Ambrosial Revelation

As part of an English "summer camp," I asked my lone student to summarize articles selected by my theology professor (for a prior class he taught in another university). I would also summarize them to help my student see an alternative way of doing it. This is one of those article summaries...

 

Article Summary/ Reflection on Ian Knox, “Revelation” in Theology for Teachers (QC: Claretian Publications, 2003), pp. 63-75.

by Eline Santos

Revelation, in a word, is romance, i.e., divine romance because God, out of an unfathomable love for us, chooses to reveal his own self—though infinitely beyond human comprehension—so that we might love him back. Out of love, he created us for himself; and to love we are called, both as a verb and as a noun—mission and destination. 

      Inscrutable as he is to our limited senses, the infinite God takes the initiative to communicate with us in mediated ways we can understand: through our own experiences; the awe-inspiring beauty of creation; individual and collective history (scriptures); the prophets; the Church; and the ultimate, definitive revelation of God, Jesus Christ. These things are necessarily perceived with faith, for without this God-given virtue, there can only be blindness, hard-heartedness and unbelief. Active faith practiced in daily life goes hand in hand with receiving revelation.

        Revelation might come when one is lying on the beach and gazing at the stars in the night sky or watching a program on how the universe began, and then Psalm 19 comes to mind: “The heavens declare the glory of God, the sky proclaims its builder’s craft…” This could be just another anecdote in one’s personal faith journey, but it is nevertheless another step forward as one evolves from perhaps being a lukewarm, non-Church goer to becoming a devout defender of the faith.

       In some instances, the revelation experienced by a person can take on more influence and is recognized by the Church as “private revelation,” i.e., it could be helpful to the faithful to live more fully as a Christian at a certain point in time, or perhaps emphasizes a certain aspect of the deposit of faith, but does not add to the latter. The faithful are not obliged to believe this type of revelation.

       In contrast, out of all the communication God uses, the Bible is at the heart of revelation—the norm by which other revelation is measured. As St. Jerome puts it: “Ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ.” The study of scripture, guided by the Holy Spirit, is essential to understand and interpret revelation correctly. However, this study is not done in isolation; for us Catholics, it is done within community, where the living transmission of revelation is carried out by the successors of Christ’s apostles, embodied in the priesthood. Knox does not say it but no other revelation is clearer than the Eucharist, where Christ comes and gives himself to us as living, life-giving bread.         

“Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament … There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien