Make Truth In Love: Deo Gratias for Pope Benedict XVI

by Daniel McInerny

"...the sanity of the world was restored and the soul of man offered salvation by something which did indeed satisfy the two warring tendencies of the past; which had never been satisfied in full and most certainly never satisfied together. It met the mythological search for romance by being a story and the philosophical search for truth by being a true story."


This passage from G.K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man came to mind as I thought about the homily delivered by the former Cardinal Ratzinger at the Mass pro eligendo romano pontifice celebrated on Monday morning, April 18, just before the College of Cardinals entered the conclave that, the next afternoon, would elect Cardinal Ratzinger as Pope. One of the central exhortations of this beautiful homily is not to remain as minors in the Faith: "We must not remain children in faith, in the condition of minors. And what does it mean to be children in faith? St. Paul answers: it means being "tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine (Eph 4:14)".

Cardinal Ratzinger went on to list various "winds of doctrine" that rock the "small boat of many Christians" today, that jeopardize the very sanity of the world: Marxism, liberalism, libertinism, collectivism, radical individualism, atheism, vague religious mysticism, agnosticism, syncretism, the proliferation of new sects, and finally, "a dictatorship of relativism."

How to withstand such winds and grow up in the faith? "An "adult" faith," the Cardinal explained, "is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ....On this theme, St. Paul offers us as a fundamental formula for Christian existence some beautiful words, in contrast to the continual vicissitudes of those who, like children, are tossed about by the waves: make truth in love. Truth and love coincide in Christ. To the extent that we draw close to Christ, in our own lives too, truth and love are blended. Love without truth would be blind; truth without love would be like "a clanging cymbal" (I Cor 13:1)."

Truth and love, the reconciliation of these two great desires of the human spirit, is the fundamental quest of every human person. The word quest is right, for the effort to live in the harmony of truth and love takes the form of a story. Chesterton was much alive to this theme:

"That normal narrative instinct which produced all the fairy tales is something that is neglected by all the philosophies--except one. The Faith is the justification of that popular instinct; the finding of a philosophy for it or the analysis of the philosophy in it. Exactly as a man in an adventure story has to pass various tests to save his life, so the man in this philosophy has to pass various tests and save his soul. In both there is an idea of free will operating under conditions of design; in other words, there is an aim and it is the business of a man to aim at it; we therefore watch to see whether he will hit it."

The Faith, Chesterton tells us, is an adventure story: a quest for love and a quest for truth, an adventure that reaches its crisis, climax and resolution in the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of He Who is Truth. The Faith meets "the mythological search for romance by being a story and the philosophical search for truth by being a true story." But the Faith is just not any story. If it were just a story it would be merely one expression of our "normal narrative instinct." It would fail to satisfy our desire for truth. That is why, Chesterton writes, the ideal figure in the story of Christianity "had to be a historical character, as nobody had ever felt Adonis or Pan to be a historical character. But that is also why the historical character had to be the ideal figure; and even fulfill many of the functions given to...other ideal figures; why he was at once the sacrifice and the feast, why he could be shown under the emblems of the growing vine or the rising sun."

The Christian story reconciles our desire for romance--the struggle that ends in the union of the lover and the Beloved--and our desire for a true account of how things really are. Life in Christ makes us protagonists in the drama of our salvation. Outside of Christ, as Chesterton observes, our desires for love and truth must forever be at war. An abyss separates them. "It was that abyss," Chesterton writes, "that nothing but an incarnation could cover; a divine embodiment of our dreams; and he stands above that chasm whose name is more than priest and older even than Christendom; Pontifex Maximus, the mightiest maker of a bridge."

Thanks be to God for our new pontifex maximus on earth, our new pontiff: Pope Benedict XVI. May he help us to live in the friendship of Christ, and thus to bridge the chasm in our wounded spirits between love and truth.

"Love without truth would be blind; truth without love would be like a "clanging cymbal.""