In the light of the previous reflection on the reality of confession, of homologeo, we gain some profound insights into the nature of Christianity and the life to which we are called as believers. In truth, a Christian can be defined (among many other things) as “one who confesses.” A Christian is one who has been touched, gratuitously and through no merit of his own, by the revelation of God’s truth and love; and because of this, not only has he found the meaning of his own life and the source of his joy, but he also become a witness before others of this same truth and love, a witness to the true meaning of reality. He is one, now, who is called upon to confess before others the truth that all seek, indeed, to become such a transparent reflection of the light of God that his very life becomes a living confession, a living testimony to the love and truth of God.

And this is perhaps one of the things that our current culture most dislikes about the Christian faith. What do I mean by this? In a secular, relativistic culture that no longer believes in a single, objective truth that unites all persons—that transcends our subjective opinions and makes a claim on each one of us, that calls us out of ourselves into the great communion of reality—the claim of Christianity to be the true religion, and specifically of the Catholic Church to be the “true Church,” or better said, the Church founded and preserved by Jesus Christ himself, is something both scandalous and unwanted. We don’t want to hear talk about truth in religion any longer. Religion, after all, is a subjective thing, something that cannot stand up to the evidential certainty, to the true norms of knowledge, that we find in the scientific realm. With the scientific revolution and “the Enlightenment” (which is much better termed “the Disenchantment”), spiritual realities have been relegated to the realm of the merely subjective—and thus well-wishing but ultimately meaningless—whereas the model of the natural sciences has been falsely expanded to be the sole criterion of all forms of trustworthy knowledge.

We obviously don’t have space to explore the false assumptions and beliefs of our contemporary age here, and such is not the purpose of these reflections, which rather seek simply to plunge into the heart of reality and there to learn to see anew in the light of God. In this light, indeed, the fallacy of these modern day assumptions is revealed, and they crumble away as nothing, like dust in the wind. If you are interested in exploring these themes more thoroughly, however, I would highly recommend the tremendous book of Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) entitled Truth and Tolerance: Christian Faith and the World Religions. Let me only note here how these two developments—the scientistic revolution and the “Enlightenment” brought into being two fundamental lies that hinder hearts from hearing and rejoicing in the saving truth of the Gospel. The first lie is that the only form of true knowledge is that gained by scientific experimentation or direct, experiential proof. This has for so many people instilled in us a profound existential doubt and cynicism about not only faith and religion, but about the knowability of reality itself. Thanks to thinkers such as Kant or Hume, we have in large part been conditioned not to experience the word of reality with a basic faith (and yes, faith lies at the foundation of every form of knowledge, for without a primal trust there is no capacity for understanding at all), but rather with a primal suspicion. This is why the so-called Enlightenment was in fact a dis-enchantment, for, while in its arrogance it thought it was finally throwing off the superstitious shackles of religion and faith, it was in fact simply returning to the exhausted and dead ideas of the ancient civilizations that collapsed in their own senility and sin. It forgot the radical revolution that was Christianity, the only force that was able to salvage all that was good, true, and beautiful in these ancient civilizations of the world and to grant it a lasting life, an enduring place, through all ages of the world: the lasting life that was nothing but the fullness of truth revealed in Christ, the eternal Word of the everlasting Father.

The second lie, related to this one, is really a return to the paganism of ancient Greece and Rome (and other civilizations) in which religion was understood to be mythological,* subjective, and true knowledge rather was found in the path of philosophy, not of religion. In this respect, the Enlightenment tried to stuff Christianity into the category of all the other religions as if it were exactly the same thing, while forgetting in fact that it is entirely different from all other religions, that it was not one mythology among others grasping blindly for the unknowable God, but rather the self-revelation of God himself. In this respect, we have forgotten the revolution that occurred at the beginning of Church history, by which the Gospel toppled all the other gods and showed the blindness of the other religions (but also their deepest truth and aspiration) by siding not with the myths, but with philosophy. The import of this was simple: Christianity is not one religion or spiritual path among others, a groping toward the inaccessible divine that, since it remains inaccessible, can be worshiped in a thousand different guises. Rather, Christianity is the true and definitive unveiling of the face and heart of God, and thus a knowledge much more akin to philosophy than to mythology, to science than to wishful-thinking.

