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Lumen Fidei – Day 2 – June 10, 2014

Pope Francis states that Vatican II was to ”restore the primacy of God in Christ to the centre of our lives”. But since Vatican II we have seen God pushed to the side. Many see Vatican II as a change in the church into something that is more modern, opening the door to changes in teaching, allowing for things that the world is more willing to accept. Many feel that changing Catholic teaching will bring more people into the Church and will allow it to become the center of their lives. But changing the Church and its teachings was not the point of Vatican II. Yes, they attempted to make the Church more accessible to people, but that is so people would change, not the Church. People were supposed to go deeper in their faith because they could relate more to the Mass. Going deeper would encourage them to make God the center of their lives. Instead, many have taken Vatican II as permission to change the Church and its teachings, weakening it as a whole, dragging it down to a lower level, and giving people an excuse to push it to the side or leave altogether.

Yesterday, Pope Francis talked about the light of Faith, but the image he uses here is something I have never heard before. “But what is it like, this road which faith opens up before us?” The light of Faith is a gate to a new road, or to use a related analogy, a road that is lit for us instead of dark. Your life is a road that you travel on and when you travel with the Light of Faith, you will simply see things better, clearer, as the truly are. To walk this road in darkness, without the Light of Faith, is to walk it in a way you were not meant to. It is the same path, seen in two very different ways. Which way will you choose? It made me think of how much we worry about things. How much more worried would you be driving down the road at night without headlights? How much more confidence would you have with your headlights on? When we worry about traveling on the road of our life, stop and think how well we are letting the Light of Faith shine and whether that is why we cannot see as clearly as we could, not have as much confidence and hope in the future as we should.

Words “when spoken by the God who is fidelity, becomes absolutely certain and unshakable”. We hear in Revelation that God speaks out against anyone that would change any of His words. That is because they are promises; they are what Faith is built upon. Abraham heard God and acted, that was his act of Faith. We hear God through His words and are called to act. That is our Faith. We can quickly see what happens when the words are easily changed or when their importance is taken away, the foundation of our Faith begins to deteriorate. That is why the Bible, as it is meant to be given, is so important, why the books that were established need to be upheld, and why the interpretations of those words need to be firm and singular. Faith cannot be firmly established when interpretations of the Words are all over the place. Back to our image, if you have ever had headlights that were not aligned properly, you know how difficult it is when the light that guides you is not pointing in the right direction.