YEAR OF FAITH CATECHESIS



THE CATECHESIS OF THE YEAR OF FAITH


POPE FRANCIS


GENERAL AUDIENCE


Paul VI Audience Hall
Wednesday, 24th April, 2013

THEME:On Christ's Second Coming

Vatican City, April 24, 2013 (Zenit.org

Dear brothers and sisters,

Good morning!

In the Creed we profess that Jesus "will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead." Human history begins with the creation of man and woman in the image and likeness of God and ends with the final judgment of Christ. Often these two poles of history are forgotten, and, above all, faith in the return of Christ and the last judgment sometimes is not so clear and steadfast in the hearts of Christians. Jesus, during his public life, often focused on the reality of his last coming. Today I would like to reflect on three Evangelical texts that help us enter this mystery: that of the ten virgins, the talents and the final judgment. All three are part of the Jesus' discourse on the end of times, in the Gospel of St. Matthew.

First of all remember that, with the Ascension, the son of God brought to the Father our humanity that he took on and he wants to draw all men to himself, to call the whole world to be welcomed into the open arms of God, so that, at the end of history, all of reality will be handed over to the Father. There is, though, this "intermediate time" between the first coming of Christ and the last, which is precisely the time that we are living. The parable of the ten virgins is placed within this context (cf. Mt 25:1-13). It involves ten girls who are waiting for the arrival of the bridegroom, but he delays and they fall asleep. At the sudden announcement that the bridegroom is coming, all prepare to welcome him, but while five of them, who were wise, have oil to trim their lamps, the others, who are foolish, are left with unlit lamps because they have no oil; and while they go out to find some, the groom arrives and the foolish virgins find the door closed that leads to the bridal feast. They knocking persistently, but it is too late, the groom replies: I do not know you. The groom is the Lord, and the waiting time of arrival is the time He gives us, all of us with mercy and patience, before his final coming, it is a time to be vigilant; a time in which we need to keep lit the lamps of the faith, hope and charity, a time in which to keep the heart open to the good, to beauty and to the truth; a time to live according to God, because we know neither the day nor the hour of Christ's return. What is asked of us is to be prepared for this encounter – prepared for an encounter, for a beautiful encounter, the encounter with Jesus - which means being able to see the signs of his presence, to keep alive our faith through prayer, with the sacraments, to be vigilant in order not to sleep, not to forget God. The Christian life asleep is a sad life, it isn’t a happy life. The Christian must be happy, have the joy of Jesus. Let’s not fall asleep!

The second parable, that of the talents, makes us reflect on the relationship between how we use the gifts received from God and his return, when he will ask how we used them (cf. Mt 25:14-30). We know the parable: before departure, the master gives each servant some talents, to use well during his absence. To the first he gives five, to the second, two, and to the third, one. During the period of his absence, the first two servants multiply their talents - ancient coins -, while the third prefers to bury his and deliver it intact to the master. Upon his return, the master judges their work: he commends the first two, while the third is kicked out into the darkness, because he kept his talent hidden out of fear, closing in on himself. A Christian who closes in on himself, who hides everything that the Lord has given him as a Christian that is…he isn’t a Christian! He is a Christian that does not thank God for all that he has given him! This tells us that the time of waiting for the Lord's return is the time of action, - we are in the time of action - the time in which to put to use the gifts of God not for ourselves, but for Him, for the Church, for others, the time during which always to try to increase the good in the world. And especially now, in this time of crisis, it is important not to close in upon oneself, burying one's talent,  one’s own spiritual, intellectual, material riches, everything that the Lord has given us, but to open oneself, to be in solidarity, to be attentive to the other. In the square, I saw today there are many young people.  Is it so? Are there very many young people? Where are they? To you, who are at the beginning of the journey of life, I ask: have you thought about the talents that God has given you? Have you thought about how you can put them at the service of others? Don't bury your talents! Bet on big ideals, those ideals that enlarge the heart, those ideals that will make your talents fruitful. Life is not given to us so that we can keep it jealously for ourselves, but is given to us so that we may donate it. Dear young people, have a great soul! Don't be afraid to dream great things!

Finally, a word on the passage of the final judgement, that describes the second coming of the Lord, when He will judge all humans, living and dead (cf. Mt 25:31-46). The image used by the Evangelist is that of the Shepherd separating sheep from goats. On the right are those who acted according to the will of God, helping their neighbor who was hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick, imprisoned, thus following the Lord himself; while on the left are those who haven't come to the aid of their neighbour. This tells us that we will be judged by God on charity, on how we loved him in our brothers, especially the weakest and neediest. Of course, we must always keep in mind that we are justified, we are saved by grace, by an act of God's gratuitous love which always precedes us; we alone can do nothing. Faith is first of all a gift that we have received. But to bear fruit, God's grace always requires our openness, our free and concrete response. Christ comes to bring us the mercy of God who saves. We are asked to trust him, to match the gift of his love with a good life, with actions animated by faith and love.

Dear brothers and sisters, may we never be afraid to look to the final judgment; may it push us rather to live better lives. God gives us with mercy and patience this time so that we may learn every day to recognize him in the poor and in the little ones, may we strive for good and we are vigilant in prayer and love. May the Lord, at the end of our existence and history, may recognize us as good and faithful servants. Thank you!
[Translation by Peter Waymel]
 

 

 

THE CATECHESIS OF THE YEAR OF FAITH


POPE FRANCIS


GENERAL AUDIENCE


Paul VI Audience Hall
Wednesday, 10th April, 2013

THEME: On Christ's Resurrection

Vatican City, (Zenit.org) | 1359 hits


Here is a translation of the address Pope Francis gave this morning during the general audience held in St. Peter's Square. He took up again the cycle of Catechesis dedicated to the Year of Faith.


* * *


Dear brothers and sisters, good morning! In the last Catechesis we focused on the event of the resurrection of Jesus, in which women played a special role. Today I would like to reflect on the event's salvific significance. What does the resurrection mean for our lives? And why is our faith in vain without it?

Our faith is based on the death and resurrection of Christ, just as a house rests on foundations: if these give way, the whole house collapses. On the cross, Jesus offered himself, taking upon himself our sins and descending into the abyss of death, and in the Resurrection he conquers, he takes [our sins] away and opens the path for us to be reborn to a new life. St. Peter expresses this succinctly at the beginning of his First Letter, as we heard: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading" (1:3-4).


