him. He cannot find you if you continue to insist that you are not lost.
Maybe you think that is going a bit far. But please remember our bargain. We agreed not to be Pharisees, but sinners, because we wanted to hear and understand anew the call of Christ. If we do, then something rather marvellous happens. We receive a gift, the gift of a hopeful and loving faith. If you don’t believe me, then try the Pope:
Anyone who wishes to understand themselves thoroughly – and not just in accordance with immediate, partial, superficial and even illusory standards and measures of his being – they must with their unrest, uncertainty and even their weakness and sinfulness, with their life and death, draw near to Christ …
John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 10
So here is the only prerequisite for coming to know Jesus as your Saviour. If you want to have faith, this is the secret. Neglect all you know or don’t know about God. Abandon attempts to reconcile the contradictions of the Alexandrian interpretation of the hypostatic union, or to understand transubstantiation. Forget everything except your unrest, your uncertainty, your weakness and your sinfulness. Dwell with them for as long as you can stand it. Then just suppose, as a hypothesis, that you are loved to a depth you cannot imagine. Your lover will die for you, lives for you. This takes us far beyond the merely intellectual. In the same passage, John Paul II says that
if this profound process takes place within you, you will bear fruit not only of adoration of God, but also of deep wonder at yourself and how precious you must be in his eyes. The name for such deep amazement at your worth and dignity is the Gospel, that is to say: the Good News. It is also called Christianity.
Redemptor Hominis, 10; slightly paraphrased
You may not find this way of working very helpful as an immediate experience. But the Pope’s point stands that faith begins in a sense of how much we need, and then astonishment at the suggestion that Jesus is prepared to fulfil that need. It is good theology as well as a way of praying. If you disagree, try living without love. Or, from God’s point of view, try compelling someone else to live without love (except don’t, of course!).
Peter fails because he stops at doubt. His need brings panic; he must cross over to Christ. He ignores the truth that Jesus is coming to him, just as he ignores the comparatively irrelevant Archimedean principle (he’ll sink). But there is no necessity to leave the boat, because when Jesus arrives the wind will drop and the waves become calm. Don’t just do something, sit there!
This is the truly amazing part of the Gospel, and the easiest to forget: that God moves long before we do. Before we can call, he is there. Before we can repent, he has forgiven. We will see this again in later chapters, so I will leave its expansion to those applications. For now, it simply means that there is no place to which Jesus cannot follow you. The reason is that, because of his love for you, there is no place where he does not want to follow you, just to be with you, and to draw you back to the Father.
Man of little faith, why did you doubt? Doubt everything you like – yourself, your strength, your worthiness, even God and his love. Faith does not erase those doubts, because they are truth, truth about us. Faith adds another, contradictory fact, a fact about God: the Lord is coming to save.
What about the creed?
If this is what faith is about, then it shows us how important the Creed is, and what the teaching of the Church’s magisterium is for. Doctrines are vital because they attempt to encapsulate and apply the content of the Gospel. They derive their significance from the personal contact with Christ which is that content; the wonder or amazement of which John Paul II has spoken. This can be demonstrated from the simple experience of the Church’s history and life. For example, as we will see below, the only way to express adequately in human language the intensity with which Jesus gives himself to us in the Eucharist is to talk of eating his Body and drinking his Blood; and to mean that, literally. Less controversially, when discussing the nature of Christ, the early theologians insisted that Christ was fully human, because ‘what was not assumed by God in Christ was not saved’, and the Christian hope is of salvation of the whole human person.
The Pope and the bishops have the task of interpreting human need and divine response in each age and all circumstances. This is a sufficiently daunting commission to encourage one to have sympathy with them. Even more so, when one realizes that they do so, and can do so, only in union with the whole Body of Christ; including you and me.
This tells us, further, how to interpret the Church’s teaching. Any given doctrine is not the result of speculation, but is forced on us to express our faith. So, in turn, we say that we believe the doctrine, that is, say it is true, because the doctrine says what we mean by putting our faith in God, revealed in Christ. Conversely, pick a doctrine, and we can try to work out what it really means in the light of the Gospel it expresses. Take murder. The Church agrees with many others that in most instances it is wrong to kill. Why? Because each human life has an equal value in God’s sight. Conversely, I am loved by God in and for myself, regardless of how tall I am or what I do. Hence, you are too. So it would not be consistent with the good news of my own life to take yours.
If only life were that simple all the time. We are nearly ready to tackle some real problems. But first, we need a few doctrines to provide ammunition, protection and shorthand. In the next few chapters, we shall look more closely at the figure approaching across the storm-tossed waters. Who is he, and what does he have to do with us?
Our God comes, he keeps silence no longer.
Psalm 50:3. Grail translation
In this chapter, we are going to look at the central doctrine of the Christian faith, the doctrine of the Incarnation. The essential idea is that Jesus Christ was both truly God and truly Man. As we approach this doctrine we are faced with a number of difficulties. One is the seeming contradiction in saying that the same person can be omnipotent (divine) and hungry (human). Another has arisen more recently but is just as acute – that Jesus was (or should I say ‘is’; that’s another problem!) a man and not a woman. The Incarnation seems to feed into Christian chauvinism, the devaluing of women, and, historically, probably has done so.
Once again, I ask you to take it on trust that these issues have resolutions, and suggest that the way forward is not to keep banging our heads on intractables or waving a number of political flags in either direction. Let’s try to get to the heart of the matter, and then see. Having put down any weapons, let’s listen to a story from the Mass, slightly edited.
You formed us in your own likeness, and set us over the whole world, to serve you, our Creator, and to rule over all creatures. Even when we disobeyed you and lost your friendship, you did not abandon us to the power of death, but helped us all to seek and find you. Again and again, you offered us a covenant, and through the prophets taught us to hope for salvation.
Roman Missal, n. 118, Eucharistic Prayer IV
We can read this in a number of ways. One approach is to take it personally. We all have in us a sense of being and of reason and love, which is the likeness to God. We also have a sense of difference from plants and other animals, a sense of understanding and control. We also have the sad knowledge of what we have done with that sense and the power that comes with it. You also know in yourself, if you are honest, ways and examples of lost love and friendship, instances in which you are not what you could be, best intentions frustrated.
