Here's a little more from Pope Benedict's Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures (p. 107):
Faith is anchored in what Jesus and the saints see
Jesus, he who knows God directly, sees him. This is why he is the true mediator between God and man. His human act of seeing the divine reality is the source of light for all men.
I can't quote the extensive sections of which this is the final restatement, in which Benedict develops the key idea of truly looking at the other whom we purport to love, and the disastrous consequences of looking away. I'll just say that after reading this small volume, I thought I understood things better than I ever had before. Who -- what human, that is -- has fully seen God? Jesus only. The Second Person, in perfect communion with the First, forever.
And then he turned around and offered the Father, whom he sees so perfectly, to us. He poured out his whole life so that could happen, and he pours it out in the great mystery of the Eucharist at every Mass.
In 1867, Matthew Arnold wrote "Dover Beach", a haunting poem evoking the "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar" of the Sea of Faith. As a boomer who finished Catholic elementary school in 1964 and then watched my Church falter, I've found the roar all too audible. So here I wait, listening for the whispers of that Sea's invincible return.