The Apostle tells us that with the resurrection of Jesus, something absolutely new happens: we are freed from the slavery of sin and become God's children, we are generated, thus, to a new life. When is this realized for us? In the sacrament of Baptism. In ancient times, it was usually performed by immersion. The person to be baptized descended into the large basin in the baptistery, taking off his clothes, and the bishop or priest poured water three times over his head, baptizing him in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Then the baptized person came out of the baptismal font and put on the new, white garment: this signified that he was born to a new life, by immersing himself in the death and resurrection of Christ. He had become a son of God. St. Paul in his Letter to the Romans writes: you have received a spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, “Abba! Father!”(Rom 8:15).  It is the Spirit that we have received in baptism that teaches us, it urges us, to say to God: “Father”, or better, “Abba!”, which means “dad”. This is our God: He is a dad for us. The Holy Spirit produces in us this new condition of being sons of God. And this is the greatest gift that we receive from the Paschal mystery of Jesus. And God treats us as children, He understands us, forgives us, embraces us and loves us even when we make mistakes. Already in the Old Testament, the prophet Isaiah said that even if a mother could forget her child, God never forgets us, ever (cf. 49:15). And this is beautiful!


However, this filial relationship with God is not like a treasure that we store in a corner of our lives, but has to grow, it must be fed every day by listening to the Word of God, praying and participating in the sacraments, especially the Eucharist and Reconciliation, and through charity. We can live as children! And this is our dignity – we have the dignity of children -. To behave as true children! This means that every day we must let Christ transform us and make us like him; it means trying to live as Christians, trying to follow him, even if we see our limitations and weaknesses. The temptation is always there to leave God aside in order put to ourselves at the center and the experience of sin wounds our Christian life, our being sons of God. For this we must have the courage of faith, and not allow ourselves to be guided by that mentality that says to us: "God is useless, he's not important for you". It is the exact opposite: it is only by acting like sons of God, without getting discouraged because of our falls, because of our sins, feeling loved by Him, that our lives will be new, animated by serenity and joy. God is our strength! God is our hope!


Dear brothers and sisters, we, before all others, need to have this hope firmly rooted and need to be a visible sign of it, bright and clear for everyone. The risen Lord is the hope that never diminishes, that never disappoints (cf. Rom 5:5). Hope never deludes. That hope that comes from the Lord! How often in our lives do our hopes vanish, how often do the expectations we nourish in our hearts not come about! Our hope as Christians is strong, secure, solid in this land, where God has called us to walk, and is open to eternity, because it is founded on God, who is always faithful. We must not forget: God is faithful; God is always faithful with us. Being risen with Christ through baptism, by the gift of faith, to an inheritance that does not corrupt, leads us to seek the things of God, to think of Him more often, to pray to Him more. Being a Christian isn't just following the commandments, but means being in Christ, thinking like him, acting like him, loving like him; it means letting him take possession of our lives and change them, transform them, free them from the darkness of evil and sin.


Dear brothers and sisters, to those who ask us an account of the hope that is in us (cf. 1 Pt 3:15), let us point out the risen Christ. Let us point him out by announcing the Word, but especially by our risen life. Let us manifest the joy of being children of God, the freedom that living in Christ gives, he who is the true freedom, freedom from the slavery of evil, sin and death! Let us look to our heavenly homeland, we will have a new light and strength also in our work and in our daily toil. It is a valuable service that we must render to our world, which often can no longer lift its gaze upward,  it no longer manages to lift its gaze towards God.

[Translation by Peter Waymel]


THE CATECHESIS OF THE YEAR OF FAITH


POPE FRANCIS


GENERAL AUDIENCE


Paul VI Audience Hall
Wednesday, 02ND April, 2013



THEME: ON FAITH IN THE RESURRECTION

"The death and resurrection of Jesus are the heart of our hope"

VATICAN CITY, April 03, 2013 (Zenit.org) - Here is a translation of the address Francis gave this morning during the general audience held in St. Peter's Square. He took up again the cycle of catechesis dedicated to the Year of Faith.

* * *


Dear brothers and sisters,

Good morning.

 Today we continue the Catechesis of the Year of Faith. In the Creed we repeat this phrase: "On the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures." This is the event we are celebrating: the Resurrection of Jesus, the center of the Christian message, which has echoed right from the very start and has been passed on so that it might reach us. St. Paul writes to the Christians of Corinth: "For I handed on to you as of first importance what I, in turn, had received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose from the dead on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve"(1 Cor 15:3-5). This short confession of faith announces the Paschal mystery, with the first appearances of the Risen Christ to Peter and the twelve: the death and resurrection of Jesus are the heart of our hope. Without this faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus our hope would be weak, it would not even be hope, and precisely the death and resurrection of Jesus are the heart of our hope. The Apostle affirms: "If Christ is not risen, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins" (v. 17). Unfortunately, often attempts have been made to obscure the faith in the resurrection of Jesus, and even among the believers themselves, doubts have crept in. A bit of that “watered down” faith, as we say; it is not the strong faith. This is on account of superficiality, or sometimes because of indifference, occupied as one is with a thousand things deemed more important than the faith, or because of a merely horizontal vision of life. But it is the resurrection that opens us up to a greater hope, because it opens our lives and the life of the world to God's eternal future, to full happiness, to the certainty that evil, sin, death can be defeated. And this leads to live the daily realities with more confidence, to face them with courage and commitment. The resurrection of Christ illumines these daily realities with a new light. The Resurrection of Christ is our strength!


But how has the truth of faith in the resurrection of Christ been transmitted to us? There are two types of testimony in the New Testament: some are in the form of a profession of faith, namely, synthetic formulas that indicate the center of the faith; others are in the form of the story of the resurrection and of the events related to it. The first: the form of the profession of faith, for example, is that which we have just heard, or that of the Epistle to the Romans where Paul writes: "Because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe with your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved"(10:9). Since the first steps of the Church, faith in the mystery of the death and resurrection of Jesus has been very firm and clear. Today, however, I would like to dwell on the second form, on testimony in the form of narrative, which we find in the Gospels. First, we notice that the first witnesses of this event were women. At dawn, they went to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus, and find the first sign: the empty tomb (cf. Mk 16:1). Then follows an encounter with a Messenger of God who proclaims: Jesus of Nazareth, the Crucified One, is not here, he is risen (cf. vv. 5-6). Women are driven by love and know how to welcome this announcement with faith: they believe, and immediately they transmit it, they do not keep it to themselves.  The joy of knowing that Jesus is alive, the hope that fills our hearts, cannot be contained. This should occur also in our lives. Let us feel the joy of being Christians! We believe in a Risen Lord who has defeated evil and death! Let us have the courage to "come out" to bring this joy and this light into all the places of our lives! The resurrection of Christ is our greatest certainty; it is our most precious treasure! How can we not share with others this treasure, this certainty? It is not only for us, it is to be communicated, to be given to others, to be shared with others. This is precisely our testimony.


