Lumen Fidei, the
encyclical drafted by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and promulgated by Pope
Francis, is a worthy successor to Benedict’s Deus Caritas Est and Spe
Salvi full of material worthy of deeper meditation. There are many sections
that one could surmise come from the hand of either author, but in the end it
is pointless to do so. Whether a passage is more Benedictine or more Franciscan
is irrelevant as there is, contra what those on the left and on the far right
would have you think, complete continuity between these two successors of
Peter. I encourage everyone to read the encyclical in full, but for those who are pressed on time and cannot devote the
whole day to reading it (as I have), here is the ‘Cliff Notes’ version, if you
will, of the encyclical in 11 quotes which are some of my favorites.
Faith is thus linked to God’s fatherhood, which gives rise
to all creation; the God who calls Abraham is the Creator, the one who 'calls
into existence the things that do not exist' (Rom 4:17), the one who 'chose us
before the foundation of the world... and destined us for adoption
as his children' (Eph 1:4-5).
-Lumen Fidei 11.
-Lumen Fidei 11.
Christians are “one” (cf. Gal 3:28), yet in a way which does
not make them lose their individuality; in service to others, they come into
their own in the highest degree. This explains why, apart from this body,
outside this unity of the Church in Christ, outside this Church which — in the
words of Romano Guardini — “is the bearer within history of the plenary gaze of
Christ on the world” —faith loses its “measure”; it no
longer finds its equilibrium, the space needed to sustain itself. Faith is
necessarily ecclesial; it is professed from within the body of Christ as a
concrete communion of believers. It is against this ecclesial backdrop that
faith opens the individual Christian towards all others.
-Lumen Fidei 22.
-Lumen Fidei 22.
Faith without truth does not save, it does not provide a
sure footing. It remains a beautiful story, the projection of our deep yearning
for happiness, something capable of satisfying us to the extent that we are
willing to deceive ourselves. Either that, or it is reduced to a lofty
sentiment which brings consolation and cheer, yet remains prey to the vagaries
of our spirit and the changing seasons, incapable of sustaining a steady
journey through life.
-Lumen Fidei 24.
-Lumen Fidei 24.
Most people nowadays would not consider love as related in
any way to truth. Love is seen as an experience associated with the world of
fleeting emotions, no longer with truth. But is this an adequate description of
love? Love cannot be reduced to an ephemeral emotion. True, it engages our
affectivity, but in order to open it to the beloved and thus to blaze a trail
leading away from self-centredness and towards another
person, in order to build a lasting relationship; love aims at union with the
beloved. Here we begin to see how love requires truth. Only to the extent that
love is grounded in truth can it endure over time, can it transcend the passing
moment and be sufficiently solid to sustain a shared journey. If love is not
tied to truth, it falls prey to fickle emotions and cannot stand the test of
time. True love, on the other hand, unifies all the elements of our person and
becomes a new light pointing the way to a great and fulfilled life. Without
truth, love is incapable of establishing a firm bond; it cannot liberate our
isolated ego or redeem it from the fleeting moment in order to create life and
bear fruit.
-Lumen Fidei 27.
-Lumen Fidei 27.
If love needs truth, truth also needs love. Love and truth
are inseparable. Without love, truth becomes cold, impersonal and oppressive
for people’s day-to-day lives. The truth we seek, the truth that gives meaning
to our journey through life, enlightens us whenever we are touched by love. One
who loves realizes that love is an experience of truth, that it opens our eyes
to see reality in a new way, in union with the
beloved. In this sense, Saint Gregory the Great could write that “amor ipse
notitia est”, love is itself a kind of knowledge possessed of its own logic. It
is a relational way of viewing the world, which then becomes a form of shared
knowledge, vision through the eyes of another and a shared vision of all that
exists. William of Saint-Thierry, in the Middle Ages, follows
this tradition when he comments on the verse of the Song of Songs where the
lover says to the beloved, “Your eyes are doves” (Song 1:15). The two eyes,
says William, are faith-filled reason and love, which then become one in rising
to the contemplation of God, when our understanding becomes “an understanding
of enlightened love”.
-Lumen Fidei 27.
-Lumen Fidei 27.
Since faith is a light, it draws us into itself, inviting us
to explore ever more fully the horizon which it illumines, all the better to
know the object of our love. Christian theology is born of this desire.
