Believing with the Church
Teachings of the Church on
Believing in the Divine Persons
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
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. (Also read § 151– 155, 170.)
Pope John Paul II in "On Catechesis in our Time", dated October 16, 1979.
§ 19: "A certain number of children baptized in infancy come for catechesis in the parish without receiving any other initiation into faith and still without any explicit personal attachment to Jesus Christ. . . . Again, many pre-adolescents still remain hesitant for a long time about committing their whole lives to Jesus Christ. . . . This means that 'catechesis' must often concern itself not only with nourishing and teaching the faith but also with arousing it unceasingly with the help of grace, with opening the heart, with converting, and with preparing total adherence to Jesus Christ on the part of those who are still on the threshold of faith."
§ 20: "To put it more precisely: within the whole fabric of evangelization, the aim of catechesis is to be the teaching and maturation stage, that is to say, the period in which the Christian, having accepted by faith the person of Jesus Christ as the one Lord and having given him complete adherence by sincere conversion of heart, endeavours to know better this Jesus to whom he has entrusted himself . . . It is true that being a Christian means saying 'yes' to Jesus Christ, but let us remember that this 'yes' has two levels: it consists in surrendering to the Word of God and relying on it [Him: the Word], but it also means, at a later stage, endeavoring to know better and better the profound meaning of this word [His revelation]."
Pope John Paul II in "The Vocation and the Mission of the Lay Faithful in the Church and in the World", Christifideles Laici, dated December 30, 1988.
"34. The Hour Has Come For a Re-Evangelization. . . . This re-evangelization is directed not only to individual persons but also to entire portions of populations in the variety of their situations, surroundings and cultures. Its purpose is the foundation of mature ecclesial communities, in which the faith might radiate and fulfill the basic meaning of adherence to the person of Christ and his Gospel, of an encounter and sacramental communion with him, and of an existence lived in charity and service."
Pope John Paul II in "The Splendor of Truth", dated 1993:
"Following Jesus . . . is not a matter only of disposing oneself to hear a teaching and obediently accepting a commandment. More radically, it involves holding fast to the very person of Jesus, partaking of his life and his destiny, sharing in his free and loving obedience to the will of the Father. By responding in faith and following the one who is Incarnate Wisdom, the disciple of Jesus truly becomes a disciple of God." (John 6:45) [19]
"Christian moral teaching . . . is a question of the decision of faith, of the obedience of faith by which man makes a total and free self-commitment to God, offering the full submission of intellect and will to God as he reveals. This faith comes from the core of man, from his heart . . . The morality of the New Covenant is dominated by the fundamental call of Jesus to follow him. To this call the disciple must respond with a radical decision and choice. The Gospel parables of the treasure and the pearl of great price, for which one sells all one's possessions, are eloquent and effective images of the radical and unconditional nature of the decision demanded by the Kingdom of God." [66]
"It is urgent to rediscover and to set forth once more the authentic reality of the Christian faith, which is not simply a set of propositions to be accepted with intellectual assent. Rather, faith is a decision involving one's whole existence. It is an encounter, a dialogue, a communion of love and of life between the believer and Jesus Christ, the Way, and the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6). It entails an act of trusting abandonment to Christ, which enables us to live as he lived (Galatians 2:20), in profound love of God and of our brothers and sisters." [88]
From the General Audience of Pope John Paul II on Wednesday, 5 July 2000:
"2. . . . Today we will start to trace this stirring interaction between God's initiative and man's response, discovering it as a fundamental element of religious experience. . . . In universal religious experience, especially in what is transmitted by the Bible, we thus find an awareness of God's primacy as he searches for man in order to lead him into the realm of his light and mystery. . . . Certainly, this absolute beginning does not eliminate the need for human action or the human obligation to respond man is called to let himself be touched by God and to open his life's door to Him, but He also has the ability to turn down these invitations. In this regard, the Book of Revelation puts amazing words on Christ's lips: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me". (Revelations 3:20). We must open the door to Him, so that we can have Him at our table in a communion of life and love."
