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| Jacob Jordaens, Christ with Mary, Martha and Lazarus |
Human reason possesses a creative power that is encouraged by evangelization, overcoming both prerational myth and rationalistic ideology. It allows the human person to encounter God's being. It is the engagement with God as Logos that enables human beings to set the proper priorities in their lives. This encounter with God in a manner previously deemed impossible is earth shattering. Thus, there exists a primacy of contemplation, contemplation centered on the always-antecedent divine self-revelation, over and against the active life. Evangelization is an invitation to such a life that lives from the Logos and leads to ethos. Against the Faustian thesis "at the beginning was the deed" [Goethe], Christianity insists on the primacy of the Word. It is not activity, but contemplation, not morality but metaphysics, not effort but adoration that enjoys preference. Evangelization means: "Who has seen me, has seen the Father...nobody comes to the Father except through me" (Jn 14:9, 14:6). Christian existence is participation in Christ's salvation. Beyond Augustine's emphasis on justification--which, taken in isolation, is a rather petty, self-centered concern--God not only liberates humankind from sin but turns humans toward his grace and enables them to access the hidden nature of God, which remains inaccessible even to angels. This is achieved by way of a spiritual Christology: "You are Christ, the Son of the living God" (Mt 16:16). The Son, coessential with the Father, is the key.
Emery de Gaál, The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI: The Christocentric Shift, New York: Palgrave, 2010, 219.
Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that which endureth unto life everlasting, which the Son of man will give you. For him hath God, the Father, sealed. They said therefore unto him: What shall we do, that we may work the works of God? Jesus answered, and said to them: This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he hath sent. John 6:28-29