IPLW-Faith, “The Reasonable Consequence of Faith,” pp. 117-131
Yes, it has been a while since I made a posting on this book. I have actually been trying to catch up on the back issues of Traces, the journal of Communion and Liberation. I am still at least three issues behind. But I have also realized that I really need to do School of Community, for my own spiritual welfare. It helps keep me grounded in the reality of Christ’s presence in my life. So I have been doing some more reading in this book; in fact it was the basis for my homily this past weekend, which a lot of parishioners found very exciting. The other reason for my lack of regular postings is just finding the time to write them.
With this section we begin the third and final chapter of the book. This chapter is called “Obedience,” but before getting into obedience, Msgr. Guissani wants to emphasize, once again, the reasonableness of faith. A precursor for faith is freedom. Again, this is not freedom as license to do whatever we want. Rather freedom is our relationship with our ultimate end, our relationship with the infinite. In other words, freedom is the being free of the obstacles that prevent us from getting to where God has called us to be right from the beginning.
Msgr. Giussani gives a few definitions in this section. First, that affection is an attitude towards a known object, and when we have the correct affection or attitude towards the known object we call this a virtue. He also defines reason as the understanding of the correspondence between what someone says about reality and what the heart expects about reality.
The reason I used this section for my homily this past weekend, is because a significant part of this section is a reflection on the section of St. John’s Gospel that we heard this past weekend. Let us recall, for the past few weekends we have been hearing from the Bread of Life discourse. It began with the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fish, and last weekend it finishes with the people having a hard time accepting Jesus’ statement that He is going to give them His body for their food, and His blood for their drink, and that unless they eat His flesh and drink His blood they will not have any life within them. Guissani, in his typical way, says that the people are not just saying “this is hard to accept.” Rather they most likely saying that Jesus is crazy. It is crazy to say that we are to eat His body and drink His blood. It was because of this “crazy” talk that many of those who had been following Jesus went back to their former way of life and followed Him no longer.
The real question is whether or not Jesus is being crazy, or are those that abandoned him being crazy, being unreasonable. This is where Msgr. Giussani has real important insight. Too often we want to set faith and reason as opposing each other. At best we put faith as something on top of reason, that takes us beyond where reason can take us. That we have reason, which takes us so far, but then we need to take a leap of faith. Guissani (as does Pope Benedict XVI) points our that faith IS reason. The way we see faith as reasonable is in our own experience.
First, the people were attracted to Jesus because His words spoke to the deepest desires of their heart. They challenged the merely human things that they think will make them happy, and help them see that only the infinite will bring them true freedom and happiness. There is an exceptionality in this encounter with Jesus because His words correspond to their hearts’ desire. Yet, they want to test or verify what Jesus is saying. Therefore Jesus works signs, miracles, as a proof of His authority and truthfulness. The Bread of Life discourse starts with one of these great signs; Jesus feeds over 5000 people, with a lot left over, with only a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish. The people recognized this sign of Jesus’ power, because they wanted to make Him king. They knew it was a miracle, yet they still were not getting it; they were still wanting to fit things into the merely earthly, human way of being a king. So now Jesus gives them the powerful words. They knew that He was not speaking metaphorically. They knew that He was talking about really giving us His body and His blood as our food and drink. Given the evidence that they had experienced; the words that spoke to the deepest desires of their hearts, and the verification that the miracles provided, it is UNREASONABLE not to continue to follow Jesus.
St. Peter, on the other hand, is being reasonable when he says, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Peter was able to recognize that while what Jesus was saying may have been incomprehensible to him at that time, he knew it was reasonable to follow Jesus. Peter was not denying what his heart was telling him, that Jesus was the way to eternal life, just because his own understanding, his own intellect is limited. He trusted that Jesus would make everything known and understandable when the time was right. All he needed to do was to follow Jesus.
This is exactly what we all must do. I could not understand why, at age 40 and having only been ordained a priest for a few months, I was diagnosed with cancer. But I remember clearly saying over and over again, “All for Jesus.” That was my statement of trust in God, and committing myself to following Jesus, even though what laid ahead was unclear to me. Because of my experience with Jesus, my encounter with Him, it would be unreasonable to do anything else but follow Him. I think it is easy to see how this is going to lead us into a deeper reflection on obedience
