Faith Illuminates Life and Society: Chapter 4 of Lumen Fidei

This is the fifth and last installment of this look at Francis' first encyclical, Lumen Fidei. Look for summaries of the introduction and the first three chapters, here. This post will feature a look into chapter four, "God Prepares a City for Them." God has our best in mind—always! God sees the eternal city he longs to bring us to one day. Yet at the same time God provides faith for the life we are called to build in our homes, cities, and societies. In this final chapter of Lumen Fidei (LF) , Francis explores how faith builds a better world for the sake of all. Faith and the Common Good Faith is not only a journey, but also "a process of building, the preparing of a place in which human beings can dwell together with one another."( LF 50) God first built the Creation where humanity could live and flourish. Then he took it a step farther and engaged humanity, calling us into a relationship with himself. We've seen from history that God always builds with the good of his people in mind. God calls us to build with him, and we must do so with faith in God in mind. The faith of Abraham and the Old Testament peoples was built upon the promises of God and a yearning for their fulfillment: a holy land, a chosen nation, a blessing for the world. The Letter to the Hebrews recalls how their faith was built on God. They desired a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city (Heb.11:16). Faith builds reliably on the firmness and fidelity of God himself. Faith illuminates all we do, not just for ourselves but for the good of all. We are designed to think and act like God—for the common good—building families and societies with faith. Faith makes us appreciate the architecture of human relationships because it grasps their ultimate foundation and definitive destiny in God, in his love, and thus sheds light on the art of building; as such it becomes a service to the common good. Faith is truly a good for everyone; it is a common good. Its light does not simply brighten the interior of the Church, nor does it serve solely to build an eternal city in the hereafter; it helps us build our societies in such a way that they can journey towards a future of hope. ( LF 51) Faith and the Family Families are the building blocks of society that best serve the common good. God's master plan uses families to bring love to the world. The first setting in which faith enlightens the human city is the family. I think first and foremost of the stable union of man and woman in marriage. This union is born of their love, as a sign and presence of God's own love, and of the acknowledgment and acceptance of the goodness of sexual differentiation, whereby spouses can become one flesh (cf. Gen 2:24) and are enabled to give birth to a new life, a manifestation of the Creator's goodness, wisdom and loving plan. Grounded in this love, a man and a woman can promise each other mutual love in a gesture which engages their entire lives and mirrors many features of faith. Promising love for ever is possible when we perceive a plan bigger than our own ideas and undertakings, a plan which sustains us and enables us to surrender our future entirely to the one we love. Faith also helps us to grasp in all its depth and richness the begetting of children, as a sign of the love of the Creator who entrusts us with the mystery of a new person. ( LF 52) Truly the vocation of marriage and family life is bigger than what a husband and wife might plan for themselves. Their home is the field where the seeds of God's plan are sown; it is where faith is passed on and where children learn to trust in the love of parents, and ultimately trust God too. This is why it is so important that within their families parents encourage shared expressions of faith which can help children gradually to mature in their own faith. ( LF 53) The encounter with Christ is an indispensible necessity to fruitful family life. Strong Christian marriages give birth and build strong Christians. Homes built on the foundation of Christ provide a secure and firm environment for the conversion of children and their spiritual maturing. Encountering Christ, letting themselves be caught up in and guided by his love, enlarges the horizons of existence, gives [life] a firm hope which will not disappoint. Faith is no refuge for the fainthearted, but something which enhances our lives. It makes us aware of a magnificent calling, the vocation of love. It assures us that this love is trustworthy and worth embracing, for it is based on God's faithfulness which is stronger than our every weakness. ( LF 53) :::page break::: A Light for Life in Society The gift of the family brings light and goodness to society. It is the foundational model for a healthy society. Francis points out that we often miss finding true brotherhood or harmony in our world by stressing equality, rather than this familial bond, as the ultimate good and the source of unity. In truth, what's lacking today in society is "a reference to a common Father as its ultimate foundation." ( LF 54) Society cannot endure without it. Yet, with this indictment comes great hope. God wants to make everyone share as brothers and sisters in that one blessing, which attains its fullness in Jesus, so that all may be one. The boundless love of our Father also comes to us, in Jesus, through our brothers and sisters. Faith teaches us to see that every man and woman represents a blessing for me, that the light of God's face shines on me through the faces of my brothers and sisters. How many benefits has the gaze of Christian faith brought to the city of men for their common life! Thanks to faith we have come to understand the unique dignity of each person, something which was not clearly seen in antiquity. ( LF 54) We discover the dignity of the human person most profoundly when we acknowledge that each of us shares a relationship with our Father in heaven. This is why faith is the bedrock of the common good: Every person we meet is a brother and sister. Unity springs from this. This is the quest of Christian faith—to find oneself, not only securely in the love of God, but in giving oneself away in love to another. This is true love of neighbor. If we live without this faith, we lack the vision and the heart to build a society that God desires. At the heart of biblical faith is God's love, his concrete concern for every person, and his plan of salvation which embraces all of humanity and all creation, culminating in the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Without