Lumen Fidei

The Year of Faith, which Pope Benedict proclaimed last year on the Feast of St. Peter and Paul, is coming to a close on this Sunday with the Feast of Christ the King. So when Joseph Pierce rescheduled, and I had to redo the schedule, I actually thought, oh, duh, what I should be doing is I should be ending the Year of Faith with the Pope's great and typical on faith that came out this year, Lumen Fide, which I don't know how many of you have actually read, but it is absolutely wonderful. So if you're looking for something to read this week or close out your Year of Faith, there's the way to do it.

And it's, you can, and one thing I don't know if you're aware that you can actually access all papal documents online for free. So if you don't have a copy of it, there's no excuse, you can still get it, you can still read it. Now, the amazing thing about the Year of Faith that is proclaimed by Pope Benedict, and in that time we already have a new Pope, and it's sort of fitting with the encyclical, because the fact of the encyclical, when you look at, okay, who wrote the encyclical, is that sort of, you got one Pope, and then you have the other one coming in and finishing. And that's some, so most of the encyclical is written by Pope Benedict, and when you read it and you look at the language and how it's written, it's almost entirely Pope Benedict.

It just screams his name the entire thing. But Francis did come in and I'm just, had a little bit here and there, but he even acknowledges that in the introduction. He talks about, well, when he came in, Pope Benedict had already almost entirely finished this, and he just added the finishing touches. And so, what great thing, as the Pope, that where else in life you get to come in and take one piece of work by probably, probably the single greatest Catholic mind of the entire 20th century, and take his work and get to publish it as your own, and it to be entirely kosher.

Like, that's great. So, anyway, so Pope Francis promulgated it, but was written almost entirely by Pope Benedict. Now, anyways, just a couple words about the general structure, and then we'll just go through and hit some of the major highlights, and it actually turns out this fits in really well the whole encyclical with the last two weeks, especially of everything we had been talking about with the age of reason and last week of modernity, because a lot of, the question and answer of last week was, well, if Catholic culture has fallen apart, like where is the great answer? And the answer is found exactly in the encyclical, and Pope Benedict even talks about many of the exact same themes that we covered in the last few weeks.

So, it's gonna really fit in well. But about the structure that is really divided up in sort of five main parts, you have first the introduction, which we're going to linger on more longer than the other individual parts, because it's sort of jam-packed. But then you have, after that, you have sort of four chapters, and the first chapter that we'll talk about is gonna be the first part where he's gonna talk about faith, basically the story of faith, and we'll get back to what's meant by that. And then he'll expand a little bit more broadly in the second chapter and talk about sort of faith and truth, like the correlation between faith and reason.

And then the third chapter he talks about, well, what's the role of faith in the life of the church? And then he expands even further out, and says, well, what's the role of faith? What does it bring to all society? So, it's like, what's the public faith of faith?

And what good is it not just for the church buzz that do for all of society, which really ties in especially with our talk that we had last week. Now, so like I said, we'll start with the introduction. And the introduction is also sort of divided up into these sort of basically three main paragraphs. And in those three main paragraphs, it's sort of like an overture to a symphony, that an overture, if you're familiar with music, not only is it the beginning of a symphony, but it also contains all the major themes that are going to follow in the symphony.

And so, in these three paragraphs, the first three, he develops one of the major themes he's going to talk about throughout the entire encyclical. But he also, like I said, he lays out those themes. And those themes are, and we'll keep coming back to this time again, are gonna be, well, the first one is out of light, and the idea of sort of the play of light and darkness, but the idea of time and the role of faith throughout time, and one of the ideas that he's gonna keep coming back to, is the idea of faith being memory of the future, which is a really profound idea that we'll get to in a few minutes, but then also the idea of faith being a journey. So, you have the light and the darkness, you have the role of time, but also faith being a journey.

And sort of the idea of like the sacred, like life being the sacred pilgrimage. And that is a very important idea in the life of Benedict, in which you can even see on the handout I gave you, which I put his coat of arms, that one of the symbols on his coat of arms, he always put was the shell. And that was because the shell was an ancient sign of pilgrimage, and that's why I actually in baptisms oftentimes, they're done with a shell, or here at St. Mary's they have like a little gold shell, because it's the idea that you're entering into the pilgrimage when entering into the faith.

So, those are sort of the three main themes. And the amazing thing also about these three first paragraphs is that in three paragraphs, he basically tells the entire history of human existence in a very profound and succinct manner. So, the first one in particular, where he starts off at the very first words, and he says the light of faith, which is what the title of the whole encyclical is Lumen Fide, the light of faith. And he says how the church tradition often uses this language referring to faith, yet he have light, to speak about this great gift that God has given us called the faith.

And that's when you think of the Gospel of John, like Christ being the light, to come and just raise into the darkness, or when John says that I have come as light of Christ himself in the Gospel of John. He says, I have come as light into the world that never believes in me, may not remain in darkness. And so, in what he's developing this history of the world, he starts off by talking about the pagans before the time of Christ and all that, that they knew that they were in darkness, and they had this great desire for the light. And one of the great ways you can see this, that this isn't something he talks about, but if you ever have read Saint Bead, the venerable, his ecclesiastical history of the English people, where he talks about how the English became Christians, that he tells this magnificent story about how you had these Christian missionaries that came to pagan England.

And the Christian missionaries were trying to convince the English kings, because they weren't united, they had these individual little kings, that to let them preach the Gospel in their lands. And in particular, they're into the land of a king named Edmund. And Edmund wasn't sure whether he should allow these Christian missionaries to preach the Gospel or not, so he decided to have a meeting of all of his advisors. And in the meeting, one of his head advisor, a guy named Koife, he said, you know what?

