What Does Faith in Christ Require?

An extraordinary witness: fully human and alive, the Church. If Jesus is God among us, the person who is the announcement of God with us, then in what mode does this Incarnation continue? In what way does Jesus not leave us orphans? Through the Church. Without the Church, we are like pagans who have received the revelation of some god who left a message for gurus and experts to interpret for us. The sacraments are God's work to make Himself present to the Church, and the Church is the sign (sacrament, mystery) of God present to the world.

An extraordinary witness: fully God, the Holy Spirit: the Advocate who descended on the Church at Pentecost. Jesus promised His Spirit to remain with the Church. How do we know which spirit is the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit brings truth and peace and unity. What is the tradition of the Church? The Holy Spirit living within the Church, the body of Christ.

Extraordinary means this: that the Person announced by the Church through the power of the Holy Spirit corresponds to the needs of my heart beyond its capacity (my cup overflows). The heart (reason, affectivity, will) recognizes its merciful Master, its tender Creator, the Good Shepherd: Jesus Christ Yesterday, Today, and Forever.

What Is Faith in Christ?

I want to understand better the connection between faith as an indirect method of knowledge and faith as it pertains to Christ. I know the connection is there because I live it every day, but I want to examine it closer, to test it in its particulars so I don't miss anything. 

I return again to the book on faith: Is It Possible to Live Like This? Faith by Luigi Giussani. Giussani is an authority for me - which is to say, he tells me things that I don't fully understand or believe and when I follow them I grow. Here's what Giussani says:

"How do you come to know Christ? Clearly, from our outline of the methods that reason uses, the one that has to be applied here is faith. We don't know Christ directly. We know Christ neither through evidence nor through the analysis of experience" (25). If someone disagrees with this point, I would like to see an explanation.

A curious thing about Giussani is that he always insists that the method by which we come to know Christ must be the same method that the disciples came to know him. In the book on faith, he describes five passages, or moments, in the progressive coming to know Christ better: 

1. An encounter
   
2. An exceptional presence
   
3. Wonder
   
4. Who is this man?
   
5. Responsibility before the fact
   

Giussani insists: the problem that we have with faith in Jesus is the same problem that the disciples had:

"The moment the question 'Who is Jesus?' was posed for the first time is the instance in which the problem of faith entered the world. Not faith as a simple method of reason, but as a method of reason applied to something supra-reasonable, beyond reason, unthinkable, inconceivable. Faith as a method of reason applied to something inconceivable, because everything this man said was unconceivable" (27). 

If you don't feel this inconceivability, then the note on page 27 points to John 1:35ff (the ff means start at 1:35 and keep reading until you see it).  Here we can see that faith in Jesus is different because the object is different: not this or that, but Someone who is beyond what we can conceive, better than we can imagine. 

Grace builds on nature, stretches it, changes it, but it doesn't wipe it out. It doesn't replace human nature with something alien. Faith does not turn men into angels who know things directly. 

Hope according to the Apostle Paul and Thomas Aquinas

Thanks to Mark of Joe versus the Volcano for the post named below:

• Aquinas on Hope.
  

Hebrews 6:18-19 (especially)

"... we who have taken refuge might be strongly encouraged to hold fast to the hope that lies before us. This we have as an anchor of the soul, sure and firm, which reaches into the interior behind the veil ..." (snippet from the NAB - click for the full context).

and if you do look at the context you will see another example of what Msgr. Giussani reminds us of, that "the word hope is always connected with Jesus" (Is it Possible to Live this Way? 2: Hope, 7).

The Apostle Paul and St. Thomas Aquinas

One of the best kept secrets of the Catholic Church is how profoundly Pauline she is. Do a bit of research and you'll discover the deep Pauline vision that informs teaching on ecclesiology, marriage, the Holy Spirit, Christ, and so much more. The Church does not reduce the Gospel to a few passages of Paul's letters, but listens to St. Paul in concert with the entire canon of Scriptures and with the experience of the Church over time.

A new resource has opened up for those interested in verifying the Church's claim to preach the same Jesus Christ whom Paul preached:

"The Aquinas Center for Theological Renewal of Ave Maria University has made available a number of Aquinas's commentaries on the epistles of St. Paul, putting them online. In particular, his commentary on Romans contains one of his most important discussions on the matter of predestination." 

Hat tip to Matthew of Nel Mezzo del Cammin di Nostra Vita, who begins his investigation with Aquinas's commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. Here's the list so far:

• Hebrews - Section 1 (845kb)
• Hebrews - Section 2 (1.06mb)
• 1 Corinthians (1.82mb)
• 2 Corinthians (1.36 mb)
• Colossians (454kb)
• Ephesians - entire group (1.84mb)
  • Introduction (210kb)
  • Prologue (79kb)
  • Chapter 1 (227kb)
  • Chapter 2 (188kb)
  • Chapter 3 (190kb)
  • Chapter 4 (240kb)
  • Chapter 5 (212kb)
  • Chapter 6 (158kb)
    
• Romans (1.4mb)

I'm Like Paul, and You're Like Timothy...

Over at La Perruque, I was provoked a bit by this comment, which asserts that "For Paul, this irruptive even is precisely not about him: it is constitutive of ecclesia."

In Galatians 1:11-12, St. Paul writes that "the gospel preached by me is not of human origin. For I did not receive it from a human being, nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ" (NAB).

