To Discover God, Go to the Church

After last week's reflection on the noble cultivation of desire to reach the heights of God (cf. CCC 27-30), again today His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI gave an insightful reading of the opening pages of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the Creed summarizing how to know God in three "ways" (cf. CCC 31-38): the way of the world of nature, the way of the depth and beautiful mystery of man (the human person), and the way of faith, viz. discovering God in the life of faith.  The first two ways are common enough in theology: All of Creation and especially Man as reflections of God and thus wonderful testimonies to His existence.  But the third way is a less common, though very obvious and broad and most profound, element in revelation theology.  Here is my translation of the relevant part.

The third word (with which, in addition to "the world" and "man",  I should like to synthetically summarize the ways (vie) of coming to the knowledge of  and encounter with God): "the faith".
Above all in the reality of our age we should not forget that one way that leads to the consciousness and encounter with God is the life of faith.  He who believes is united to God, is open to his grace, to the force of charity.  Thus his existence becomes a witness, not of himself, but of the Risen One, and his faith is not afraid to show itself in daily life, he is open to dialogue which expresses profound friendship for the journey (cammino) of every man, and he knows how to open lights of hope to the need for rescue, for happiness, for the future.  The faith, indeed, is an encounter with God who speaks and operates in history and who converts our daily life, transforming in us mentalities, value judgments, choices and concrete actions.  It is not an illusion, a flight from reality, an easy refuge, sentimentalism, but rather an involvement of the entire life and the announcement of the Gospel, the Good News capable of liberating the entire man.
A christian, a community which are operative and faithful to God's project who has first loved us, constitute a privileged way for those who are in indifference or in doubt regarding his existence and his action.  This calls, however, each believer to make his own witness to the faith ever more transparent, purifying one's own life that it be conformed to Christ.
Today many have a limited concept of the christian faith because they identify it with mere system of beliefs and of values and not so much with the truth of a God revealed in history, desirous to communicate with man one on one (a tu per tu), in a rapport of love with him.  In reality, at the foundation of every doctrine and value is the event of the encounter between man and God in Christ Jesus.
Christianity, before being a morality or an ethics is the advent of love, the reception of the person of Jesus.  Hence the christian and the christian community should before all else behold (look at) Christ and make him seen (to be looked at), the true Way which escorts (conduce) to God.

P.S.  It seems to me that the Holy Father himself is humbly, and most profitably (especially for us), slowly rereading and interpreting and presenting The Catechism of the Catholic Church.  He himself is doing what he is recommending for all of the faithful for this Year of Faith.  Bravo Benedetto!

P.S.S.  For more on this theme of discovering God in the faith see Newman's Grammer of Assent Chapter X, second section--the last part of the book.  As a matter of fact, I have to say that the Holy Father's Wednesday audience address today is a pretty good summary of that entire book which is Newman's treatise on the sources of Christian certitude.  It would be great to have these Wednesday audiences with some relevant footnotes by the Holy Father.  Perhaps later when they are published in book form.