Of course, due to human blindness and sin even in Christianity there have been people who have been superstitious, and there have been trends of thought that have betrayed the true essence of Christianity as “enlightenment,” that have sunk back into a subjectivistic, anti-rational, “opium of the masses” approach to religion. But these are aberrations, not the true faith of the Church. We need to discover again, today most of all, that the Christian faith is illumination, that it is true knowledge in the fullest sense, born of a filial trust in the utterly trustworthy God who speaks to us and makes known to us his own perspective on reality. And as we welcome this revelation and live within its orbit, such faith-knowledge becomes lived-knowledge, never apart from faith but within it—a knowledge, in fact, that can encompass and order all other forms of knowledge, be they rational, philosophical, historical, scientific, or otherwise. In this respect, Joseph Ratzinger wrote:

The cultures of mankind, each of which together with its religion forms a whole, are not just unrelated blocks standing side by side or in opposition to each other. The one being, man, is at work within them all, since there are differing historical experiences and paths, differing errors and dangers, yet everywhere it is in the end man who is expressing himself in them. Because the one being, man, is at work in all mankind, all men are capable of coming into communion with one another; indeed, all are called to this. No true culture is ultimately impenetrable for others; all are capable of coming into contact with one another and are related to each other. Always, therefore, in history—we were talking about this—there have been intercultural exchanges and the fusion of cultures. “Inclusivism” belongs to the essence of the cultural and religious history of mankind, which is certainly not structured as a strict pluralism. Pluralism in its radical form ultimately denies the unity of mankind and denies the dynamic of history, which is a process of various unions.

Up to this point we are still in the purely phenomenological realm; faith is not involved in these statements and remarks. It makes its first appearance in the statement that in this process of various unions the real point of reference is the revelation offered in Christ, for the very reason that faith in this revelation springs, not from any one single culture, but from an intervention from above and, hence, does not simply “absorb” anything. It allows room for all the great spiritual experiences of being human, in a many-toned harmony: this is exactly what the Christian sees as foreshadowed in the wonder of Pentecost, in which there is not one single language (single civilization) prescribed for all the others, as in Babylon (the type of cultures of achievement and of power), but unity comes to pass in multiplicity. The many languages (cultures) understand each other in the one Spirit. They are not abolished; rather, they are brought together in harmony. From a phenomenological point of view, what must be regarded as the new element peculiar to Christianity is the way that it has not simply taken its place in the history of religions as an “absolute religion” among “relative religions” (although one could even understand such a conceptual structure correctly).

In the first few centuries the Christian faith looked for its prehistory rather in enlightenment, that is, in the movement of reason criticizing religion’s tendency to ritualism. Those patristic texts about the “sowing of the Word” (and similar concepts and images), which are nowadays taken as evidence for the power of salvation in other religions, did not originally refer to religions at all but to philosophy, to a “pious” enlightenment, which is what Socrates stands for, at the same time active both in enlightening people and in seeking after God. We will talk about all that at greater length. This “enlightenment” trait of early Christian preaching, critical of religion, is also the reason why it was classified by the state as atheism, as a rejection of pietas and of the rituals that upheld the state. We cannot of course lapse into a one-sided view here. Although Christianity, as we said, saw its prehistory in enlightenment and not in religions, it did connect with the religious search of men, and, in shaping its prayer and worship, it drew on the heritage of religion. Its inner prehistory—the Old Testament—consists accordingly in a constant struggle between becoming absorbed into the religious forms of the peoples and the prophetic enlightenment that sweeps the gods aside in order to discover the face of God. Thus Christianity has a quite singular position in the spiritual history of mankind. We could say that it lies in Christianity’s not dividing enlightenment from religion but in combining them in a structure in which each has repeatedly to make the other purer and more profound. This desire for rationality, which still constantly pushes reason to go beyond itself in a way it would rather avoid, is part of the essence of Christianity. We could also say that the Christian faith, which grew out of the faith of Abraham, insists relentlessly on the question of truth and, thus, on what in all circumstances concerns all men and unites them all. For we have all to be pilgrims of truth.

Mere pluralism of religions, as blocks standing forever side by side, cannot be the last word in the historical situation today. Perhaps we will have to replace “inclusivism”—which, by the way, until just recently was used in the history of religions with quite a different meaning—with some better concepts. It is certainly not the absorption of religions by one single one that is meant; but an encounter, in a unity that transforms pluralism into plurality, is something necessary. Today it is certainly desired. If I have rightly understood, there are currently three models for this: the spiritual monism of India—the mysticism of identity, to which Radhakrishnan first gave the classic formulation—regards itself as the overarching way: it can offer all other religions a place, allow them to stand in their symbolic significance, as it seems, and at the same time it transcends them in an ultimate profundity. It “relativizes” all of them and, at the same time, lets them stand in its relativity; the absolute value with which it surrounds them lies beyond anything that can be named; it is strictly “non-categoric”. It can thus equally well be called “being” as “nonbeing”, “word” as “nonword”; it is obvious that this solution finds many supporters today, since in its own fashion it maintains that relativism which in certain respects has become the real religion of modern men.

