教宗指出四旬期大力开展爱德事业是宣讲福音
2013/02/01 16:13梵蒂冈
教宗指出四旬期大力开展爱德事业是宣讲福音
信德年之际，教宗本笃十六世的四旬期文告围绕"信德与爱德两者有彼此相连不可分解的关系"展开。"信德既是恩赐，也是响应，让我们知道基督是爱，是降生成人并被钉十字架的爱，彻底而完全地顺从天父的旨意，以及对待近人神圣无限的慈悲"。"爱德则会带领我们进入基督所彰显的天主爱内，让我们个人及我们的生活都能参与耶稣对天父及对他弟兄姊妹完全及无条件的自我牺牲"
http://www.asianews.it/files/img/size2/B_XVI_-_9.jpg梵蒂冈城（亚洲新闻）-大力开展爱德活动就是福传。因为"基本上，一切事物都来自爱，也归向爱。福音向我们宣讲了天主对我们不求回报的爱了。如果我们怀着信德迎接这爱，我就会经验到那与天主初次并不可缺的接触--这接触能使我们'爱上天主'，并接着在这爱内存留并成长，以及喜悦地将这爱传递给他人"。由此，教宗本笃十六世揭示了信德与爱德之间的关系，主题为《相信仁爱便激发爱德》的信德年四旬期文告也就此展开。
教宗谈到了信德与爱德之间的关系，这也是天主教徒和新教运动长期存在分歧的主要问题。并从信德的定义为起点，指出这是在《天主是爱》通谕中已经阐述过的"响应天主的爱"。
本笃十六世继续写道，"信德就是整个人--包括我们所有的官能，投身于天主启示给我们那种不求回报及'热情'的爱，而这份爱在耶稣基督身上全然地显示出来。与身为爱的天主相遇，不只要有诚心，也需要用理智：对生活的天主的认识，是一条通向爱的道路，是我们的意志对天主旨意的'顺服'，是在爱的整体行动中，结合理智、意志和情感的顺服，然而这是一个不断在进展中的过程，爱永远不会'终结'，也不会完成"。
为此，信德"就是认识真理及投向真理（参弟前二4）；爱德是在真理中'行走'（参弗四15）。我们借着信德与上主为友；这友谊借着爱德能生存茁长（参若十五14）。信德使我们欣然接受吾主上主的诫命；爱德赋予我们实行这诫命的福乐（参若十三13-17）。在信德中，我们成为天主的子女（参若一12以下）；爱德使我们具体地保持我们'天主儿女'的身份，坚定不移，结出圣神的果实（参迦五22）。信德使我们认清仁慈慷慨的天主所交托给我们的恩赐；爱德则使这恩赐结出丰盛的果实（参玛廿五14-30）"。
文告中，教宗集中阐述了"信德与爱德两者有彼此相连不可分解的关系"。指出"由以上面的观点来看，可以清楚地知道，信德与爱德是绝不能分开，更非对立的。这两个超性德行亲密相连，若视二者之间有对立或基本上就互相矛盾，这是误导。太强调信德的优先和决断性，并低估，甚至轻视具体的爱德工作，使爱德工作沦为含糊不清的人道主义，那是过于偏颇；然而，另一方面，过份强调爱德的首位，以及爱德所产生的行动，似乎爱德工作可以取代信德一样，也同样无补于事。要过健全的灵修生活，唯信主义和道德行动主义，两者都必须避免"。
"但我们有时会经常把'爱德'这个词汇局限为精诚团结或仅是人道援助。我们务必要记住，最大的爱德工作就是传扬福音，也就是'宣道的职务'。对自己的近人，没有什么行动比分享天主圣言、分享福音中的好消息、带领他与天主建立关系更有益处，因此也更有爱德。传扬福音是提升人性的最崇高，也是最具体的行为。正如天主仆人教宗保禄六世在《民族发展》通谕中所写的，宣扬基督是对民族发展最首要、最主要的贡献（参16号）。天主实践并宣讲了最根本的真理，就是天主先爱了我们，这真理促使我们接受这爱，因而能够发展全人类，并发展每一个人（参《在真理中实践爱德》8）"。
"信德既是恩赐，也是响应，让我们知道基督是爱，是降生成人并被钉十字架的爱，彻底而完全地顺从天父的旨意，以及对待近人神圣无限的慈悲；信德在心中及思想中种下坚定的信念，相信只有这爱才能克服邪恶及死亡。信德邀请我们怀着望德展望未来，深信基督之爱大获全胜之日必会来到。爱德则会带领我们进入基督所彰显的天主爱内，让我们个人及我们的生活都能参与耶稣对天父及对他弟兄姊妹完全及无条件的自我牺牲。天主圣神将爱倾注在我们心中，使我们参与耶稣对天主的孝爱、对每一个人的弟兄之爱（参罗五5）"。
"信、爱两德之间的关系，就好象教会的两个基本圣事一样：圣洗圣事和圣体圣事之间的关系一样。圣洗圣事（sacramentum fidei：'信德的圣事'）先于圣体圣事（sacramentum caritatis：'爱德的圣事'），但指向圣体圣事--基督信仰旅途的圆满实现。同样，信德在爱德之先，但只有在爱德冠群时，才算是真正的信德。万事都起源于谦逊接受信仰（'自知蒙天主所爱'），但必须抵达爱德的真理（'知道如何爱天主及爱近人'），爱才会永远长存，因为爱是所有德行的完成（参格前十三13）"。
四旬期文告2013， 英文全文：
Believing in charity calls forth charity
“We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us” (1 Jn 4:16)
Dear Brothers and Sisters,The celebration of Lent, in the context of the Year of Faith, offers us a valuable opportunity to meditate on the relationship between faith and charity: between believing in God – the God of Jesus Christ – and love, which is the fruit of the Holy Spirit and which guides us on the path of devotion to God and others.
