Dear Dott. Scalfari,
I would cordially like to reply to the letter
you addressed to me from the pages of "La Repubblica" on July 7th, which
included a series of personal reflections that then continued to enrich
the pages of the daily newspaper on August 7th.
First of
all, thank you for the attention with which you have read the Encyclical
"Lumen fidei". In fact it was the intention of my beloved predecessor,
Benedict XVI, who conceived it and mostly wrote it, and which, with
gratitude, I have inherited, to not only confirm the faith in Jesus
Christ, for those who already believe, but also to spark a sincere and
rigorous dialogue with those who, like you, define themselves as "for
many years being a non-believer who is interested and fascinated by the
preaching of Jesus of Nazareth".
Therefore, without a doubt it
would seem to be positive, not only for each one of us, but also for
the society in which we live, to stop and speak about a matter as
important as faith and which refers to the teachings and the figure of
Jesus.
In particular, I think there are two circumstances which
today cause this dialogue to be precious and necessary. This is one of
the principal aims of the Second Vatican Council, convened at the behest
of John XXIII as well as by the Apostolic Ministry of the Popes who,
each with their own sensibility and help have since then continued in
the course traced by the Council.
The first circumstance -
that refers to the initial pages of the Encyclical - derives from the
fact that, down in the centuries of modern life, we have seen a
paradox: Christian faith, whose novelty and importance in the life of
mankind since the beginning has been expressed through the symbol of
light, has often been branded as the darkness of superstition which is
opposed to the light of reason. Therefore a lack of communication has
arisen between the Church and the culture inspired by Christianity on
one hand and the modern culture of Enlightenment on the other. The time
has come and the Second Vatican has inaugurated the season, for an open
dialogue without preconceptions that opens the door to a serious and
fruitful meeting.
The second circumstance, for those who attempt
to be faithful to the gift of following Jesus in the light of faith,
derives from the fact that this dialogue is not a secondary accessory in
the existence of those who believe, but is rather an intimate and
indispensabile expression. Speaking of which, allow me to quote a very
important statement, in my opinion, of the Encyclical: as the truth
witnessed by faith is found in love - it is stressed - "it seems
clear that faith is not unyielding, but increases in the coexistence
which respects the other. The believer is not arrogant; on the
contrary, the truth makes him humble, in the knowledge that rather than
making us rigid, it embraces us and possesses us. Rather than make us
rigid, the security of faith makes it possible to speak with everyone"
(n.34). This is the spirit of the words I am writing to you.
For
me, faith began by meeting with Jesus. A personal meeting that touched
my heart and gave a direction and a new meaning to my existence. At
the same time, however, a meeting that was made possible by the
community of faith in which I lived and thanks to which I found access
to the intelligence of the Sacred Scriptures, to the new life that comes
from Jesus like gushing water through the Sacraments, to fraternity
with everyone and to the service to the poor, which is the real image of
the Lord. Believe me, without the Church I would never have been able
to meet Jesus, in spite of the knowledge that the immense gift of faith
is kept in the fragile clay vases of our humanity.
Now, thanks
to this personal experience of faith experienced in Church, I feel
comfortable in listening to your questions and together with you, will
try to find a way to perhaps walk along a path together.
Please
forgive me if I do not follow the arguments proposed by you step by step
in your editorial of July 7th. It would seem more fruitful to me - or
more congenial - to go right to the heart of your considerations. I
will not even go into the manners of explanation followed by the
Encyclical, in which you find the lack of a section specifically
dedicated to the historial experience of Jesus of Nazareth.
To
start, I will only observe that such an analysis is not secondary. In
fact, following the logic of the Encyclical, this means paying attention
to the meaning of what Jesus said and did and after all, of what Jesus
has been and is for us. The Letters of Paul and the Gospel according to
John, to which particular reference is made in the Encyclical, are in
fact created on the solid foundation of the Messianic Ministry of Jesus
of Nazareth which culminated in the pentecost of death and resurrection.