Beside that stands the Christian version of universality, which regards as the ultimate value, not the unnameable, but that mysterious unity created by love and which is represented, beyond all our categories, in the Trinity and unity of God, which for its part is the highest picture of the reconciliation of unity and multiplicity. The last word about being is, no longer the unnameable absolute, but love, which then makes itself visible in the God who himself becomes a creature and thus unites the creature with the Creator. This form seems in many respects more complicated than the “Asiatic” one. Yet is it not the case that basically we all understand that love is the highest word, the truly last word to be said on anything real? All our reflections hitherto, and everything that follows, serve to make more clear how this Christian “model” is the true power for uniting, the inner goal of history.i

And thus we come full circle. Our world is intolerant of Christianity because it has despaired of a single, world-cradling truth that unites us all. It sees this truth, this call of objective faith, as an imposition on the freedom of the individual, or as a sinking into subjective and untrustworthy wishful-thinking. But this is the very opposite of the reality! Our world cannot see the claims of truth, unless that truth be, on the one hand, scientific self-actualization in bringing humanity to a new technological paradise, or, on the other hand, the complete realization of “human rights” that allows every person to have their own reality and to be justified in law to impose it on all other persons, regardless of its conformity to objective reality or not. This too is rooted in the atrophy of thought that has occurred in the last five-hundred years, in the dis-enchantment of our modern world. If God is not trustworthy, if faith is just a blind shot in the dark, then it is not really worth the risk; if it does not beget in us true and abiding certainty, then what’s the point. Such is the attitude of our modern world (when, at least, it refrains from dismissive mockery or revisionist condemnation, such as has happened with the Crusades, the Inquisition, the supposed anti-scientific attitude of the Church, and indeed the entirety of the Middle-Ages).

In the minds of many, faith has become a caricature of itself, and we don’t want it. Instead, we are left with the pettiness of our own selves and their subjective wishes and desires. We are left with an approach to knowledge that confines itself to utility, to what we can do with things, not able to come to understand what they are, how they are to be used, and what they mean. And in this void of meaning, something else, something terrible, has developed. As a culture, we have been subconsciously inundated with the rotten fruits of the thought of the atheistic existentialists, who claimed that there was no objective reality outside of us, no inherent meaning in the universe, but only absurdity. According to them, it is up to us to will meaning into absurdity by our own efforts, to give meaning to meaninglessness by our own desire for meaning. (But if anything is wishful-thinking, it is this!) In practice, such an approach to life is hardly more than subjectivistic hedonism or rights-ideology—which, of course, is precisely where we find ourselves today, caught up in the battle for the true nature of reality over and against revisionist theories that would redefine masculinity and femininity, the meaning of sexuality, and the very meaning and value of human life, all in the name of “individual rights,” the right of each individual to define and create his own reality. But such, in the end, is chaos.

For only in the truth given to us from God, the truth that holds us from the first moment of our existence in the love of our parents, that cradles us in every aspect of life in the very world in which we live, that is inscribed in our humanity and in the inner recesses of our conscience—only this truth can both set us authentically free and also enable us to enter into harmony and communion with other persons. And such truth has been fully unveiled before us, given to us as a gift—indeed as a redeeming force that enters into us and makes us new from the inside—in Jesus Christ, the beloved Son of the Father, who through the outpouring of the Spirit impresses the fullness of truth upon our hearts and begets in us a certainty, a knowledge, deeper than all knowledge, and yet which lifts up and ennobles in itself all forms of knowledge, unleashing their hidden capacities and setting them on the most expansive and fruitful journey.

