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  Date: 2001-10-25
Cardinal Ratzinger
Talks About the Holy Face
Old Testament Holds Key for
Understanding Importance, He Says
ROME, OCT. 25, 2001 (Zenit.org).-
Why has the representation of Jesusī face been so
important for Christians throughout the centuries?
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger responded to this question
when he addressed the congress on "The Hidden and
Transfigured Face of Christ," held here Oct. 20-21. It
was organized by the International Institute of Research
on the Face of Christ.
To give an idea of the importance of the question, the
prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith began by asking the Apostle Philipīs question:
"Lord, show us the Father, and that will be enough."
Jesus replied: "Whoever sees me, sees the Father."
"In the Old Testament, manīs original destiny to see God
assumed the form of the search for Godīs face," Cardinal
Ratzinger told the congress. "Jesusī disciples are men
who seek Godīs face; therefore, in seeking Godīs face,
when they met Jesus they followed him."
"If we wish to understand the theology of the New
Testament on the body of Christ, we must look back to
the Old Testament; only in this way is it intelligible
in all its depth," the cardinal added.
The word "face" appears almost 400 times in the Old
Testament.
"How is it possible to interpret this nostalgia for the
vision [of God] in a religion that, by prohibiting
images, seems to exclude the vision totally?" Cardinal
Ratzinger asked. "What does the Israelite expect when he
seeks the face of God and knows that no image of him can
exist?"
The Bavarian cardinal explained that in the Old
Testament the idea "of the image is abandoned, but the
search for the face remains."
"The objectified form, the reduction of divinity to an
object, disappears, but God keeps his face," the
cardinal clarified.
"The ancient cultural form that had materialized and
reduced God to a concrete reality is abandoned and its
deeper orientation emerges; God has a face, he is a
person. We can say that in abandoning images the concept
of person has been formed and, more precisely, as a
relational concept," the cardinal emphasized.
This is, in fact, the contribution that Christian
philosophy has made over the centuries, the cardinal
concluded. |
