Msgr. Peter J. Vaghi
Title of Series: "What Catholics Believe: The Faith Professed"

Part 1: "There Is Still a Hound of Heaven -- He Awaits Our Faith Response"

October 5th, 2006
First Thursday

The title of my 9 month series this year is : "What Catholics Believe: The Faith Professed." I draw fundamentally from three sources: the first part of the Catechism of the Catholic Church which was published in 1992, the new Compendium to the catechism which was promulgated by Pope Benedict on June 28, 2005 and finally, to complement the universal Catechism of 1992, the first part of the United States Catholic Catechism for Adults which was recently promulgated by the American bishops on July 31, 2006. In each publication, there are four pillars -- creed, sacraments, moral life, and prayer. Each is designed for faith formation and a growth in holiness. The focus this year is "the creed." Might I also suggest that our new Archbishop, (a much respected teacher of the faith), Archbishop Wuerl, has started a regular column in the Catholic Standard on the new Catechism which I also recommend.

My opening meditation is entitled: "There is Still a Hound of Heaven -- He Awaits our Faith Response." There are three parts: first, our capacity (or desire) for God; second, how God comes continually to meet us; and third, our human response to God -- the response (obedience) of faith.

I. Our Capacity (or Desire) for God

A number of years ago, on our pilgrimage in the footsteps of St. Paul, in the midst of a very hot August day, Cardinal Laghi and I climbed a steep and rocky hill in Athens to get a glimpse of the Areopagus on Mars Hill where in 51 A.D. St. Paul gave his famous "Men of Athens" speech. It was a speech delivered to lawyers, judges, and philosophs of His day (none of them schooled in the language or person of Jesus). It is referred to in CCC 28 and enshrined forever in Acts 17:22-31.

It was there on Mars Hill that St. Paul directly refers to this gathering of the Greek intelligentsia, at this cultural center of Athens, as "religious people." Paul addresses them: "You Athenians, I see that in every respect you are very religious. For as I walked around looking carefully at your shrines, I even discovered an altar inscribed 'To an Unknown God.'" What does this mean? It does not mean that they were religious in belief or practice as we profess to be. They were not. But they were religious in the deepest sense of that word and Paul -- even using language from one of their own pagan poets -- tried to explain the living God. John Paul II, referring to this speech, wrote that "The Apostle accentuates a truth which the Church has always treasured: in the far reaches of the human heart there is a desire and nostalgia for God." FR24 The psalmist writes: "As the deer longs for streams of water, so my soul longs for you. O God." Ps 42:2

In major part, the Athenians were not open to Paul -- at least then -- or what he had to say and his efforts to bring them to acceptance of a living God and so he left. This experience is one known so often to each of us -- at cocktail parties, at work, even in the home, at the Areopagus of our day. The God who means so much to us can leave others unmoved and untouched.

In his interview with German television before his recent trip to his homeland, Pope Benedict XVI had this to say: "It's become more difficult to believe because the world in which we find ourselves is completely made up of ourselves and God, so to speak, doesn't appear directly anymore. We don't drink from the source anymore, but from the vessel which is offered to us already full, and so on. Humanity has rebuilt the world by itself and finding God inside this world has become more difficult."

This should not be cause for discouragement. As in the time of ancient Athens, whether Jesus Christ is explicitly acknowledged as Lord and Savior, there is a desire (a capacity) and a quest for God written in every human heart without exception. That is so precisely because we are created by God and for God. In that same interview with German television, Pope Benedict also states more positively that: "The quest for 'something bigger' wells up again from the depth of the western people and in Germany...the joy of a huge universal community possesses a transcendental strength, and that together with the new searching movements there are also new outlets for the faith that lead us from one to the other and that are also positive for society as a whole." In the new American catechism we read, especially with reference to the large number of people coming to the faith yearly through the RCIA: "It is encouraging that many are finding the move to secularism to be an unsatisfactory approach and continue to search for a deeper meaning in life." (USCCA 6)

In his day, speaking of the Lord in his own language, St. Augustine writes similarly that "our heart is restless until it rests in you." God never ceases drawing us to Himself even where He is not explicitly known to us. God has written upon our hearts the desire to see him.

