The announced topic for this conference is Veritatis Splendor, the splendor of the truth, i.e., Jesus, but under this particular aspect of truth. The Holy Father was very courageous in publishing this encyclical; one can say this when one is somewhat familiar with theological circles. Actually, many theologians no longer accept to be under the control of the bishops and the Holy Father when they teach in a university. They want to be "judged by their peers," as they say, i.e., by university professors. In other words, they consider their university rank to be more than the faith, and that their theological conclusions are more than the faith. Actually, the theologian, who is at the service of God's word, is subject to the faith and the current teaching of the Church. Thomas Aquinas--and this is quite proper to him--affirms that theology is a science, i.e., that it has great rigor in its reasonings, but a science "subordinate to the science of the saints," i.e., the beatific vision. Who are the "saints"?--those who are oriented towards the beatific vision. We are all called to this sanctity and our entire life of faith is ordered to the beatific vision. One day we will see God face to face, such as He is (1 Jn. 3:2). All our life here below takes its signification starting from this point, and contemplative life is present in the Church to remind all Christians that faith orients us directly towards God, that as Saint Paul says, "Christ lives in our hearts through faith" (Eph. 3:17), and that He is there, present, in the depths of our heart. The mystery of the Eucharist reminds us of this presence. More than ever it is important today to understand that the Christian, through his faith, has a divine nobility, that he is of a divine race, and thus that there is something in him which surpasses all the conclusions of theologians. He respects these conclusions, yet the work of theologians is there for the growth of faith, so that Christians may always go further in this direct contact with God which is faith, that they may always go much farther in intimacy with God. For we are made for this.

Progress of Science and Moral Conscience

The Holy Father knows that moral theology has been through great upheavals due to the progress of science, due to the numerous problems which did not arise at the time of Saint Thomas and which arise in our time. And he knows that we always have the temptation to believe that it is the progress of science which determines our moral conscience as man and Christian. A scientist like Monod, who was a Nobel Prize winner, declared twenty years ago at the International Meeting in Geneva that human morality must be modified according to the progress of science; thus he considered that the progress of science determines human morality. And some theologians, without saying so in such an official way, are convinced that the traditional morality of the Church is completely outdated. Some say this openly. Quite recently a rather important person did not hesitate to say that John Paul II understood nothing about scientific progress. As if the role of the Pope wear to bear witness to scientific progress! He is much more than this. He is, as Saint Catherine of Sienna says, "the sweet vicar of Christ upon the earth"; he is the friend of Jesus and His witness. Now, for half a century, moral theology has been in a state of upheaval on a practical level, to the extent that Rome has been obliged to intervene in instances where the theologians should have intervened. For the role of the theologian is to point out the profound direction that the Christian must follow to be faithful to the Gospel and the teaching of Christ. Everything is contained in the teaching of Christ, yet sometimes in a virtual way, i.e., in an implicit and hidden way; the role of the theologian is precisely to explain it so that we understand, when confronted with present day situations, what the Gospel is saying to us.

The Holy Father has the courage to denounce all these errors. If he was a martyr in 1981, martyr in his body-and even now he still suffers the consequences of it-he is now, even more profoundly, a martyr in his soul, in his intelligence and in his heart as good shepherd, as father of all believers and of all men, in the footsteps of Christ and Peter.

A Morality of Love Those who have read the encyclical Veritatis Splendor have immediately understood that the first part is for all of us. The Holy Father reminds us of what Christian morality is, how Christian morality surpasses what the ten "commandments of God" represent. It is the meeting with Christ, presented by means of this passage of the Gospel which the Holy Father loves so much: the meeting of Jesus and the rich young man (Mt. 19:16-22; Mk. 10:17-22; Lk. 18-18-23). Jesus clearly says to this young man that one must go beyond the Law is order to follow Him, Jesus. Christian morality is linked to a person; it is not abstract. Sometimes theologians make it a little abstract, yet in itself it is not abstract. It is a personal covenant with a person, and this person is the Incarnate Word, the beloved Son of the Father, who assumed a nature similar to ours from Mary under the action of the Holy Spirit. Fully son of Mary, of the woman, fully our brother, He is at the same time the One who reveals to us and gives us His intimate life as beloved Son of the Father. Christian morality is a morality, yes, but a morality entirely of love. Jesus does not hesitate to say this: if we are Christian, we cannot be content with observing a human morality. Following Jesus demands that one go much further, since the demands of the Heart of Christ are not written in stone like the commandments of God. Our morality, and its deepest demands, can only be understood in light of the pierced Heart of Jesus. They are written in the heart of Christ, in this wounded Heart which is at the same time so loving, so gentle, and so demanding; for it is the Heart of the beloved Son of the Father and of Mary that wants to lead us to sanctity, i.e., to full fruition of love for God and neighbor.

