ON SIGNS OF A LIVING FAITH

Zenit News Agency
h
Nov 27 2008
Italy

"Christian Ethics … Is the Consequence of our Friendship With Christ"

VATICAN CITY, NOV. 26, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of
the address Benedict XVI delivered during today’s general audience
in St. Peter’s Square.

Before the Holy Father continued with the cycle of catecheses dedicated
to the figure and thought of St. Paul, he addressed Aram I, catholicos
of Cilicia of the Armenians.

* * *

[Pope’s English-language address to Aram I:]

This morning I greet with great joy His Holiness Aram I, Catholicos
of Cilicia of the Armenians, together with the distinguished
delegation accompanying him, and the Armenian pilgrims from various
countries. This fraternal visit is a significant occasion for
strengthening the bonds of unity already existing between us, as we
journey towards that full communion which is both the goal set before
all Christ’s followers and a gift to be implored daily from the Lord.

For this reason, Your Holiness, I invoke the grace of the Holy Spirit
on your pilgrimage to the tombs of the Apostles Peter and Paul, and
I invite all present to pray fervently to the Lord that your visit,
and our meetings, will mark a further step along the path towards
full unity.

Your Holiness, I wish to express my particular gratitude for your
constant personal involvement in the field of ecumenism, especially in
the International Joint Commission for Theological Dialogue between
the Catholic Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches, and in the
World Council of Churches.

On the exterior facade of the Vatican Basilica is a statue of Saint
Gregory the Illuminator, founder of the Armenian Church, whom one
of your historians has called "our progenitor and father in the
Gospel". The presence of this statue evokes the sufferings he endured
in bringing the Armenian people to Christianity, but it also recalls
the many martyrs and confessors of the faith whose witness bore rich
fruit in the history of your people. Armenian culture and spirituality
are pervaded by pride in this witness of their forefathers, who
suffered with fidelity and courage in communion with the Lamb slain
for the salvation of the world.

Welcome, Your Holiness, dear Bishops and dear friends! Together let
us invoke the intercession of Saint Gregory the Illuminator and above
all the Virgin Mother of God, so that they will enlighten our way
and guide it towards the fullness of that unity which we all desire.

[Catechesis in Italian:]

Dear brothers and sisters,

In last Wednesday’s catechesis, I spoke of the question of how man
is justified before God. Following St. Paul, we have seen that man
is not capable of making himself "just" with his own actions, but
rather that he can truly become "just" before God only because God
confers on him his "justice," uniting him to Christ, his Son. And
man obtains this union with Christ through faith.

In this sense, St. Paul tells us: It is not our works, but our faith
that makes us "just." This faith, nevertheless, is not a thought,
opinion or idea. This faith is communion with Christ, which the Lord
entrusts to us and that because of this, becomes life in conformity
with him. Or in other words, faith, if it is true and real, becomes
love, charity — is expressed in charity. Faith without charity,
without this fruit, would not be true faith. It would be a dead faith.

We have therefore discovered two levels in the last catechesis:
that of the insufficiency of our works for achieving salvation,
and that of "justification" through faith that produces the fruit of
the Spirit. The confusion between these two levels down through the
centuries has caused not a few misunderstandings in Christianity.

In this context it is important that St. Paul, in the Letter to the
Galatians, puts emphasis on one hand, and in a radical way, on the
gratuitousness of justification not by our efforts, and, at the same
time, he emphasizes as well the relationship between faith and charity,
between faith and works. "For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision
nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through
love" (Galatians 5:6). Consequently, there are on one hand the "works
of the flesh," which are fornication, impurity, debauchery, idolatry,
etc. (Galatians 5:19-21), all of which are contrary to the faith. On
the other hand is the action of the Holy Spirit, which nourishes
Christian life stirring up "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control" (Galatians 5:22):
These are the fruits of the Spirit that arise from faith.

At the beginning of this list of virtues is cited ágape, love, and at
the end, self-control. In reality, the Spirit, who is the Love of the
Father and the Son, infuses his first gift, ágape, into our hearts
(cf. Romans 5:5); and ágape, love, to be fully expressed, demands
self-control. Regarding the love of the Father and the Son, which comes
to us and profoundly transforms our existence, I dedicated my first
encyclical, "Deus Caritas Est." Believers know that in mutual love
the love of God and of Christ is incarnated by means of the Spirit.

Let us return to the Letter of the Galatians. Here, St. Paul says
that believers complete the command of love by bearing each other’s
burdens (cf. Galatians 6:2). Justified by the gift of faith in Christ,
we are called to live in the love of Christ toward others, because
it is by this criterion that we will be judged at the end of our
existence. In reality, Paul does nothing more than repeat what Jesus
himself had said, and which we recalled in the Gospel of last Sunday,
in the parable of the Final Judgment.

In the First Letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul becomes expansive
with his famous praise of love. It is the so-called hymn to charity:
"If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love,
I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. … Love is patient,
love is kind. It is not jealous, (love) is not pompous, it is not
inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests …" (1
Corinthians 13:1,4-5).

