Monday, January 26, 2009

Faith Is Given Us so that We Communicate It

Can man save himself? To this question Christ answers, “No, man cannot save himself; it is in the companionship of God, of the Mystery who has set Himself beside him, part of his humanity, that Christ is the answer to man’s supreme need, the need for his own salvation.” This is the inconceivable and unforeseeable answer to man’s need for salvation. So the more man is aware of his limitation (his frailty, his wrongdoing, his incapacity), the more he is able to open himself to this answer. I think Reinhold Niebuhr’s phrase is significant: “Nothing is so incredible as the answer to a question that is not asked.” The gravest opposition, the greatest obstacle to the acknowledgment of Christ is, first and foremost, the non-acknowledgment of one’s own human need, of the question that our humanity itself is.

Msgr. Luigi Giussani

No comments: