From Pope Benedict XVI
"…we think of the number of books written each day for or against faith, we might lose heart and think that it is all too complicated. In the end, we can no longer see the forest for the trees.
True enough: faith’s vision embraces heaven and earth; past, present and future; eternity - and so it can never be fully exhausted.
And yet, deep down, it is quite simple. The Lord himself tells us so when he says to the Father: “you have revealed these things to the simple - to those able to see with their hearts” (cf. Mt 11:25).
The Church, for her part, has given us a tiny Summa in which everything essential is expressed. It is the so-called “Apostles’ Creed”, which is usually divided into twelve articles, corresponding to the number of the twelve Apostles. It speaks of God, the creator and source of all that is, of Christ and his work of salvation, and it culminates in the resurrection of the dead and life everlasting. In its basic structure, the Creed is composed of only three main sections, and as we see from its history, it is merely an expansion of the formula for Baptism which the same Lord entrusted to his disciples for all time when he told them: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28:19).
Once we realize this, two things become clear. First, faith is simple.
We believe in God - in God, who is the Beginning and End of human life. We believe in a God who enters into a relationship with us human beings, who is our origin and our future. Consequently, faith is, always and inseparably, hope: the certainty that we have a future and will not end up as nothing. And faith is love, since God’s love is “contagious”. This is the first thing: we simply believe in God, and this brings with it hope and love.
A second thing also becomes clear: the Creed is not a collection of propositions; it is not a theory. It is anchored in the event of Baptism - a genuine encounter between God and man. In the mystery of Baptism, God stoops to meet us; he comes close to us and in turn brings us closer to one another. Baptism means that Jesus Christ adopts us as his brothers and sisters, welcoming us as sons and daughters into God’s family."
~ Pope Benedict XVI
w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/homilies/2006/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20060912_regensburg.html
“Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.”
~ Pope Benedict XVI Deus Caritas Est
“Faith opens us to knowing and welcoming the real identity of Jesus, his newness and oneness, his word, as a source of life, in order to live a personal relationship with him. Knowledge of the faith grows, it grows with the desire to find the way and in the end it is a gift of God who does not reveal himself to us as an abstract thing without a face or a name, because faith responds to a Person who wants to enter into a relationship of deep love with us and to involve our whole life.”
~ Pope Benedict XVI (Sunday, 14 August 2011)
