As Revelation is the Gift of a Person as Donation, So Faith is the Gift of a Person as Reception: A Death-Event
[Testimonies of Three
Popes]
Faith, As Lived Experience, Saves
“It is urgent to rediscover and to set forth once
more the authentic reality of the Christian faith, which is not simply a set of
propositions to be accepted with intellectual assent. Rather, faith is a lived
knowledge of Christ, a living remembrance of his commandments, and a truth to be lived out. A word, in any event, is not truly received until
it passes into action, until it is put into practice. Faith is a decision
involving one's whole existence. It is an encounter, a dialogue, a communion of
love and of life between the believer and Jesus Christ, the Way, and the Truth,
and the Life (cf. Jn 14:6). It entails an act of trusting
abandonment to Christ, which enables us to live as he lived (cf. Gal 2:20), in profound love of God and of our
brothers and sisters” [Veritatis Splendor #88]
Ss. John XXIII and John Paul II: [Homily by Pope Francis April 27,
2014]
“(O)n the body
of the risen Christ, the wounds never pass away: they remain, for those wounds
are the enduring sign of God’s love for us. They are essential for believing in God. Not for believing that God exists, but for
believing that God is love, mercy and faithfulness.”
“At the heart of this Sunday , which concludes the Octave of Easter
and which John Paul II wished to dedicate to Divine Mercy, are the glorious wounds of the risen Jesus.
He had already shown those wounds when he first appeared to the
Apostles on the very evening of that day following the Sabbath, the day of the
resurrection. But Thomas was
not there that evening, and when the others told him that they had seen the
Lord, he replied that unless he himself saw and touched those wounds, he would
not believe. A week later, Jesus appeared once more to the disciples gathered
in the Upper Room , and Thomas was present;
Jesus turned to him and told him to touch his wounds. Whereupon that man, so
straightforward and accustomed to testing everything personally, knelt before
Jesus with the words: "My Lord and my God!" (Jn 20:28).
The wounds of Jesus are a scandal, a stumbling block for faith,
yet they are also the test of faith.
That is why on the body of the risen Christ the wounds never pass away: they
remain, for those wounds are the enduring sign of God’s love for us. They are essential for believing in God.
Not for believing that God exists, but for believing that God is love, mercy and faithfulness. Saint Peter, quoting Isaiah,
writes to Christians: "by his wounds you have been healed" (1 Pet 2:24,
cf. Is 53:5).
Saint John XXIII and Saint John Paul II were not afraid to look upon the wounds of Jesus, to touch his torn
hands and his pierced side. They were not ashamed of the flesh of
Christ, they were not scandalized by him, by his cross; they did not despise
the flesh of their brother (cf. Is 58:7),
because they saw Jesus in every person who suffers and struggles. These were
two men of courage, filled with the parrhesia of the Holy Spirit, and they bore
witness before the Church and the world to God’s goodness and mercy.
They were priests , bishops and popes of the twentieth
century. They lived through the tragic events of that century, but they were
not overwhelmed by them. For them, God was more powerful; faith was more
powerful – faith in Jesus Christ the Redeemer of man and the Lord of
history; the mercy of God, shown by those five wounds, was more powerful; and
more powerful too was the closeness of Mary our Mother.
In these two men, who looked upon the wounds of Christ and bore
witness to his mercy, there dwelt a living hope and
an indescribable and glorious
joy (1 Pet 1:3,8). The hope and the joy which the
risen Christ bestows on his disciples, the hope and the joy which nothing and
no one can take from them. The hope and joy of
Easter, forged in the crucible of
self-denial, self-emptying, utter identification with sinners, even to the
point of disgust at the bitterness of that chalice. Such were the hope and the
joy which these two holy popes had received as a gift from the risen Lord and
which they in turn bestowed in abundance upon the People of God, meriting our
eternal gratitude.”[2]
Remarks concerning the nature of faith as found in Dei Varbum #5 of Vatican II of John Paul
II to Andre Frossard (1981): “According
to the teaching of the apostles, faith finds its fullness of life in love. It
is in love that the confident surrender to God acquires its proper character
and this dimension of reciprocity starts with faith.
“Thus while the old definition
in my catechism spoke principally of the acceptance as truth ‘of all that God
has revealed’ [Vatican I], the conciliar text [Vatican II], in speaking of
surrender to God, emphasizes rather the personal character of faith. This does
not mean that the cognitive aspect is concealed or displaced, but it is, so to
speak, organically integrated in the broad context of the subject responding to
God by faith….
“Before I tell you how I am
inclined to conceive this commitment, allow me to examine once again the
fundamental meaning of this word in the light of the confident surrender to
God.
“I have already drawn your
attention to the difference between the catechism formula, ‘accepting as true
all that God reveals,’ and surrender to God. In the first definition faith is primarily intellectual, in so far as
it is the welcoming and assimilation of revealed fact. On the other hand, when
the constitution Dei verbum tells us
that man entrusts himself ato God ‘by the obedience of faith,’ we are
confronted with the whole ontological and existential dimension and, so to
speak, the drama of existence proper to man.
“In faith, man discovers the
relativity of his being in comparison with an absolute I and the contingent character of his own existence. To believe is
to entrust this human I, in all its
transcendence and all its transcendent greatness, but also with its limits, its
fragility and its mortal condition, to Someone
who announces himself as the beginning
and the end, transcending all that is
created and contingent, but who also reveals himself at the same time as a
Person who invites us to companionship, participation and communion. An
absolute person - or better, a personal Absolute.