insight into these realities, there is no criterion for discerning what makes human life precious and unique. Man loses his place in the universe, he is cast adrift in nature, either renouncing his proper moral responsibility or else presuming to be a sort of absolute judge, endowed with an unlimited power to manipulate the world around him. ( LF 54) The dignity of the human person and the common good must inform every aspect of societal development. It imposes moral responsibilities on how we exist together. When we remove faith from a society, it weakens respect for both earthly creation and social stability. The presence of God in our midst solidifies "every human relationship [and] enables us to respect nature all the more...It teaches us to create just forms of government." ( LF 55) But what if we ignore God in the midst of society? Drawing again from the Letter to the Hebrews, Francis offers a way to measure our effectiveness. In the Letter to the Hebrews we read that "God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them" (Heb. 11:16). Here the expression "is not ashamed" is associated with public acknowledgment. The intention is to say that God, by his concrete actions, makes a public avowal that he is present in our midst and that he desires to solidify every human relationship. Could it be the case, instead, that we are the ones who are ashamed to call God our God? That we are the ones who fail to confess him as such in our public life, who fail to propose the grandeur of the life in common which he makes possible? Faith illumines life and society. If it possesses a creative light for each new moment of history, it is because it sets every event in relationship to the origin and destiny of all things in the Father. This is a challenging assessment, especially for Western countries where distancing God and religion from its influence in the public square is increasingly common. Yet again, after giving a challenge word, Francis lays down hope. The next section of the chapter brings consolation and hope amid difficulty. :::page break::: Consolation and Strength Amid Suffering This section speaks to the trials of the Christian in the world today, and how this also existed with the early church Christians who strived to by the light of faith in a darkened world. By uniting our faith to Christ we can endure whatever trials come our way, both personally, and in society. To speak of faith often involves speaking of painful testing, yet it is precisely in such testing that Paul sees the most convincing proclamation of the Gospel, for it is in weakness and suffering that we discover God's power which triumphs over our weakness and suffering. The apostle himself experienced a dying which would become life for Christians. (cf. 2 Cor. 4:7-12) In the hour of trial faith brings light, while suffering and weakness make it evident that "we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord." (2 Cor. 4:5)... Christians know that suffering cannot be eliminated, yet it can have meaning and become an act of love and entrustment into the hands of God who does not abandon us; in this way it can serve as a moment of growth in faith and love. By contemplating Christ's union with the Father even at the height of his sufferings on the cross, (cf. Mk. 15:34) Christians learn to share in the same gaze of Jesus. This chapter links faith and hope as it applies to suffering. Faith is not so much a cure for suffering, as it is a consolation bringing hope. Faith is not a light which scatters all our darkness, but a lamp which guides our steps in the night and suffices for the journey. To those who suffer, God does not provide arguments which explain everything; rather, his response is that of an accompanying presence, a history of goodness which touches every story of suffering and opens up a ray of light. In Christ, God himself wishes to share this path with us and to offer us his gaze so that we might see the light within it. Christ is the one who, having endured suffering, is "the pioneer and perfecter of our faith." (Heb. 12:2) Suffering reminds us that faith's service to the common good is always one of hope—a hope which looks ever ahead in the knowledge that only from God, from the future which comes from the risen Jesus, can our society find solid and lasting foundations. In this sense faith is linked to hope, for even if our dwelling place here below is wasting away, we have an eternal dwelling place which God has already prepared in Christ, in his body. (cf. 2 Cor. 4:16-5:5) In faith, we experience the presence of Christ accompanying us through our suffering and difficulties. This faith sustains us personally plus it has the power to sustain societies, and the world. This is the faith leading us to that city "whose architect and builder is God" (Heb. 11:10). At the cross, the pinnacle of human and spiritual suffering, Jesus introduced us to the spiritual mother of us all, his Mother, Mary. She experienced soul-crushing heartache, yet abided in faith in God. And so the encyclical transitions to its final theme: deep homage to the perfect disciple, the Blessed Virgin Mary. Blessed Is She Who Believed "The Mother of the Lord is the perfect icon of faith... 'Blessed is she who believed.'" (Lk. 1:45). ( LF 57) A faithful life is a fruitful life. Both physical and spiritual fruit are born from faith. Mary's faith led to the ultimate spiritual fruitfulness—the blessed fruit of her womb, Jesus. When our lives become spiritually fruitful, Francis says, one of the side effects is joy. It is "the clearest sign of faith's grandeur." ( LF 58) The Holy Father closes Lumen Fidei with a prayer asking Mary's intercession, as the Mother of our faith. It invokes the themes of faith contained within this encyclical, and much more. Mary, help our faith! Open our ears to hear God's word and to recognize his voice and call. Awaken in us a desire to follow in his footsteps, to go forth from our own land and to receive his promise. Help us to be touched by his love, that we may touch him in faith. Help us to entrust ourselves fully to him and to believe in his love, especially at times of trial, beneath the shadow of the cross, when our faith is called to mature. Sow in our faith the joy of the Risen One. Remind us that we are never alone. Teach us to see all things with the eyes of Jesus, That he may be a light to our path. And may this light of faith always increase in us, Until the dawn of that undying day which is Christ Himself, your Son, our Lord! ( LF 60)