Ponder Points: Seeing The Light of Faith

A Quick Look at Lumen Fidei

Members of the Roman Catholic Church have been impressed with their new pontiff Francis starting from day one, and so it would not be surprising if these same Catholics would also respect and revere him all the more as he gets his first encyclical published for all the faithful to read. Entitled Lumen Fidei, the encyclical is Francis' own effort to complete what has been started by his predecessor, the Pope-Emeritus Benedict XVI,  as a draft. Eventually, he ended up with a relatively short work composed of four chapters which tackles faith itself, completing the trilogy of the theological virtues. In here, Francis has somehow presented a grand synthesis of the faith that the Church hangs on to and lives with, linking it with the two other theological virtues of hope and love, and bringing to light all the figures and ideas of the Church as part of the faith that it lives.

And regarding this synthetic approach, three things can be said:

1. In its content and form, the whole encyclical seems to be a return to the basics of the Church, touching on the very foundations of the life that it lives. A Catholic might not be able to find something new in the same way that a non-believer desiring to know about the nature of the Church's faith would, but I think both would be filled with wonder as to how the two popes dealt with faith, coming from various points of view within and outside the Church. This can be seen in the various references that both popes used, ranging from Nietzsche, to William of Saint-Thierry, to T. S. Eliot, in which they presented different ways of seeing the faith that Christianity regards as a foundation. All of these perhaps serves a single purpose that, for Benedict and Francis, is very clear: to provide a response to the view of faith in a secular world that has lost an appreciation of it, to let its light shine bright again.

2. Connected to the first, one could see how interesting it is that Benedict and Francis tied everything around faith, which stands alongside hope and love. They were able to talk about not only the crisis of faith in a secular world, but also other issues that have to be dealt with, including the question of other faiths and ecumenism and environmentalism among others. What seems to be emphasized at this point is that faith is not just a matter of private and subjectively held truths, but a commitment that is at the same time a perspective of the whole, which in turn leads the human being to act in a certain manner. But what sets the difference is that it does not come from the initiative of the human being, but is granted as a gift by that whom faith enables the human being to see.

3. I think it is apt for the encyclical to end with the model of faith, the Blessed Virgin herself, who, through his unconditional 'yes' to Christ and to the salvation of humanity, led a life of faith. It started with light and ended with light, the light we receive from the beacon reflecting Christ's life and love herself. And perhaps what Francis would want to point here is not just the fact that the Church as a whole is invited to walk the path of her Blessed Mother, but also and more importantly, to seek her motherly love in the times when we cannot see the light.

Indeed, Lumen Fidei has allowed us to receive once again the light of faith that penetrates our whole existence.