We Must Go Back to God

During the General Audience on 17 October 2012, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI began a new series of catecheses which will cover the period of the Year of Faith. The Year, he said, is intended "to renew our enthusiasm at believing in Jesus Christ, ... to revive the joy of walking along the path He showed us, and to bear concrete witness to the transforming power of the faith".

 

With his catecheses over coming months our Holy Father hopes to help people understand that the faith "is not something extraneous and distant from real life, but the very heart thereof. Faith in a God Who is love and Who came close to mankind by taking human flesh and giving Himself on the cross to save us and open the doors of heaven for us, is a luminous sign that only in love does man's true fullness lie", he said.

 

The essential formula of the faith, the Pope explained, is to be found in the Creed, in the Profession of the Faith, whence develops "the moral life of Christians, which there has its foundation and its justification. ... It is the Church’s duty to transmit the faith, to communicate the Gospel, so that Christian truths may become a light guiding the new cultural transformations, and Christians may be able to give reasons for the hope that is in them.

 

Pope Benedict XVI went on: "We must go back to God, to the God of Jesus Christ, we must rediscover the message of the Gospel and cause it to enter more deeply into our minds and our daily lives.

 

"In these catecheses during the Year of Faith I would like to help people make this journey, in order to regain and understand the central truths of faith about God, man, the Church, and all social and cosmic reality, by reflecting upon the affirmations contained in the Creed. And I hope to make it clear that these contents or truths of the faith are directly related to our life experience. They require a conversion of existence capable of giving rise to a new way of believing in God".

For more information, please visit: http://www.news.va/en/news/a-new-series-of-catecheses-on-the-subject-of-faith http://www.news.va/en/news/audience-the-creed-healing-the-rupture-between-fai   + Glory in his holy name; let the hearts that seek the Lord rejoice. Turn to the Lord and his strength; remember the wonders he has done.        Mass for the New Evangelization      Entrance Antiphon Cf. Ps 105 (104): 3-4, 5   +