 Another element. In the professions of faith of the New Testament, only the men, the Apostles, are remembered as witnesses of the resurrection, but not the women. This is because, according to the Jewish law of that time, women and children could not give a reliable, credible testimony. In the Gospels, however, women have a primary, fundamental role. Here we can grasp an element in favour of the historicity of the resurrection: if it were a made-up event, in the context of that time it would not have been tied to the women's testimony. Instead the evangelists simply narrate what happened: women are the first witnesses. This says that God does not choose according to human criteria: the first witnesses of the birth of Jesus are the shepherds, simple and humble people; the first witnesses of the resurrection were women. And this is beautiful. And this is to some degree the mission of women: of the mothers, of women! To give witness to their children, their grandchildren, that Jesus is alive, he is the Living One, he is risen. Mothers and women, go forward with this testimony! For God the heart counts, how open we are to Him, if we are like children who trust. But this makes us reflect also on how women in the Church and in the journey of faith, have had and now have a particular role in opening the doors to the Lord, in following him and communicating his face, because the gaze of faith always needs the simple and profound gaze of love. The Apostles and disciples find it harder to believe in the risen Christ. The women don’t. Peter runs to the tomb, but stops at the empty tomb; Thomas must touch with his hands the wounds of the body of Jesus. Also in our faith journey, it is important to know and feel that God loves us, don't be afraid to love Him: faith is professed with the mouth and the heart, with words and with love.


After the appearances to the women, others follow: Jesus makes himself present in a new way: he is the Crucified One, but his body is glorious; he has not come back to earthly life, but has returned in a new condition. At the beginning they do not recognize him, and only through his words and gestures are their eyes opened: the encounter with the Risen One tranforms, gives a new force to the faith, an unshakeable foundation. For us too there are many signs in which the Risen One makes himself recognized: Sacred Scripture, the Eucharist, the other sacraments, charity, those gestures of love that bring a ray of the Risen Lord. Let us allow ourselves to be enlightened by the resurrection of Christ, let us allow ourselves to be transformed by his strength, so that also through us in the world, the signs of death may give way to signs of life. I have seen that there are many young people in the Square. There they are! To you I say: bring forward this certainty: the Lord is alive and he walks side by side with us in life. This is your mission! Bring forward this hope. Be anchored to this hope: this anchor that is in heaven; hold firm to the chain, be anchored and bring forward hope. You, witnesses of Jesus, bring forward the testimony that Jesus is alive and this will give us hope, it will give hope to this world that has somewhat grown old on account of the wars, evil, sin. Go forward, young people!


I greet with affection the Italian-speaking pilgrims. In particular, I welcome with joy the great pilgrimage of the Diocese of Milan, led by Cardinal Angelo Scola, and especially the 14-year young people, who are preparing for their profession of faith. Dear young people, I pray for you, so that your faith may become convinced, strong, like a plant that grows and brings forth good fruit. May the Gospel be your rule of life as it was for St. Francis of Assisi. Read the Gospel, meditate on it, follow it: humility, simplicity, fraternity, service; all in trust in God the Father, in the joy of having a Father in heaven who always listens and speaks to your heart. Follow his voice, and you will bear fruit in love! Dear young people.




THE CATECHESIS OF THE YEAR OF FAITH

BENEDICT XVI

GENERAL AUDIENCE

  On Ash Wednesday

"The forty days of Lent recall Israel’s sojourn in the desert and the temptations of Jesus at the beginning of his public ministry."
Vatican City, February 13, 2013 

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Today, Ash Wednesday, we begin the liturgical time of Lent, forty days that prepare us for the celebration of Holy Easter. It is a time of particular commitment on our spiritual journey. The number forty occurs several times in Scripture. In particular, it recalls the forty years that the Israelites wandered in the desert: a long period of formation to become the people of God, but also a long period in which the temptation to be unfaithful to the covenant with the Lord was always present. Forty is also the number of days it took the prophet Elijah to reach the Mountain of God, Horeb, as well as the days that Jesus spent in the desert before beginning his public life and where he was tempted by the devil. In this Catechesis I would like to reflect on precisely this moment of the earthly life of the Son of God, which we will read in this Sunday's Gospel.

First of all, the desert, where Jesus withdraws, is a place of silence, of poverty, where man is deprived of all material support and is faced with the fundamental questions of life, he is prompted to examine that which is most essential, and hence it is easier to meet God. But the desert is also a place of death, because where there is no water there is no life, and it is a place of solitude, where man feels temptation more intensely. Jesus goes into the desert, and there undergoes the temptation to leave the path indicated by God the Father, to follow other, easier and worldly paths (cf. Lk 4:1-13). And so he bears our temptations, takes upon himself our misery, to defeat the Evil one and open us to the way towards God, the way of conversion.

Reflecting on the temptations undergone by Jesus in the desert is an invitation for each of us to answer a fundamental question: what is truly important in our lives? In the first temptation the devil suggests that Jesus turn a stone into bread to satisfy his hunger. Jesus replies that man also lives from bread, but not by bread alone: ​​without an answer to his hunger for truth, hunger for God, man cannot be saved (cf. vv. 3-4). In the second temptation, the devil offers Jesus the way of power: he leads him on high and offers him dominion over the world, but this is not the way of God: Jesus knows clearly that it is not worldly power that saves the world, but the power of the Cross, of humility, of love (cf. vv. 5-8).
In the third temptation, the devil proposes that Jesus throw himself down from the pinnacle of the Temple of Jerusalem and make God save him through His angels, that is, to do something sensational to test God; but Jesus answers that God is not someone upon whom we may impose our conditions: He is the Lord of all (cf. vv. 9-12). What is the crux of the three temptations that Jesus undergoes? It is the proposal to manipulate God, to use Him for one's own interests, for one's own glory and success. And, in essence, to put oneself in the place of God, removing Him from one's life and making Him seem superfluous. Everyone should then ask himself: what is God's role in my life? Is He is the Lord or am I?

Overcoming the temptation to place God beneath oneself and one's own interests or to place Him in a corner and to convert to the proper ordering of priorities, to give God the first place, is a journey that every Christian must undertake. "Conversion", an invitation that we will hear many times in Lent, means to follow Jesus in such a way that his Gospel is a real guide for life; it means letting God transform us, to stop thinking that we are the only creators of our lives; it means recognizing that we are creatures who depend on God, on His love, and only by "losing" our life in Him can we gain it. 

This requires making our choices in the light of the Word of God. Today one can no longer be Christian as a simple consequence of living in a society with Christian roots: even those who come from Christian families, and are brought up religiously must renew every day the choice to be Christian, that is, to give God the first place, in front of the temptations that a secularized culture presents us with all the time, before the criticism of many of our contemporaries.

The tests to which modern society subjects Christians, indeed, are many, and affect both personal and social life. It is not easy to be faithful to Christian marriage, to practice mercy in everyday life, to leave space for prayer and inner silence, it is not easy to publicly oppose choices that many consider obvious, such as abortion in the event of an unwanted pregnancy, euthanasia in the case of serious illness, or the selection of embryos to prevent hereditary diseases. The temptation to set aside one's faith is always present and conversion becomes a response to God which must be confirmed repeatedly in life.

There are, as an example and stimulus, the great conversions such as that of St. Paul on the road to Damascus, or of St. Augustine, but also in our time of eclipses of the sense of the sacred, God's grace is at work and works wonders in the lives of many people. The Lord never gets tired of knocking at the door of man in social and cultural contexts that seem swallowed up by secularization, as occurred with the Russian Orthodox Pavel Florensky. After a completely agnostic upbringing, to the point that he felt outright hostility to the religious teachings taught in school, the scientist Florensky found himself exclaiming: "No, one cannot live without God!", and changed his life completely, so much so that he became a monk.

