Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - “How is a man just in the eyes of God?” This was the question posed by the Holy Father Benedict XVI during the General Audience held on Wednesday, November 19, dedicated to the preaching of Saint Paul on justification. He said: “When Paul met the Risen One on the road to Damascus he was a fulfilled man: irreproachable in regard to justice derived from the law; he surpassed many of his contemporaries in the observance of the Mosaic prescriptions and was zealous in upholding the traditions of his forefathers. The illumination of Damascus changed his life radically...The Letter to the Philippians gives us a moving testimony of Paul's turning from a justice based on the law and achieved by observance of the prescribed works, to a justice based on faith in Christ.”
For Paul, “Christ was not only his life, but his living,” the Pope said. “It was not because he did not appreciate life, but because he understood that for him, living no longer had another objective; therefore, he no longer had a desire other than to reach Christ, as in an athletic competition, to be with him always...Only concern for the growth in faith of those he had evangelized and solicitude for all the Churches he had founded (cf. 2 Corinthians 11:28), induced him to slow down the run toward his only Lord, to wait for his disciples, so that they would be able to run to the goal with him.”
At the center of his Letters, Paul places the alternative “between justice through the works of the law and justice through faith in Christ.” The Holy Father stressed the importance of clarifying “what is the 'law' from which we have been freed and what are those 'works of the law' that do not justify.” Already in the community at Corinth, there was the opinion that Christian freedom consisted in liberation from ethics, yet, “it is obvious that this interpretation is erroneous: Christian liberty is not libertinism; the freedom of which St. Paul speaks is not freedom from doing good...or St. Paul, as well as for all his contemporaries, the word law meant the Torah in its totality, namely, the five books of Moses. In the Pharisaic interpretation, the Torah implied what Paul had studied and made his own, a collection of behaviors extending from an ethical foundation to the ritual and cultural observances that substantially determined the identity of the just man.”
All these observances had become important in the Hellenistic culture, which was the universal culture of the time and was a threat to Israel's identity, with the consequent loss of “the precious inheritance of the faith of their Fathers, of faith in the one God and in God's promises.” Against this cultural pressure, it was necessary to build a wall of defense that consisted in the Jewish observances and prescriptions. “Paul, who had learned these observances precisely in their defensive function of the gift of God, of the inheritance of the faith in only one God, saw this identity threatened by the freedom of Christians: That is why he persecuted them. At the moment of his encounter with the Risen One he understood that with Christ's resurrection the situation had changed radically. With Christ, the God of Israel, the only true God became the God of all peoples... The wall was no longer necessary. It is Christ who guarantees our true identity in the diversity of cultures; and it is he who makes us just. To be just means simply to be with Christ and in Christ. And this suffices. Other observances are no longer necessary.”
The Holy Father recalled that, “Luther's expression 'sola fide' is true if faith is not opposed to charity, to love. Faith is to look at Christ, to entrust oneself to Christ, to be united to Christ, to be conformed to Christ, to his life. And the form, the life of Christ, is love; hence, to believe is to be conformed to Christ and to enter into his love. That is why, in the Letter to the Galatians, St. Paul develops above all his doctrine on justification; he speaks of faith that operates through charity.”
The Pontiff concluded his catechesis by saying that, “Paul knows that in the double love of God and neighbor the whole law is fulfilled,” and that “we are just when we enter into communion with Christ, who is love...communion with Christ, faith in Christ, creates charity. And charity is the realization of communion with Christ. Thus, being united to him we are just, and in no other way. At the end, we can only pray to the Lord so that he will help us to believe. To really believe; belief thus becomes life, unity with Christ, the transformation of our life. And thus, transformed by his love, by love of God and neighbor, we can really be just in the eyes of God.” (SL) (Agenzia Fides, 20/11/2008)