He told this story, he said, life, it's kind of like, and you may have heard this before, it's like a sparrow that flies in out of the darkness into a meat hall. So you have this big hall, and it comes out of the darkness, and it comes into this hall and is well lit, but he keeps flying and is well lit for a while, you can see what's going on, but then he goes out the other side, and he's back in the darkness. He said that that is the analogy of life. He says, we don't know where we came from, we don't know where we're going, we just know life is short, and we have no answer other than that.

And he said, and so if these men have an answer to what is in the darkness, if they have that light, then maybe we should listen to him. And so that's when King Edmund said, all right, and he allowed St. Augustine of Canterbury to come and preach the Gospel, and the English first converted Christianity. But the analogy that Benedict uses here is he says, like even if you look at all the pagan cultures, worshiping the sun, that it's not an accident that they're worshiping the sun, because they know that they have this need for light.

But how worshiping the sun is ultimately very unsatisfying, because it's incapable of casting light and do all the answers of human existence. It can't tell what's on either side of the doors in the meat hall, or the quote he has in here, and he says it from St. Justin Martyr, when he says that no one has ever been ready to die for his faith in the sun. So that you can see how inadequate that faith in the sun is, but there was that spilled its desire.

And then he talks about how then came to these people the true sun and the true light, which was Christ himself. And he says that those who believe see, they see with the light that illumines their entire journey for it comes from the risen Christ, the morning star which never sets. So he's saying that Christ alone is the light that provides that answer of where they came from and where they're going. So that's the first paragraph where he establishes the first part of history.

And then he talks about the next section where he entitles an illusionary light question mark where he talks and says how well, people after a while though, they got kind of bored of having the light. They sort of started to take for granted. And one of the great things you can always tell when you're reading something written by Pope Benedict is the fact that he has quotes from everywhere. That Pope Benedict, well, you might have a quote from a German philosopher, you might have a quote from some rabbi, you might have a quote from an early church father, the whole spectrum, he takes from it.

So only an encyclical written by Benedict would you have a quote from Nietzsche in the second paragraph where he talks about how young Nietzsche riding to his sister started to talk about how this light is just an illusionary light, it's not a real light. And how he said to his sister that she should take risks to tread new paths with all the uncertainty of one who must find his own way, adding that this is where humanity's paths part. If you want peace of soul and happiness, then believe. But if you want to be a follower of truth, then seek.

That there's this fundamental misunderstanding that came about at this time. It's something we got into last week when we started to talk about the journey. It's the idea that the destination is not, and the truth is not what matters, it's the journey. And if you've ever, I mean, that's a very common phrase even nowadays, well, it's all about the journey, man.

That no, it's like, and people always, I guess I remember when I was entering the Catholic Church and I went through RCIA at a parish that was not like St. Mary's. And I remember coming to RCIA. And the first meeting, what we did, we talked about the color of faith, whatever that means.

And then the second meeting, we'd ever once told their faith journeys, which is this idea. It's all about the journey, not the destination. And I was more, I guess, even more brazen back then than I am now. And I ended up asking the teacher, well, how can we tell our faith journeys?

The faith comes at baptism and no one's been baptized here yet. But we did it anyway. But it's this idea that somehow that he thinks that truth and belief don't go together, Nietzsche, which is a complete misunderstanding of what belief is, as well as what truth is. So he doesn't think that belief is compatible with seeking.

And the words that Benedict uses to describe this is the idea that they think that having the light that shines on the path that it strips life of all of its novelty and adventure. It's more fun to stumble around in the darkness, that they do actually have the light that shows where you're going. That's sort of the idea that the modern world has adopted. And so he goes on and says, not only was there this rejection of the light, but they actually started to turn the light on upside down so that the light of a faith actually became to be associated with darkness, not with light.

So you get to the almost the other opposite of extreme. That light, and this is in his third paragraph. He says, in the process, faith came to be associated with darkness. That faith, and I will end up quoting him a fair amount, says that faith was thus understood either as a leap in the dark to be taken in the absence of light, driven by blind emotion, or as subjective light capable of perhaps a warming heart and bringing a personal consolation, but not something which could be proposed to others as an objective shared light which points the way.

And this is something we talked about last week, when you take away the idea of truth, then all the faith comes as sentiment. And so that's what all he's saying is that people think, all right, well, faith is good if it makes you feel good, but there's nothing objective about it. It's not rooted in truth. And this is something we'll come back to with one of his chapters being on that idea of faith being rooted in truth.

And not having that true light telling the way, then the idea he says is that people, well, you can't stumble around in complete darkness. So are you're going to keep hitting your knees a little too much. And so people start looking for other lights. And this is something that we got into last week when we're talking about history and how, when you don't understand the meaning of history, the true meaning, which is Christ himself, then people start looking for other meanings.

But those meanings are never satisfying. And the language he uses last week was that ultimately, he says that the future remains shadowy and fraught with fear of the unknown. As a result, humanity renounced the search for a great light, truth itself, in order to be content with smaller lights which illumine the fleeting moment, yet prove incapable of showing the way. Yet in the absence of light, everything becomes confused.

It is impossible to tell good from evil or the road to our destination from other roads which take us in endless circles going nowhere. So that's such a powerful image that you're in this, yet another place later on uses the language of a labyrinth. But here is the endless circle. So without the true light, you don't know where you're going and you're going to end up in the maze going nowhere in circle after circle, which is sort of like this image of despair.