“The surrender to God through
faith (through the obedience of faith) penetrates to the very depths of human
existence, to the very heart of personal existence. This is how we should
understand this ‘commitment’ which you mentioned in your question and which
presents itself as the solution to the very problem of existence or to the
personal drama of human existence. IPt is much more than a purely intellectual
theism and goes deeper and further than the act of ‘accepting as true what God
has revealed.’
“When God reveals himself and
faith accepts him, it is man who sees
himself revealed to himself and confirmed in his being as man and person.
“We
know that God reveals himself in Jesus Christ and that at the same time,
according to the constitute ion Gaudium
et spes [22], Jesus Christ
reveals man to man: ‘The mystery of man is truly illumined only in the mystery
of the Word incarnate.”
“Thus these various aspects,
these different elements or data of Revelation turn out to be profoundly
coherent and acquire their definitive cohesion in man and in his vocation. The essence of faith resides not only in
knowledge, but also in the vocation, in the call.
For what in the last analysis is this obedience of faith by which man displays
‘a total submission of his intelligence and will to the God who reveals
himself’? It is not simply hearing the Word and listening to it (in the sense
of obeying it): it also means responding to a call, to a sort of historical and
eschatological ‘Follow me!’ uttered both on earth and in heaven.
“To my mind, one must be very
conscious of this relation between knowledge and vocation inherent in the very
essence of faith if one is to decipher correctly the extremely rich message of
Vatican II. After reflecting on the whole of its content, I have come to the conclusion
that, according to Vatican II, to believe is to enter the mission of the Church
by agreeing to participate in the triple ministry of Christ as prophet, priest
and king. You can see by this how faith, as a commitment, reveals to ur eyes
ever new prospects, even with respect to its content. However, I am convinced
that at the root of this aspect of faith lies the act of surrender to God, win
which gift and commitment meet in an extremely close and profound way;” Be
Not Afraid, St. Martin’s Press (1981)64-67.
Homily of John Paul II For the Inauguration of His
Pontificate: Experiential Faith
"You are the Christ, the Son of the
living God" (Mt 16:16). These words were spoken by Simon, son of Jonah, in
the district of Caesarea Philippi. Yes, he spoke them with his own tongue, with
a deeply lived and experienced conviction—but it is not in him that they These words mark the beginning of Peter's mission in the history of salvation, in the history of the People of God. From that moment, from that confession of Faith, the sacred history of salvation and of the People of God was bound to take on a new dimension: to express itself in the historical dimension of the Church.
This ecclesial dimension of the history of the People of God takes its origin, in fact is born, from these words of faith, and is linked to the man who uttered them: "You are Peter—the rock—and on you, as on a rock, I will build my Church."
2. On this day and in this place these same words must again be uttered and listened to:
"You are the Christ, the Son of the
Yes, Brothers and sons and daughters, these words first of all.
Their content reveals to our eyes the mystery of the living God, the mystery to which the Son has brought us
All of you who are still seeking God, all of you who already have the inestimable good fortune to believe, and also you who are tormented by doubt: please
Homily of Benedict XVI of the Beatification of John Paul
II:
(…) “’Blessed are those who have not seen
and yet have come to believe’ (Jn 20:29). In today’s Gospel Jesus
proclaims this beatitude: the beatitude of faith. For us, it is particularly
striking because we are gathered to celebrate a beatification, but even more so
because today the one proclaimed blessed is a Pope, a Successor of Peter, one
who was called to Our thoughts turn to yet another beatitude, one which appears in the Gospel before all others. It is the beatitude of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of the Redeemer. Mary, who had just conceived Jesus, was told by Saint Elizabeth:’ “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord’ (Lk 1:45). The beatitude of faith has its model in Mary, and all of us rejoice that the beatification of John Paul II takes place on this first day of the month of Mary, beneath the maternal gaze of the one who by her faith sustained the faith of the Apostles and constantly sustains the faith of their successors, especially those called to occupy the Chair of Peter. Mary does not appear in the accounts of Christ’s resurrection, yet hers is, as it were, a continual, hidden presence: she is the Mother to whom Jesus entrusted each of his disciples and the entire community. In particular we can see how Saint John and Saint Luke record the powerful, maternal presence of Mary in the passages preceding those read in today’s Gospel and first reading. In the account of Jesus’ death, Mary appears at the foot of the cross (Jn 19:25), and at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles she is seen in the midst of the disciples gathered in prayer in the Upper Room (Acts 1:14).”
[1] “Conversion
in the Pauline sense is something much more radical than, say, the revision of
a few opinions and attitudes. It is a death-event. In other words, it is an
exchange of the old subject for another. The ‘I’ ceases to be an autonomous
subject standing in itself. It is snatched away from itself and fitted into a
new subject. The ‘I’ is not simply submerged, but it must really release its
grip on itself in order then to receive itself anew in and together with a
greater ‘I.’” Joseph Ratzinger, “The
Spiritual basis and Ecclesia Identity of Theology” in The Nature and
Mission of Theology, Ignatius
(1995) 50-51.
[2] Homily, Pope Francis, Mercy Sunday,
April 17, 2014: canonization of St. John XXIII and St. John Paul II:
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