Christian love is so demanding because it springs from the total
love of Christ for us: this love that demands from us, welcomes us,
embraces us, sustains us, even torments us, because it obliges us to
live no longer for ourselves, closed in on our egotism, but for "him
who has died and risen for us" (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:15). The love of
Christ makes us be in him this new creature (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:17),
who enters to form part of his mystical body that is the Church.

>From this perspective, the centrality of justification without works,
primary object of Paul’s preaching, is not in contradiction with the
faith that operates in love. On the contrary, it demands that our
very faith is expressed in a life according to the Spirit. Often,
an unfounded contraposition has been seen between the theology of
Paul and James, who says in his letter: "For just as a body without
a spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead" (2:26).

In reality, while Paul concerns himself above all with demonstrating
that faith in Christ is necessary and sufficient, James highlights
the consequent relationship between faith and works (cf. James
2:2-4). Therefore, for Paul and for James, faith operative in love
witnesses to the gratuitous gift of justification in Christ. Salvation,
received in Christ, needs to be protected and witnessed "with fear
and trembling. For God is the one who, for his good purpose, works
in you both to desire and to work. Do everything without grumbling
or questioning … as you hold on to the word of life," even St. Paul
would say to the Christians of Philippi (cf. Philippians 2:12-14,16).

Often we tend to fall into the same misunderstandings that have
characterized the community of Corinth: Those Christians thought that,
having been gratuitously justified in Christ by faith, "everything
was licit." And they thought, and often it seems that the Christians
of today think, that it is licit to create divisions in the Church,
the body of Christ, to celebrate the Eucharist without concerning
oneself with the brothers who are most needy, to aspire to the best
charisms without realizing that they are members of each other, etc.

The consequences of a faith that is not incarnated in love are
disastrous, because it is reduced to a most dangerous abuse
and subjectivism for us and for our brothers. On the contrary,
following St. Paul, we should renew our awareness of the fact that,
precisely because we have been justified in Christ, we don’t belong to
ourselves, but have been made into the temple of the Spirit and are
called, therefore, to glorify God in our bodies and with the whole
of our existence (cf. 1 Corinthians 6:19). It would be to scorn the
inestimable value of justification if, having been bought at the
high price of the blood of Christ, we didn’t glorify him with our
body. In reality, this is precisely our "reasonable" and at the same
time "spiritual" worship, for which Paul exhorts us to "offer your
bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God" (Romans 12:1).

To what would be reduced a liturgy directed only to the Lord but
that doesn’t become, at the same time, service of the brethren,
a faith that is not expressed in charity? And the Apostle often
puts his communities before the Final Judgment, on which occasion
"we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each
one may receive recompense, according to what he did in the body,
whether good or evil" (2 Corinthians 5:10; and cf. Romans 2:16).

If the ethics that St. Paul proposes to believers does not lapse
into forms of moralism, and if it shows itself to be current for us,
it is because, each time, it always recommences from the personal
and communitarian relationship with Christ, to verify itself in life
according to the Spirit. This is essential: Christian ethics is not
born from a system of commandments, but rather is the consequence of
our friendship with Christ. This friendship influences life: If it is
true, it incarnates and fulfills itself in love for neighbor. Hence,
any ethical decline is not limited to the individual sphere, but at
the same time, devalues personal and communitarian faith: From this
it is derived and on this, it has a determinant effect.

Let us, therefore, be overtaken by the reconciliation that God has
given us in Christ, by God’s "crazy" love for us: No one and nothing
could ever separate us from his love (cf. Romans 8:39). With this
certainty we live. And this certainty gives us the strength to live
concretely the faith that works in love.

[Translation by ZENIT]

[After the audience, the Holy Father greeted the people in several
languages. In English, he said:]

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

In our continuing catechesis on Saint Paul, we now consider his
teaching on faith and works in the process of our justification. Paul
insists that we are justified by faith in Christ, and not by any merit
of our own. Yet he also emphasizes the relationship between faith
and those works which are the fruit of the Holy Spirit’s presence and
action within us. The first gift of the Spirit is love, the love of the
Father and the Son poured into our hearts (cf. Rom 5:5). Our sharing
in the love of Christ leads us to live no longer for ourselves, but
for him (cf. 2 Cor 5:14-15); it makes us a new creation (cf. 2 Cor
5:17) and members of his Body, the Church. Faith thus works through
love (cf. Gal 5:6). Consequently, there is no contradiction between
what Saint Paul teaches and what Saint James teaches regarding the
relationship between justifying faith and the fruit which it bears
in good works. Rather, there is a different emphasis. Redeemed by the
precious blood of Christ, we are called to glorify him in our bodies
(cf. 1 Cor 6:20), offering ourselves as a spiritual sacrifice pleasing
to God. Justified by the gift of faith in Christ, we are called,
as individuals and as a community, to treasure that gift and to let
it bear rich fruit in the Spirit.

I am pleased to greet all the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors
present at today’s Audience, especially those from England and the
United States of America. I pray that your stay in Rome will renew your
love for the Lord Jesus Christ and strengthen you in his service. Upon
all of you I cordially invoke God’s blessings of joy and peace.

–Boundary_(ID_3tVSmseBam+8mLxyAP21Cw)–

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress