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Letter #51, 2015: The Withdrawal of the Logos[2015-10-27][Engleză]October 27, 2015, Tuesday The Withdrawal of the Logos"In principio erat Verbum, et Verbum erat apud Deum, et Deus erat Verbum... ("In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God..." or "In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God...") The Gospel of John, Chapter 1, Verse 1. In the old liturgy, these words were the beginning of what was called "The Last Gospel," so named because it is part of the concluding rite of the traditional Latin Mass of the Roman Rite. The beginning of the Gospel of John up to verse 14 would be read at the end of every Mass. The "Last Gospel" began as a private devotional practice on the priest's part, but was gradually absorbed into the rubrics of the Mass, and was then recited at the end of each Mass for some 800 years, until recent times. Immediately after the final blessing, the priest would go to the Gospel side of the altar. He would begin with the "Dominus vobiscum" (the Latin for "The Lord be with you") as at the proclamation of the Gospel of the Mass, then begin to read the words above. At the words "Et Verbum caro factum est" ("And the Word became flesh"), the priest would genuflect... "Christianity must always remember that it is the religion of the 'Logos.' It is faith in the 'Creator Spiritus,' (Creator Spirit), from which proceeds everything that exists. Today, this should be precisely its philosophical strength, in so far as the problem is whether the world comes from the irrational, and reason is not, therefore, other than a 'sub-product,' on occasion even harmful of its development, or whether the world comes from reason, and is, as a consequence, its criterion and goal. The Christian faith inclines toward this second thesis, thus having, from the purely philosophical point of view, really good cards to play, despite the fact that many today consider only the first thesis as the only modern and rational one par excellence. However, a reason that springs from the irrational, and that is, in the final analysis, itself irrational, does not constitute a solution for our problems. Only creative reason, which in the crucified God is manifested as love, can really show us the way. In the so necessary dialogue between secularists and Catholics, we Christians must be very careful to remain faithful to this fundamental line: to live a faith that comes from the 'Logos,' from creative reason, and that, because of this, is also open to all that is truly rational." Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (who would become Pope Benedict XVI just over two weeks later), on April 1, 2005, referring to the Christian religion as the religion of the Logos "I will write my law on their hearts." Jeremiah 31:33. Catholics believe this is Jeremiah's prophecy of a new covenant, and Catholics often use the word logos to refer to the moral law written in human hearts. St. Justin wrote that those who have not accepted Christ but follow the moral law of their hearts (logos) follow God, because it is God who has written the moral law in each person's heart. Though man may not explicitly recognize God, he has the spirit of Christ if he follows Jesus' moral laws, written in his heart... That Christ is the logos implies that Gods immanence in the world is his rationality." Michael Heller, Creative Tension: Essays on Religion and Science, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA: Templeton Foundation Press, 2003 ========================== Brief Note: The official translation into English of the Final Document of the Synod on the Family has still not been released. The text in Italian has been released on the internet: Link. When the text is out on English, I will send a note with a link to it, and observations. =========================== Logos and Dia-logos My thought in recent days, during this somewhat peculiar bishops' synod in Rome, has turned repeatedly to the Logos. That is, to the question of the nature and being of Christ, the Logos of God. The recent synod has deepened my conviction that this reflection is urgently necessary once again in our time, as in every time. In other words, we need to reflect again, and more deeply, on what it means to be a man, on what freedoms and duties the possession of this "human nature" implies, and on what the true gift of the faith is to the men and women of our time. And the answer is near at hand: the true gift of the faith in our time, as in all times, is Christ himself. The Logos of God. But what does this mean really? Does it have any meaning at all? I think it does, of course, and in fact, it is "self-evident" to me that the "meaning" it has is the "meaning" of human life. In other words, once there are beings who are capable of conceiving of meaning at all, who have risen, perhaps even in a Chardinian sense, "above the horizon of consciousness," we have beings who experience reality either as meaningful or meaningless, either as having some sense, or as nonsense, either as part of a fabric of reality which ultimately has, at its end, as in its beginning, a face, a person, or as part of a chaos in which these faces which we have are epiphenomena with no significance at all, a kind of "cosmic joke," in that we long for meaning (for Logos, that is, for Christ), but find... nothing but the empty intergalactic spaces, expanding and contracting in endless explosive "Big Bangs" and