It's like if you've ever watched the old Twilight Zone TV show. There's a great episode where you have these four characters in search of an exit. Where you have these four characters, you have this ballet dancer and this clown and an army major and a hobo. And they're in this perfectly circular room.

And they can see the top out, but there's no hope of going anywhere. It's just perfectly circular and they're just stuck in their fraternity. And they come to this ultimate conclusion that they are in hell is what they decide. And that's sort of the image I think of there, the endless circles.

Well, that truly is the image of hell. So when man has renounced the light, that's what he's left with. However, then he starts to say, well, what needs to be recovered is that light. And we're not going to get into a ton of detail, because the whole recipe in cyclical is just on that, meaning what is that light?

What is faith? And that's the last part of the introduction, which we'll get to as we go along. Now, so the first chapter is on sort of what I call the story of faith. And this is one of the key images.

And this is something I tried to get into a little bit last week. But it's that idea that faith first and foremost is a story. And this is something I tied in a little bit when I was talking about history, being a story, and religion at its heart, all of them together, that they are a story. And that's actually faith and religion are so intertwined together.

Because the whole idea of them is it's just the greatest story ever told. And one place you can really see that is in the word religion, for instance, that comes from the Latin religio, which literally means to yoke together, like to oxen, that have the big wooden yoke that's put in between them. That's what the word religion means. And so the idea is that what religion is, is it's the story of God coming to man, throwing his yoke around man, and attaching man to himself, and bringing man back to himself.

And so that is what the faith is. Is that faith is that story. And actually, in sort of there's two aspects through the word faith. And this is why the thing can be a little bit confusing when you're reading about things that talk about faith, is that there's really sort of two aspects.

That faith is both a story of God coming to man, and that divine proposal of God revealing himself to man, and asking man to come with him. But it's also, faith is also used to refer to man's response to that proposal. So oftentimes, when we talk about the faith, or the object of faith, we'll refer to the story of God's proposal. And oftentimes, when we talk about faith, like I have faith, or the virtue of faith, sometimes called the act of faith, is referring to man's response.

And the amazing thing, and it's another thing that we'll keep coming back to you, is that both are equally, ultimately come from God. He has to both give us the object of faith, but the act of faith to begin with. So anyway, so he makes the point that because faith is a story, the best way to understand it is to go through the story. It's to go through salvation history, if you want to understand what faith truly is.

So he starts off by talking about Abraham, our father, and faith. And the beautiful first words, when he says, how faith opens the way before us, and accompanies our steps through time. Hence, if we want to understand what faith is, we need to follow the route that is taken, the path trodden by believers, as witnessed first in the Old Testament. So, like I said, faith is a story, if you understand it, you've got to follow the believers.

So he starts with Abraham. And I love how he starts, he says, Abraham, our father, he says, they're here, a unique place belongs to Abraham, our father, and faith. Something disturbing takes place in his life. So that's the first thing he says.

Something disturbing takes place in his life. And what's that disturbing thing? And that is that God himself came and talked to him. And not only did God come and talk to him, but God said, Abraham, I want you to follow me and go to a place that I will show you.

So the amazing thing is that when God talked to Abraham, he didn't say, hey, go to this place over here on this map, here's some pictures. He said, no, go to the place that I will show you. You can imagine that truly would be disturbing. Now, and one of the amazing things that, some themes you see in this aspect of out faith, that you could learn about it from the story of Abraham, is that one, that faith is both linked to hearing, and this is something he comes back to multiple times.

But also the idea that faith has a very personal aspect, that there's something very different about God from every other God, when you think of the pagan gods. And then all the pagan gods were what were always called Newman Locale, like Gods of Place. As of what makes distinguishes Hebrew Christian God from every other God is that he's a Newman person, a Newman person, not a lot of person, a God of relationship. So faith is ultimately an encounter with that person.

Or in the last line here about the first paragraph in Abraham, he says that faith, ultimately, it's our response to a word which engages us personally to a vow who calls us by name. So that's a big difference even between this is something to come back to, between the idea of belief and faith. That belief is an intellectual assent to premises. Faith is a complete trusting in a person.

It's a belief in a person, not a belief of a person. But anyway, and one of the major themes that you see in this God's relationship with Abraham, too, is this idea that faith contains both a call of something of basically happening in the past. So it has a past element. But then it also has a promise, an idea of the future.

So it actually has past, present, and future all involved. So you have the idea that so it's linked to this link in time. So not only does faith a journey, but it's this link that goes across time as well. And like I said, the words he uses is that he says how Abraham's faith ultimately is an act of remembrance.

Abraham remembering the promise that God made of something that will happen in the future. He says that this remembrance is not fixed on past events, but as the memory of a promise, it becomes capable of opening up the future, shedding light on the path to be taken. We see how faith as remembrance of the future. He calls memoraria futuri is thus closely bound up with hope.

So this is why all the virtues are so closely connected, and that's how it's connected with hope. Now, hold on a second. That was a good question. Hey, guys, questions at any time?

He'll use it a couple of times later on. Yeah, he's a couple of times. But it's the whole same mind. Because it's the song.

Well, the covenants are the method of the story. And faith is the story. Good point. And so anyway, and one of the things that he talks about too that you see in this relationship with Abraham is just even the language they use, that in the Bible faith is expressed, he talks about a couple of different words.

