CATECHISM CC - Part 3 - MAN'S RESPONSE TO GOD

By his Revelation, "the invisible God, from the fullness of his love, addresses men as his friends, and moves among them, in order to invite and receive them into his own company."¹ The adequate response to this invitation is faith.

By faith, man completely submits his intellect and his will to God.² With his whole being man gives his assent to God the revealer. Sacred Scripture calls this human response to God, the author of revelation, "the obedience of faith".³

144 To obey (from the Latin ob-audire, to "hear or listen to") in faith is to submit freely to the word that has been heard, because its truth is guaranteed by God, who is Truth itself. Abraham is the model of such obedience offered us by Sacred Scripture. The Virgin Mary is its most perfect embodiment.

The Letter to the Hebrews, in its great eulogy of the faith of Israel's ancestors, lays special emphasis on Abraham's faith: "By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place which he was to receive as an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was to go."⁴ By faith, he lived as a stranger and pilgrim in the promised land.⁵ By faith, Sarah was given to conceive the son of the promise. And by faith Abraham offered his only son in sacrifice.⁶

Abraham thus fulfills the definition of faith in Hebrews 11:1: "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen":⁷ "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness."⁸ Because he was "strong in his faith", Abraham became the "father of all who believe".⁹

The Old Testament is rich in witnesses to this faith. The Letter to the Hebrews proclaims its eulogy of the exemplary faith of the ancestors who "received divine approval".¹⁰ Yet "God had foreseen something better for us": the grace of believing in his Son Jesus, "the pioneer and perfecter of our faith".¹¹

The Virgin Mary most perfectly embodies the obedience of faith. By faith Mary welcomes the tidings and promise brought by the angel Gabriel, believing that "with God nothing will be impossible" and so giving her assent: "Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be [done] to me according to your word."¹² Elizabeth greeted her: "Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord."¹³ It is for this faith that all generations have called Mary blessed.¹⁴

Throughout her life and until her last ordeal¹⁵ when Jesus her son died on the cross, Mary's faith never wavered. She never ceased to believe in the fulfillment of God's word. And so the Church venerates in Mary the purest realization of faith.

Faith is first of all a personal adherence of man to God. At the same time, and inseparably, it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed. As personal adherence to God and assent to his truth, Christian faith differs from our faith in any human person. It is right and just to entrust oneself wholly to God and to believe absolutely what he says. It would be futile and false to place such faith in a creature.¹⁷

For a Christian, believing in God cannot be separated from believing in the One he sent, his "beloved Son", in whom the Father is "well pleased"; God tells us to listen to him.¹⁸ The Lord himself said to his disciples: "Believe in God, believe also in me."¹⁹ We can believe in Jesus Christ because he is himself God, the Word made flesh: "No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known."²⁰ Because he "has seen the Father", Jesus Christ is the only one who knows him and can reveal him.²¹

One cannot believe in Jesus Christ without sharing in his Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who reveals to men who Jesus is. For "no one can say "Jesus is Lord", except by the Holy Spirit",²² who "searches everything, even the depths of God. . No one comprehends the thoughts of God, except the Spirit of God."²³ Only God knows God completely: we believe in the Holy Spirit because he is God.

When St. Peter confessed that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, Jesus declared to him that this revelation did not come "from flesh and blood", but from "my Father who is in heaven".²⁴ Faith is a gift of God, a supernatural virtue infused by him. "Before this faith can be exercised, man must have the grace of God to move and assist him; he must have the interior helps of the Holy Spirit, who moves the heart and converts it to God, who opens the eyes of the mind and 'makes it easy for all to accept and believe the truth.'"²⁵

Believing is possible only by grace and the interior helps of the Holy Spirit. But it is no less true that believing is an authentically human act. Trusting in God and cleaving to the truths he has revealed is contrary neither to human freedom nor to human reason. Even in human relations it is not contrary to our dignity to believe what other persons tell us about themselves and their intentions, or to trust their promises (for example, when a man and a woman marry) to share a communion of life with one another. If this is so, still less is it contrary to our dignity to "yield by faith the full submission of. . . intellect and will to God who reveals",²⁶ and to share in an interior communion with him.