I also have in mind the figure of Etty Hillesum, a young Dutch girl of Jewish origin who would die in Auschwitz. Initially far from God, she discovered Him by looking deep within herself and wrote: "There is a very deep well inside me. And God is in that well. Sometimes I manage to reach Him, more often stones and grit block the well, and God is buried beneath. Then God must be dug out again"(Diary, 97). In her scattered and restless life, she found God right in the midst of the great tragedy of the twentieth century, the Shoah. This young fragile and dissatisfied girl, transfigured by faith, became a woman full of love and inner peace, able to say: "I live in constant intimacy with God."

The ability to oppose the ideological blandishments of her time, to choose the search for truth and open herself to the discovery of faith is evidenced by another woman of our time, the American Dorothy Day. In her autobiography, she confesses openly that she fell in the temptation to solve everything with politics, adhering to the Marxist cause: she writes: "I wanted to go off with the protesters, go to jail, write, influence others and leave my dream to the world. How much ambition and how much self-seeking there was in all this!" 

The journey of faith in so secularized an environment was particularly difficult, but Grace acts all the same, as she herself points out: "It is certain that I felt more and more often the need to go to church, to kneel down, to bow my head in prayer. A blind instinct, one might say, because I was not conscious of praying. But I went, I inserted myself into the atmosphere of prayer...". God led her to a conscious adherence to the Church, in a life dedicated to the underprivileged.

In our time there is no small number of conversions understood as the return of those who, after perhaps a superficial Christian upbringing, have fallen away from the faith for years and later rediscover Christ and His Gospel. In the Book of Revelation we read: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me "(3:20). Our inner man must prepare itself to be visited by God, and precisely for this reason should not let itself be invaded by illusions, by appearances, by material things.

In this time of Lent, in the Year of Faith, we renew our commitment on the way of conversion, to overcome the tendency to close in on ourselves and to make room for God instead, looking at our daily reality through His eyes. We might say that the choice between closing in on our egoism and opening to the love of God and others, corresponds to the alternatives in Jesus' temptations: the choice, that is, between human power and love of the Cross, between a redemption viewed solely as material well-being and redemption as the work of God, to whom we give the first place in life. Conversion means not closing in on oneself in the pursuit of one's own success, one's own prestige, one's own position, but making sure that every day, in the small things, truth, faith in God and love become the most important thing. Thank you!

Source: Zenit.org


Paul VI Audience Hall
Wednesday, 06th February, 2013

On God As Creator of Heaven and Earth

"In the work of creation, God is seen as the almighty Father who by his eternal Word brings into existence a universe of goodness, harmony and beauty"

Vatican City, February 06, 2013 (Zenit.org). | 819 hits
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
The Creed, which begins by describing God as "Almighty Father," as we meditated on last week, then adds that He is the "Creator of heaven and earth," and thus takes up the Bible's opening line. In the first verse of Sacred Scripture, we read: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1): God is the origin of all things and his omnipotence as a loving Father unfolds in the beauty of creation.

God manifests himself as Father in creation, inasmuch as He is the origin of life, and in creating, reveals his omnipotence. The images used in Sacred Scripture in this regard are very powerful (cf. Is 40:12; 45:18; 48:13; Psalm 104:2.5; 135.7, Prov 8:27-29; Job 38-39). He, like a good and powerful Father, takes care of what he has created with a love and loyalty that never fail or diminish, as the Psalms repeatedly affirm (cf. Ps 57:11; 108:5; 36:6). Thus, the creation becomes a place in which to know and recognize the omnipotence of the Lord and his goodness, and becomes an appeal to faith as believers so that we proclaim God as Creator. "By faith", writes the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, "we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible"(11:3). Faith implies, therefore, knowing how to recognize the invisible by identifying the traces of it in the visible world. The believer can read the great book of nature and understand its language (cf. Ps 19:2-5), but the Word of revelation, which stimulates faith, is necessary for man to achieve full awareness of the reality of God as Creator and Father. It is in the book of Sacred Scripture that human intelligence can find, in the light of faith, the interpretative key to understand the world. In particular, the first chapter of Genesis holds a special place, with its solemn presentation of the divine creative act that unfolds in seven days: in six days God completes creation and on the seventh day, the Sabbath, he ceases from all activity and rests. A day of freedom for all, a day of communion with God. And so, with this image, the book of Genesis tells us that God's first thought was to find a love responding to His love. 

The second thought is then create a material world in which to place this love, these creatures who answer him in freedom. This structure, therefore, causes the text to be marked by some significant repetitions. Six times, for example, the phrase is repeated: "God saw that it was good" (vv. 4.10.12.18.21.25), and finally, the seventh time, after the creation of man: "God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good" (v. 31). Everything that God creates is good and beautiful, full of wisdom and love, the creative action of God brings order, sets things in harmony, bestows beauty. In the Genesis account then, it emerges that the Lord creates by his word: ten times the texts uses the expression "God said" (vv. 3.6.9.11.14.20.24.26.28.29). It is the word, the Logos of God who is the origin of the reality of the world and by saying, "God said," and it was so, it emphasizes the effective power of the Word of God. As the psalmist sings: "By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, by the breath of his mouth all their host ... because he spoke and all things were created, he commanded, and it was done" (33:6.9). Life arises, the world exists, because everything obeys the divine Word.

But our question today is: in the age of science and technology, does it still make sense to speak of creation? How should we understand the Genesis narratives? The Bible is not intended as a natural science manual; its intention instead is to teach us the authentic and profound truth of things. The fundamental truth that the Genesis stories reveal to us is that the world is not a collection of contrasting forces, but has its origin and its stability in the Logos, in God's eternal Reason, who continues to sustain the universe. There is a plan for the world that arises from this Reason, from the creating Spirit. Believing that such a reality is behind all this, illuminates every aspect of life and gives us the courage to face the adventure of life with confidence and hope. Thus, the Scriptures tell us that the origin of being, of the world, our origin is not irrationality or necessity, but rather reason and love and freedom. Hence the alternative: either priority of the irrational, of necessity, or priority of reason, freedom and love. We believe in this latter position.

But I would like to say a word about that which is the apex of all creation: man and woman, the human being, the only being "capable of knowing and loving his Creator" (Pastoral Constitution. Gaudium et spes, 12). The Psalmist, gazing on the skies, asks: "When I see your heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which you have established, what is man that you remember him, the son of man that you care for him?"(8:4-5). The human being, created by God with love, is a small thing before the immensity of the universe; sometimes, when gazing, fascinated, upon the huge expanses of the sky, we too have perceived our limitedness. The human being is inhabited by this paradox: our smallness and our frailty coexist with the magnitude of what the eternal love of God has willed for us.