He says in Hebrew word, and I've never studied Hebrew, so I'm sure I will butcher it. Emuna derived from the word Ammon, whose root means to uphold, and that this word, they use Emuna, that it can mean two things, kind of like our way, our faith can mean two things, and that it can mean both God's fidelity as well as man's faith in that fidelity. So this is like when I said, when faith has those two aspects, it has that story of God's fidelity to us, of God's love to us. And then it also has the same time, can refer to man's role as well.

Man's act of trust in God's fidelity. So is both man and God that are ultimately are faithful. Now, the other main aspect about Abraham before moving on, that he points out, is how God ties his promise to Abraham. Sorry, he ties it to that aspect of human life, which always has appeared most full of promise, namely parenthood, the beginning of new life.

That this is an important aspect as well. That part of that story was this idea of the parenthood and the beginning of new life. And this is so important because doing so, faith is thus linked to God's fatherhood, which gives rise to all creation. The God who calls Abraham is the creator, the one who calls into existence, the things that do not exist.

So this shows a huge part of the story of God is the idea that God is the God of life, the God of existence. That if you think about, as an interesting sort of side note, that if you want the definition of God, is that God is existence itself. And this is, I mean, one of the things you can see this, I mean, this is a continual theme throughout scripture, that you can even see, if you want, like, as I said, if you understanding God, you have those two aspects, the God of existence, and the God of relationship, what you see, especially in this part here with Abraham. But you see it also even later on with Moses.

This isn't something Benedict talks about. But the whole concept of when Moses was talking to God in the burning bush, that when God reveals himself to Moses, he reveals himself in those two ways, is the God of existence and the God of relationship. When he says, when Moses asks him, well, who should I say, sent me? He says, well, say, he said, I am.

So that is the name that he gives, which is basically the to-be verb. Which you see this especially if you're doing, like, a foreign language like Latin, that Latin, when you would, the word the personal to-be verb, would be, you could translate, zoom, is either, I am, like, I am, I don't know, I am tall, short, I am fat. No, or you could say, but you could also translate it just to mean, like, I exist, or like, I am alive. So by saying so, I am, he's saying that he is existence itself.

He is the only being that exists as part of his nature, meaning that God alone has to exist at all times and places. That existence is actually part of his essence. But at the same time, right after God says to Moses, I am, he goes on to say that I am the God of your fathers of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Meaning I am a God of relationship.

I am that new man person, Ale. And that's why actually even the Hebrew word that, when they refer to God, the idea of Jehovah literally translates as, my God who is. So it has those two parts. It's not just God who is, it's my God who is.

The idea of God is relationship as well as existence. Now, following that story, Benedict goes past just Abraham, and he next moves on to the faith of Israel. And one of the main themes that he refers to in the story of Israel is this idea that faith is a gift, first and foremost. And he comes back to the idea that it is also, and he's going to keep hammering his own, that it is a story.

And he says, here in the history of history of Israel, here we see the light of faith is linked to concrete life stories to the grateful remembrance of God's mighty deeds and the progressive fulfillment of his promises. Or promises, sorry. So it's that idea. It's the life stories and the remembrance of God's deeds and the fulfillment of his promises, the remembrance of the future.

And this is actually particularly important when Advent starting, that this is the whole concept of Advent, that what is it that you prepare for an Advent? We prepare for a past event as well as a future event. But we have the remembrance of the future, the remembrance of when Christ came in time, and the promise that he will come again. That it's the same idea.

But then after, obviously we're talking about the history of Israel, that Israel obviously did not show great faith most of the time. So he goes on to say, well, what is the opposite of faith? Which is oftentimes what you can learn more from Israel than what faith actually is. And so he says, how faith ultimately, I mean, the opposite of faith is shown to be idolatry.

And now, the reason is that faith, by its very nature, demands renouncing the immediate possession which site would appear to offer, it is an invitation to turn to the source of the light while respecting the mystery of accountants, which will unveil itself personally, in its own time. So he's saying how ultimately, like the faith, it does take a little bit of trust. And so there's a demand that's placed upon one. And so oftentimes, it's easier not to do it.

So what do they turn towards? It turns towards idolatry, which ultimately is as defined as the work of our own hands. That he says, before an idol, there is no risk. So faith makes a demand.

But an idol does not. Before an idol, there is no risk. That we will be called to abandon our security. For idols have mouths, but they cannot speak.

Idols exist. We begin to see as a pretext for setting ourselves as the center of reality and worshiping the work of our hands. So this idea, well, that there's no risk in worshiping the work of your own hands. But there is an idea, like the faith, it is scary.

It is God is dangerous. It's this idea that it is a grand adventure to go out on the journey without it to be easier to turn off the light and sort of to stay in the corner and not to go out on that adventure. But he said, but ultimately, once man has lost the fundamental orientation which unifies his existence, he breaks down into a multiplicity of his desires and refusing to await for the time of promise, his life story disintegrates into a myriad of unconnected events or incidents, which is what we've got to do last year with history without knowing the whole purpose of the story is, there's nothing to connect to all the instances. Idolatry then is always a polytheism and aimless passing from one lord to another.

Idolatry does not offer a journey, but rather a plethora of paths leading nowhere and forming a vast labyrinth. Now then he says, but faith tied as it is to conversion is the opposite of idolatry. It breaks with the idols to turn to the living God in a personal encounter. And he says, how faith consists in the willingness to let ourselves be constantly transformed and renewed by God's call.

