Lumen Fidei - page 20

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recoil before death in order to show its depth,
is something I can believe in; Christ’s total self-
gift overcomes every suspicion and enables me
to entrust myself to him completely.
17. Christ’s death discloses the utter reliability
of God’s love above all in the light of his resur-
rection. As the risen one, Christ is the trustwor-
thy witness, deserving of faith (cf. Rev 1:5; Heb
2:17), and a solid support for our faith. “If Christ
has not been raised, your faith is futile”, says
Saint Paul ( 1 Cor 15:17). Had the Father’s love
not caused Jesus to rise from the dead, had it not
been able to restore his body to life, then it would
not be a completely reliable love, capable of illu-
minating also the gloom of death. When Saint
Paul describes his new life in Christ, he speaks of
“faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave
himself for me” (Gal 2:20). Clearly, this “faith in
the Son of God” means Paul’s faith in Jesus, but
it also presumes that Jesus himself is worthy of
faith, based not only on his having loved us even
unto death but also on his divine sonship. Pre-
cisely because Jesus is the Son, because he is ab-
solutely grounded in the Father, he was able to
conquer death and make the fullness of life shine
forth. Our culture has lost its sense of God’s tan-
gible presence and activity in our world. We think
that God is to be found in the beyond, on anoth-
er level of reality, far removed from our everyday
relationships. But if this were the case, if God
could not act in the world, his love would not