Therefore,
I would say that we must face Jesus in the concrete roughness of his
story, as above all told to us by the most ancient of the Gospels, the
one according to Mark. We then find that the "scandal" which the word
and practices of Jesus provoke around him derive from his extraordinary
"authority": a word that has been certified since the Gospel according
to Mark, but that is not easy to translate well into Italian. The Greek
word is "exousia", which literally means "comes from being" what one
is. It is not something exterior or forced, but rather something that
emanates from the inside and imposes itself. Actually Jesus, amazes and
innovates starting from, he himself says this, his relationship with
God, called familiarly Abbà, who gives him this "authority" so that he
uses it in favor of men.
So Jesus preaches "like someone who has
authority", he heals, calls his disciples to follow him, forgives...
things that, in the Old Testament, belong to God and only God. The
question that most frequently is repeated in the Gospel according to
Mark: "Who is he who...?", and which regards the identity of Jesus,
arises from the recognition of an authority that differs from that of
the world, an authority that aims not at exercising power over others,
but rather serving them, giving them freedom and the fullness of life.
And this is done to the point of staking his own life, up to
experiencing misunderstanding, betrayal, refusal, until he is condemned
to die, left abandoned on the cross. But Jesus remained faithful to God,
up to his death.
And it is then - as the Roman centuriun
exclaims, in the Gospel according to Mark - that Jesus is paradoxically
revealed as the Son of God. Son of a God that is love and that wants,
with all of himself that man, every man, discovers himself and also
lives like his real son. For Christian faith this is certified by the
fact that Jesus rose from the dead: not to be triumphant over those who
refused him, but to certify that the love of God is stronger than
death, the forgiveness of God is stronger than any sin and that it is
worthwhile to give one's life, to the end, to witness this great gift.
Christian
faith believes in this: that Jesus is the Son of God who came to give
his life to open the way to love for everyone. Therefore there is a
reason, dear Dr. Scalfari, when you see the incarnation of the Son of
God as the pivot of Christian faith. Tertullian wrote "caro cardo
salutis", the flesh (of Christ) is the pivot of salvation. Because the
incarnation, that is the fact that the Son of God has come into our
flesh and has shared joy and pain, victories and defeat of our
existence, up to the cry of the cross, living each event with love and
in the faith of Abbà, shows the incredible love that God has for every
man, the priceless value that he acknowledges. For this reason, each of
us is called to accept the view and the choice of love made by Jesus,
become a part of his way of being, thinking and acting. This is faith,
with all the expressions that have been dutifully described in the
Encyclical.
* * *
In your editorial of July 7th, you
also asked me how to understand the originality of Christian Faith as it
is actually based on the incarnation of the Son of God, with respect to
other religions that instead pivot on the absolute transcendency of
God.
I would say that the originality lies in the fact that
faith allows us to participate, in Jesus, in the relationship that He
has with God who is Abbà and, because of this, in the relationship that
He has with all other men, including enemies, in the sign of love. In
other words, the children of Jesus, as Christian faith presents us, are
not revealed to mark an insuperabile separation between Jesus and all
the others: but to tell us that, in Him, we are all called to be the
children of the only Father and brothers with each other. The uniqueness
of Jesus is for communication not for exclusion.
Of course a
consequence of this is also - and this is not a minor thing - that
distinction between the religious spere which is confirmed by "Give to
God what belongs to God and give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar",
distinctly confirmed by Jesus and upon which, the history of the
Western world was built. In fact, the Church is called to sow the yeast
and salt of the Gospel, and that is the love and mercy of God which
reaches all men, indicating the definitive destination of our destiny in
the hereafter, while civil and political society has the difficult duty
of expressing and embodying a life that is evermore human in justice,
in solidarity, in law and in peace. For those who experience the
Christian faith, this does not mean escaping from the world or looking
for any kind of supremacy, but being at the service of mankind, of all
mankind and all men, starting from the periphery of history and keeping
the sense of hope alive, striving for goodness in spite of everything
and always looking beyond.