And then he goes on to say that faith, so it's that ultimately one, he's going to say what faith is, it's an encounter with Jesus Christ and this is something you'll keep coming back to. But then the next paragraph, it's very interesting that one of the things you can really see from the nation of Israel is the idea though that faith is a personal encounter, but it's also communal. That it was not just all the individual Israelites in God, it was Israel and God. And likewise, the church, the new Israel, it's not just all of us individually and God, even though that is an aspect of the faith, but faith is communal, which is another important aspect.

Now, so after that, he goes on to talk about, well, what, so following the story, he moves on to Christ and he says, so what Abraham, what ultimately that promise he was waiting for, the promise he is waiting for, that it all was ultimately fulfilled in Jesus Christ. And so this is the idea of that if faith is a story, Christ is the climax of the story. And this is why, especially nowadays, we still have that aspect of faith as being a remembrance of something of the past, because the highlight of the story happened in the past. It was an actual historical event of Christ dying 2000 years ago, but it also has a promise of the future when the story will come to its end.

But the highlight was the point of the faith, it was fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. Now, so he says, how Christian faith is centered on Christ, is the confession, so ultimately, if you want to summarize what the faith is, it's the confession that Jesus Christ was Lord, and that God has raised him from the dead. So that's ultimately actually the shortest profession of the faith, which was popular in early church, was simply Jesus Christ was Lord. That ultimately sums up the entire Christian faith.

Now, and so he says, so what is the culmination? He goes on to say it was the crucifixion. That was the culmination of all of history, which ultimately is closely tied together with the resurrection, that you cannot have the crucifixion without the resurrection, it's meaningless, that without the destroying of death and the rising of life. And yeah.

And one of the things he goes on to talking about Christ, that the amazing thing about Christ too, is that the fullness which Jesus brings is not just these events, but it actually goes back to that idea of relationship. And how in faith, Christ is not simply the one in whom we believe, but is the supreme manifestation of God's love, he's also the one with whom we are united, precisely in order to believe. So that it's the amazing thing, that not only do we believe in Christ, but we are actually united with Christ. Like the whole story is Christ coming to us to bring us back to himself, to be united with him.

That is like the Christ is the beginning of the story, the highlight of the story, and the end of the story. And that idea of, that I talked to you about before, our faith being more than intellectual belief, but is that relationship, as you see particularly when Saint John, he brings out the importance of a personal relationship with Jesus for our faith, by using various forms of the word to believe. And he says, in addition to believing that, what Jesus tells us is true, John also speaks of believing Jesus and believing in Jesus. We believe Jesus when we accept his word, his testimony, because he's truthful.

We believe in Jesus when we personally welcome him into our lives and journey towards him, clinging to him in love, and following in the footsteps along the way. So this idea of faith being more than just intellectual belief, but it is rather that he talked about before, an encounter, it is the saying yes to the vow that calls us by name, it is a complete trusting in God, and trusting in Christ. So he says that, so what's the result of all of this, basically, he says that far from divorcing us from reality, our faith in the Son of God made man in Jesus of Nazareth, enables us to grasp reality's deepest meaning, and to see how much God loves his world, and is constantly guiding it to himself. This leads all Christians who live our lives in this world, with ever-greatment commitment, ever-greater commitment and intensity.

So he's saying that this relationship with Christ, it brings with it such great gifts. Now, so I don't have my fridge up in the time, I need to speed up a little bit. So anyway, in the next section, we talked about salvation by faith, one of the main things that he talks about there is the idea that faith is ultimately a gift from God, that the story of God coming to man is a gift from God, but equally, you're being able to say yes to that story, ultimately, is also a gift from God. And so when he talks about how the beginning of faith is openness to something prior to ourselves, to a primordial gift that affirms life and sustains our being.

By grace, you have been saved through faith, and this is not of your own doing, it is a gift of God as it says in Ephesians 2A. And this is the point he keeps coming back there too, that is entirely the work of God and the gift of God, speeding up a little bit, skipping some things. But anyway, the next section, he talks about, well, the church on his role in the faith. And he talks about how that the faith is ultimately says it is ecclesial.

So he talked about it as a communal, but it's ecclesial. That if you think about it, that he says that Christ is the mirror in which they find their own image fully realized. If you think about the church, what is the church? The body of Christ, and the faith is Christ.

So there's this idea that the church is part of faith as well. Faith is ecclesial, meaning the church. That's why he says that, so if you want to truly know the faith, the only place to know it fully is in the church. And so he said why he says that this explains why, apart from this body, outside this unity of the church in Christ, outside the church, which in the words of Romano Guardini, is the bearer within history of the plenary gaze of Christ on the world.

Faith loses its measure. It no longer finds its equilibrium. The space needed to sustain itself. Faith is necessarily ecclesial.

It is professed, professed, from within the body of Christ as concrete communion of believers. So this is an idea that sort of what is the result of faith in the church is that faith becomes a prophet, that faith becomes a prophet. God gives us the faith, and what do we do with it? We make a profession of faith, which is what the creed is.

It is our professing that story that God has given us. It's why Saint Paul says that one believes with the heart and confesses with the lips. As being ecclesial, faith becomes creed. Now, the next chapter is particularly on that idea of faith and truth.

That faith has to be rooted in the truth, that faith is not subjective. And he's going to talk a fair amount about relativism in this. And so he talks to, like I said, he says, how faith needs to be rooted in the truth. He says, faith without truth does not save, is does not provide assured footing.

It remains a beautiful story. The projection of our deep yearnings for happiness, something capable of satisfying us to the extent that we are willing to deceive ourselves. Either that or is reduced to a lofty sentiment, which brings consolation and cheer. Yet remains prayed to the vagaries of our spirit in the changing seasons.