In Acts 1:21-22, however, St. Peter proposes electing an Apostle to replace Judas, with the following criteria: "Therefore, it is necessary that one of the men who accompanied us the whole time the Lord Jesus came and went among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day on which he was taken up from us, become with us a witness to his resurrection" (NAB).

In Galatians, St. Paul claims that his office as Apostle was received through a special revelation of Jesus Christ whereas in Acts an Apostle is chosen to succeed Judas (who was never an Apostle but one of the Twelve) according to criteria set by the Church and with a reliance on God's grace to perfect this criteria. In the Catholic Church, the bishops are the successors to the Apostles (as teachers of the faith). And yet, the bishops have taken a decidedly pastoral role of local governance, while the bishop of Rome, the Pope, still bears a universal responsibility, that is, apostolic succession. Not surprisingly, the election of a new pope is reminiscent of this scene from Acts.

In congregational Protestantism especially, this Pauline apostleship is taken as normative. That is, anybody at any time can announce that they have been selected by Jesus Christ to bear responsibility for the whole Church. And so it happens that a Bible study teacher believes himself called and starts a new congregation. The group that I met in college was started in order to relive the freshness of the Church as recorded in Acts. At that time, some left to begin again since the existing group was already becoming too institutional.

In Catholicism, however, we have had many men and women who have received a special prophecy from the Holy Spirit which even as it does not add or change the tradition received from the Apostles, yet allows the central person of Jesus Christ to shine forth in a new and splendid way (just as the revelation which St. Paul received brought a distinctive perspective on the work of Christ). These prophetic charisms are inspired in the most diverse people within the Church: women and men, servants and free, of all ethnic and cultural backgrounds and educations. Some of these Christian prophets live a hundredfold paternity, with their spiritual children witnessing to the same prophetic gift for hundreds of years: like Elisha, these spiritual sons and daughters inherit the prophetic gift of their founder. And like St. Paul, these visionaries have often had blind spots which were healed by submitting to the pastoral leaders of the Church as St. Paul did to Ananias in Damascus. It is this phenomenon which accounts for much of the rich diversity and vitality of the Catholic Church — which makes it catholic instead of parochial.

The disruptive irruption of prophetic apostles is an essential characteristic of the Church and is  truly generative — reviving the love of the Baptized for Jesus Christ. St. Paul is inimitible and unique, as are the many founders of orders and movements — and yet they share a common goal: that Christ may be followed.

The Cross is a Bridge over the Chasm of Sin

I've always felt that the above illustration of salvation was a bit cold and mechanistic. So, imagine my surprise when I read something a couple of weeks ago from the medieval saint Catherine of Siena:

St. Catherine's Parable of the Bridge

St. Catherine imagined the Incarnation of Christ as a bridge that spanned the dangerous torrents of sin to enable a soul to walk from the shore of our humanity onto the shore of heaven where we could step into the presence of The Father. This alone is an interesting analogy, however the analogy is deepened by St. Catherine's layered analogy in which the structure of the bridge is the cross. As, we walk across the bridge, and advance in our spiritual life, we encounter the body of Christ as follows:

First Step: Takes us to the wounded FEET of Christ; here we are called to obey Christ, to accept the call to love. Often this obedience is first given more out of fear than out of love

Second Step: We come to Christ’s wounded HEART. Here, we accept the Christian life out of love however, due to a lack of perfect understanding, some selfishness still remains. In time it is here that we give our heart to Christ and understand that he is giving his heart to us. Catherine calls this an "Exchange of Hearts" as a fulfillment of the promise given in Ezekiel 36:26

Third Step: We encounter the MOUTH of Christ from which God speaks His Truth. It is also here that Christ claims his bride with a nuptial kiss.

Fourth Final Step brings us onto the shore of eternal life where we live forever in presence of God the Father and his love.

Posted at Broken Alabaster

This is a great image, and when I sit in Church, I no longer need St. Catherine's words, but I can meditate on the crucifix and the humanity of Christ becomes for me a bridge and I can remember His obedience, His humility, His heart. The knees can remind me of how He washed St. Peter's feet. The belly reminds me of Christ's hunger for the happiness of human beings - and I beg for this hunger.

The image of the bridge is also the great central image from Fr. Giussani's talk, "Recognizing Christ" (which in turn draws upon Victor Hugo's poem, "The Bridge/ Le Pont"):

He imagines someone, a man, sitting on a beach one starry night, staring at the largest star, apparently the one closest to him, and thinking of the thousands and thousands of arches that would have to be built to construct this bridge, a bridge never fully defined, never completely usable. Imagine, then, this immense plain, crowded with attempts by groups large and small, or even individuals, like in Hugo’s image, each one carrying out his imagined, fantastic design. 

Suddenly a powerful voice is heard in the immense plain, saying: “Stop! All of you stop!” And all the workers, engineers, architects stop working and look towards where the voice is coming from: it is a man, who continues, raising his arm: “You are great men, your efforts are noble, but your attempt, albeit great and noble, is a sad one. This is why so many give up and stop thinking about it and become indifferent. It is great but sad, because it will never end, it will never reach its goal. You are not able to do it because you are impotent in front of this aim. There is an insurmountable disproportion between you and the farthest star in the sky, between you and God. You cannot imagine the Mystery. Now leave your hard thankless work and follow me: I will build this bridge for you, rather, I am this bridge! Because I am the way, the truth, the life!”

So, the bridge is a great illustration, suitable for catechism, and I repent that I recoiled from its simplicity. But, the bridge is not only a schema but an icon, a true window into heaven. A rich and fecund promise.