1. Faith as a response to the love of God
In my first Encyclical, I offered some thoughts on the close relationship between the theological virtues of faith and charity. Setting out from Saint John’s fundamental assertion: “We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us” (1 Jn 4:16), I observed that “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 … Since God has first loved us (cf. 1 Jn 4:10), love is now no longer a mere ‘command’; it is the response to the gift of love with which God draws near to us” (Deus Caritas Est, 1). Faith is this personal adherence – which involves all our faculties – to the revelation of God’s gratuitous and “passionate” love for us, fully revealed in Jesus Christ. The encounter with God who is Love engages not only the heart but also the intellect: “Acknowledgement of the living God is one path towards love, and the ‘yes’ of our will to his will unites our intellect, will and sentiments in the all-embracing act of love. But this process is always open-ended; love is never ‘finished’ and complete” (ibid., 17). Hence, for all Christians, and especially for “charity workers”, there is a need for faith, for “that encounter with God in Christ which awakens their love and opens their spirits to others. As a result, love of neighbour will no longer be for them a commandment imposed, so to speak, from without, but a consequence deriving from their faith, a faith which becomes active through love” (ibid., 31a). Christians are people who have been conquered by Christ’s love and accordingly, under the influence of that love – “Caritas Christi urget nos” (2 Cor 5:14) – they are profoundly open to loving their neighbour in concrete ways (cf. ibid., 33). This attitude arises primarily from the consciousness of being loved, forgiven, and even served by the Lord, who bends down to wash the feet of the Apostles and offers himself on the Cross to draw humanity into God’s love.
“Faith tells us that God has given his Son for our sakes and gives us the victorious certainty that it is really true: God is love! … Faith, which sees the love of God revealed in the pierced heart of Jesus on the Cross, gives rise to love. Love is the light – and in the end, the only light – that can always illuminate a world grown dim and give us the courage needed to keep living and working” (ibid., 39). All this helps us to understand that the principal distinguishing mark of Christians is precisely “love grounded in and shaped by faith” (ibid., 7).
2. Charity as life in faith
The entire Christian life is a response to God’s love. The first response is precisely faith as the acceptance, filled with wonder and gratitude, of the unprecedented divine initiative that precedes us and summons us. And the “yes” of faith marks the beginning of a radiant story of friendship with the Lord, which fills and gives full meaning to our whole life. But it is not enough for God that we simply accept his gratuitous love. Not only does he love us, but he wants to draw us to himself, to transform us in such a profound way as to bring us to say with Saint Paul: “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (cf. Gal 2:20).
When we make room for the love of God, then we become like him, sharing in his own charity. If we open ourselves to his love, we allow him to live in us and to bring us to love with him, in him and like him; only then does our faith become truly “active through love” (Gal 5:6); only then does he abide in us (cf. 1 Jn 4:12).
Faith is knowing the truth and adhering to it (cf. 1 Tim 2:4); charity is “walking” in the truth (cf.Eph 4:15). Through faith we enter into friendship with the Lord, through charity this friendship is lived and cultivated (cf. Jn 15:14ff). Faith causes us to embrace the commandment of our Lord and Master; charity gives us the happiness of putting it into practice (cf. Jn 13:13-17). In faith we are begotten as children of God (cf. Jn 1:12ff); charity causes us to persevere concretely in our divine sonship, bearing the fruit of the Holy Spirit (cf. Gal 5:22). Faith enables us to recognize the gifts that the good and generous God has entrusted to us; charity makes them fruitful (cf. Mt 25:14-30).
3. The indissoluble interrelation of faith and charity
In light of the above, it is clear that we can never separate, let alone oppose, faith and charity. These two theological virtues are intimately linked, and it is misleading to posit a contrast or “dialectic” between them. On the one hand, it would be too one-sided to place a strong emphasis on the priority and decisiveness of faith and to undervalue and almost despise concrete works of charity, reducing them to a vague humanitarianism. On the other hand, though, it is equally unhelpful to overstate the primacy of charity and the activity it generates, as if works could take the place of faith. For a healthy spiritual life, it is necessary to avoid both fideism and moral activism.