Christian morality thus goes much further than the ten commandments of God. These commandments represent a religious morality that is very beautiful and very great, but there is something that goes further. Today we must understand that there are, as it were, three levels of morality, three levels of responsibility. There is first of all a human morality, pertaining to all men, even to those who do not believe, to those who subscribe to an absolute laicism. It is a moral of justice and friendship, of human friendship. Then there is a religious morality which remains profoundly human since suppression of the religious aspect of the human heart is a mutilation of man. This religious morality, which is developed from the moment man discovers the existence of God, is based upon adoration. Finally there is Christian morality, which no longer solely concerns God as Creator, as Father of our intelligence and will, but as the One who ordained the mystery of the Incarnation in view of the Redemption and thus in view of the mystery of the Cross, since it is at the Cross that the Redemption is brought about.

Christian morality, which is revealed at the Cross, is thus a morality which goes much further because it is a bond of friendship and because it is what goes furthest in friendship. It is the morality which was already foretold in the Old Testament, in the Song of Songs, and which reaches its perfect realization at the Cross. It is a morality which requires a total gift of ourselves; it is a morality of love. And here I do not make a distinction between Christians who live in the world and religious. There is not a particular morality for religious. There are particular requirements for them in the sense that the evangelical counsels become an immediate demand for the religious--we will have the opportunity to return to this. Yet the evangelical counsels are given to everyone. And today, since the Lord allows man to live longer--many of us would perhaps already be dead if we had not made such progress in medicine and surgery--people live much longer, and I always wonder whether it is not God who wants in this way to "catch up" with the elderly, so to speak. They are the closest to God. All those who are older than eighty are, according to the psalm (Ps. 90:10; "The time of our years is sixty-five years, seventy-five years for the stronger"), the feats of God. Can we not think here that God is "catching up"? I have always been amazed to see that God chose Abraham when he was seventy-five--at the age when we send bishops into retirement.

And why do we do this? Might this not be to remind bishops that their vocation is a vocation of perfection in love, and thus contemplation? And this is also true for households. Once you have reached the age of seventy-five, grandmothers and grandfathers, be saints, understand that Jesus demands a much more profound Christian life from you. You have the time for this. This is why I always dream--you must allow me to dream a little--of a truly Christian university, for philosophy and theology, for older people who have the time to give to the Lord and who live, in a certain way, a life consecrated to God. Is this not why God allows us to live longer? So that we might be those who have the greatest audacity of love in the Christian life? Actually, when one reaches a respectable age one can be very audacious. To youth we say, "Listen; do not burn everything too quickly"! But when one is past seventy-five one certainly has the right to burn everything and to give oneself to the very core. I think that this is what the Holy Spirit asks of us--and I say "of us" since I am included.

Christian morality is thus a morality of holiness, of total love, of covenant with Jesus. It is a true covenant with Jesus, a covenant of bride and bridegroom. Jesus gives us His body as food; He gives us His heart so that our heart may be transformed into His heart. This is indeed the profound signification of the Eucharist; Saint Augustine said this ("I am indeed the food of the great: grow and you will eat Me. Yet you will not change Me into you like food for your body; it is you who will be changed into Me." [Confessions, VII, X, 16]), and he would say it even more forcefully today. If Jesus gives Himself to us under the appearances of bread and wine, it is to allow us to understand that He is the servant par excellence. We make the most use of bread and wine since we are helped by them in such a way that we transform them into ourselves--this is the substantial service of food. Now the Father, through His beloved Son who is Incarnate, wants us to understand that He gives Himself to us in this unique way, that He wants to transform us into being His beloved sons although we are poor little creatures, fragile, sinful, slow-witted, and not very intelligent! We who are so poor are made to have a heart of a child of God, to have the capacity to love as a child of God. There is something infinitely great in this. It is the testament of Christ which is for the present moment. Jesus asks everybody, and especially those who have the most time, to devote themselves to their betrothal to Him, to this intimacy with Him. Jesus asks this of all Christians.