The creation stories in Genesis also introduce us to this mysterious area, helping us to know God's plan for man. First of all they affirm that God formed man of the dust of the earth (cf. Gen 2:7). This means that we are not God, we did not make ourselves, we are earth; but it also means that we come from the good soil, by the work of the good Creator. Added to this is another fundamental reality: all human beings are dust, beyond the distinctions made by culture and history, beyond any social difference; we are one humanity moulded with the one soil of God. Then there is a second element: the human being has its origin in God breathing the breath of life into the body moulded from the earth (cf. Gen 2:7). The human being is made in the image and likeness of God (cf. Gen 1:26-27). So we all carry within us God's breath of life and every human life - the Bible tells us - is under God's special protection. This is the most profound reason for the inviolability of human dignity against any attempt to judge the person according to utilitarian and power-based criteria. Being in the image and likeness of God means, then, that man is not closed in on himself, but finds in God his essential point of reference.

In the first chapters of the Book of Genesis we find two significant images: the garden with the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the serpent (cf. 2:15-17; 3,1-5). The garden tells us that the reality in which God has placed the human being is not a wild forest, but a place that He protects, nourishes and sustains; and man must recognize the world not as property to be plundered and exploited, but as a gift of the Creator, a sign of His saving will, a gift to cultivate and care for, to grow and develop with respect, in harmony, following its rhythms and logic, according to the plan of God (cf. Gen 2:8-15). Then, the serpent is a figure derived from oriental fertility cults, which appealed to Israel and were a constant temptation to abandon the mysterious covenant with God. In light of this, the Sacred Scripture presents the temptation that Adam and Eve undergo as the essence of temptation and of sin. What does the serpent say, in fact? He does not deny God, but slips in a subtle question: "Is it true that God has said 'You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?'"(Gen 3:1). In this way, the serpent raises the suspicion that the covenant with God is like a chain that binds him, depriving him of freedom and of the most beautiful and precious things in life. 

The temptation becomes to build their own world in which to live, to not accept the limitations of being a creature, the limits of good and evil, of morality; their dependence on the love of God the Creator is seen as a burden to be shaken off. This is always the essence of temptation. But when it distorts the relationship with God, with a lie, putting oneself in His place, all the other relationships are altered. Then the other becomes a rival, a threat: Adam, having succumbed to the temptation, immediately accuses Eve (cf. Gen 3:12); the two hide from the sight of that God with whom they used to converse in friendship (cf. 3:8-10); the world is no longer a garden to live in in harmony, but a place to be exploited and which conceals pitfalls (cf. 3:14-19); envy and hatred towards each other enter into the heart of man: one example is that of Cain, who kills his brother Abel (cf. 4:3-9). By turning against his Creator, in reality man turns against himself, he denies his origin and therefore his truth; and evil enters into the world, with its painful chain of sorrow and death. And so what God had created was good, in fact, very good; and after this free decision of man for a lie and against the truth, evil enters the world.

In the creation stories, I would like to highlight one last teaching: sin begets sin and all the sins of history are interconnected. This aspect leads us to talk about what we call "original sin." What is the meaning of this reality, so difficult to understand? I would like offer just a few elements. First, we must consider that no man is closed in on himself, no one can live only in and for himself; we receive life from the other and not just at the moment of our birth, but every day. The human being is relation: I am myself only in you and through you, in the relationship of love with the Thou of God and the you of others. Well, sin is to upset or destroy the relationship with God, this is its essence: to destroy the relationship with God, the fundamental relationship, to put oneself in the place of God. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that with the first sin, man "chose himself over and against God, against the requirements of his creaturely status and therefore against his own good" (no. 398). When the fundamental relationship is disturbed, all the other relational poles are compromised or destroyed, sin ruin relationships, and in this way ruins everything, because we are relation. Now, if the relational structure of humanity is troubled from the start, every man walks into a world marked by this disturbance of relationships, he enters a world disturbed by sin, of which he is marked personally; the initial sin attacks and injures human nature (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 404-406). And man alone, one alone cannot get out of this situation, he cannot redeem himself alone; only the Creator Himself can restore the right relationships. Only if He from whom we have strayed comes to us and takes us by the hand with love, can the right relationships be stitched together again. 

This is done in Jesus Christ, who goes in exactly the opposite direction of Adam, as described in the hymn in the second chapter of St. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians (2:5-11): while Adam does not acknowledge his creaturely status and wants to put himself in the place of God, Jesus, the Son of God, is in a perfect filial relationship with the Father, he lowers himself, he becomes the servant, he goes the way of humbling himself to death on the cross, to reorder our relations with God. The Cross of Christ becomes the new Tree of Life.
Dear brothers and sisters, to live by faith is to recognize the greatness of God and accept our smallness, our creaturely condition, letting the Lord fill it with His love and so allowing our true greatness to grow. Evil, with its burden of pain and suffering, is a mystery that is illuminated by the light of faith, which gives us the certainty of being able to be freed: the certainty that it is good to be a human being.

Source: Zenit.com
[Translation by Peter Waymel]




THE CATECHESIS OF THE YEAR OF FAITH

BENEDICT XVI


GENERAL AUDIENCE


Paul VI Audience Hall
Wednesday, 30 January 2013


On God the Almighty Father
"Despite the Crisis of Fatherhood in Many Societies, the Scriptures Show us Clearly what it Means to Call God 'Father'"

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

In last Wednesday's catechesis we focused on the words of the Creed: "I believe in God." But the profession of faith specifies this statement: God is the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth. I should like to reflect with you now on the first, fundamental definition of God that the Creed gives us: He is Father.

It is not always easy today to talk about fatherhood. Especially in the West, the broken families, the increasingly absorbing work commitments, the worries and often the effort to balance the family budget, the distracting invasion of the media into daily life are some of the many factors that can prevent a peaceful and constructive relationship between fathers and their children. Communication becomes difficult at times, trust is weakened and the relationship with the father figure can become problematic; and thus it also becomes difficult to imagine God as a father, not having adequate models of reference. For those who have had the experience of a father who was too authoritarian and inflexible, or indifferent and lacking in affection, or even absent, it is not easy to think calmly of God as Father and surrender to Him with confidence.

But the biblical revelation helps to overcome these difficulties, telling us about a God who shows us what it means to truly be "father", and it is especially the Gospel which reveals the face of God as a Father who loves even to the giving of his own Son for the salvation humanity. The reference to the father figure therefore helps to understand something of the love of God which however remains infinitely greater, more faithful, more total than that of any man. "Is there anyone among you", says Jesus, to show the disciples the Father's face, "who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!"(Mt 7:9-11; cf. Lk 11:11-13). God is our Father because He has blessed and chosen us before the foundation of the world (cf. Eph 1:3-6), he has truly made us his children in Jesus (cf. 1 Jn 3:1). And, as Father, God accompanies our lives with love, giving us His Word, His teachings, His grace, His Spirit.

