“One of the most beautiful and important” documents of the Council. This is how Pope Leo XIV described the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum on Divine Revelation, which was at the heart of today’s catechesis delivered in the Paul VI Hall. The Pope called for recognizing “the difference between the word and chatter”, because “the Revelation of God has the dialogical nature of friendship and, as in the experience of human friendship, it does not tolerate silence, but is nurtured by the exchange of true words”. “Time dedicated to prayer, meditation and reflection cannot be lacking in the Christian’s day and week” was his concluding exhortation.
No longer servants, but friends. “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you”: these words of Jesus in the Gospel of John were described as “a fundamental point of Christian faith, which Dei Verbum reminds us of: Jesus Christ radically transforms man’s relationship with God, which is henceforth a relationship of friendship. Therefore, the only condition of the new covenant is love”. Saint Augustine, commenting on this passage from the Fourth Gospel, the Pontiff noted, “insists on the perspective of grace, which alone can make us friends of God in his Son”. “Friendship is born between equals, or makes them so”, the Pope said, quoting a Latin proverb. “We are not equal to God, but God himself makes us similar to Him in his Son”.
“Nothing can separate us” from God’s love, Leo XIV assured.
“As we can see in all the Scripture, in the Covenant there is a first moment of distance, in which the pact between God and mankind always remains asymmetrical”, he explained. “God is God and we are creatures. However, with the coming of the Son in human flesh, the Covenant opens up to its final purpose: in Jesus, God makes us sons and daughters, and calls us to become like Him, albeit in our fragile humanity”. “Our resemblance to God”, the Pope specified, “is not reached through transgression and sin, as the serpent suggests to Eve, but in our relationship with the Son made man”.
The words of Jesus — “I have called you friends” — are reprised in the Constitution Dei Verbum, which states: “Through this Revelation, therefore, the invisible God out of the abundance of His love speaks to men as friends and lives among them, so that He may invite and take them into fellowship with Himself”. “The God of Genesis already conversed with our first parents, engaging in dialogue with them”, the conciliar constitution continues, “and when this dialogue was interrupted by sin, the Creator did not cease to seek an encounter with his creatures and to establish a covenant with them. In the Christian Revelation, that is, when God became man in his Son in order to seek us out, the dialogue that had been interrupted is restored in a definitive manner: the Covenant is new and eternal, nothing can separate us from his love”.
No to chatter, yes to prayer. “The Revelation of God has the dialogical nature of friendship and, as in the experience of human friendship, it does not tolerate silence, but is nurtured by the exchange of true words”, Leo XIV summarised.
“It is important to recognize the difference between words and chatter”, he urged.
“This latter stops at the surface and does not achieve communion between people, whereas in authentic relationships, the word serves not only to exchange information and news, but to reveal who we are. The word possesses a revelatory dimension that creates a relationship with the other. In this way, by speaking to us, God reveals himself to us as an Ally who invites us into friendship with Him”.
From this perspective, “the first attitude to cultivate is listening, so that the divine Word may penetrate our minds and our hearts”; at the same time, according to the Pope, “we are required to speak with God, not to communicate to him what He already knows, but to reveal ourselves to ourselves”. Hence the need for prayer, “in which we are called to live and to cultivate friendship with the Lord”. “This is achieved first of all in liturgical and community prayer”, he observed, “in which we do not decide what to hear from the Word of God, but it is He himself who speaks to us through the Church; it is then achieved in personal prayer, which takes place in the interiority of the heart and mind”.
“Time dedicated to prayer, meditation and reflection cannot be lacking in the Christian’s day and week”,
the Pope urged at the conclusion of his catechesis. “Only when we speak with God can we also speak about Him. Our experience tells us that friendships can come to an end through a dramatic gesture of rupture, or because of a series of daily acts of neglect that erode the relationship until it is lost. If Jesus calls us to be friends, let us not leave this call unheeded. Let us welcome it, let us take care of this relationship, and we will discover that friendship with God is our salvation”.