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NOTES
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*I do not mean to imply that mythology has nothing to say about reality. That is obviously not the case. But what I mean is that in mythological religion the true face of God remains hidden, inaccessible except in hints and shadows, and thus all religions remain ultimately equivalent—since they are all “approximations” toward a God who remains invisible. Such is even to this day the default approach to religion in the East (in the Asiatic continents), but in the West it has been entirely changed by the emergence of Christianity, which took up all the hints of God in mythology and religion and filled them (and surpassed) them, with the fullness of truth both rational and historical, in the myth-that-is-historical-fact: the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the beloved Son of the Father come to espouse humanity to the very Trinity, and to grant us full and free access into his innermost life.
i. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions, trans. Henry Taylor (Ignatius Press: San Francisco, 2004), 81-84. The “third” option he mentions is as follows: “Finally, Islam stands in the ring with the theory that it is the ‘final’ religion, which takes us beyond Judaism and Christianity into the true simplicity of the one God, while Christianity, with its faith in the Godhead of Christ and in God the Trinity, has supposedly fallen back into heathen error. It is claimed that Islam, without cult or mystery, emerges as the universal religion, in which the religious development of mankind has reached its goal. There is no doubt that the question Islam poses for us deserves detailed attention. But it is not within the scope of this book, which is limited to the (to my mind) more fundamental choice between the mysticism of identity and the mysticism of personal love.” (onto page 85)

In John the Baptist’s response to the priests and the Levites, we see emerge a theme that shall recur throughout the Gospel, and which has a specific and profound meaning. This becomes clear in the way that John’s manner of responding is emphasized: “he confessed, he did not deny but confessed” (1:20). Here the word is ὡμολόγησεν, homologesen, meaning literally “to speak the same,” or “to agree.” Homo-logeo, homo being “with” or “the same,” and logos being “word” or “speech.” This seems a developed word at the time we encounter it here in the Gospel, for in John the Baptist’s case it does not seem to mean “agree” but rather “profess,” or “confess,” or “speak openly.” He speaks openly of who he is; he does not belittle or deflect or deny, but opens his mouth to speak the truth from a wide open and vulnerable heart. His speaking is in agreement with God. His agreement, his speaking-with, his speaking-the-same, is in regard to God. He speaks God’s Word alive within his own word. As Saint Paul wrote: “Am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still pleasing men, I should not be a servant of Christ” (Gal 1:10). Here we see a deeply evangelical theme that has such a rich history—such a rich life—throughout not only the Bible but the entirety of the history of salvation, throughout the entire story of the Church and her children.

It is the profession of faith. It is the confession of the truth. It is martyrdom,* whether red or white, whether in the simple daily fidelity of ordinary life bathed in the light of grace, in the enunciation of our faith before others in which we speak without fear of God and his goodness, and of our own joy in him, or in the very giving of our life in suffering and death for the truth of the Gospel and in service of the redeeming Love of the Trinity at work in the world. All of this is summed up in the term homologeo, profession, witness, confession: it is the vulnerability of love that speaks the truth without fear, indeed that becomes a living profession of the faith in the entirety of one’s life. Yes, profession reaches such a degree that not only my words are a profession, but my very existence becomes a living word of God, echoing forth the Word that has first been spoken into me, echoes forth, as love, the very Love that I have first received and that has become the foundation and substance of my life.

So why this emphasis at the beginning of the Gospel on John the Baptist’s profession? “He confessed, he did not deny but confessed.” It should be clear now. In the context of the Gospel, and in the light of our own prior reflections on the Prologue—particularly the interrelationship between the words exousia, exegesis, obaudire, and docibilitas—we can see this very radiantly and beautifully. Already we have witnessed the confession of the Son in the Prologue, and our own confession in him: “No one has ever seen God, but only-begotten, God, the One in the bosom of the Father, he has professed him (exegasato) to us;” and “to those who believed into his name, he has given power to become children of God.” The word of love spoken by the Son, the living Exegesis of God, awakens our own word of faith, and this meeting of words, of professions, becomes new life in intimacy and reciprocal belonging.

John’s Gospel is the enunciation of the Word of God, the unfolding of the mystery of Jesus Christ before our interior vision, and the echo of his voice; and it seeks to awaken and to set free within us our own “word” in response, our own “yes” in response to the “Yes” of his Love first spoken into us. In other words, the Gospel presents before us, makes present before us, the “confession” (homologeo) of Jesus, the Son of the Father, who in his own unveiling, opens before us the depths of his Heart and indeed of the inner life of the entire Trinity, made a gift to us. And in response, our own confession is sought and awakened, a confession of faith and of love, of trust and of surrender, of repentance, conversion, and new life.