He - as revealed in Jesus - is the Father who feeds the birds of the sky without them having to sow and reap, and bedecks the flowers of the field in wonderful colors, with clothes more beautiful than those of King Solomon (cf. Mt 6.26-32 and Lk 12:24-28); and we - adds Jesus - are worth far more than flowers and the birds of the sky! And if He is good enough to make "his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and ... send the rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous" (Mt 5:45), we can always, without fear and with total confidence, trust in the forgiveness of Father when we lose our way. God is a good Father who welcomes and embraces the lost and repentant son (cf. Lk 15:11ff), He gives himself freely to those who ask (cf. Mt 18:19, Mk 11:24, Jn 16:23) and offers the bread from heaven and the living water that gives life forever (cf. Jn 6:32.51.58).

Therefore, the one praying in Psalm 27, surrounded by enemies, besieged by evil and slanderers, while he seeks help from the Lord and calls upon Him, can give his testimony full of faith, saying: "My father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me up"(v. 10). God is a Father who never abandons his children, a loving Father who supports, helps, welcomes, forgives, saves, with a fidelity that immensely surpasses that of men, opening onto the dimensions of eternity. "For his steadfast love endures forever," as Psalm 136 continually repeats in every verse, as a litany, retracing the history of salvation. The love of God the Father never fails, He never tires of us; He is love that gives to the extreme, even to the sacrifice of His Son. Faith gives us this certainty, which becomes a secure rock in constructing our lives: we can face all the moments of difficulty and danger, the experience of the darkness of crisis and of times of pain, supported by our faith that God does not leave us alone and is always near, to save us and bring us to eternal life.

It is in the Lord Jesus that the benevolent face of the Father who is in heaven shows itself fully. It is in knowing Him that we can know the Father (cf. Jn 8:19; 14:7); it is by seeing Him that we can see the Father, because He is in the Father and the Father is in Him (cf. Jn 14:9.11). He is the "image of the invisible God" as the hymn of the Letter to the Colossians defines Him, "the firstborn of all creation ... the firstborn from the dead", "through whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins" and reconciliation of all things, "whether in heaven or on earth, having made peace through the blood of his cross" (cf. Col 1:13-20).

Faith in God the Father asks us to believe in the Son, under the action of the Spirit, recognizing in the Cross that saves the final revelation of divine love. God is our Father by giving us his Son; God is our Father by forgiving our sins and bringing us to the joy of the risen life; God is our Father giving us the Spirit that makes us sons and allows us to call Him, in truth, "Abbà, Father "(cf. Rom 8:15). Therefore Jesus, teaching us to pray, invites us to say "our Father" (Mt 6:9-13; cf. Lk 11:2-4).

The fatherhood of God, then, is infinite love, tenderness that stoops over us, weak children, in need of everything. Psalm 103, the great hymn of divine mercy, proclaims: "As a father has compassion for his children, so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him, for he knows how we were made, he remembers that we are dust" (vv. 13-14). It is precisely our littleness, our weak human nature, our fragility that becomes an appeal to the Lord's mercy for Him to manifest His greatness and tenderness as a Father by helping us, forgiving us and saving us.

And God responds to our appeal, sending His Son, who died and rose again for us; He enters our fragility and does that which man alone could never do: He takes upon Himself the sin of the world, as an innocent lamb, and re-opens the way for us to communion with God, He makes us true children of God. It is there, in the Paschal Mystery, where the definitive face of the Father is revealed in all its luminosity. And it is there, on the glorious Cross, where the full manifestation occurs of the greatness of God as "Father Almighty."

But we might ask: how is it possible to imagine an omnipotent God looking at the Cross of Christ? At this power of evil, that goes so far as to kill the Son of God? We would like an omnipotence of God according to our mental schemes and our desires: an "omnipotent" God who solves the problems, who intervenes to save us from every difficulty, who defeats all the harmful powers, changes the course of events and cancels out pain. Thus, today various theologians say that God cannot be omnipotent, otherwise there would not be so much suffering, so much evil in the world. In reality, in the face of evil and suffering, for many, for us, it becomes difficult to believe in God the Father and to believe Him to be almighty; some seek refuge in idols, yielding to the temptation to find an answer in an alleged "magical" omnipotence and its illusory promises.

But faith in the Almighty God takes us through very different paths: to learn to recognize that God's thoughts are different from our thoughts, that God's ways are different from our ways (cf. Is 55:8), and even his omnipotence is different: it is not expressed as an automatic or arbitrary force, but is marked by a loving and fatherly freedom. In reality, God, by creating free creatures, giving them freedom, has renounced a part of his power, empowering our freedom. In this way He loves and respects our free response of love to his call.  Like a Father, God want us to be his children and to live as such in his Son, in communion, in full intimacy with Him. His omnipotence is not expressed in violence, it is not expressed in the destruction of every adverse power as we would like, but is expressed in love, in mercy, in forgiveness, in accepting our freedom and in the untiring call to conversion of heart, in an attitude that is only apparently weak – God seems weak, if we think of Jesus Christ who prays, who lets himself be killed. An apparently weak attitude, consisting of patience, gentleness and love, shows that this is the true way of being powerful! This is the power of God! And this power will win! The wise man of the Book of Wisdom addresses God in this way: "You are merciful to all, for you can do all things; you overlook people's sins, so that they may repent. For you love all things that exist ... You spare all things, for they are yours, O Lord, you who love the living"(11:23-24a.26).

Only one who is truly powerful can endure evil and show compassion; only one who is truly powerful can fully exercise the power of love. And God, to whom all things belong because all things were made by Him, reveals his strength by loving everyone and everything, in a patient waiting for the conversion of us men, whom he wants to have as children. God awaits our conversion.  God's all-powerful love knows no bounds, so much so that "he did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us" (Rom 8:32). The omnipotence of love is not that of the power of the world, but that of total gift, and Jesus, the Son of God, reveals to the world the true omnipotence of the Father, giving his life for us sinners. This is the real, authentic and perfect divine power: to respond to evil with good, to insults with forgiveness, to murderous hatred with the love that gives life. Then evil is really defeated, because washed by the love of God; then death is finally defeated, because transformed into the gift of life. God the Father raises the Son: death, the great enemy (cf. 1  Cor 15:26), is swallowed up and deprived of its poison (cf. 1 Cor 15.54-55), and we, freed from sin, can access our reality of being God's children.

So when we say "I believe in God the Father Almighty," we express our faith in the power of the love of God who in his Son dead and risen defeats hatred, evil, sin and opens us to eternal life, that of children who want to be always in the "Father's House". To say “I believe in God the Father Almighty”, in his power, in his way of being Father, is always an act of faith, of conversion, of transformation of our mind, of all our affection, of our entire way of life.

