From the Beginning...

Someone who had gone through RCIA some years ago told me that he chose for his confirmation name the saint who when asked, "What then should we believe?" replied, "Believe what has been believed from the beginning."  The man who told me this story had formerly been a deacon in the Disciples of Christ Church; now he is a deacon in the Catholic church.  Unfortunately, I had never heard the name of the saint he referenced and do not now remember it.  But, like him, I do love the reply given:  Believe what has been believed from the beginning.

As I go back to the earliest writings of the church fathers after the Apostles, I find there the most beautiful, the most sound, the most inspirational teachings and reflections.  Until the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 (I think), most converts to the Christian way of life faced some kind of persecution from the state.  Their faith was not an empty one; it was rich, full of life, and worth dying for.  If they did not risk death, as toward the end of the Roman Republic, they did face the loss of livelihood and public respect, an issue that Augustine wrestled with before his baptism in 387 AD.

I love, respect, and admire the Church today.  I love the good works I see and read about -- the care of the sick and of society's most helpless; the excellence of education of our young people; the dedication of our priests, and the sacrifice and faithfulness of our bishops as they wrestle with the "gates of hell" that have penetrated the church today, etc.  But if the ordinary Catholic adult today were to be renewed in spirit and in truth, I think it might come from a sustained reading of the Fathers of the Church.  All of these men were reflecting on the Gospels as they struggled to define what we believe against all the heresies that consistently attacked the foundational truths of Scripture.  And as their writings were rooted and grounded in Scripture, they drew out "that which has been believed from the beginning."  It is not "doctrine" that has the power to save us, but the truth, the Truth that resides in Jesus Christ and which is elucidated in the Scriptures.

Jesus said, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free."  Many people today, like Pilate, scoff at the idea that we can know truth: "What is truth?" he asked.  Relativism, the modern philosophy, holds that one man's truth is just as valid as that of another, that the great "virtue" is to shrug one's shoulders and to deny that anyone really knows Truth.  But even a cursory reading of the Gospel of John is like walking on solid ground after slogging through the muck for most of our lives.  There is no shifting sand of truth in the Gospels.  From the very beginning of Christianity, from the opening words of John's Gospel, the Truth shines forth with no equivocation: 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.  Through Him all things were made; without him, nothing was made that has been made.  In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 

These words were intended to take us straight back to the beginning of Genesis:  When God began creating the heavens and the earth, the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.  And God said [ie--spoke the Word], "Light, Be!"  And Light was....and He separated the light from the darkness.

 If we make the mistake of reading these words as "history," as something that "once happened," we fail to know the truth.  What God "did," He "does."  Even now, at this moment, He speaks His eternal Word (His Light, His Truth) into the formless and empty darkness of souls living in chaos.  Even now, His Spirit "hovers" over the surface of the deep, and He says, "Light, Be!"  He sends His Word in the flesh, that we not be overwhelmed with His brightness, and be afraid, but rather be drawn to  Him through compassion and love:  No longer do I call you servants, but friends.  His Light shines in the darkness even now; if we fail to receive the Light, we continue to walk in darkness, but to all who receive Him, He gives the power to become children of God.  If we do not receive Him, we cannot become the children of God, but continue to live according to the flesh.

Why will people not receive what has been believed from the beginning?