At the end of your first article, you
also ask me what to say to our Jewish brothers about the promise God
made to them: Has this been forgotten? And this - believe me - is a
question that radically involves us as Christians because, with the
help of God, starting from the Second Vatican Council, we have
discovered that the Jewish people are still, for us, the holy root from
which Jesus originated. I too, in the friendship I have cultivated in
all of these long years with our Jewish brothers, in Argentina, many
times while praying have asked God, especially when I remember the
terrible experience of the Shoah. What I can say, with the Apostle Paul,
is that God has never stopped believing in the alliance made with
Israel and that, through the terribile trials of these past centuries,
the Jews have kept their faith in God. And for this, we will never be
grateful enough to them, as the Church, but also as humanity at large.
Persevering in their faith in God and in the alliance, they remind
everyone, even us as Christians that we are always awaiting, the return
of the Lord and that therefore we must remain open to Him and never take
refuge in what we have already achieved.
As for the three
questions you asked me in the article of August 7th. It would seem to
me that in the first two, what you are most interested in is
understanding the Church's attitude towards those who do not share faith
in Jesus. First of all, you ask if the God of the Christians forgives
those who do not believe and do not seek faith. Given that - and this
is fundamental - God's mercy has no limits if he who asks for mercy
does so in contrition and with a sincere heart, the issue for those who
do not believe in God is in obeying their own conscience. In fact,
listening and obeying it, means deciding about what is perceived to be
good or to be evil. The goodness or the wickedness of our behavior
depends on this decision.
Second of all, you ask if the thought,
according to which no absolute exists and therefore there is no
absolute truth, but only a series of relative and subjective truths is a
mistake or a sin. To start, I would not speak about, not even for
those who believe, an "absolute" truth, in the sense that absolute is
something detached, something lacking any relationship. Now, the truth
is a relationship! This is so true that each of us sees the truth and
expresses it, starting from oneself: from one's history and culture,
from the situation in which one lives, etc. This does not mean that the
truth is variable and subjective. It means that it is given to us only
as a way and a life. Was it not Jesus himself who said: "I am the way,
the truth, the life"? In other words, the truth is one with love, it
requires humbleness and the willingness to be sought, listened to and
expressed. Therefore we must understand the terms well and perhaps, in
order to avoid the oversemplification of absolute contraposition,
reformulate the question. I think that today this is absolutely
necessary in order to have a serene and constructive dialogue which I
hoped for from the beginning.
In the last question you ask if,
with the disappearance of man on earth, the thoughts able to think about
God will also disappear. Of course, the greatness of mankind lies in
being able to think about God. That is in being able to experience a
conscious and responsible relationship with Him. But the relationship
lies between two realities. God - this is my thought and this is my
experience, but how many, yesterday and today, share it! - is not an
idea, even if very sublime, the result of the thoughts of mankind. God
is a reality with a capital "R". Jesus reveals this to us - and he
experiences the relationship with Him - as a Father of infinite
goodness and mercy. God therefore does not depend on our thoughts. On
the other hand, even when the end of life for man on earth should come
- and for Christian faith, in any case the world as we know it now is
destined to end, man will not finish existing and, in a way that we do
not know, nor will the universe created with him. The Scriptures speak
of "new skies and a new land" and confirm that, in the end, at the time
and place that it is beyond our knowledge, but which we patiently and
desirously await, God will be " everything in everyone".
Dear Dr.
Scalfari, here I end these reflections of mine, prompted by what you
wanted to tell and ask me. Please accept this as a tentative and
temporary reply, but sincere and hopeful, together with the invitation
that I made to walk a part of the path together. Believe me, in spite of
its slowness, the infidelity, the mistakes and the sins that may have
and may still be committed by those who compose the Church, it has no
other sense and aim if not to live and witness Jesus: He has been sent
by Abbà "to bring good news to the poor... to proclaim release to the
captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go
free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour" (Luke 4: 18-19).
With brotherly love,
Francesco