At the beginning of Fides et Ratio, we read: "...God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth -- in a word, to know himself -- so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves." In Veritatis Splendor, we similarly read: "In the depth of his heart there always remains a yearning for absolute truth and a thirst to attain full knowledge of it. This is eloquently proved by man's tireless search for knowledge in all fields." (VS 1) In this sense, we are religious by nature, religious in the sense that we are created to transcend ourselves. "Human beings would not even begin to search for something of which they knew nothing or for something which they thought was wholly beyond them. Only the sense that they can arrive at an answer leads them to take the first step." (FR 29)

This step, this search, is one thing. But how do we come to know and discover and even love God? There are two ways: l.) by looking at creation -- the physical world and the human person and 2.) by listening to God's revelation. The first way is an act of reason; the second is an act of religion. The first way is open to all humanity; the second only to believers. What we discover by the first way is called the law of nature or natural law; what we discover by the second way is the law of Christ or the law of the Gospel.

The Church teaches that God can be known with certainty from the created world by the natural light of human reason. Without this innate capacity, we would not be able to welcome God's revelation. Each of us has this capacity precisely because we are created in the "image of God." This doctrine, the so-called "natural means" of coming to know God, is of great importance for it is the presupposition of the Church's dialogue with all men and women regardless of their religious background. It justifies the confidence that it is possible to speak to all men and women about God. But note well -- our human words always fall short in their ability to speak about the mystery of God. To be able to enter into real intimacy with God, moreover, our Creator willed both to reveal Himself and to give us the grace that empowers us to accept this revelation in faith.

II.) How God Comes to Meet Us

What then is revelation? It is the personal self-communication in history of a living God to us, a communication that is always triggered by His initiative. Reason is simply not enough, for through reason we cannot know God's inner life nor His loving plan for us personally. There is another order of knowledge that we cannot arrive at on our own and that is revelation. It operates on the order of grace.

Revelation combines words and actions of a living God -- our God. "In Revelation, the tremendous gulf between God and the human race is bridged." (USCCA 13) In the words of Vatican Council II, the divine plan of salvation is realized simultaneously "by deeds and words which are intrinsically bound up which each other" and shed light on each other. There are various stages of revelation -- recorded in sacred scripture -- that have taken centuries to unfold. "God's revelation disturbed and changed the patriarchs, the prophets, the apostles and others" -- from Moses to Isaiah to Peter himself." (USCCA 14) God communicates, reveals, unpacks, unveils Himself gradually and continually -- culminating in the person and mission of His Son Jesus Christ -- and continuing in the power of the Holy Spirit in our day. But note well that "no new public revelation is to be expected before the glorious manifestation of our Lord, Jesus Christ (cf. 1Tim.6:14 and Tit.2:13)." Dei Verbum 4

"In the Incarnation of the Son of God we see forged the enduring and definitive synthesis which the human mind of itself could not even have imagined: the Eternal enters time, the Whole lies hidden in the part, God takes on a human face." (FR 12) He is the definitive revelation of God. And "'only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light.' Seen in any other terms, the mystery of personal existence remains an insoluble riddle. Where might the human being seek the answer to dramatic questions such as pain, the suffering of the innocent and death, if not in the light streaming from the mystery of Christ's passion, death, and resurrection?" (FR 12) God continues to reveal Himself to us, to invite us to enter into His life, the life of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to make Himself present in our lives often when we least expect Him. "God comes to us in the things we know best and can verify most easily, the things of our everyday life, apart from which we cannot understand ourselves." FR 12