So he's saying that faith is not rooted in the truth. It becomes something God had to do last week. He just becomes pure sentiment. And so there's this intrinsic link of truth and faith that are needed.

And so he basically goes on to say how in contemporary culture, we tend to only consider the only real truth to be that of technology. Truth is what we succeed in building and measuring by our scientific know-how. Truth is what works and what makes life easier and more comfortable. And how nowadays, this appears to be the only source of truth that we can take for certain.

The only truth that can be shared, the only truth that can serve as the basis for discussion or common undertakings is so this goes by a factor of the idea that last few weeks. We only say what's true is what can be proven through science and technology. He says, but, and this is a dichotomy we got into the last two weeks is the idea of that only note can only know truth through science. But then there's this idea, well, you can't know truth at all.

So when he says, yet at the other end of the scale, we are willing to allow for subjective truths of the individual, which consist in fidelity to his or her deepest convictions, yet these truths are valid only for that individual and not capable of being proposed to others in an effort to serve the common good. So he says how in the end what we are left with is relativism, in which the question of universal truth, and ultimately, the means, this means the question of God is no longer relevant. So he's saying that, and we're not going to get too much detail about those. We spent two weeks talking about this idea of relativism we're talking about.

So he says how, I love how he says this, he says that, nowadays we can speak sort of a massive amnesia in our contemporary world. The question of truth is really a question of memory, deep memory, for it deals with something wired to ourselves and can succeed in uniting us in a way that transcends our petty and limited individual consciousness. It is a question about the origin of all that is, in whose light we can glimpse the goal and thus the meaning of our common path. Now, this idea of the culture having this massive amnesia and faith being this remembrance is something that's really powerful to think about.

And particularly when we think about the different parts of the mass, that this is why in the mass, during the consecration, one of the main parts is technically it's called the anemnesis, which is literally what the anemnesis is, is the word anemnesis is the opposite of amnesia. That is where it's the coming out of amnesia of remembering of truth. So what is the highlight of the mass, the anemnesis, the remembering, which is exactly the language that he's drawing on there. Now, so then the next action he goes on to talk about, so not only does faith have to be rooted in the truth, but it also has to be rooted in love.

And how, because faith, like I said, it's not just intellectual belief, but this is something that when Protestants, for instance in Catholics, talk about salvation, by faith, that they sort of talk right past each other, because there's sort of a completely different understanding of faith. That the common positive understanding of what's meant by faith is just intellectual belief. But while the Catholic, well I guess it depends on what you're talking about, I should say it on there. But the Catholic understanding is, well, faith isn't just intellectual belief.

It is something that transforms your whole life. And you can't have one, you can't say man is saved by faith alone, because you can't have faith without hope, you can't have faith without love. All three are intertwined together. And so the say that man is saved by faith alone makes no sense to a Catholic.

So I said, actually the Protestant, I'm gonna get off to do off to that. But anyway, but it's this idea that, so faith has to be rooted in love. And he says, but the problem is, why this doesn't make sense to a lot of people nowadays, is because just like faith has to be rooted in truth. Also, love needs to be rooted in truth.

That nowadays we have a completely wrong understanding of love as well, where love has just been reduced to ephemeral emotion, he says. But, and then he goes on talking about what true love is, is that true love is ultimately a choice, that it is the union with the beloved. So ultimately, true love is the complete giving of self, the choice of giving of self to another, and ultimately of giving of self to God. So if you look at the definition of love, that no greater love is this, has this than greater, I don't know, I'm butchering.

No greater love has man than this than to lay down his life for his friends. That is ultimately the idea of giving himself, of choice of self-sacrifice. That is what love is. And so, when he talks about how, well, faith is that man's response, the giving of ourselves back to God, who's given himself to us.

So as God has given the perfect love to us, and then we give that perfect love back to him, that is what faith is at its heart. So it is intimately connected with love. That's why there's a great passage from, great distortion thinker in the monk in the Middle Ages, named William of St. Thierry.

When he talked about how, in his commentary on the song of songs, and he talked about faith and love, and he said, basically the passage of the song of songs that says your eyes are doves. He talks about how the two doves, St. says William, are faith-filled reason and love. So faith-filled reason and love, and which then become one in rising to the contemplation of God when our understanding becomes an understanding of enlightened love.

It's the language that you use it, that they all are connected together. And this is something that Pope John Paul talked about, and is encyclical on faith and reason, which interestingly, Pobeneedict, when he gets to the idea of the interplay of faith and reason, he doesn't spend much time on it, and he sort of skips the question, and he simply says, my predecessor, John Paul II, wrote a great encyclical on faith and reason, reason, go and read that. But John Paul, the first word that he uses, is he uses the idea of faith and reason being two wings by which man is brought up to contemplation of God, that he's echoing St. William of St.

D.I.E. with the idea of faith and reason, or he, or St. William says faith and reason and love being, or what, unite and bring us up together. Now, I know I'm running out of time, so I'm trying to skip ahead a little bit.

So one of the things that he does talk about in faith and reason in the section there is the idea that all creation ultimately reflects God. So he, a little bit goes into it and starts to say that, and this is something we got into the beginning of last week as well, is the idea that, and this has always been sort of the position of the church, of the interplay of faith and reason, that all creation, whether it has been God's, if you think of faith, it's the story of God directly coming to man. So if it's part of that direct story, or if it's just part of the man's natural life, apart from God directly telling man, or another way you could say it is God's revelation, of God directly in telling command, or a man just using his own natural faculties, that both of them ultimately all reflect up towards God. And this is why the church has never, out of hand, rejected things such as pagan philosophy, like the ancient Greeks and the Romans, because they say, well, all creation has reflects God.

