Today begins the Season of Advent, in which we prepare ourselves for that wonderful event that took place in Bethlehem: the birth of the Son of God, the Redeemer of humanity.
Thus, today marks the beginning of a new liturgical year. With God’s help, I will try to publish a meditation and the ‘3 Minutes for Abba’ every day of the year, as I have been doing for the past years. Since I – and also my Harpa Dei co-workers – often find ourselves on missionary journeys, we will sometimes have to draw on meditations from past years. I will also deal from time to time with other spiritual themes that are not directly related to the reading or the gospel of the day.
Anyone who knows my daily meditations will know that it is very important to me that all the spiritual and theological content in my interpretations of Holy Scripture be in conformity with the authentic doctrine of the Church. Otherwise, they would be merely human ideas, which can easily lead to grave errors. These not only deprive souls of wholesome spiritual nourishment, but even poison and cloud their minds.
We cannot overlook the fact that evangelisation in the Church is currently in a great crisis as a result of the wrong direction taken by the current leadership of the Church. This crisis reached a climax with Pope Francis’ recent statements in Singapore that all religions are a way to God. These words were a continuation of the erroneous statements contained in the Abu Dhabi document. All this generates great confusion and distress among those faithful who want to remain faithful to the Word of God and the authentic doctrine of the Church.
Such statements, which represent a serious deviation from the Lord’s missionary mandate to the Church, require clear correction. That is why, in today’s and tomorrow’s meditation, I will quote certain passages from the statement ‘Dominus Iesus’, which Cardinal Ratzinger, while still Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote in the year 2000. However openly we may meet with other religions, we can never allow confusion to arise, nor can we allow the unique message that the Risen Lord entrusted to the Church to be weakened. If this were to happen, humanity would be deprived of the message of salvation which the Church, as the faithful Bride of Christ, has proclaimed throughout the centuries.
Thus, the following words of the Gospel should serve as a guiding star for us in this new liturgical year:
“The Lord Jesus, before ascending into heaven, entrusted His disciples with the mandate to preach the gospel to the whole world and to baptise all nations: ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned. ’ (Mk 16:15-16); ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age’ (Mt 28:18-20; cf. also Lk 24:46-48; Jn 17:18; 20:21; Acts 1:8)”.
With these Gospel passages, the then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – Cardinal Ratzinger – begins his important statement ‘Dominus Iesus’. This writing was necessary because in certain circles of the Church these elementary words of the Gospel had begun to be relativised or called into question. Let us listen to how Cardinal Ratzinger describes it in article 4:
“The perennial missionary proclamation of the Church is today endangered by relativistic theories which seek to justify religious pluralism, not only de facto but also de iure (or in principle). Consequently, truths such as the definitive and complete character of the revelation of Jesus Christ, the nature of the Christian faith in relation to belief in other religions, the inspired character of the books of Sacred Scripture, the personal unity between the eternal Word and Jesus of Nazareth, the unity between the economy of the incarnate Word and of the Holy Spirit, the uniqueness and salvific universality of the mystery of Jesus Christ, the universal salvific mediation of the Church (…) are, for example, held to be superseded”.
Therefore, the declaration ‘Dominus Iesus’ wanted to recall the fundamental truths of the Catholic faith, so that in interreligious dialogue the error that found a dramatic climax in the statements of Pope Francis in Singapore, considering all religions as a path to God, does not creep into interreligious dialogue.
Cardinal Ratzinger continues in Dominus Iesus:
‘In order to remedy this increasingly widespread relativistic mentality, it is necessary to reiterate, first of all, the definitive and complete character of the revelation of Jesus Christ. Indeed, the affirmation that in the mystery of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, who is ‘the way, the truth and the life’ (cf. Jn 14:6), the revelation of the fullness of divine truth is given: ‘No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him’ (Mt 11:27), must be firmly believed. ‘No one has ever seen God: the only Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father, He has revealed Him‘ (Jn 1,18); “for in Him is all the fullness of the Godhead” (Col 2,9-10)’.
It must be clear to all the faithful that the proclamation of the Gospel is, on the one hand, an offering of God’s love to all people and, on the other hand, an urgent necessity for every person, so that he or she does not live outside the truth. However, in order to proclaim the Lord’s message truthfully, it cannot be relativised or adulterated. In this context, the words of St. Paul to the Galatians are very clear:
‘I marvel that you have so soon forsaken him who called you by the grace of Christ, and have turned to another gospel – not that there is another, but that some are troubling you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we ourselves or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel other than the one we have preached to you, let him be accursed! Again I say to you what I have already said: if anyone preaches to you a gospel other than the one you have received, let him be accursed’ (Gal 1:6-9).
Tomorrow we continue this theme…