Yesterday we took a look at the beginning of a healing process that starts with the true faith. With the gift of faith as our answer to God’s love and search for us, the transcendent destiny of our lives finds its way: a conscious relationship with God is now restored and the life of God can be communicated to us.
Important is the emphasis on the true faith, as it is given to us through the Holy Scriptures and the orthodox Magisterium of the Church. This does not mean that elements of the truth can not exist in other religions. However, they are still interspersed with frequent errors and lack of knowledge of God, so that they do not represent in themselves a valid way of salvation and therefore can not heal the soul as only the authentic way of faith in Jesus Christ can do. In this way, God calls all people.
The Holy Scripture has been given to us by the Lord in the mediation of the Church as an invaluable good. In it we encounter the Word of God and thus God himself, who communicates himself to us. When we have received the light of faith, then the word of God speaks to us. We begin to understand, the word enlightens us. With that, the word of the Lord begins to teach us and lead us out of the darkness of ignorance. The word of the Lord is the truth.
Man is created for the truth, and the violation of truth deeply wounds him. To live in the lie, the error and the illusion injures man in his dignity. Truth is not, as unfortunately many people today say, for example, only a subjective opinion of people and everyone can have “his truth”. Truth is God Himself.
Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and life” (Joh 14,6). Therefore there can not be many truths, because there are not many gods, but the one Holy Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is true that there is a different degree of knowledge of the truth, but not different truths.
The Word of God now satisfies our inner need to know the truth and is light on our path (cf. Sal 118,105). It is inexhaustible and if the authentic teaching helps us to understand it more exactly, then the hunger of the soul will be satisfied. Just as man is internally raped and enslaved by sin and freed and healed by faith, so also he is spiritually liberated and healed by the truth. The Word of God penetrates him and becomes the measure of thought and action. The soul learns to know the voice of the Lord and Pastor ever better and to distinguish it from other voices.
With the reading of the Holy Scripture and above all through the internalization of the sacred words, an incomparable treasure of wisdom grows in our soul. It is the Holy Spirit himself who always reminds us of the words of the Holy Scriptures, the words of Jesus and brings them to our mind. The word of the Lord now becomes a constant spiritual nourishment, it has a special spiritual taste which no intelligent human words can ever give. This nourishment now strengthens our soul, increasingly dispels blindness, and makes us capable of witnessing the truth.
Just as we feed our bodies daily to sustain it, so now God nourishes our spiritual life through his word. With his word he dwells in the soul of man. The hl. Church expresses the value of the Word very beautifully by saying that we are nourished at the Lord’s table, both by the sacrament and by the Word of God. And before receiving the holy communion we pray: Lord I am note worthy to receive you, but only say the word and my soul shall be health.
The healing process of our soul, which begins with faith, is continued by the constant reception and internalization of the Word of God. The truth penetrates us more and more and frees the soul out of its confusion, because the mind darkened by original sin is enlightened by the light of God and the ways of God become ever more clear to the soul.
Thus, the Word of God gives us the dignity to walk in the truth and thus heals the deep wounds of ignorance.