Lumen Fidei
Overview
The text is divided into four chapters: “We Have Believed in Love,” “Unless You Believe, You Will Not Understand,” “I Delivered to You What I Also Received,” and “God Prepares a City for Them.” It also contains an introduction to the light of faith and a conclusion presenting the Virgin Mary as a model of faith.
Top Highlights
“Faith does not merely gaze at Jesus, but sees things as Jesus himself sees them, with his own eyes: it is a participation in his way of seeing.” (Page 21)
“In place of faith in God, it seems better to worship an idol, into whose face we can look directly and whose origin we know, because it is the work of our own hands. Before an idol, there is no risk that we will be called to abandon our security, for idols ‘have mouths, but they cannot speak’ (Ps 115:5). Idols exist, we begin to see, as a pretext for setting ourselves at the centre of reality and worshiping the work of our own hands. Once man has lost the fundamental orientation which unifies his existence, he breaks down into the multiplicity of his desires; in refusing to await the time of promise, his life-story disintegrates into a myriad of unconnected instants.” (Pages 15–16)
“The question of truth is really a question of memory, deep memory, for it deals with something prior to ourselves and can succeed in uniting us in a way that transcends our petty and limited individual consciousness.” (Page 32)
“Faith is necessarily ecclesial; it is professed from within the body of Christ as a concrete communion of believers.” (Page 26)
“Unless you believe, you will not understand (cf. Is 7:9).” (Page 29)