Love for the Truth

This morality of love that is Christian morality demands a great love for the truth. We must never forget this. In the big family of the Church we have chosen Saint John, and the Church has recognized us as the "Community of Saint John," "Congregation of Saint John." If we have this privilege it is not because of our merits, and certainly not because of our holiness! Nor is it because of our intelligence. It is gratuitously given to us. I can affirm to you that I was able to give the name Saint John to this new community in a very gratuitous way. It is indeed gratuitously (I insist upon this) that we were granted the grace of being in the Church this family that keeps the ultimate revealed truth in its heart. The ultimate revealed truth is the Gospel of Saint John. And the Gospel of Saint John is completed by this icon of the Most Blessed Trinity which presents Jesus, Mary, and John at the Cross. The Old Testament is illumined at its beginning by an icon of the Blessed Trinity: the annunciation made to Abraham at the oak of Mamre--the three young men who are one and who come to Abraham to announce to him the birth of Isaac. And the New Testament is brought to completion in the icon of Most Blessed Trinity which is even greater still (we cannot go any further)--the icon of the Cross. At the Cross the pierced heart of the Lamb is given to us, and Mary carries the victimal state of Jesus; she receives the fragility, the weakness, the poverty of the Crucified One. Only a woman and a mother can receive the Immolated Lamb. She is its Holy of Holies; she is His temple. And it is at the moment when she lives this unity with Jesus that she is given to John to allow us to understand that John is the one who is to reveal to us the mysteries of the pierced heart of the Lamb, the most intimate mysteries of Jesus and thus of Christian morality. The Old Testament is surpassed that we might discover, in the wounded heart of Jesus, the single commandment: "Love one another, as I have loved you" (Jn. 13:34; 15:12); in other words, "Love one another in light of the love that you have for the Father, for the Son, and for the Holy Spirit." It is John who reveals to us this ultimate moment of love. Jesus came for this, and John is designated by the Holy Spirit and by Jesus to communicate this treasure to us. He does this in his Gospel. And since we are the "family of Saint John" (oblates, friends, brothers and sisters, we form a single family), we receive Mary following John-"Behold your mother"-Mary who carries the Lamb, Mary who lives in unity with Jesus offering Himself to the Father. Mary is given to us, and we must be for Jesus and for the Father what John was for Jesus and for the Father at the end of this twentieth century when the Church is in such upheaval. In no time at all, in very Christian countries where there was an enormous percentage of practicing Christians, there is now but a "little remnant" (Isa. 10:20-22; Isa. 37:31-32; cf. 2 Kings 19:30-31), but this small remnant has an extraordinary fervor, and this is what unceasingly revives the great torch of hope. When so many young families so profoundly Christian are gathered here with their small children, united with this new religious family of brothers, contemplative sisters, and apostolic sisters, where there is so much ardor, one cannot fail to find comfort.

The Three Wisdoms

To look at the mystery of the Cross and to live by it is to understand the demand of truth, since whenever one consciously accepts an error--i.e., whenever one does not submit totally to the teaching of the Church and prefers instead one's own theological opinion--one diminishes love. The intelligence, in its greatest aspect, is at the service of love, in order to go as far as possible in love. This is why to live by this icon of the Most Blessed Trinity requires a great love for truth. And the Holy Father, at the end of the encyclical Veritatis Splendor, emphasizes that the Church is presently undergoing a terrible crisis of truth. This crisis of truth lies outside the Church, yet unfortunately it contaminates many Christians who let themselves be led astray because they think that they must speak the language of man. No: we must first of all speak the language of Christ and in the light of the language of Christ correct the language of men--instead of reducing the language of God, of Christ, to the language of men. As a Christian we are bound to the Cross of Christ and to His Resurrection, and it is this which is always for us the presence of truth. It is for this reason that the Community of Saint John--and it is the Holy Father who asked for this-is particularly attentive to the search for truth, and that we always desire to go as far as possible in this search for truth, in full docility to the Holy Spirit, and to really take as the structure of our lives the three wisdoms of which Thomas Aquinas speaks: philosophical wisdom, today demolished; theological wisdom, also so often demolished; and mystical wisdom which comes from the Holy Spirit through the gift of wisdom, a gift that we all have received at baptism with Christian grace. The Holy Father asks us to be particularly bound to this search for truth, to these three wisdoms.

When I used to speak of these three wisdoms to Marthe Robin, our little saint at this end of the twentieth century, so close to little Therese, she would tell me, "That is wonderful; it puts everything in order." Now Marthe was the daughter of a farmer in the diocese of Valence, at Châteauneuf. She had not studied philosophy, yet she had this amazing realism of country people, and another realism even greater, the realism of a little child of the Holy Spirit. And I can say that if the Community of Saint John exists it is thanks to her prayer, because she took it immediately into her heart. When the first seven, who were students at Fribourg, asked me to b responsible for them, it was very difficult for me to respond. Besides, I was not so young anymore.... So I asked Marthe Robin to pray to know whether I should accept, and Marthe, with a entirely divine simplicity, told me, "Father, it is clear; you must take care of them; you must receive them." This was a very great source of strength for me, to know that the prayer of Marthe was there.