Clearly, theology is impossible without faith; it is part of the very process
of faith, which seeks an ever deeper understanding of God’s self-disclosure
culminating in Christ. It follows that theology is more than
simply an effort of human reason to analyze and understand, along the lines of
the experimental sciences. God cannot be reduced to an object. He is a subject
who makes himself known and perceived in an interpersonal relationship. Right
faith orients reason to open itself to the light which comes from God, so that
reason, guided by love of the truth, can come to a deeper knowledge of God. The
great medieval theologians and teachers rightly held that theology, as a
science of faith, is a participation in God’s own knowledge of himself. It is
not just our discourse about God, but first and foremost the acceptance and the
pursuit of a deeper understanding of the word which God speaks to us, the word
which God speaks about himself, for he is an eternal dialogue of communion, and
he allows us to enter into this dialogue. Theology thus demands the humility to
be "touched" by God, admitting its own limitations before the
mystery, while striving to investigate, with the discipline proper to reason,
the inexhaustible riches of this mystery.
-Lumen Fidei 36.
-Lumen Fidei 36.
Theology also shares in the ecclesial form of faith; its
light is the light of the believing subject which is the Church. This implies,
on the one hand, that theology must be at the service of the faith of
Christians, that it must work humbly to protect and deepen the faith of
everyone, especially ordinary believers. On the other hand, because it draws
its life from faith, theology cannot consider
the magisterium of the Pope and the bishops in communion with him as something
extrinsic, a limitation of its freedom, but rather as one of its internal,
constitutive dimensions, for the magisterium ensures our contact with the
primordial source and thus provides the certainty of attaining to the word of
Christ in all its integrity.
-Lumen Fidei 36.
-Lumen Fidei 36.
It is impossible to believe on our own. Faith is not simply
an individual decision which takes place in the depths of the believer’s heart,
nor a completely private relationship between the "I" of the believer
and the divine "Thou", between an autonomous subject and God. By its
very nature, faith is open to the "We" of the Church; it always takes
place within her communion.
-Lumen Fidei 39.
-Lumen Fidei 39.
Since faith is one, it must be professed in all its purity
and integrity. Precisely because all the articles of faith are interconnected,
to deny one of them, even of those that seem least important, is tantamount to
distorting the whole.
-Lumen Fidei 48.
-Lumen Fidei 48.
The first setting in which faith enlightens the human city
is the family. I think first and foremost of the stable union of man and woman
in marriage. This union is born of their love, as a sign and presence of God’s
own love, and of the acknowledgment and acceptance of the goodness of sexual
differentiation, whereby spouses can become one flesh (cf. Gen 2:24) and are
enabled to give birth to a new life, a manifestation of
the Creator’s goodness, wisdom and loving plan. Grounded in this love, a man
and a woman can promise each other mutual love in a gesture which engages their
entire lives and mirrors many features of faith. Promising love for ever is
possible when we perceive a plan bigger than our own ideas and undertakings, a
plan which sustains us and enables us to surrender our future entirely to the
one we love. Faith also helps us to grasp in all its depth and richness the
begetting of children, as a sign of the love of the Creator who entrusts us
with the mystery of a new person. So it was that Sarah, by faith, became a
mother, for she trusted in God’s fidelity to his promise (cf. Heb 11:11).
-Lumen Fidei 52.
-Lumen Fidei 52.
Modernity sought to build a universal brotherhood based on
equality, yet we gradually came to realize that this brotherhood, lacking a
reference to a common Father as its ultimate foundation, cannot endure.
-Lumen Fidei 54.
-Lumen Fidei 54.
Because of her close bond with Jesus, Mary is strictly
connected to what we believe. As Virgin and Mother, Mary offers us a clear sign
of Christ’s divine sonship. The eternal origin of Christ is in the Father. He
is the Son in a total and unique sense, and so he is born in time without the
intervention of a man. As the Son, Jesus brings to the world a new beginning
and a new light, the fullness of God’s faithful love bestowed on humanity. But
Mary’s true motherhood also ensures for the Son of God an authentic human
history, true flesh in which he would die on the cross and rise from the dead.
-Lumen Fidei 59.
-Lumen Fidei 59.
