The Light that Faith is

This week's bulletin column was my presentation of Pope Francis' first encylical, Lumen Fidei, to the parish.

You have been called by name.  That’s the conviction of Pope Francis, who recently released his first letter to the Church as Pope, called Lumen Fidei – “The light of faith.”  You have been called by name: the God who made heaven and earth beckons you, counts every hair on your head, offers a hand to pull you up when you’re wounded, offers His only Son so that He might be more perfectly in relationship with you.  “Faith,” the Pope tells us, “is our response to this.”

How can we possibly respond to all this?  If we know ourselves, we know that while we wish to be wholehearted we find it within ourselves to hold back.  That’s why, while faith is truly our response, it is also a gift: “a supernatural gift,” writes Pope Francis, “a light for our way, guiding our journey.”  He stresses that life is not just any journey, but a pilgrimage: the journey is holy, sacred and has a definite end in mind.  We are growing into a full response to God’s grace.

The Pope is keen to avoid, though, any suggestion that God is distant from our current life.  No, the whole way is holy, as Christ is the way.  The Holy Father laments that “our culture has lost its sense of God’s tan­gible presence and activity in our world.”  One excellent way to recover that is the prayer of examen.  Daily, one says four things to God: wow, thank you, sorry, please.  How was God present to me and blessing me today?  How did I not respond as fully as I might?  What do I need to ask for to continue my journey?  One might add a question: did I live faithfully?  Did my words and deeds “profess [my] faith in God’s tangible and powerful love which really does act”?

It is very important to Pope Francis that our faith is a gift given to be shared.  The first step is to transform how we see the world.  He writes “Faith does not merely gaze at Jesus, but sees things as Jesus himself sees.”  Do we see all, friend, stranger, even enemy, as neighbor?  Who do we see in the ditch by the side of the road?  With eyes renewed by faith, we can start “accompanying the path of every man and woman towards God.”

To be able to reach out to others as God reaches out to us requires us to be saturated in God’s love, a relationship that is nourished by life in the Spirit, in the Church, living the full sacramental life.  To share your faith, you must be on fire with it.  Only then can we accompany those who suffer and offer them the solace of faith: “not a light which scatters all our darkness, but a lamp which guides our steps in the night and suffices for the journey.”

These thoughts barely scratch the surface of our Pope’s letter, the full text of which may be accessed at: http://tinyurl.com/LightOfFaith2013