Such Faith
- POPE BENEDICT XVI
The act of faith, we said, is a sharing in the vision of Jesus, propping oneself up on Jesus: John, who leant on Jesus' bosom, is a symbol for what faith means.
Faith is communion with Jesus and thus liberation from the repression that is opposed to the truth, liberation of my ego from its going against the grain of its being, so as to respond to the Father and say "yes" to love, "yes" to being, to say that "yes" that is our redemption and that overcomes the "world."
In this way faith by its inmost essential nature involves other people: it is a breaking out of the isolation of my ego that is its own illness.
The act of faith is an opening out into the distance, a breaking down of the door of my subjectivity, described by Paul in the phrase: It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me (Gal 2:20). The redeemed ego finds itself again in a greater new ego. Paul describes this process of the dissolution of the first ego and its reawakening in a greater ego as being born again. In this ego into which I am liberated by faith I find myself united not only with Jesus but with everybody who has followed the same path. To put it another way, faith is necessarily what may be called churchly faith. It lives and moves in the "we" of the Church, one with the common "I" of Jesus Christ. In this new subject the wall between myself and others falls down: the wall that divides my subjectivity from objectivity and makes it unattainable for me, the wall between me and the depth of being.
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Acknowledgement
Pope Benedict XVI. "Such Faith." from The Yes of Jesus Christ: Exercises in Faith, Hope, and Love (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1991).
Reprinted with permission of The Crossroad Publishing Company.
The Author
Pope Benedict XVI is the author of Jesus of Nazareth, Vol II, Jesus of Nazareth, Vol I, Caritas in Veritate: Charity in Truth, Saved in Hope: Spe Salvi, God Is Love: Deus Caritas Est,The End of Time?: The Provocation of Talking about God, Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions, Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam, Salt of the Earth: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church at the End of the Millennium, God and the World: Believing and Living in Our Time, In the Beginning: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall, The Spirit of the Liturgy, The Ratzinger Report: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church, Introduction to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Introduction to Christianity, Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today, Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977, Behold the Pierced One, and God Is Near Us: The Eucharist, the Heart of Life.