The Christian life consists in continuously scaling the mountain to meet God and then coming back down, bearing the love and strength drawn from him, so as to serve our brothers and sisters with God’s own love. In sacred Scripture, we see how the zeal of the Apostles to proclaim the Gospel and awaken people’s faith is closely related to their charitable concern to be of service to the poor (cf. Acts 6:1-4). In the Church, contemplation and action, symbolized in some way by the Gospel figures of Mary and Martha, have to coexist and complement each other (cf. Lk 10:38-42). The relationship with God must always be the priority, and any true sharing of goods, in the spirit of the Gospel, must be rooted in faith (cf. General Audience, 25 April 2012). Sometimes we tend, in fact, to reduce the term “charity”to solidarity or simply humanitarian aid. It is important, however, to remember that the greatest work of charity is evangelization, which is the “ministry of the word”. There is no action more beneficial – and therefore more charitable – towards one’s neighbour than to break the bread of the word of God, to share with him the Good News of the Gospel, to introduce him to a relationship with God: evangelization is the highest and the most integral promotion of the human person. As the Servant of God Pope Paul VI wrote in the Encyclical Populorum Progressio, the proclamation of Christ is the first and principal contributor todevelopment (cf. n. 16). It is the primordial truth of the love of God for us, lived and proclaimed, that opens our lives to receive this love and makes possible the integral development of humanity and of every man (cf. Caritas in Veritate, 8).
Essentially, everything proceeds from Love and tends towards Love. God’s gratuitous love is made known to us through the proclamation of the Gospel. If we welcome it with faith, we receive the first and indispensable contact with the Divine, capable of making us “fall in love with Love”, and then we dwell within this Love, we grow in it and we joyfully communicate it to others.Concerning the relationship between faith and works of charity, there is a passage in theLetter to the Ephesians which provides perhaps the best account of the link between the two: “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God; not because of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (2:8-10). It can be seen here that the entire redemptive initiative comes from God, from his grace, from his forgiveness received in faith; but this initiative, far from limiting our freedom and our responsibility, is actually what makes them authentic and directs them towards works of charity. These are not primarily the result of human effort, in which to take pride, but they are born of faith and they flow from the grace that God gives in abundance. Faith without works is like a tree without fruit: the two virtues imply one another. Lent invites us, through the traditional practices of the Christian life, to nourish our faith by careful and extended listening to the word of God and by receiving the sacraments, and at the same time to grow in charity and in love for God and neighbour, not least through the specific practices of fasting, penance and almsgiving.
4. Priority of faith, primacy of charity
Like any gift of God, faith and charity have their origin in the action of one and the same Holy Spirit (cf. 1 Cor 13), the Spirit within us that cries out “Abba, Father” (Gal 4:6), and makes us say: “Jesus is Lord!” (1 Cor 12:3) and “Maranatha!” (1 Cor 16:22; Rev 22:20).
Faith, as gift and response, causes us to know the truth of Christ as Love incarnate and crucified, as full and perfect obedience to the Father’s will and infinite divine mercy towards neighbour; faith implants in hearts and minds the firm conviction that only this Love is able to conquer evil and death. Faith invites us to look towards the future with the virtue of hope, in the confident expectation that the victory of Christ’s love will come to its fullness. For its part, charity ushers us into the love of God manifested in Christ and joins us in a personal and existential way to the total and unconditional self-giving of Jesus to the Father and to his brothers and sisters. By filling our hearts with his love, the Holy Spirit makes us sharers in Jesus’ filial devotion to God and fraternal devotion to every man (cf. Rom 5:5).
The relationship between these two virtues resembles that between the two fundamental sacraments of the Church: Baptism and Eucharist. Baptism (sacramentum fidei) precedes the Eucharist (sacramentum caritatis), but is ordered to it, the Eucharist being the fullness of the Christian journey. In a similar way, faith precedes charity, but faith is genuine only if crowned by charity. Everything begins from the humble acceptance of faith (“knowing that one is loved by God”), but has to arrive at the truth of charity (“knowing how to love God and neighbour”), which remains for ever, as the fulfilment of all the virtues (cf. 1 Cor 13:13).
Dear brothers and sisters, in this season of Lent, as we prepare to celebrate the event of the Cross and Resurrection – in which the love of God redeemed the world and shone its light upon history – I express my wish that all of you may spend this precious time rekindling your faith in Jesus Christ, so as to enter with him into the dynamic of love for the Father and for every brother and sister that we encounter in our lives. For this intention, I raise my prayer to God, and I invoke the Lord’s blessing upon each individual and upon every community!
From the Vatican, 15 October 2012
xiaotianshi 发表于 2013-2-2 00:03
四旬期文告2013， 英文全文：
Believing in charity calls forth charity
多谢提供英文全文，
若有英汉对照更好。 信仰自由 发表于 2013-2-2 06:04 static/image/common/back.gif
多谢提供英文全文，
若有英汉对照更好。
中文的 点击这里：http://www.chinacath.org/article/doctrina/letter/40/2013-02-02/19372.html
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