Archbishop's web site Denver Catholic Register Parishes Catholic Pastoral Center
December 5, 2001
Seeking the `face of Christ'
Advent a time to pray: `Come, Lord Jesus'
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for 20 years, has left an indelible mark on the Catholic Church of the 21st century. Often pilloried as the "Panzerkardinal" and typically described as the man whose office "was once known as the Inquisition," Cardinal Ratzinger is, in fact, an engaging figure with a deep compassion for those caught in the bramble patch of belief and unbelief today. A man with an encyclopedic knowledge of theology, past and present, he is also remarkably modest.
Shortly after October's Synod of Bishops, I visited Cardinal Ratzinger in his office and was much impressed, yet again, by his intellectual lucidity. Ask the cardinal a question and the answer comes out in whole paragraphs. In this instance, my question had to do with the challenges facing theology in the next decades.
As he had during the synod, the cardinal spoke forcefully about the need to recover an enriched sense of the person of Christ. Let me quote from his synod intervention, which summarizes his concerns and his challenge to Catholics today: "...the central problem of our time is the emptying of the figure of Jesus Christ. It begins with the denial of the virginal conception of Jesus in the womb of the Virgin Mary and continues with the denial of the bodily resurrection of Jesus, relegating his body to corruption (against Acts 2:27 ff.) and transforming the resurrection into a merely spiritual event, leaving no hope for the body, for matter.
"It continues with the denial that the Jesus of history had any awareness of being the Son of God; the only words of his accepted as authentic are those that could be spoken by any rabbi of his time.
"The same happens with the institution of the Eucharist, which is seen as something impossible for the historical Jesus, remaining just a farewell supper...
"Such an impoverished Jesus cannot be the only savior and mediator, he is not the God-with-us. And, in the end, Jesus is replaced by the idea of the `values of the Kingdom,' which in fact has no precise content and becomes a hope without God, an empty hope. We must return with clarity to the Jesus of the Gospels, for he is the only authentic historical Jesus: `You alone have words of eternal life'" (cf. John 6:68).
If, as the cardinal said during our conversation, Jesus is simply one among many "illuminators of humanity," then he is not the Son of God and "God really is at a great distance from us." If, on the other hand, "we see this Christ crucified for us, then we have a much more precise idea of God, of who he is and what he does."
When the Church loses sight of the face of Christ, the Church loses contact with the God whom Jesus reveals. God becomes, at best, a grand cosmic engineer, the God who banged-the-Big-Bang, so to speak, but not a God who comes searching for us in history. To lose sight of the face of Christ is to lose contact with the central truth of Christian faith — that God does not remain outside the world, aloof and unapproachable, but rather enters history, in the person of the Son, whose face reveals the face of the merciful Father.
The God we see through the face of Christ does not leave us to our own devices. In the person of the incarnate Word, God takes the sin of the world upon himself and consumes it in the fire of self-giving love, thus making it possible for all of humanity to live again with hope. That is the Church's proclamation. And we cannot proclaim such a God unless the Church's gaze remains fixed, in wonder, on the face of Christ.
It is not an accident that many Catholics have discovered the importance of icons during a time when too much religious education and too many homilies have blurred the face of Christ. This Advent and every Advent, we find, in the beauty of the Lord, the God who comes into history to seek what was lost and to bring us home.
Come, Lord Jesus: Let us see, again, your holy face.
George Weigel is a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.
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