Faith within the Church

General Audience: October 31, 2012

Wednesday's General audience gave Pope Benedict XVI to expound on last week's look at the act of faith.  This week, the Pope linked the personal act of faith to the faith of the Church: you can't have one without the other.  Or, as Saint Cyprian says, “No one can have God as Father who does not have the Church as Mother.”

Recap: Faith is a gift of God because he is the one who comes to encounter us.  Faith is also a response to this encounter: we accept God as the firm foundation of our life.  Faith then begins to transform our existence.

• Faith has more than an individual perspective.  To believe is not just the result of reflection in solitude; it is the fruit of relationship, of dialogue, which includes listening, receiving, and responding.  Faith is truly personal only if it is also communal.  The community in which I believe is the Church.  "My" faith is only mine if it is also the faith of the one Church.
• From Lumen Gentium 9:
  God, however, does not make men holy and save them merely as individuals, without bond or link between one another. Rather has it pleased Him to bring men together as one people, a people which acknowledges Him in truth and serves Him in holiness. 

  

  A screenshot of footage from the opening of the Second Vatican Council. Credit: CTV/CNA.

  There is an uninterrupted chain and an unbreakable link between the life of the Church, the proclamation of the Word of God, and the celebration of the sacraments; this has reached our times, and it's called Tradition.  It is the guarantee that what we believe is the original message of Christ, preached by the Apostles.  Scripture contains the the Word of God, and the Tradition of the Church conserves it and faithfully transmits it.
• Faith grows and matures within the ecclesial community.  Saint Paul, in his letter to the Romans, calls the Christians in Rome "saints"--but he didn't mean it in the way we usually think of saints, like Saint Kateri Tekakwitha.  So what did he mean?  That those who have and live the faith in Christ are called to become a reference point for everybody else.  We, like the Romans that Paul was writing to, are called to put others in contact with the Person and message of Jesus, who reveals the face of the living God.  The faith of the Church forms us in this mission.
• The tendency to relegate faith to the private sphere contradicts its very nature.  In the Church we have not only a confirmation of our faith, but also the very real experience of it in the Word, the Sacraments, the grace which sustains us, and the witness of love.
• The experience of communion with God is what faith brings us through the life of the Church.  That communion is the basis for communion and peace among men.  Individualism does not makes us stronger, it chokes our relationships and makes them ever more fragile.  Faith makes us bearers of love and communion with God for the whole human race.