gravitational apocalypses in which all matter and all life is extinguished, re-fashioned, and re-ejected into a meaningless carnival show of blazing supernovas and darting asteroids, all of it "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying... nothing." (Shakespeare, King Lear) So we begin with an anthropological question: does the longing in the human heart for meaning correspond to anything real in our actual encompassing reality? Is there a "telos," a goal or end, toward which we are moving? Or is it all without meaning, without... Logos? All senseless? Once this question is asked -- and it seems legitimate to me to ask this question, it seems to me to be the very first and fundamental question that mind asks, it seems to me to be woven into the very fabric of every conscious mind to ask this question -- then we are embarked on a search. A search, as Viktor Frankl put it, for meaning. A search, as a Platonic philosopher might put it, for the Logos. A search, as a Christian philosopher might, after long reflection, come to put it, for Christ. The Encounter with the Logos Each Christian, by definition, is in some way "incorporated" into the Logos, who is Christ. This happens in baptism. The other sacraments of the Church continue this "incorporation" -- this "putting on" of Christ. This "being conformed" to Christ -- to meaning in its absolute sense. To "the Word." In baptism, the Logos "clothes" or, perhaps better, "interpenetrates" into the very being, the inmost soul, of the person baptized; symbolically, the infant, born into mortal flesh, and subject to the consequences of sin (which are death), dies with regard to this world, and is resurrected with the Logos, no longer subject to death. This is the reason Christians wish all of their children to be baptized -- even those children who are still-born, or who die in the first days of life. This "Logos," we are taught, became "incarnate" in Palestine at the time of the Roman Emperor Augustus, and he was crucified under the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, about 40 years before the destruction of the Second Temple. We believe this because we believe something that seems fantastic, but which was attested to by many credible witnesses: because death did not hold him, because he rose from death, leaving his tomb empty, in a mysterious way we do not understand, to new, and eternal, life. This "Logos" whom we call the "Word" of God might equally be called the "Meaning" of God or even the "Reason" of God. And, this meaning, this reason, is actually, we believe, God Himself. In other words, the essential "fact" of Christianity, from which all else unfolds -- as a plant unfolds from its original seed -- is that there is a personal, ontological reality, the Logos, who is the Word of God, the Meaning of God, the Reason of God, the Son of God, and (in fact, and shockingly to many) the very God Himself, the true God, who, in a mysterious way -- that is, through mysteries (the word "mystery" in Greek is the same as the word "sacrament" in Latin) -- communicates his life, his being, and his holiness in an effective way into all human beings who, forsaking all other idolatrous divinities, after coming to "believe in Him," begin to follow Him, and in so doing, become His disciples. And so there are personal and corporate, individual and societal, consequences to this "faith," which is actually a living and organic process of life. The entire history of the Church -- and, indeed, the entire history of humanity, if rightly understood -- reveals this to us. What is the point of this argument? The point is, as Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI would againâ© and â©again reiterateâ© throughout his decades of "doing theology" and preaching to the Church and to the world, thatâ© Christianity â©isâ© notâ© a â©setâ© of â©ideasâ© toâ© believeâ© orâ© even â©less,â© moralâ© principlesâ© or â©lawsâ© toâ© follow.â©â© Rather,â© Christianityâ© isâ© about â©aâ© person â©and â©specifically, â©theâ© question â©of â©ourâ© own â©encounterâ© with â©thatâ© person.â©â© Benedict stressesâ© repeatedly â©thatâ© Godâ© hasâ© spoken â©toâ© humanity,â© ultimatelyâ© andâ© mostâ© perfectly, â©in â©theâ© person â©of â©Jesus â©Christ.â© And this is the theological insight, the truth, that Pope Francis as well has also taught on many different occasions, especially, during the past two years, during his daily morning homilies at Mass in the Domus Santa Marta. This truth explains why, for Pope Francis, the adherence to a certain set of moral principles is always a secondary consequence of something prior. That "something prior" is... the encounter with Christ. Pope Francis is not interested in the first place in maintaining an institution, no matter how ancient or impressive in its rituals and pieties. He is interested in arousing in souls the hunger for the Logos and in directing those souls, often wounded to the point of profound misery, toward that Christ who is the ultimate "reason" for all that has been, and all that is, and all that ever will be... Truth and Mercy In this context, we arrive at the false distinction between "truth" and "mercy" as polar opposites. They are not. Truth and mercy come together, and are reconciled, in the holiness of Christ. How can this be? To the human mind, clearly, it is a paradox. Sursa: www.InsideTheVatican.com Contor Accesări: 886, Ultimul acces: 2026-08-02 01:47:50
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