Day 12

Where to Seek the Truth

 The Church wishes to serve this single end: that each person may be able to find Christ, in order that Christ may walk with each person the path of life, with the power of the truth about man and the world that is contained in the mystery of the Incarnation and the Redemption, and with the power of the love that is radiated by that truth. — St. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis

Healthy Christians experience an avid yearning to learn more about God and how to live more and more in communion with him, just as healthy babies experience a driving hunger for the food that will enable them to grow. In different seasons of life, however, and for different reasons, the yearning itself can diminish, or we can silence it by focusing on less taxing or seemingly more practical aspects of following Christ. We need to keep an eye out for that. Loving God with all our minds means constantly seeking to get to know him better. When our knowledge of him becomes stale, our love too will become stale. 

We live in a fallen world, and growing in spiritual maturity requires intentionally swimming against that fallen world’s current. As soon as we stop, worldliness carries us backwards. This is why St. Paul encouraged the Christians in Rome, who had already received the gift of faith and the Holy Spirit, to continue seeking the renewal of their minds:

Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect. (Romans 12:2)

Finding Food

In past ages, getting access to the message of Christ often required heroic efforts. Copies of the Bible were few, precious, and highly protected. And the vast majority of the population lacked enough education to be able to read the sacred Scriptures even if they had been more widely available. The faith was passed on largely through preaching and teaching, through the liturgical celebrations and the liturgical calendar, through the witness of consecrated men and women, and through local traditions. Even in difficult circumstances, however, God is still God, and the Holy Spirit has always found ways to instruct those who choose to make seeking a deeper knowledge of Christ and his kingdom a high priority — every era has its saints.

In post-modern times, the situation is different. Instead of a shortage of information, we have a glut of it. We are caught in a lava flow of information. We could spend all our waking hours reading, listening to, and watching the billions and billions of bytes that form the fluid and multimedia Internet library at our fingertips. Our problem isn’t finding sources that can deepen our knowledge of God and his revelation; our problem is choosing which ones to use, and following through with the decision to use them.

Whom to Listen to

The most important criterion to follow as we make those choices is Christ’s own: “Whoever listens to you listens to me. Whoever rejects you rejects me” (Luke 10:16). Jesus has given to the world a teacher authorized to speak in his name, and he has promised to protect that teacher from error in all things regarding faith (what God has revealed about himself, his creation, and his plan of salvation) and morals (what God has revealed about how we must live in order to reach spiritual maturity). This teacher is his Church, the preserver and explainer of the gospel message as it comes to us, especially through sacred Scripture (the Bible) and sacred tradition (everything else the apostles received through the Holy Spirit and passed on to the Church). 

The Church’s authentic teaching office is called her Magisterium, and its dependability is guaranteed through the Holy Spirit’s guidance of Christ’s vicar on earth, the pope, and the bishops who teach in communion with him. As members of the Church, we all share in what theologians call the sensus fidei, or “supernatural sense of faith,” by which revelation is maintained and understood down through the ages, but the Magisterium has a special role to play in that process. 

In order to preserve the Church in the purity of the faith handed on by the apostles, Christ who is the Truth willed to confer on her a share in his own infallibility. By a “supernatural sense of faith” the People of God, under the guidance of the Church’s living Magisterium, “unfailingly adheres to this faith.” (CCC, 889)

As we actively seek to expand and deepen our knowledge of God and his plan of salvation, the Magisterium provides clear reference points, firm anchors, and healthy parameters around which we can freely and confidently grow in our knowledge of the truth. These come primarily in the form of instructions from popes and bishops (such as encyclicals and the Catechism) and are explained by dependable Catholic sources (homilies, books, articles) that apply them to the different circumstances of life. Without those reference points, anchors, and parameters, we would return to the hesitant, fearful exploration that characterizes so many Christ-less paradigms. Without them, we could easily fall into seductive but destructive errors — for example, the heresies that have caused so many wounds throughout the centuries, the post-modern rationalizations of abortion and euthanasia, or even the false ideologies that have justified such horrific crimes as the Nazi holocaust and the Soviet gulags. 

We need to stay humble and accept God’s truth. We need to allow the Church to be for us, as it was for St. Paul, “the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of truth” (1 Timothy 3:15).

Fearless Pursuit of Truth

This doesn’t mean that a good Christian is only permitted to read the Bible, the Catechism, and papal encyclicals — not at all. God draws each of us into a unique relationship with him. This uniqueness will be reflected in our individual journey of knowing God better. But whatever patterns emerge as we journey along the renewal of our mind, certain basic vitamins must never be depleted; we have to give ourselves daily doses of dependable truth, regular intellectual meals that only come with intentional and conscientious study of our authentically Catholic faith.

We have to gradually master the basic truths of revelation so we can recognize when they are contradicted or threatened by other ideas we run across. We have to continue developing our understanding of the implications of those basic truths so we cultivate the capacity to make mature and truthful judgments in tough situations. We have to seek greater familiarity with Christ’s message so we can “always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope, but . . . with gentleness and reverence” (1 Peter 3:15–16).

And finally, we need to continually increase our knowledge about God, correcting any false ideas we may have about him and expanding our grasp of the truth about him so we can continually increase our love for and dedication to God. We cannot love what we do not know, and we cannot love more deeply what we know only superficially. Jesus came to earth to be our light, to roll back the suffocating darkness of ignorance and sin through his unique message of salvation. Loving him with all our minds means filling them, more and more every day, with that light (see 2 Pet. 1:19).

Questions for Personal Reflection or Group Discussion

What idea in this reflection struck you most and why?

How much time and effort do you currently put into getting to know your faith better and better?

When it comes to being informed about current issues and events from the point of view of the Magisterium, would you describe yourself as proactive or reactive? Why?

Very few of us are able to study our faith full-time. God understands this. But we do manage to find time every day to study something — we watch the news or our favorite TV series; we visit our favorite websites; we fill our minds with knowledge about things we are interested in. Daily learning more about our faith can happen in the same, natural, unexaggerated way. 

What will you do on a daily/weekly basis to learn something new about the “inscrutable riches of Christ” (Ephesians 3:8)?

• I will attend an adult faith-formation event at my parish.
• I will attend a public lecture or guest-speaker event at a nearby Catholic college or university.
• I will search for a good Catholic website and sign up to receive daily or weekly e-mail updates.
• (Write your own resolution) I will

Concluding Prayer

O Lord my God, I believe in you, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 

Insofar as I can, insofar as you have given me the power, I have sought you. I became weary and I labored. O Lord my God, my sole hope, help me to believe and never to cease seeking you. Grant that I may always and ardently seek out your countenance. Give me the strength to seek you, for you help me to find you and you have more and more given me the hope of finding you. Here I am before you with my firmness and my infirmity.

Preserve the first and heal the second. Here I am before you with my strength and my ignorance. Where you have opened the door to me, welcome me at the entrance; where you have closed the door to me, open to my cry; enable me to remember you, to understand you, and to love you. 

— St. Augustine of Hippo