So where are, as St. Justin and Margaret, put it, those little spermata, those little seeds of truth, that are found even there, that we can look, to understand God better. Now, but one of the most beautiful parts when he talks about faith and reason, is how at the end of it, he says that, when one believes though, he says that even though we know that our faith is rooted in the truth. And this is something that is a powerful thing, knowing that our faith, when it's proper, is rooted in the truth, that this is not something to have pride in.

He says that we must not, that one who believes may not be presumptuous, that on the contrary, truth leads to humility, since believers know that rather than ourselves possessing truth, it is truth which embraces and possesses us. So this goes back to that idea of faith being the gift, that is not something of our own doing, that it ultimately comes from God, and what more is there that would require humility knowing that is entirely gift and not of our own doing. Now, but he goes on to say, but if things like science and reason, if they're gonna be properly understood, faith is the way to do it, or the way he basically puts it, he says that faith leads to wonder which broadens the horizon of reason. So reason apart from faith, ultimately, it's sort of stunted, it doesn't lead very far, it leads to a certain degree of despair.

And this is actually something you can see in the ancient philosophers that they understood, which is almost a whole nother talk, that you could see in a lot of the writings that they understood that they could only go so far and it really bothered them. You can particularly see this in the writings of the Roman Virgil, that there is in all his works this sort of frustration, that he knows that there is this truth that is greater, but and he sees these virtues, but they can only go so far, and he is frustrated that he doesn't have the full light to show the whole path. Now, so in the next section, he talks about faith and man's search for God, and it's that same idea that man ultimately has the search for God, that man knows he needs this light, and you can look at those ancient philosophers, you can see that they are looking for the faith, but it's the idea of man seeking God with a sincere heart. And so ultimately, he says that one of the questions that always comes up is sort of like, why doesn't God, if man is seeking God, why doesn't God just reveal himself?

Like why doesn't God just like come into the sky and say, hey, everyone, here I am. And ultimately, well, the answer is what God did, but there's also, but the idea that is that that he uses the analogy to answer this question of the magi, he says, all right, man is seeking like the magi, are these pagans, they were Zoroastrian philosophers who are seeking after the truth, and they follow the Bethlehem star and the greatest analogy he uses, well, why doesn't God just reveal himself completely to man, why does he do it in the process of this story where he tells a little bit here, a little bit here, and a little bit here, is he says that the star is a sign of God's patience with our eyes, which need to go across accustomed to his brightness. And it's the idea that, you know what, God, man would not be prepared to see God in his glory. That God needs to be spoon fed in order to get to the place where he needs to be.

Now, I need to speed up and just hit some of the last final points. Now, so the next section he talks about, the next chapter, the faith in the church. And he goes through and particularly talks about baptism, especially because baptism is where we receive. The faith is where the place where we enter into the story ourselves.

And he keeps coming back to that idea that the sacraments, especially are where we encounter the faith and how the faith ultimately is an encounter with a person. And but the biggest place where I want to focus on is when he talks about the Eucharist, that you can really see the proper understanding of the faith in the Eucharist. So we talked about the idea of the animesis, the idea of the remembering of the future. But if you think of the consecration of the Eucharist, that you have this complete tie in of this idea of faith being the journey and of going across time and the idea of the stories, how in the Roman canon you have the listing of all of the saints.

And this is why it's so important when priests actually do list the saints and don't just skip over them. And now, but it's this idea because faith is what unites us in time. That it is what unites us with the church in the past. So the church is not just the church here on earth.

It is the church in heaven, it is the church in purgatory. Those who came before it, it is those who will come in the future. And so you especially see this if you've ever read, like for instance, like Scott Hahn on the Lamb's Supper. And this is something in the language that he really brings back is this idea how in the consecration, how time and space are literally ripped open.

And the heavens are ripped open. And we are present in Mount Calvary. We are present at the Last Supper. We are present at every Mass set throughout the world, throughout all of history.

And we are present at the Supper of the Lamb going on in heaven. That it is this moment where the whole of the journey is sort of laid out where everyone is present at the same time. Like I said, it is where you see how where faith truly is what unites us in time and in space. Now, speeding along to that last chapter on when I called it sort of like the public face of sort of, well, so the faith does a lot of great stuff for us in the church.

But what does it do for society? And so one place you see this argument is, I guess there's this idea that, well, nowadays, the faith is good for you, but it's not going to somehow contribute makes society a whole lot better. It's like, for instance, when the whole H.S. mandate was going around.

And there was a pretty good analogy. But people started saying, well, requiring Catholics to provide contraceptives and these other abortion-inducing drugs, et cetera, that goes against their faith. It's kind of like if the government was to go to a Jewish deli and say, you have to stop serving kosher meals. You need to serve up like some pulled pork sandwiches to your non-Jewish customers.

Now, in some ways it's a good analogy, but some ways it's a very poor analogy, because that idea is that, well, their faith is just sort of this anachronism. It's this sort of a obscure thing that's not going to make all of society better. But the Catholic understanding is, you know what? Not only is it good for us, it is good for everybody.

All of society is going to be better and enriched by the faith, not just us. And now, so he says, for instance, one part, when he gets to do he talks about faith in the family, that what is the foundation of society? It is the family. And it's kind of funny when this came out, when he starts off talking about, he says how, the first setting in which faith enlightens the human city is in the family.

