be renewed by the Holy Spirit.” The Pope emphasised that even in the life of the Church there are “ancient structures” to be renewed without fear.

“New wine in new wineskins.” In his homily, Pope Francis dwelt on the renewal that Jesus brings. “The doctrine of the law,” he noted, “is enriched, renewed with Jesus . . . Jesus makes all things new.” He said Jesus brings a “true renewal of the law, the same law, but more mature, renewed.” He explained that what Jesus requires of us is greater than the requirements of the law. The law allows us to hate our enemy; Jesus, on the other hand, tells us to pray for him. This, then, is “the Kingdom of God that Jesus preaches”: a renewal above all “in our heart.” We think that “being Christian means doing this, or doing that; but it is not so:

“Being Christian means allowing oneself to be renewed by Jesus in this new life. ‘I am a good Christian, I go to Mass every Sunday from 11 til noon, I do this, I do that’. . . as if it were a collection. But the Christian life is not a collage of things. It is a harmonious whole, harmonious, and the Holy Spirit does it! He renews all things: He renews our heart, our life, and makes us live differently, but in a way that takes up the whole of our life. You cannot be a Christian of pieces, a part time Christian. Being a part-time Christian simply doesn’t work! The whole, everything, full-time. The Spirit accomplishes this renewal. Being Christian ultimately means, not doing things, but allowing oneself to be renewed by the Holy Spirit – or, to use the words of Jesus, becoming new wine.”

The newness of the Gospel, he continued, is really new, “but in the same law that comes in the history of Salvation.” And this newness, he said, “goes beyond us,” it renews us and “renews the structures.” This is why Jesus says that new wineskins are necessary for new wine:

“In the Christian life, even in the life of the Church, there are old structures, passing structures: it is necessary to renew them! And the Church has always been attentive to this, with dialogue with cultures . . . It always allows itself to be renewed according to places, times, and persons. The Church has always done this! From the very first moment, we remember the first theological battle: was it necessary to carry out all of the Jewish practices in order to be Christian? No! They said no! The gentiles could enter as they are: gentiles . . . Entering into the Church and receiving Baptism. A first renewal of the structures. . . . And so the Church always goes forward, giving space to the Holy Spirit that renews these structures, structures of the churches. Don’t be afraid of that! Don’t be afraid of the newness of the Gospel! Don’t be afraid of the newness that the Holy Spirit works in us! Don’t be afraid of the renewal of structures!”

The Church, he said, “is free: the Holy Spirit carries her forward.” The Gospel teaches this: “the liberty to always find the newness of the Gospel in us, in our life, and even in our structures.” The Pope then re-iterated the importance of the “freedom to choose new wineskins for this newness.” He added that the Christian is free, “with that liberty” that Jesus gives us. A Christian “is not a slave of habits, of structures. . . . The Spirit carries [the Christian] forward.” The Pope then recalled that on the day of Pentecost, the Madonna was there with the disciples:

“And where the mother is, the children are safe! All of them! Let us ask for the grace of not being afraid of the newness of the Gospel, of not being afraid of the renewal that the Holy Spirit brings, of not being afraid to let go of the passing structures that imprison us. If we are afraid, we know that the Mother is with us. And like children who are a little afraid, let us go to her – and she, as the ancient antiphon says, – ‘will protect us with her cloak, with her motherly protection.’ Amen.

A group of Swiss Guard recruits took part in Saturday's liturgy, the last group to take part in the Pope's daily Mass before the summer break.

Encyclical Letter Lumen Fidei of the Supreme Pontiff Francis

2013-07-06T12:36:00.001-07:00

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.