“I no longer call you servants, but friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (Jn 15:15) Jesus says to his disciples—and to each one of us—at the Last Supper. To such an extent does the confession of Jesus open itself before us, become a gift to us and within us, that nothing is held back: the very intimacy between the Father and the Son is made accessible to us. And precisely by the totality of this confession it echoes forth a reciprocal totality within us. This is illustrated in various places in the Gospel, where a responding homologeo is shown (or shown to fail) in those who encounter the word and the activity of Jesus Christ. For example, we see it in the man who was born blind and is healed by Jesus, who when interrogated by the authorities speaks openly and confesses the truth:

So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and said to him, “Give God the praise; we know that this man is a sinner.” He answered, “Whether he is a sinner, I do not know; one thing I know, that though I was blind, now I see.” They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” He answered them, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you too want to become his disciples?” And they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.” The man answered, “Why, this is a marvel! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if any one is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him. Never since the world began has it been heard that any one opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” (Jn 9:23-33)

We see this same confession in Mary and Martha as they approach Jesus who draws near to Lazarus’ tomb: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. And even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you… I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day” (Jn 11:21-22, 24). We see its early failure in Nicodemus who comes seeking truth but fails yet to confess Christ, and only later, following upon Jesus’ death, does he find the courage to come forth and speak openly. (See Jn 3.) We see Peter’s failure to confess his faith when he feels afraid for himself during the trial of Jesus. Indeed, his own failure to speak his word of faith is paralleled and set against the confession of Jesus before Pilate, as these two scenes are placed side-by-side and woven together. “I am not,” Peter lies, while Jesus says, “I am.” Indeed, “For this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth.” (See Jn 18.) Here is the homologeo of Christ.

Yet Peter’s fear and failure is not the end of his story; nor is Jesus’ death the end of the journey and of the confession of his love. For the glory of Christ’s exaltation on the Cross and in the Resurrection—as his own full and unified homologeo--brings forth in his disciples, and seeks to bring forth in us and in all of humanity, a confession that echoes forth the glory of God revealed in the face of Christ. At the very moment of the opening of Jesus’ Heart by a lance as he hangs upon the Cross, given wholly in love unto death, John the Evangelist, the beloved disciple who witnesses this moment, cannot restrain his confession. He cries out an invitation to step into our own confession, to speak the faith of our own hearts in response to the revelation of Love that, in this sacred event, we too have beheld: “He who saw it has borne witness—his testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth—that you also may believe. For these things took place that the scripture might be fulfilled” (Jn 19:35-36).

So too, after the Resurrection we see John exclaim again, upon recognizing the Risen Jesus even from a distance while he stands atop a boat looking toward the shore: “It is the Lord!” And Peter now gives the gift that in his denial he failed to give: “When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his clothes, for he was stripped for work, and sprang into the sea (Jn 21:7-8) Indeed the very text of the Gospel concludes with a re-affirmation of the veracity of the Evangelist’s confession, and thus a hearkening back to the invitation to faith that had burst forth at the foot of the Cross: “This is the disciple who is bearing witness to these things, and who has written these things; and we know that his testimony is true” (Jn 21:24).

Beginning with the homologeo of the Son of God, the One who is eternally in the bosom of the Father and comes to reveal to us the very heart of God, and through the homologeo of John the Baptist, through the homologeo of those who confess their faith in the Christ and who speak the word of their own hearts back into his welcoming embrace, the path leads to our own homologeo, our own confession of faith. In this confession God’s own Word resounds within us and awakens our response, our “yes,” which is both an act of obedience to the gift and the authority of God, our own eisegesis in response to his exegesis of God, and also the voice of our unique heart which God so tenderly desires to hear. Here our word is joined with his Word, our beauty wedded to his Beauty—in the vulnerability and openness of love that lies at the heart of homologeo—and makes possible true reciprocal dialogue, and abiding intimacy.

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NOTE
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*And, of course, the word for martyrdom actually appears here in the text as well—“and this is the martyria of John”—showing the deep interrelationship between martyria and homologeo, between witness and profession.

“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came for testimony, to bear witness to the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light.” (1:6-8)

In Baptism, each one of us receives a share in the threefold office of Christ as priest, prophet, and king. And this is true not only of each individual, but of the Church as a whole. The Church herself is this priestly, prophetic, and kingly people—this people gathered together in God as a living sacrifice of intimacy with God (priesthood), of harmony among the whole creation (kingship), and of the radiant prophetic witness to his light and beauty in the world.

And all three of these realities come together in a single reality: martyrdom. The Greek word for martyr is μαρτυρίαν, martyrion. This word appears three times (in different forms) in the verses quoted above. It simply means to bear witness or to testify. John is therefore a true martyr, not only when he at last lays down his life in Herod’s dungeon, but from the very beginning. For he is one who bears witness to the light, who reflects his radiance in such a way that other hearts are drawn to the light through him: “that all might believe through him.”