Whenever God permits crises in the Church and in humanity it is for a greater mercy: we must never forget this. Whenever God permits evil, like right now in Rwanda, it is for a greater mercy. We must believe this. That God should permit this is the mystery of the Cross made visible for us. The history of the Church has always been marked by crosses like this one, yet today perhaps this attains an ultimate dimension of cruelty, of violence. That God should permit this for a greater love is difficult to understand! Yet it is certain; this we know. And it is for this reason that we must have such a great love for truth, such a great concern for seeking truth, to go as far as possible in the search for love.

Having taught philosophy almost my entire life, in a search for truth and wisdom, I asked myself, while reading the Gospel of Saint John--which is the Gospel of personal encounters of Jesus with men--if there was a place in this Gospel where Jesus speaks as a philosopher. And I found it: it is when Jesus speaks to Pilate. Pilate was a pagan, a Roman, a cultivated man whose philosophy was Stoic since it was the Stoic philosophy which was taught at Rome at that time. Moreover, as Caesar's representative, his philosophy was surely Stoic. What does Jesus say to him? "I came to bear witness to the truth" (Jn. 18:37). Thus we must ask ourselves what a Christian must do today confronted by a world which is, most of the time, led by lies, by erroneous myths. People invent myths by the dozens. Consider, for example, the celebrations for the bicentennial of the storming of the Bastille: they were extraordinary, a return to paganism and myth. This even influenced liturgical celebrations: thus at the time of the Feast of the Three Kings, when everybody buys a King Cake in which there is a "bean," in many cakes there was a little medal bearing the message, "Bicentennial of the storming of the Bastille"! I saw it; that is why I say this. This bicentennial was a return to paganism in full force. Someone who was required to participate in it said that it was disgusting, appalling. What do they want to show in such celebrations? That after two centuries of Christianity it is only a failure? Just as some journalists today say that "the Pope's last book reveals a total failure." Isn't that what they said to Jesus?

Confronted by a world which no longer seeks the truth, we must seek truth and wisdom with all our heart with a view towards greater love, with a view to going further in love. Let us maintain the search for the truth on all levels, including our language, for lies always come from the devil. In the Gospel of Saint John (cf. Jn. 8:38-44) Jesus says that the devil is the father of lies. He is, if I may venture to say, the "anti-father," and this is why he is the father of lies. Confronted by this lie which penetrates all levels--one never knows where the truth lies--we must be witnesses of the truth following Christ. Thus we must seek the truth at the human level, at the religious level, and at the Christian level, even to the Cross of Christ, and understand that this is really what is required of us. Is it not true that our only way of responding to the encyclical of the Pope is to go to the end in the demands of truth, of wisdom, to understand that Jesus is the master of truth, the father of truth, and the One who communicates this truth to us by dying on the Cross out of love for us? "There is no greater love than to give one's life for the one whom he loves" (Jn. 15:13). This is indeed divine practical truth. It is indeed the final and ultimate demand of fraternal charity. Jesus gave His life for each one of us, and He asks us to receive this gift with an ardent desire to place our intelligence at the service of faith and love. To be intelligent for one's brothers by loving them. To be intelligent for the Church by seeing and discerning all the confusions that come from the Evil One. To be intelligent for all humanity so that it will not be led astray by fallacious myths, songs of sirens, seductions which are very powerful and which go very far. For this we must have great moral strength. Sometimes we are obliged to be silent: but one is silent without consenting to evil, without consenting to error, and as soon as we can we intervene to rectify it, because one does not have the right to remain silent when truth is rejected, falsified in a violent way against Jesus. We must have an ever more profound sense of truth; and for us Christians it is the conformity of all our thoughts to the wisdom of Christ, to the very mystery of Jesus, to His teaching-and also to the current teaching of the Church, since the Holy Father has not hesitated to say that the mission of the Church is the mission of Christ which is prolonged for us. Thus if Christ comes to give us the full truth, the Church continues to carry this truth in order to give it to us and to allow us to be witnesses of this truth by being faithful to Her teaching.

This is what we must ask for today. This will be the best way to prepare for the meeting with the Holy Father, God willing. Yet in any case there is a meeting with him in the depths of our heart and with all the saints in heaven during these days when we celebrate their sanctity. And in the midst of these saints there is the one who is Mother of wisdom, the one who is given to us to be our mother and to be in us the guardian of truth and of the witness of truth.

Sunday, October 30, 1994
Second Conference in Rome