And He is persistent and often unexpected. Remember the persistence and the sound and movement that Francis Thompson calls "the Hound of Heaven." And oh how we react in different ways at different times of our lives. Francis Thompson captured Him and our reaction so well: "I fled Him down the nights and down the days; I fled Him down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind: and in the mist of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter. Up vistaed hopes I sped; And shot, precipitated, adown Titantic glooms of chasmed fears, from those strong Feet that followed, followed after. But with unhurrying chase, And unperturbed pace, deliberate speed, majestic instancy, they beat -- and a Voice beat more instant than the Feet -- 'All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.'" "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, [then] I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me." Rev 3: 20 And how can we forget the search for the lost sheep? "And when he does find it, he sets it on his shoulders with great joy." Lk 15:5

Our God continues to speak to us. Do we listen? Do we hear Him amidst the din of our daily existence and all the challenges and noise? Do we make time for Him. He so wants to speak and desires that we listen each and every day.

There is the living and life-giving Word of God, His Word that continues to invite us to listen, His Word revealed in sacred scripture and the living tradition of the church. Listen closely to His living Word, a Word which informs, changes and critics us, strengthens and gives life and forms us more and more into Christ Himself!

The Vatican Council has happily restored sacred scripture into its proper place in the life of the church. Frequent prayerful reading and study is essential to growth in the Lord. It is an integral part of our lives as Catholics. St. Jerome has reminded us that "Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ." (USCCA 32) Sacred Scripture, both the Old and New Testament, is the speech of God as it is put down in writing under the breathe of the Holy Spirit -- 46 books of the Old Testament and 27 books of the New Testament. These books, called the canon of the Bible, were identified in the early centuries of the church has having been divinely inspired. (USCCA 24)

Unlike the fundamentalist, however, ours is not a faith that relies solely on Scripture for revelation. Ours is a faith that includes Tradition, a living transmission distinct from Scripture but closely related to Scripture. Through Tradition, the Church, in her doctrine, life and worship perpetuates and transmits to every generation all that she herself is and all that she believes (I.e. In the reception of the sacraments, the writings of the Holy Father and our bishops, our common prayer). As we gather prayerfully at this very moment, we are experiencing the living Tradition of the Church, the living voice of the Lord Himself. God is speaking to us in a very special way in the quiet of our prayer where He breaks open into our lives.

God's Word thus reveals itself in Scripture and the living Tradition of the Church. Both have their common source in the revelation of the Word of God. We can never forget as well that the task of giving an authentic interpretation to the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living, teaching office of the Church which is called the Magisterium -- the Pope and the bishops in communion with him. The Magisterium is not superior to the Word of God but its servant, the servant of Truth.

III.) Our Human Response to God -- The Response (Obedience) of Faith

Faith is a response word. It is our human response to God Who continues to reveal and communicate His love to us. It is our free response to a loving God who communicates Himself to us each day, every moment of each day, continually through the living Scripture and the on-going life of the Church that we call Tradition -- the prayer life, the sacramental life, the teaching life of the Church as given us by our Pope and the bishops.

Faith has two aspects. It is at once a response to a person, to Jesus, AND it is a response to the message that Jesus teaches in and through the Church. Not unlike two sides of the same coin, it is at once "what" I believe, fides quae, the content of what I believe and at the same time it is the "event of personal surrender" to the God encountered now in and through Jesus Christ, fides qua, the Person to Whom I submit my life. Such surrender engages the whole person.

In his recent visit to Poland last May, Pope Benedict XVI dedicated his series of talks to faith and encouraged the Polish people to stand firm in the faith. Speaking there about the two aspects of faith, he stated at Krakow "To believe means first to accept as true what our mind cannot fully comprehend. We have to accept what God reveals to us about himself, about ourselves, about everything around us, including the things that are invisible, inexpressible and beyond our imagination." The Pope speaks of the second aspect of the faith in these words: "it is a trust in a person, no ordinary person, but Jesus Christ himself. What we believe is important, but even more important is the One in whom we believe ...Believing means surrendering ourselves to God and entrusting our destiny to him...and making this relationship the basis of our whole life."