Again we encounter here the sacramental and incarnational principle, and we could also say the “ecclesial” principle, that is, the principle of the Church. The Church is the incarnational sacrament of God’s presence in the world until the end of time. Yes, Christ, enfleshed in our world is the Sacrament of the Father (this is what I mean by inscape). And, when Christ poured out the Blood and water from his side upon the Cross, and then poured out the Spirit on Pentecost after he had ascended into the glory of the Father, he gave birth to the Church, who is both his Bride and his mystical Body. Therefore, just as Christ is the Sacrament of the Father, we can say that the Church is the sacrament of Christ. Indeed, the Church is the sacrament of our communion with the entire Trinity, the very space of redeemed creation where we are all drawn together into unity with God and with one another. As Marc Cardinal Ouellet says:

In the mystery of Christ, the incarnate Word, in the union of his two natures, the divine nature is, as it were, hidden under the sign of his human nature. His human nature reveals to us his divine mystery and also communicates to us his divine life. The Constitution [“On the Church” of the Second Vatican Council] establishes a clear parallel between the invisible part of the mystery of the Church—the indwelling of God in her—and her visible, institutional part, marked by weaknesses, too, but bringing the mystery of grace that is intended for the whole of mankind. … I say, first of all, that the Council is Christocentric [centered in Christ], which immediately means Trinitarian. For Christ admits us into the Trinitarian communion. He comes in the name of his Father; he speaks in the name of the Father; he communicates to us the Spirit of his Father. To have a fuller and better understanding of how the Church is the sacrament of salvation, we must define salvation in terms that are Trinitarian. Salvation does not simply consist in liberation from sin. Exoneration from sin is, as it were, the negative stage. But salvation is above all participation in the Trinitarian communion. I believe that this concept has been insufficiently developed and taught. In fact, it is a dynamic concept, which expresses our participation in the communion of the three divine Persons. … The Church is [the sign of “intimate union with God”] inasmuch as she lives out the communion given her by God. Insofar as she does so, she finds herself to be a visible sign and, at the same time, an instrument, a means for mankind to discover this secret, hidden reality. This grace, this living source of dynamic grace transforms human relationships because it incorporates them into the divine relationships. It is what is called the sanctification of the world.i

Notice the significance of what is being said: the Church is the living space in which and through which we, as human persons, are drawn to participate in the very intimacy shared eternally by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! And at the heart of our communion with God, and on the basis of this communion, our human relationships with one another are also incorporated into the divine relationships and are thus admitted into a totally new depth of mutual self-giving, profound understanding, and unspeakable intimacy! And this holds true, not only for the full consummation of the being of the Church that awaits us at the end of time, but already in the present life, as this breathtaking mystery is incarnate in the very frailty of our existence and of the Church’s temporal structure, like a seed in the earth or leaven in the dough, transforming human existence from the inside and making it a sharing in the very life of the Trinity.

Such a new communion, this communion founded entirely on grace and our participation in the life and love of the Trinity, is indeed the only thing that can truly satisfy the deepest desires of our hearts. For what do we desire more than the enduring security given by being sheltered in the arms of perfect Love, and the joy of an intimacy of perfect depth and complete totality which flowers within this place? This is the highest example of how the supernatural alone brings fulfillment to the very capacities of nature itself. For my heart, from the very instant of my conception, has been in a foundational relationship with God, upheld ceaselessly by his Love. And this same heart has been open to ever deeper relationship with him and with the human persons with whom I share life in this world—open to receiving and giving love with an open and trusting heart.

But because of sin this openness has been lost, and communion has given way to isolation, misunderstanding, friction between persons, and a deep and gnawing loneliness. Thus God has sent his Son as the Sacrament of his presence, as the very One in whom and through whom our enclosed hearts are reopened and drawn together into the intimacy for which we were made. And the Church, the living Church of Christ—who subsists in her fullness in the Catholic Church while also being deeply if imperfectly present in other ecclesial communities—is the very sacramental space in which this reconciliation and unification happens.

