Lumen Fidei - page 43

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to read the thirteenth chapter of the Letter to
the Romans.28 In this way, the personal God of
the Bible appeared to him: a God who is able to
speak to us, to come down to dwell in our midst
and to accompany our journey through history,
making himself known in the time of hearing
and response.
Yet this encounter with the God who speaks
did not lead Augustine to reject light and seeing.
He integrated the two perspectives of hearing
and seeing, constantly guided by the revelation
of God’s love in Jesus. Thus Augustine devel-
oped a philosophy of light capable of embracing
both the reciprocity proper to the word and the
freedom born of looking to the light. Just as the
word calls for a free response, so the light finds
a response in the image which reflects it. Augus-
tine can therefore associate hearing and seeing,
and speak of “the word which shines forth with-
in”.29 The light becomes, so to speak, the light
of a word, because it is the light of a personal
countenance, a light which, even as it enlightens
us, calls us and seeks to be reflected on our fac-
es and to shine from within us. Yet our longing
for the vision of the whole, and not merely of
fragments of history, remains and will be fulfilled
in the end, when, as Augustine says, we will see
and we will love.30 Not because we will be able to
28 Cf. Confessiones, VIII, 12, 29: PL 32, 762.
29 De Trinitate, XV, 11, 20: PL 42, 1071: “verbum quod intus
lucet ”.
30 Cf. De Civitate Dei, XXII, 30, 5: PL 41, 804.