You can read the
first installment of my excerpts of Lumen Fidei here and
second installment here. The
first includes an introduction and links to an overview.
Introduction (1-7)
Chpt 1: We Have
Believed In Love (8-22)
Chpt 2: Unless You
Believe, You Will Not Understand (23-36)
Chpt 3: I Delivered
To You What I Also Received (37-49)
Chpt 4: God
Delivers A City For Them (50-60)
While Chapter One
traces the history of faith, Chapter Two develops why faith is necessary to
understand the fullness of life. Through
faith we find Truth, that is, with a capital “t.” And that Truth is that love is at the center
of life, the source of knowledge.
31. It was only in this way, by taking flesh, by sharing
our humanity, that the knowledge proper to love could come to full fruition.
For the light of love is born when our hearts are touched and we open ourselves
to the interior presence of the beloved, who enables us to recognize his
mystery. Thus we can understand why, together with hearing and seeing, Saint
John can speak of faith as touch, as he says in his First Letter: "What we
have heard, what we have seen with our eyes and touched with our hands, concerning
the word of life" (1 Jn 1:1). By his taking flesh and coming among
us, Jesus has touched us, and through the sacraments he continues to touch us
even today; transforming our hearts, he unceasingly enables us to acknowledge
and acclaim him as the Son of God. In faith, we can touch him and receive the
power of his grace. Saint Augustine, commenting on the account of the woman
suffering from haemorrhages who touched Jesus and was cured (cf. Lk 8:45-46),
says: "To touch him with our hearts: that is what it means to
believe".[26] The crowd presses in on Jesus, but they
do not reach him with the personal touch of faith, which apprehends the mystery
that he is the Son who reveals the Father. Only when we are configured to Jesus
do we receive the eyes needed to see him.
“By his taking
flesh and coming among us, Jesus has touched us, and through the sacraments he
continues to touch us even today; transforming our hearts, he unceasingly
enables us to acknowledge and acclaim him as the Son of God.”
Only when we are configured to Jesus do we receive the eyes needed to see HIM.
ReplyDeleteSo true Manny
Keep sending prayers my way also.
Peace