Pope Benedict stated further: "Faith does not just mean accepting a certain number of abstract truths about the mysteries of God, of man, of life and death, of future realities. Faith consists in an intimate relationship with Christ, a relationship based on love of him who loved us first, even to the total offering of himself.

This response of faith calls us to bear witness by word and deed. The response of faith is not merely lifeless or academic. Faith is very practical. It is a criterion which actually determines and defines my life style. Nor does faith mean anything without love. It often demands sacrifice and ridicule. You and I know that from our experience of trying to live our daily lives at home and in the workplace.

St. Ignatius of Antioch, a second century saint who died around l00 A.D., was one of many in the history of the Church who let himself be torn to pieces by the jaws of lions in the Roman arena rather than reject his faith. Cardinal Newman once wrote: "No one is a martyr for a conclusion, no one is a martyr for an opinion; it is faith that makes us martyrs." It is faith in a living person, in Jesus Christ. After all, we do not give our lives to a question mark.

Abraham and Moses have given us examples of faith. But our Blessed Lady perfectly embodies the obedience of faith. Mary puts flesh to what could be simply an abstract concept. That is why the Church venerates her. In Mary, we see the purest realization of faith. She truly heard and listened to God's word brought by an angel and surrendered to that Word. She had no idea where it would lead her but she trusted in God's Word. At the Annunciation, she listened and was moved to consent. At its heart, that is faith. Mary remained faithful. "Let it be done to me according to your word."

We learn from the catechisms that faith is both a grace of God, a grace of God's love, an impulse of the Holy Spirit AND at the same time it is a free human act. It is a task. If it were not a grace, it could not reach God Himself. If it were not a human act, i.e., a task, it would not be a real answer of man. It involves both an assent of the intellect and the will to God's self-revelation, communicated to us in words and deeds.

Faith is necessary for our salvation, and even though there is salvation outside the Catholic Church, the fullness of means of salvation subsists in the Catholic Church. The Lord Himself affirms: "He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned." (Mk 16:16). Faith is a foretaste of the beatific vision which is the goal of our journey on earth. "The ultimate goal of a life of faith is eternal union with God in heaven." (USCCA 41)

Faith requires perseverance. It grows in stages. Sometimes we fall and walk away. So often we must crawl before we can walk again. It seems that so often it must stand various test and even scandals. Each one of us knows that. And we are not in it alone. The catechism states: "To live, grow, and persevere in the faith until the end we must nourish it with the word of God; we must beg the Lord to increase our faith; it must be 'working through charity, abounding in hope , and rooted in the faith of the Church." CCC 162

The Church's faith, the faith that has perdured for centuries, precedes, engenders, supports and nourishes our faith. Faith is not just a private act either. "In the assembly of believers at Mass, we profess our faith together and join our hearts as we experience ourselves as the Body of Christ." (USCCA 37)

Finally, the response of faith does not complete the journey that reason began with its initial questions of who I am or where I have come from or where I am going or why is there suffering or evil or is there life after death. It helps us, however, realize that by the response of faith, the journey has just begun. Our faith is reasonable. There exist "reason[s] for your hope." 1 Pet 3:15

I conclude with Pope John Paul II: "...men and women are on a journey of discovery which is humanly unstoppable -- a search for the truth and a search for a person to whom they might entrust themselves. Christian faith comes to meet them, offering the concrete possibility of reaching the goal which they seek. Moving beyond the stage of simple believing, Christian faith immerses human beings in the order of grace, which in turn offers them a true and coherent knowledge of the Triune God. In Jesus Christ, who is the Truth, faith recognizes the ultimate appeal to humanity, an appeal made in order that what we experience as desire and nostalgia may come to fulfillment." (FS33)

Amen