Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - The theme of 'faith and reason', “a determinant, or better the determinant theme for the biography of St Augustine of Hippo", was the subject of the teaching which the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI gave during his general weekly audience on Wednesday 30 January in the Paul VI Hall in the Vatican. Educated in the Catholic faith by his mother Monica, on entering adolescence, Augustine abandoned the faith “because he could no longer see its reasonableness and rejected a religion which was not also for him expression of reason, that is, of the truth”. His thirst for the truth was radical and therefore he could not content himself with philosophies which failed to reach truth, failed to reach God, a God “who is the true God, the God who gives life and enters into our lives”. The Pope went on to say that Augustine's whole “intellectual and spiritual journey still represents a valid model for the relationship between faith and reason today, a theme that concerns not only believers but everyone who seeks the truth, and that is central to the equilibrium and the destiny of all human beings. These two dimensions - faith and reason - must not be separated or brought into conflict with one another, rather they must be harmonised”. Benedict XVI cited in this context two Augustinian maxims “which express this coherent blend of faith and reason: 'crede ut intelligas' (believe in order to understand), believing opens the way to entering the gates of truth" and, "inseparable from this, 'intellige ut credas' (scrutinise truth in order to encounter God and believe)”.
After recalling that this relation between faith and reason marked the whole history of the Church, even before Christ's coming, the Pope explained “This harmony between faith and reason means, above all, that God is not far away from our reason and our lives. He is close to each human being, close to our heart and close to our reason". Augustine experience this closeness of God with extraordinary intensity. "God's presence in man is profound and, at the same time, mysterious, but it can be recognised and discovered in our inmost selves”. At the same time if we are far from God we are far from ourselves: “ Those who are far from God are far from themselves, they are alienated from themselves and can only encounter themselves if they encounter God”.
The human person has been saved by Christ, the sole mediator between God and humanity, so “Christ is the head of the Church, and mystically united with her to the point that Augustine could say: ‘We have become Christ. In fact if He is the head and we are His members, the whole man is Him and us. People of God and house of God, the Church in the Augustinian vision is closely connected with the concept of the Body of Christ, based on a Christological rereading of the Old Testament and on sacramental life centred on the Eucharist, in which the Lord gives us His Body and makes us become his Body. It is then fundamental for the Church, the people of God in the Christological not sociological sense, to be truly inserted in Christ”.
At the end of his catechesis, citing the Apostolic Letter Augustinum Hipponensem by John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI indicated the unchanging relevance of St Augustine: “ Augustine encountered God and throughout his life experienced His presence in such a way that this reality - which is above all an encounter with a Person, Jesus - changed his life, as it changes the lives of those people, men and women, who in all ages have had the grace of meeting Him. Let us pray to the Lord that He may give us this grace and thus bring us to discover His peace".
(S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 31/1/2008; righe 40, parole 611)