In faith, the human intellect and will cooperate with divine grace: "Believing is an act of the intellect assenting to the divine truth by command of the will moved by God through grace."²⁷

What moves us to believe is not the fact that revealed truths appear as true and intelligible in the light of our natural reason: we believe "because of the authority of God himself who reveals them, who can neither deceive nor be deceived".²⁸ So "that the submission of our faith might nevertheless be in accordance with reason, God willed that external proofs of his Revelation should be joined to the internal helps of the Holy Spirit."²⁹ Thus the miracles of Christ and the saints, prophecies, the Church's growth and holiness, and her fruitfulness and stability "are the most certain signs of divine Revelation, adapted to the intelligence of all"; they are "motives of credibility" (motiva credibilitatis), which show that the assent of faith is "by no means a blind impulse of the mind".³⁰

Faith is certain. It is more certain than all human knowledge because it is founded on the very word of God who cannot lie. To be sure, revealed truths can seem obscure to human reason and experience, but "the certainty that the divine light gives is greater than that which the light of natural reason gives."³¹ "Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt."³²

"Faith seeks understanding":³³ it is intrinsic to faith that a believer desires to know better the One in whom he has put his faith, and to understand better what He has revealed; a more penetrating knowledge will in turn call forth a greater faith, increasingly set afire by love. The grace of faith opens "the eyes of your hearts"³⁴ to a lively understanding of the contents of Revelation: that is, of the totality of God's plan and the mysteries of faith, of their connection with each other and with Christ, the center of the revealed mystery. "The same Holy Spirit constantly perfects faith by his gifts, so that Revelation may be more and more profoundly understood."³⁵ In the words of St. Augustine, "I believe, in order to understand; and I understand, the better to believe."³⁶

Faith and science: "Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth."³⁷ "Consequently, methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are."³⁸

To be human, "man's response to God by faith must be free, and. . . therefore nobody is to be forced to embrace the faith against his will. The act of faith is of its very nature a free act."³⁹ "God calls men to serve him in spirit and in truth. Consequently they are bound to him in conscience, but not coerced. . . This fact received its fullest manifestation in Christ Jesus."⁴⁰ Indeed, Christ invited people to faith and conversion, but never coerced them. "For he bore witness to the truth but refused to use force to impose it on those who spoke against it. His kingdom. . . grows by the love with which Christ, lifted up on the cross, draws men to himself."⁴¹

Believing in Jesus Christ and in the One who sent him for our salvation is necessary for obtaining that salvation.⁴² "Since "without faith it is impossible to please [God]" and to attain to the fellowship of his sons, therefore without faith no one has ever attained justification, nor will anyone obtain eternal life 'But he who endures to the end.'"⁴³

Faith is an entirely free gift that God makes to man. We can lose this priceless gift, as St. Paul indicated to St. Timothy: "Wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting conscience, certain persons have made shipwreck of their faith."⁴⁴ To live, grow and persevere in the faith until the end we must nourish it with the word of God; we must beg the Lord to increase our faith;⁴⁵ it must be "working through charity," abounding in hope, and rooted in the faith of the Church.⁴⁶

Faith makes us taste in advance the light of the beatific vision, the goal of our journey here below. Then we shall see God "face to face", "as he is".⁴⁷ So faith is already the beginning of eternal life:

Now, however, "we walk by faith, not by sight";⁴⁹ we perceive God as "in a mirror, dimly" and only "in part".⁵⁰ Even though enlightened by him in whom it believes, faith is often lived in darkness and can be put to the test. The world we live in often seems very far from the one promised us by faith. Our experiences of evil and suffering, injustice and death, seem to contradict the Good News; they can shake our faith and become a temptation against it.

It is then we must turn to the witnesses of faith: to Abraham, who "in hope. . . believed against hope";⁵¹ to the Virgin Mary, who, in "her pilgrimage of faith", walked into the "night of faith"⁵² in sharing the darkness of her son's suffering and death; and to so many others: "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith."⁵³