Dear brothers and sisters, we ask the Lord to sustain our faith, to help us truly discover faith and to give us the strength to proclaim Christ crucified and risen and to bear witness to him in the love of God and neighbor. And God grant that we may receive the gift of our "sonship", to live fully the reality of the Creed, in trusting abandonment to the love of the Father and His merciful omnipotence that saves. Thank you.
[Translation by Peter Waymel]

Source: ZENIT






THE CATECHESIS OF THE YEAR OF FAITH


BENEDICT XVI


GENERAL AUDIENCE


Paul VI Audience Hall
Wednesday, 23 January 2013


On Abraham's Faith

"Saying 'I believe in God' means founding my life on Him"
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
In this Year of Faith, I would like to start today to reflect with you on the Creed, the solemn profession of faith which accompanies our lives as believers. The Creed begins, "I believe in God." It is a fundamental affirmation, deceptively simple in its essentiality, but one that opens onto the infinite world of the relationship with the Lord and with his mystery. Believing in God implies adherence to Him, the welcoming of his Word and joyful obedience to His revelation. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, "Faith is a personal act - the free response of the human person to the initiative of God who reveals himself" (no. 166). Being able to say that one believes in God is therefore both a gift – God reveals himself, he comes to meet us – and a commitment, it is divine grace and human responsibility, in an experience of dialogue with God who, out of love, "speaks to men as friends" (Dei Verbum, 2); he speaks to us so that, in faith and with faith, we may enter into communion with Him.

Where can we listen to his Word? The Holy Scripture is fundamental, in which the Word of God makes itself audible for us and nourishes our life as "friends" of God. The entire Bible recounts the revelation of God to humanity, the whole Bible speaks about faith and teaches us faith by telling a story in which God carries out his plan of redemption and comes close to us men, through many bright figures of people who believe in Him and entrust themselves to Him, up to the fullness of revelation in the Lord Jesus.

A beautiful passage relating to this context is chapter 11 of the Letter to the Hebrews, which we just heard. Here it speaks of faith and highlights the great biblical figures who have lived it, becoming a model for all believers: "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen" (11:1). The eyes of faith are thus able to see the invisible and the heart of the believer can hope beyond all hope, just like Abraham, of whom Paul says in Romans that he "believed, hoping against hope" (4:18).

And it is precisely on Abraham that I would like to focus my attention, because he is the first major reference point for talking about faith in God: Abraham the great patriarch, the exemplary model, the father of all believers (cf. Rom 4:11-12). The Letter to the Hebrews presents him in the following way: "By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God"(11:8-10).

The author of Hebrews refers here to the call of Abraham, narrated in the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. What does God ask of this great patriarch? He asks him to leave his country and go to the country that he will show him, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you" (Gen 12:1). How would we respond to an invitation like that? It is, in fact, a departure in the dark, not knowing where God will lead him; it is a journey that calls for a radical obedience and trust, accessible only through faith. But the darkness of the unknown – where Abraham must go – is illuminated by the light of a promise; God adds to his command a reassuring word that opens up before Abraham a future of life in its fullness: "I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you, and make your name great... and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed" (Gen 12:2-3).

The blessing, in Holy Scripture, is linked primarily to the gift of life that comes from God, and manifests itself primarily in fertility, in a life that is multiplied, passing from generation to generation. And the blessing is linked also to the experience of owning a land, a stable place to live and grow in freedom and security, fearing God and building a society of men loyal to the Covenant, "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (cf. Ex 19:6).

So Abraham, in the divine plan, is destined to become the "father of a multitude of nations" (Gen 17:5; cf. Rom 4:17-18) and to enter into a new land in which to live. Yet Sarah, his wife, is barren, she is unable to have children; and the country to which God leads him is far from his native land, it is already inhabited by other peoples, and will never truly belong to him. The biblical narrator emphasizes this, though very discreetly: when Abraham arrived at the place of God's promise, "at that time the Canaanites were in the land" (Gen 12:6). The land that God gives to Abraham does not belong to him, he is a stranger and will remain so forever, with all that this entails: not aspiring to possess, always feeling his own poverty, seeing everything as a gift. This is also the spiritual condition of those who agree to follow Christ, of those who decide to start off, accepting his call, under the sign of his invisible but powerful blessing. And Abraham, the "father of believers," accepts this call, in faith. St. Paul writes in his Letter to the Romans: "Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become 'the father of many nations,' according to what was said, 'So numerous shall your descendants be.' He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised"(Rom 4:18-21).

Faith leads Abraham to tread a paradoxical path. He will be blessed, but without the visible signs of blessing: he receives the promise to become a great nation, but with a life marked by the barrenness of his wife Sarah; he is brought to a new homeland but he will have to live there as a foreigner, and the only possession of the land that will be granted him will be that of a plot to bury Sarah (cf. Gen 23:1-20). Abraham was blessed because, in faith, he knows how to discern the divine blessing by going beyond appearances, trusting in God's presence even when his ways seem mysterious to him.

What does this mean for us? When we affirm: "I believe in God," we say, like Abraham: "I trust You; I entrust myself to You, Lord," but not as Someone to run to only in times of difficulty or to whom to dedicate a few moments of the day or of the week. Saying "I believe in God" means founding my life on Him, letting his Word orient me each day, in the concrete choices, without fear of losing something of myself. When, in the Rite of Baptism, we are asked three times: "Do you believe?" in God, in Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church and the other truths of faith, the triple response is in the singular: "I believe," because it is my personal existence that must go through a turning point with the gift of faith, it is my life that must change, convert.  Each time we attend a Baptism we should ask ourselves how we are living out the great gift of faith each day.

Abraham, the believer, teaches us faith; and, as a stranger on earth, shows us our true homeland. Faith makes us pilgrims on earth, placed within the world and its history, but on the way to the heavenly homeland. Believing in God therefore makes us bearers of values that often do not coincide with what's fashionable or the opinions of the times, it asks us to adopt criteria and engage in conduct which do not belong to the common way of thinking. The Christian should not be afraid to go "against the grain" in order to live his faith, resisting the temptation to "conform". In many societies God has become the "great absentee" and in his place there are many idols, first of all the autonomous '"I". The significant and positive advances in science and technology also have caused in man an illusion of omnipotence and self-sufficiency, and a growing self-centeredness has created many imbalances in interpersonal relationships and social behaviors.

However, the thirst for God (cf. Ps 63:2) has not vanished and the Gospel message continues to resonate through the words and deeds of many men and women of faith. Abraham, the father of believers, continues to be the father of many children who are willing to walk in his footsteps and set out on the way, in obedience to the divine call, trusting in the benevolent presence of the Lord and welcoming his blessing to become a blessing for all. It is the blessed world of faith to which we are all called, to walk without fear following the Lord Jesus Christ. And it is sometimes a difficult journey, that knows even trial and death, but that opens onto life, in a radical transformation of reality that only the eyes of faith can see and savor in abundance.

To say "I believe in God" leads us, then, to set off, to go out of ourselves continually, just like Abraham, to bring into the daily reality in which we live the certainty that comes to us from faith: the certainty, that is, of the presence of God in history, even today; a presence that brings life and salvation, and opens us to a future with Him for a fullness of life that will never diminish. Thank you.

