REAL FAITH SHOWS ITSELF AS LOVE FOR OTHERS, POPE SAYS AT AUDIENCE
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic Weekly
Nov 26 2008
MI
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — If Christian faith is not translated into love
and concrete help for the poor, it is not real faith, Pope Benedict
XVI said.
"Real faith becomes love and expresses itself in charity. A faith
without charity, without this fruit, would not be true faith. It would
be a dead faith," the pope said Nov. 26 at his weekly general audience.
The gathering was held in the Vatican audience hall on the first day
solar panels installed on the roof began generating energy for the
Vatican’s power grid.
The audience began with Pope Benedict entering the hall side by side
with Armenian Orthodox Catholicos Aram of Cilicia.
The pope told an estimated 9,000 people at the audience that the
visit of the Lebanon-based patriarch "is a significant occasion for
strengthening the bonds of unity already existing between us as we
journey toward that full communion which is both the goal set before
all Christ’s followers and a gift to be implored daily from the Lord."
Catholicos Aram told the pope that all Christian churches must work
together to fight "the decay of moral values" and to minister to a
world "in dire need of spiritual transformation."
In his main talk, Pope Benedict continued a discussion he began the
week before about St. Paul’s teaching on how people are made just in
the eyes of God and on the relationship between faith and good works.
St. Paul taught clearly that people can do nothing to make themselves
just in the eyes of God, but rather that justification is God’s gift
to those who believe, the pope said.
"But this faith is not a thought, an opinion or an idea," he said.
Faith implies communion with Christ and conformity to him, the pope
said. Those who have faith in Christ strive to act as Christ did.
Pope Benedict focused on St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians,
especially the passage that begins, "If I speak in human and angelic
tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing
cymbal."
Like the people of Corinth to whom St. Paul wrote, he said, Christians
today also can be tempted to think that because they are saved by faith
alone, they do not have to worry about anything but their prayers.
"What would we be reducing the liturgy to if, at the same time as we
turned to the Lord, we did not also serve our brothers and sisters? A
faith that does not express itself in charity," the pope said,
answering his own question.
Christianity is not a rulebook, he said. "The Christian ethic is
not born of a system of commandments, but is the consequence of our
friendship with Christ."
"The Christian life is nourished by the action of the Holy Spirit,
which gives rise to love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity,
faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. These are the fruits of
the spirit that grow from faith," he said.
"Believers know that love for God becomes concrete in love for one
another," Pope Benedict said.
"Justified through the gift of faith in Christ we are called to live
in the love of Christ for our neighbors because it is on this criteria
that we will be judged at the end of our existence," he said.