1 DV 2; cf. Col 1:15; 1 Tim 1:17; Ex 33:11; Jn 15:14-15; Bar 3:38 (Vulg.).
2 Cf. DV 5.
3 Cf. Rom 1:5; 16:26.
4 Heb 11:8; cf. Gen 12:1-4.
5 Cf. Gen 23:4.
6 Cf. Heb 11:17.
7 Heb 11:1.
8 Rom 4:3; cf. Gen 15:6.
9 Rom 4:11,18; 4:20; cf. Gen 15:5.
10 Heb 11:2, 39.
11 Heb 11:40; 12:2.
12 Lk 1:37-38; cf. Gen 18:14.
13 Lk 1:45.
14 Cf. Lk 1:48.
15 Cf. Lk 2:35.
16 2 Tim 1:12.
17 Cf. Jer 17:5-6; Ps 40:5; 146:3-4.
18 Mk 1:11; cf. 9:7.
19 Jn 14:1.
20 Jn 1:18.
21 Jn 6:46; cf. Mt 11:27.
22 1 Cor 12:3.
23 1 Cor 2:10-11.
24 Mt 16:17; cf. Gal 1:15; Mt 11:25.
25 DV 5; cf. DS 377; 3010.
26 Dei Filius 3:DS 3008.
27 St. Thomas Aquinas, STh II-II,2,9; cf. Dei Filius 3:DS 3010.
28 Dei Filius 3:DS 3008.
29 Dei Filius 3:DS 3009.
30 Dei Filius 3:DS 3008-3010; Cf. Mk 16 20; Heb 2:4.
31 St. Thomas Aquinas, STh II-II,171,5,obj.3.
32 John Henry Cardinal Newman, Apologia pro vita sua (London: Longman, 1878) 239.
33 St. Anselm, Prosl. prooem.:PL 153,225A.
34 Eph 1:18.
35 DV 5.
36 St. Augustine, Sermo 43,7,9:PL 38,257-258.
37 Dei Filius 4:DS 3017.
38 GS 36 § 1.
39 DH 10; cf. CIC, can. 748 § 2.
40 DH 11.
41 DH 11; cf. Jn 18:37; 12:32.
42 Cf. 16:16; Jn 3:36; 6:40 et al.
43 Dei Filius 3:DS 3012; cf. Mt 10:22; 24:13 and Heb 11:6; Council of Trent:DS 1532.
44 1 Tim 1:18-19.
45 Cf. Mk 9:24; Lk 17:5; 22:32.
46 Gal 5:6; Rom 15:13; cf. Jas 2:14-26.
47 1 Cor 13:12; 1 Jn 3:2.
48 St. Basil, De Spiritu Sancto, 15,36:PG 32,132; cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, STh II-II,4,1.
49 2 Cor 5:7.
50 l Cor 13:12.
51 Rom 4:18.
52 LG 58; John Paul II, RMat 18.
53 Heb 12:1-2.

Mary, Mother of Sorrows:
The Mystery of Comfort and Hope
Louis J. Cameli, abridged

Iuxta crucem tecum stare
ac me tibi sociare
in planctu desidero.

Fac ut portem Christi mortem
passionis fac me sortem
et plagas recolere.

I want to stand with
you next to the cross
and I want to join you in your grieving.

Make me bear Christ's death
make me share his passion
make me recall his wounds.

Image:
Crucifixion (fragment)
Church at Walburg
Lower Rhine

Ten or twenty years ago, it would have been unthinkable or, at least, improbable, to consider writing about Mary as the mother of sorrows. Devotion to Mary under that title and in Roman Catholic circles had its heyday in the 40s and 50s. Time has passed and given us larger perspectives. The flood of peppy and overly optimistic postconciliar spiritualities failed to satisfy people, precisely because they did not and could not engage people on the level of suffering.

There is a vast quantity of suffering in the world. It extends from deeply personal and hidden domains through social patterns and global realities. It even reaches a cosmic dimension. These abstract levels of suffering are marked out very specifically by sorrowing mothers. In some particular and powerful way a large quantity of human suffering coalesces in the hearts of mothers. In this context, the early and, in the Christian tradition, paradigmatic figure of Mary, mother of sorrows, is worth pursuing for greater understanding.

Even before a theology of suffering was elaborated, the images of a young and suffering mother bearing a child in a hostile world and an older mother standing before the cross of her son as he was dying captivated generations of believers. The embodiment in art and poetry and music of the Mater dolorosa suggests that priority needs to be given to the primary experience which is both imaginative and affective.

An example of giving priority to the imaginative is found in the remarkable medieval hymn Stabat Mater (verses above). When these and other similar verses are read in a perspective of male-female dynamics and spirituality, some significant conclusions emerge. The poet, a man, is asking a woman, Mary, to help him to identify with, join with, participate in the sufferings and death of another man, Jesus.

Read in this way, the Stabat Mater highlights the need or, perhaps more accurately, the necessity of Mary in the spiritual journey. Gerald May says, "...in my experience I have never met a sincere Western spiritual seeker who did not have to encounter Mary at some point along the way, regardless of that seeker's religious denomination. The image of Mary allows both men and women to relate their images of the divine in ways simply not possible with a totally male divinity"

The StabatMater, I suggest, captures a way in which Mary gives access to all believers to the mystery of Jesus Christ. In a particular way, she provides male believers with a possibility for intimate relationship with the suffering and dying Jesus, that is, on the level of his vulnerabilities and our vulnerabilities as well as on the level of strong affect or feeling.

Image:
Man of Sorrows
Geertgen tot Sint Jans

Although admiration and veneration are both historically and theologically valid and appropriate, another dimension of Marian devotion, recently recovered and reemphasized by Paul VI in Marialis Cultus, needs our attention. The other dimension is identification with Mary or the imitation of Mary. Identification with Mary means that Christians see her and say not only "Look, there is the mother of sorrows," and admire her; they also say, "Here is a life and faith pattern which I can call my own."

If we are to trace the biblical witness to Mary's sufferings, her experience of sorrow, a fundamental distinction is necessary. We are following the experience of someone whose title is sorrowful mother, not depressed mother. In the gospels as documents of faith, we have Mary's experience of suffering presented in a context of faith, hope, and love. Were the gospels to chronicle her pain simply in a context of sadness, perhaps anger, a lack of resolution, and ultimately without perceived hope, then she would not emerge as a pained, sorrowing, yet faith-filled person but rather as a depressed person.

The sufferings endured by Mary were complex. As we noted, the gospel narratives often mix a joy and a sorrow. Their layered descriptions ring true to the texture of real life. In a similar way, one would expect and correctly find a complexity in the responses of Mary to suffering. Although we instinctively look for a single solution to "the problem of suffering," faith and, more specifically, the Mary experience in the New Testament lead us to a multifaceted approach. I will describe her responses under the categories of struggle, presence, expansion, and surrender.

(Gerald G. May, win and Spirit: A Contemplative Psychology, pp. 147-8).

1) STRUGGLE – Mary's first response to suffering is struggle. Because of an excessively passive piety in the past, we may be surprised that struggle can be named the first response to suffering. Mary's "yes" is not mere acquiescence but active engagement in the unfolding of salvation. Mary's response to suffering by way of struggle becomes clear in the Magnificat. Here we find suffering, struggle, hope, courage and anticipation.

2) PRESENCE – As she shares in the sufferings of her son, Mary accompanies him, does not "do" anything. Hers is an active and engaged presence which includes: knowing, understanding, accepting and loving. When "nothing can be done" medically, socially, psycho-therapeutically, or whatever way, then the core needs of people emerge. They are: being known, being understood, being accepted, being loved. These elements form the content of Mary's presence.

3) EXPANSION – A significant response of Mary to suffering is an expansion of consciousness and of concern. The gospel narratives are quite clear about this. At the cross, in John's gospel, she faces the greatest loss. Precisely at that moment, she expands her embrace and receives the beloved disciple and, symbolically, all other disciples as their mother. In the face of her most intense suffering, she expands the arena of her concern.

Image:
Pieta
detailof the Marian altar in the
Lady Chapel, Frankfurt, Germany

4) SURRENDER – Mary's surrender is a surrender to God. Psychologically, that means not clinging to her control over matters or outcomes. In faith, it means the radical acknowledgment of God's sovereignty. In hope, it means re-imagining the future, not simply making the future an extrapolation of the present. In love, it means the movement toward the union of wills with the one who loves us absolutely, unconditionally.

The mystery of suffering is a mystery of connection and disconnection. The overall pattern of Mary emergent in our reflection is to link us with Jesus in his suffering and dying and rising, to link us with one another as we share common struggles and suffering, to link us with a larger world of concern. Mary comforts primarily by being a sacrament of God's compassion, enduring, promising, supporting.

How can Mary be the sorrowful mother if she has been gloriously assumed into heaven? Recall the image of the appearing risen Lord who continues to bear the wounds of his passion. He is glorified and wounded still. For the mystery is one: death and resurrection. Similarly, Mary is both virgo assumpta and mater dolorosa . Her sufferings and sorrows have shaped her glory. She is "a sign of sure hope and solace for the pilgrim people of God."

Source: Louis J. Cameli, abridged from the article with same title which appeared in Chicago Studies, 27, 1: April, 1988, pp. 3;15. This excerpt appeared in The Marian Library Newsletter, Spring, 1991.

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