God comes to us, not as isolated individuals, but from and in the heart of a community, a family. Each of us receives the gift of faith through an encounter that is mediated by the community and propels us anew into the heart of the community—a community that is a manifestation of and a participation in the very community of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Because the very foundation of my being is relationship—first with God, but also with others—my life of faith unfolds always in the context of relationship, born from relationship and carrying my heart ever deeper into the blessedness of intimate and loving relationship. Yes, this is first of all my relationship with God himself in the inmost sanctuary of my being, but it is also the rich and beautiful network of relationships with all of God’s children in heaven and on earth. The two are not opposed to one another, but deeply and inseparably intertwined, for God’s Love is present and at work in everything and seeks to draw all of us, his beloved children, into a unity with him and with one another that will be a pure reflection of his own life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Indeed, he draws each one of us uniquely, and all of us together, into the joy of his own embrace, where he reverently receives us and holds us tenderly, and where he pours out into our own receptive hearts the ardent yet gentle torrent of his own eternal delight.

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i. Marc Cardinal Ouellet, The Relevance and Future of the Second Vatican Council, 56-57.

There is one obvious element of the Prologue that I have entirely failed to mention—but this was deliberate. This is the enduring presence of John the Baptist throughout. He appears in verses 6 through 8, again in verse 15, and, after the prologue concludes, is the focus of verses 19-35. Having spoken about verses 1 through 18, I want to move on to verse 19 and following now, namely, the scenes surrounding John the Baptist which immediately follow the Prologue, and in doing so I will gesture back to those verses of the Prologue which have until now been passed over in silence.

The first lesson that we receive through John the Baptist is one that goes unspoken. Namely, the writer of the Gospel is not able to speak about the coming of the incarnate Word into the world without referring also to John the Baptist, who prepared his way into the hearts of his people. In other words, the destiny of John the Baptist and the mystery of Jesus have become inseparably intertwined. John belongs to the Son, utterly and radically. And therefore even though John is not the Christ—and he says very strongly that he is not!—he cannot be separated from Christ, and, in a way, Christ cannot be separated from him.

When God enters into this world he “involves” himself in the lives of unique individuals, and in a way God’s own “destiny” becomes bound up with the creatures to whom he has united himself. We see this most clearly in the Virgin Mary. Ever since the Incarnation it has been impossible to approach the Child without the Mother—for there is no Child without a Mother! Without Mary’s “yes” there would be no Incarnation at all! And by knitting together the humanity of his own Son within the womb of Mary, God the Father has knitted his own Heart forevermore into the heart and flesh of humanity—and into the heart and flesh of this unique woman too. It is impossible, therefore, to wrench Christ out of the arms of Mary without losing both Mother and Child. This makes me think of a quote from G.K. Chesterton:

When I was a boy a more Puritan generation objected to a statue upon my parish church representing the Virgin and Child. After much controversy, they compromised by taking away the Child. One would think that this was even more corrupted with Mariolatry, unless the mother was counted less dangerous when deprived of a sort of weapon. But the practical difficulty is also a parable. You cannot chip away the statue of a mother from all round that of a new-born child. You cannot suspend the new-born child in mid-air; indeed you cannot really have a statue of a new-born child at all. Similarly, you cannot suspend the idea of a new-born child in the void or think of him without thinking of his mother. You cannot visit the child without visiting the mother; you cannot in common human life approach the child except through the mother. If we are to think of Christ in this aspect at all, the other idea follows as it is followed in history. We must either leave Christ out of Christmas, or Christmas out of Christ, or we must admit, if only as we admit it in an old picture, that those holy heads are too near together for the haloes not to mingle and cross.i

Chesterton also says beautifully elsewhere: “Mary leads us to Christ, but Christ leads us back to his Mother, for without Mary Jesus would become a mere abstraction to us.”

Does not all of this tie in with what I have said previously about the reality of “inscape”? In other words, the import for us is this: in order to approach God, I must take the same path by which he first came to me. On my own I cannot ascend into the “celestial realms.” I cannot strip away my flesh and my human limitations, and make myself, by the force of my own will, an angel or a god. Rather, I can only hope to draw near to the Invisible One because he has first opened a door into this invisibility, indeed, because he has become visible in his very invisibility and close in his very transcendence.

Christ is the Road that brings me to God, because he has first brought God to me. As he says: “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn 14:6). I therefore do not find God somehow “beyond” Christ, as if Christ was only a pointer to something beyond himself. Rather, God lives within Christ, just as Christ lives within the Father. The incarnate Son of God, the very humanity of Christ, is true truest and most perfect Inscape, for which all other inscapes of creation prepare my heart and to which they lead. He is truly the Bounded Infinity which, to touch, is to touch the very Mystery of God.

