Benedict XVI: Year of Faith, October 11,
2012 until the Feast of Christ the King November 24, 2013.
The Meaning of Faith:
Vatican II – Dei Verbum #5: “‘The obedience of faith’ (Rom. 16, 26;
cf.. Rom. 1, 2; 2 Cor. 10, 5-6) must be given to God as he reveals himself. By
faith man freely commits his entire self to God, making ‘the full submission of
his intellect and will to God who reveals….”
Instrumentum Laboris – The
New Evangelisation for the Transmission of the Christian Faith: Synod of
Bishops: 2012.[1]
“18. The Christian faith is not simply teachings,
wise sayings, a code of morality or a tradition. The Christian faith is a true
encounter and relationship with Jesus Christ. Transmitting the faith means to
create in every place and time the conditions which lead to this encounter
between the person and Jesus Christ. The goal of all evangelization is to
create the possibility for this encounter, which is, at one and the same time,
intimate, personal, public and communal. Pope Benedict XVI stated: ‘Being
Christian is not the result of an ethical choice of a lofty idea, but the
encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a
decisive direction. (…) Since God has first loved us (cf. 1 Jn, 4, 10), love is
now no longer a mere ‘command;’ it is the response to the gift of love with
which God draws near to us.’”
Autobiographical Summary of
Benedict XVI’s Thesis on Revelation and Faith (1956):
“I had ascertained that in Bonaventure (as well as in
theologians of the thirteenth century) there was nothing corresponding to our
conception of ‘revelation’ by which we are normally in the habit of referring
to all the revealed contents of the faith: it has even become a part of
linguistic usage to refer to Sacred Scripture simply as ‘revelation.’ Such an
identification would have been unthinkable in the language of the High Middle
Ages. Here, ‘revelation’ is always a concept denoting an act. The word refers
to the act in which God shows himself, not to the objectified result of this
act. And because this is so, the receiving subject is always also a part of the
concept of ‘revelation.’ Where there is no one to perceive ‘revelation,’ no
re-vel-ation has occurred, because no veil has been removed. By definition,
revelation requires a someone who apprehends it. These insights, gained through
my reading of Bonaventure, were later on very important for me at the time of
the conciliar discussion on revelation, Scripture and tradition. Because, if
Bonaventure is right, then revelation precedes Scripture and becomes deposited
in Scripture but is not simply identical with it. This in turn means that revelation
is always something greater than what is merely written down. And this again
means that there can be no such thing as pure sola scriptura… because an
essential element of Scripture is the Church as understanding subject, and with
this the fundamental sense of tradition is already given…. Michael Schmaus… saw
in these theses not at all a faithful rendering of Bonaventure’s thought
(however to this day I still affirm the contrary) but a dangerous modernism
that had to lead to the subjectivization of the concept of revelation.”[2]
Again in another publication of
Ratzinger: “(Y)ou can have Scripture without having revelation. For
revelation always and only becomes a reality where there is faith. The
nonbeliever remains under the veil of which Paul speaks in the third chapter of
his Second Letter to the Corinthians. He can read Scripture and know what is in
it, can even understand at a purely intellectual level, what is meant and how
what is said hangs together – and yet he has not shared in the revelation.
Rather, revelation has only arrived where, in addition to the material
assertions witnessing to it, its inner reality has itself become effective
after the manner of faith.
Consequently, the person who
receives it also is a part of the revelation to a certain degree, for without
him it does not exist. You cannot put revelation in your pocket like a book you
carry around with you. It is a living reality that requires a living person as
the locus of its presence.”[3]
The Realism of the Word of
God: Word-Person:
“ (…) (T)he Word of God is
the foundation of everything, it is the true reality. And to be realistic, we
must rely upon this reality. We must change our idea that matter, solid things,
things we can touch, are the more solid, the more certain reality. At the end
of the Sermon on the Mount the Lord speaks to us about the two possible
foundations for building the house of one's life: sand and rock. The one who
builds on sand builds only on visible and tangible things, on success, on
career, on money. Apparently these are the true realities. But all this one day
will pass away. We can see this now with the fall of large banks: this money
disappears, it is nothing. And thus all things, which seem to be the true
realities we can count on, are only realities of a secondary order. The one who
builds his life on these realities, on matter, on success, on appearances,
builds upon sand. Only the Word of God is the foundation of all reality, it is
as stable as the heavens and more than the heavens, it is reality. Therefore,
we must change our concept of realism. The realist is the one who recognizes
the Word of God, in this apparently weak reality, as the foundation of all
things. Realist is the one who builds his life on this foundation, which is
permanent. Thus the first verses of the Psalm invite us to discover what
reality is and how to find the foundation of our life, how to build life. [4][5]
The Content of the Word of
God:
“As we have seen, the Word
of God is the Person of the Son. He is the revelation of the Father. But what
is the content of that revelation? Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in 1993: “What does
the Church believe? This question includes the others: who believes and how
should one believe? The Catechism has dealt with both fundamental questions:
the question of ‘what’ to believe and of ‘who’ believes, as one question with
an interior unity. In other words, the catechism illustrates the act of
the faith and the content of the faith in their inseparability. Perhaps
this sounds a little abstract; let’s try to develop a little what’s intended by
this.
“One finds
in the confessions of faith both the formula ‘I believe’ and the formula ‘we
believe.’ Let us speak about the faith of the Church, and let us speak about
the personal nature of the faith, and finally let us speak about the faith as a
gift from God, as a ‘theological act’ in accordance with an expression that’s
current today in theology.
“What does
all this mean? The faith is an orientation [relation] of our existence as a
whole, in its completeness. It is a basic decision, one which has effects in
every aspect of our existence and one which is realized only if it is supported
by all the efforts of our existence. Faith is not solely an intellectual
process, or solely one with will or emotions; it is all of these together. It
is an act of the entire self, of the whole person in the unity of all the
elements of that person gathered into one. In this sense it was described by
the Bible as an act of the ‘heart’ (Rom. 10, 9). It is a highly personal act. But
precisely because it is this, it surpasses the self, the ‘I,’ the limits of the
individual. Nothing belongs to us as little as our self, St. Augustine affirms
in one passage …
“The faith is a disappearing of the
simple I and so the resurgence of the true I, a becoming oneself through
freeing oneself from the simple I in communion with God, which is mediated
through communion with Christ.”[6]
* * * * * * *
*
Benedict XVI continues in his labor
of moving the Church across the threshold of a consciousness of God by an experience
of Christ. This seems to be the one goal of his pontificate: To move the Church
to the consciousness and concept that faith and revelation are one subjective
act of God revealing Himself, and the whole person of the believer receives Him
and becomes Him. More scripturally and concretely: Simon enters into the prayer
of Christ to the Father (Lk. 9, 18) and experiences within himself the
consciousness that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God (Mt. 16, 16).
For that consciousness to have taken place, Simon had to become rock (Peter) as
Christ is “cornerstone” (Acts 11, 4). He had to do what Christ does (and "is"): pray. Like is known by like: Stone is known by
rock and confesses: “You are the Christ, Son of the living God” (Mt. 16, 16).
[1] XIII
Ordinary General Assembly, Chapter I – Jesus Christ, The Good News of God to
Humanity.
[2] J.
Ratzinger, “Milestones, Memoirs 1927-1977,” Ignatius (1997) 108-109.
[3] J.
Ratzinger, “God’s Word” Ignatius (2003)
52.
[4] Benedict
XVI, Keynote Address – Synod on the Word of God, October 6, 2008.
[5]
Benedict XVI Synod on the Word of God,
10/6/2008.
[6] J.
Ratzinger, “What Does the Church Believe?” The Catholic World Report March
1993, 27.
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