Benedict XVI - The Face of Jesus (Spiritual Thought Series)

Introduction by Lucio Coco

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
Washington, DC

H elping others to see the true Face of God is the first form of love.

Benedict XVI

T his volume of the series of the Spiritual Thoughts of Pope Benedict XVI is a collection of some of the Holy Fathers reflections on the Face of Christ, on Jesus as the Face of God, on the Face of the Passion and on the reflection that this face produces in our lives, on how our decisions can make our own image conform more and more to the divine features, so that our Christian identity can become deeper and more fully formed.

In todays reality, so overloaded with images, the Face of Christ that Pope Benedict offers and indicates continually for our contemplation expresses an essential figure to the construction of which we must contribute our entire lives. Over and over again, he echoes the invitation of the Psalmist to constantly seek his face (Ps 105:4) and the commentary of St. Augustine that emphasizes that this search is inexhaustible and endures for all eternity: in fact, the more we enter into the splendor of this face, the greater will be our discoveries and the more beautiful it will be to travel on and know that our seeking has no end, hence, finding has no end and is thus eternitythe joy of seeking and at the same time of finding (Address at the 20th World Youth Day, August 21, 2005).

In this journey of exploration and seeking, the other important and decisive relationship that Pope Benedict highlights is the one through which Jesus manifests the Face of the Father. He is the revelation, and his Face shows us who the Father is: God is not an unknown Person, a hypothesis perhaps of the very beginning of the cosmos. God is flesh and blood. He is one of us. We know him by his Face, by his Name. He is Jesus Christ (Address to Parish Priests and the Clergy of the Diocese of Rome, February 7, 2008). The contours of this face provide a glimpse of the features of the face of God, they reveal his merciful face, the Face of pardon and love, the Face of the encounter with us (Lenten Meeting with the Clergy of Rome, Februrary 22, 2007). The God of Revelation is not, therefore, just any sort of God, cold and distant like the god of the philosophers, but a God who out of love stoops down to humanity, allowing himself to be wounded in order to heal its wounds. He is a God who has suffered for us, and who with his Passion and through his disfigured face, so cruelly shown to us in the Stations of the Cross, continues to reflect for us the Face of the One who transforms the world in the manner of the grain of wheat that fell into the earth (Meeting with the Diocesan Clergy of Aosta, July 25,2005).

We want to see Jesus, said some of the Greeks who had gone to Jerusalem for the Passover (cf. Jn 12:20-22). In the request of these men, the Holy Father sees the thirst to see and to know Christ which is in every persons heart (Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, March 29, 2009). And the response that Jesus gave and that made him known to the men was that of losing oneself for the sake of giving oneself: Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life (Jn 12:24-25).

The Gospel does not say whether these anonymous pilgrims listened to this teaching, or instead returned to Greece without succeeding in seeing Jesus; that is, whether they were able to impress his face upon themselves, to stamp it on their hearts in terms of openness, of capacity for service, of self-giving, of losing oneself for the sake of finding oneself as is written of the grain of wheat that must die in order to bear much fruit.

The image of the cross is therefore inscribed on the face of Christ as the most certain sign of the true transformation of the human person, of becoming like him in no other feature if not that of the capacity to suffer and to love, because, as Pope Benedict reminds us, there is no other way to experience the joy and the true fecundity of love than the way of giving oneself, of self-giving, of losing oneself in order to find oneself (Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, March 29, 2009).

Lucio Coco

Your Face, O Lord, I seek: seeking the Face of Jesus must be the longing of all of us Christians; indeed, we are the generation which seeks his Face in our day, the Face of the God of Jacob. If we persevere in our quest for the Face of the Lord, at the end of our earthly pilgrimage, he, Jesus, will be our eternal joy, our reward and glory for ever: Sis Jesu nostrum gaudium, qui es futurus praemium: sit nostra in te gloria, per cuncta semper saecula.

Address during a pilgrimage to the Shrine of the
Holy Face in Manoppello, Italy
September 1, 2006

St. Augustine... has some marvelous thoughts about the invitation found in Psalm 105[104]: Quaerite faciem eius semper constantly seek his face (v. 3).

He points out that this invitation is not only valid for this life but also for eternity. The discovery of Gods Face is never ending. The further we penetrate into the splendor of divine love, the more beautiful it is to pursue our search, so that amore crescente inquisitio crescat inventi the greater love grows, the further we will seek the One who has been found ( Enarr. in Ps 105[104]: 3; CCL 40, 1537).

This is the experience to which, deep down, we too aspire.

Angelus
August 28, 2005

Today, many people are searching. We too are searching. Basically, in a different dialectic, both these things must always exist within us. We must respect each ones own search. We must sustain it and make them feel that faith is not merely a dogmatism complete in itself that puts an end to seeking, that extinguishes mans great thirst, but that it directs the great pilgrimage towards the infinite; we, as believers, are always simultaneously seekers and finders.

In his Commentary on the Psalms, St. Augustine interprets so splendidly the expression Quaerite faciem eius semper , constantly seek his face, that ever since my student days his words have lived on in my heart. This is not only true for this life, but for eternity; his face will be one to ceaselessly rediscover. The more deeply we penetrate the splendor of divine love, the greater will be our discoveries and the more beautiful it will be to travel on and know that our seeking has no end, hence, finding has no end and is thus eternitythe joy of seeking and at the same time of finding.

We must support people in their search as fellow-seekers, and at the same time we must also give them the certainty that God has found us and, consequently, that we can find him.

Address to German Bishops during an
apostolic journey to Cologne
August 21, 2005

Faith in Christ brought all Augustines seeking to fulfillment, but fulfillment in the sense that he always remained on the way. Indeed, he tells us: even in eternity our seeking will not be completed, it will be an eternal adventure, the discovery of new greatness, new beauty.