Yet this is not only true of the humanity of Christ, but, in a different sense, of humanity as a whole—and of the humanity of unique individuals who have been touched and grasped by divine grace. When Christ came into the world, he did not super-add something “extra” onto an already complete nature. Rather, nature itself is, and has always been, inherently open to grace, to what is beyond nature—in other words, to the super-natural. And so when he came and was conceived within the womb of Mary, he brought the supernatural, yes, but he also brought the only true fulfillment of nature itself. This fulfillment of nature is none other than a marriage with the supernatural, a wedding with the divine through grace and love.

Thus Christ’s presence—the very presence of the uncreated God at the heart of the creation—restores creation to its own integrity and dignity, which was fractured through sin. At the same time, his presence also surpasses creation into the uncreated Mystery of God. But it surpasses in such a way that it doesn’t strip off nature, doesn’t leave it behind, but rather lifts it up and espouses it forever to the very mystery of infinity and eternity! This is how the natural inscapes of creation are brought to their true beauty and fulfillment, not by being left behind but by being espoused to God, being made partakers in the life of God, within Christ. We need think only of Christ’s own experience of creation. When he looked out across a field of grain as he traveled with his disciples, who was looking? God himself was looking lovingly upon his creation through the eyes of Christ! And through the creation, Christ saw the beauty of his own Father present and reflected! When Christ reached out and touched the woman caught in adultery, who was touching her? God himself was touching her in the tender touch of Christ! And when the beloved disciple leaned against that human breast, rising and falling with its inhalation and exhalation, with a real flesh-and-blood Heart encased within the rib cage, whose Heart was he leaning against? It was the very Heart of God, the Heart of the Trinity throbbing and pulsating with eternal Love!

To touch Christ, therefore, is to touch the Infinite and Eternal, and this occurs, not by “abstracting” from Christ to some “God-beyond.” No, God is found at the very core of the Being of Christ, in all the concreteness of who he is, what he does, what he feels, what he says. Again, Christ is the living Exegesis of God, and when we draw near to this Exegesis—to this outpouring of eternal Love—we find ourselves drawn within, in an eisegesis of love, into the very bosom of the eternal Father.

But what does this have to do with John the Baptist? A lot. I said that, when God “involves” himself with our history, he doesn’t just unite himself to a generic or abstract human nature, nor just to the irreplaceable humanity of Christ. Rather, he espouses himself to every unique human person who has ever lived or ever will live. And whenever hearts open themselves to this union, their very life becomes grafted onto his in loving relationship. He lives in them and they live in him, and we cannot look upon one without also seeing the other.

We saw this with Mary. And we see it also with John the Baptist. Christ has come to us through John the Baptist, just as it is through the very words of this Gospel—the Gospel of John the Evangelist—that Christ comes to us. If we were to try and scrap John the Evangelist, we would lose our living contact with Jesus as given to us in the Gospel! And so the “path” by which God has come to us, and by which we in turn go to him, is not merely Christ, but it is also all those to whom Christ has united himself, and through whom and in whom he continues to communicate himself to the world.

This is but another application of the “sacramental” and “incarnational” principle that makes Catholic Christianity so unique and so beautiful. This is also one of the most convincing signs of its divine origin. For the natural human tendency is to try and “strip off” creation as we make our ascent to God; but God, when he comes to us and establishes a religion, makes it one that is tremendously “earthy,” because rooted in the very soil of the creation that he himself has made and redeemed. For is it not the nature of a true Lover to embrace and cherish everything about his beloved? Therefore, when God comes to us to unite us to himself, he takes the whole of his bride to himself and makes her radiant and beautiful with his own love. The whole created world, in the redeeming light of Christ, becomes radiant and pure and holy.

This explains why the Catholic Church has Sacraments, and why she has saints, and why she has feasts, and why she has different “states of life,” and why she has been the central driving force behind the development of the arts and sciences, as well as of the institutions that are aimed at the betterment of humanity, such as schools and hospitals. She is nothing but the space of redeemed creation, in which the fragmentation of sin is overcome by the magnetic movement of Christ who draws all to himself and makes us one within his own divine embrace.

And those who are united to Christ become a meeting-place between God and the creation, for his own mystery is perpetuated in them. They stand at the spot where the exegesis meets the eisegesis, where the outflow of love awakens the inflow of love in response. They become “mediators” within the one Mediator, channels of grace within the One from whom all grace and salvation flow. This is how deeply Christ has united himself to us, that our very humanity—our very unique existence in this world—becomes a perpetuation of his own life in enduring intimacy with God and with our brothers and sisters, and draws the two closer together until the union is consummated definitively at the end of time.

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NOTE
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i. G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man, Part II: On the Man Called Christ, The God in the Cave.
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