 Source: Zenit
 




CATECHESIS OF THE YEAR OF FAITH

BENEDICT XVI

GENERAL AUDIENCE

Paul VI Audience Hall
Wednesday, 9 January 2013



He became a man

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

In this Christmas season let us reflect once again on the great mystery of God who came down from heaven to enter our flesh. In Jesus God was incarnate, he became a man like us and in this way opened for us the road to his heavenly Kingdom, to full communion with him.


In these days the term the “Incarnation” of God has rung out several times in our churches, expressing the reality we celebrate at Holy Christmas: the Son of God was made man, as we say in the Creed. But what does this word, so central to the Christian faith, mean? Incarnation derives from the Latin incarnatio. St Ignatius of Antioch — at the end of the first century — and, especially, St Irenaeus used this term in reflecting on the Prologue to the Gospel according to St John, in particular in the sentence “the Word became flesh” (Jn 1:14). Here the word “flesh”, according to the Hebrew usage, indicates man in his whole self, the whole man, but in particular in the dimension of his transience and his temporality, his poverty and his contingency. This was in order to tell us that the salvation brought by God, who became man in Jesus of Nazareth, affects man in his material reality and in whatever situation he may be. God assumed the human condition to heal it from all that separates it from him, to enable us to call him, in his Only-Begotten Son, by the name of “Abba, Father”, and truly to be children of God. 


St Irenaeus stated: “For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God” (Adversus Haereses, 3, 19, 1: PG 7,939; cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 460).


“The Word was made flesh” is one of those truths to which we have grown so accustomed that the greatness of the event it expresses barely makes an impression on us. Effectively, in this Christmastide in which these words often recur in the Liturgy, we at times pay more attention to the external aspects, to the “colours” of the celebration rather than to the heart of the great Christian newness that we are celebrating: something that utterly defeats the imagination, that God alone could bring about and into which we can only enter with faith.

The Logos, who is with God, is the Logos who is God, the Creator of the world (cf. Jn 1:1) through whom all things were created (cf. 1:3) and who has accompanied men and women through history with his light (cf. 1:4-5; 1:9), became one among many and made his dwelling among us, becoming one of us (cf. 2:14).


The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council said: “The Son of God... worked with human hands, he thought with a human mind. He acted with a human will, and with a human heart he loved. Born of the Virgin Mary, he has truly been made one of us, like to us in all things except sin” (Constitution Gaudium et Spes, n. 22). Thus it is important to recover our wonder at the mystery, to let ourselves be enveloped by the grandeur of this event: God, the true God, Creator of all, walked our roads as a man, entering human time to communicate his own life to us (cf. 1 Jn 1:1-4). And he did not do so with the splendour of a sovereign who dominates the world with his power, but with the humility of a child.


I would like to stress a second element. At holy Christmas we generally exchange a few gifts with the people closest to us. At times this may be a conventional gesture, but it usually expresses affection; it is a sign of love and esteem. In the Prayer over the Offerings at the Vigil Mass of the Solemnity of Christmas the Church prays: “may the oblation of this day’s feast be pleasing to you, O Lord, we pray, that through this most holy exchange we may be found in the likeness of Christ in whom our nature is united to you. Who lives and reigns for ever”. 


The idea of giving is therefore at the heart of the liturgy and makes us aware of the original gift of Christmas: on that Holy Night, in taking flesh God wanted to make a gift of himself to men and women, he gave himself for us; God made his Only Son a gift for us, he took on our humanity to give his divinity to us. This is the great gift. In our giving too it does not matter whether or not a gift is expensive; those who cannot manage to give a little of themselves always give too little. Indeed, at times we even seek to substitute money or material things for our hearts and the commitment to giving ourselves.


The mystery of the Incarnation shows that God did not do this: he did not give some thing but he gave himself in his Only-Begotten Son. We find here our model for the giving so that our relationships, especially those that are most important, may be guided by giving love freely. 


I would like to offer a third thought: the event of the Incarnation, of God who became man, like us, shows us the daring realism of divine love. God’s action, in fact was not limited to words. On the contrary we might say that he was not content with speaking, but entered into our history, taking upon himself the effort and burden of human life. The Son of God truly became a man. He was born of the Virgin Mary in a specific time and place, in Bethlehem during the reign of the Emperor Augustus, under the Governor Quirinius (cf. Lk 2:1-2); he grew up in a family, he had friends, he formed a group of disciples, he instructed the Apostles to continue his mission and ended the course of his earthly life on the Cross. The way God acted gives us a strong incentive to question ourselves on the reality of our faith, which must not be limited to the sphere of sentiment, of the emotions; rather, it must enter into the practicality of our existence, that is, it must touch our everyday life and give it practical guidance. God did not stop at words, but showed us how to live, sharing in our own experience, except for sin. 


The Catechism of St Pius X, which some of us studied as children answers with simple brevity the question “What must we do to live according to the will of God?”: “to live according to the will of God, we must believe the truths that he has revealed and obey his commandments with the help of his grace, which is obtained through the sacraments and through prayer”. Faith has a fundamental aspect that does not only involve our mind and heart but also our whole life.


I suggest one last element for you to think about. St John says that the Word, the Logos, was with God in the beginning and that everything was done through the Word and nothing that exists was done without him (cf. Jn 1:1-13). The Evangelist is clearly alluding to the Creation narrative in the first chapters of the Book of Genesis, and reinterprets it in the light of Christ. This is a fundamental criterion in the Christian interpretation of the Bible: The Old and New Testaments should always be read together and, starting with the New, the deepest meaning of the Old Testament is also revealed. That same Word, who has always existed with God, who is God himself and through whom and for whom all things were created (cf. Col 1:16-17), became man: the eternal and infinite God immersed himself in human finiteness, in his creature, to bring back man and the whole of creation to himself.


The Catechism of the Catholic Church says: “the first creation finds its meaning and its summit in the new creation in Christ, the splendour of which surpasses that of the first creation” (n. 349). The Fathers of the Church compared Jesus to Adam, even to the point of calling him “the second Adam”, or the definitive Adam, the perfect image of God. With the Incarnation of the Son of God a new creation was brought about that gave the complete answer to the question “who is man?”. God’s plan for the human being was fully manifest in Jesus alone. He is the definitive man according to God’s will.


The Second Vatican Council reasserted this forcefully: “In reality it is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of man truly becomes clear.... Christ the new Adam... fully reveals man to himself and brings to light his most high calling”. (Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, n. 22; cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 359). In that Child, the Son of God contemplated at Christmas, we can recognize the true face not only of God but also of the human being; and only by opening ourselves to his grace and seeking to follow him every day do we fulfil God’s plan for us, for each one of us.

Dear friends, in this period let us meditate on the great and marvellous richness of the Mystery of the Incarnation, to permit the Lord to illuminate us and to change us, more and more, into an image of his Son made man for us.

No comments:

Post a Comment