And I think first and foremost of the stable union of man and woman in marriage. And it's funny how when the cyclical came out, what was the only thing the secular media referenced at all? Was this statement, like it was somehow shocking, like a news flash, the pope's Catholic. But it's this idea, he says, that in order to have stable marriages, you have marriages that are going to make society what it should be.

You need faith. And he says, how promising love forever is possible when we perceive a plan bigger than our own ideas and undertakings, a plan which sustains us and enables us to surrender our future entirely to the one we love. So it's this idea that you don't have faith to give reason to why you're going to put up with all the miseries of marriage, because frankly, if you're married, you know that marriage is miserable at times, and you want to smack your spouse over the head with a frying pan. The only thing that will give you the courage to do so and to have true sacrificial love is the understanding of what you're doing it for.

And so of course, you're going to have a 60% or whatever divorce rate if you do not have faith. So that in one way and what makes society better. And the language he uses, he goes on to say how, even the ideas of some sort of we sort of take for granted in society, such as like the brotherhood of all persons and equality. He goes on to talk about the idea of the dignity of the human person.

This is something we got into last week as well, that these are assumptions based in faith. And how modernity he says sought to build a universal brotherhood based on equality, yet we gradually came to realize that this brotherhood lacking a reference to a common father as its ultimate foundation cannot endure. So if you want to have a society that's good, I mean, this actually sounds like a federalist paper almost, and the founding fathers, that if you want to have a good society, you need people that are virtuous. You will not have, and you cannot have that without religion.

You cannot have a common brotherhood without a common father. And that ultimately he says that it's only thanks to the faith that we've come to understand the unique dignity of each person, something which was not clearly seen in antiquity. And the idea, well, it's only the idea of the human person being made in God's image that gives him dignity. Well, if you think that society will give dignity to the human person apart from faith, all you need to do is look at history and the rest of the world.

But only in Christian society as every human person has been treated, not necessarily treated with dignity, but not always treated with dignity, but ideally the idea of every human person having dignity, only is that is only found in Christian society. You only need to go, like I said, to non-Christian places today or look throughout all of history, there's something uniquely Christian. Now, the last section is he, or he doesn't, okay, second to last section, but I'll be really fast in the last two, is he talks about well, the other thing that he gives to society is the idea of consolation and strength and mid-suffering. And this is something that he goes on to talk and say how basically life has pain.

That they're one of the surest things that you can know this by living life is that there is great suffering in the world. And he says that to speak of faith often involves speaking of painful testing. Yet it is precisely and such testing that Paul sees the most convincing proclamation of the gospel for it is in weakness and suffering that we discover God's power, which triumphs over weakness and suffering. So only God is able to ultimately give the answer to suffering, that if you want the, ultimately the only answer to why is there death in suffering in the world?

That God did not give like a big treat as well. There's this reason and this reason and this reason, the ultimately he all he answered with was with the crude suffix, that that's the answer. That God's love is ultimately the answer. Now Christians know that suffering cannot be eliminated, yet it can have meaning and become an act of love and entrustment in the hands of God who does not abandon us.

In this way, we can serve as a moment of growth and faith and love by contemplating Christ's union with the Father, even at the height of his suffering on the cross. Like I said, so ultimately what is the answer to suffering is Christ on the cross. That Christians learn to share in the same days of Jesus. Even death is illumined and can be experienced as the ultimate call to faith and the ultimate go forth from the land.

The ultimate come spoken by the Father to whom we abandon ourselves in the confidence that we will keep that he will keep us steadfast even in our final passage. This idea that God takes all that is evil and he brings good from it. So even death becomes the ultimate call to faith. Now this is something last week when I was being really depressing and talking about the culture of death, that this is what the great hope of it.

That if death is the ultimate call of faith, so what is the culture of death? Is the ultimate culture of the call of faith? It is that there is, that man will look at the, at death and say, well, only Christ alone ultimately has the answer. This goes all the way back to that idea that only the light alone tells what's going on at the outside of the meat hall.

Now, what he says, but then he goes on to say, but that this light doesn't make us forget the sufferings of this world and he goes on to give examples of St. Francis of Assisi and Blessed Mother Teresa and how the Christian rooted in God's love, even though we know the final fulfillment of basically what overcomes all this suffering, it actually makes us, because of knowing what love actually is we're able to sympathize even more. Now, the last section that he ends with is he talks about, well, what's the perfect example of faith and that is the Blessed Mother. So in a simple way when he says that if you want, well, if faith is ultimately the yes to God's proposal, then who's the perfect example of that yes?

But Mary who said, thy will be done, her fiat, let it be done into me according to thy will. The perfect and pure of faith of, well, if holiness is complete surrender to God's will, of God's saying like, all right, God, we accept the proposal, thy will be done, that Mary is the perfect example. And how, yeah, and so anyway, what he ends up concluding with is a prayer to Mary. So we conclude with that prayer, and then we can open up for any questions.

So, name the Father, the Son, Holy Spirit, Amen. Mother, help our faith, open our ears to hear God's word and recognize his voice and call, awaken in us a desire to follow in the footsteps, to go forth from our own land and receive his promise. Help us to be touched by his love that we may touch him in faith, help us to entrust ourselves fully to him and to believe in his love, especially at times of trial, beneath the shadow of the cross when our faith is called to mature. So in our faith, the joy of the risen one, remind us that those who believe are never alone, teach us to see all things with the eyes of Jesus, that he may be light for our path, and may this light of faith always increase in us until the dawn of that undying day, which is Christ himself, your Son, our Lord, and the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Amen.