Pope Leo, Dei Verbum, and Evangelii Gaudium

I have often voiced my gratitude for the grace of being a student in Rome during the four sessions of the Second Vatican Council. One of the most unforgettable moments occurred barely six weeks after the Council’s opening. On November 20, 1962, the preparatory schema, “De fontibus revelationis,” was found wanting and rejected by over sixty percent of the Council fathers. And, though the Council’s procedures stipulated that a two-thirds vote was necessary to reject a draft, Pope John XXIII intervened and remanded the documents to be re-worked by a newly constituted committee. That day, as has often been remarked, the bishops assumed direction of the Council–cum Petro et sub Petro.

It also marked the beginning of the process that led to the promulgation, three years later, of what I have called “the first among equals” of the Council’s four constitutions. Without in any way minimizing the significance of the Constitutions on the Liturgy, the Church, and the Church in the Modern World, I have insisted, in season and out of season, on the primary importance of the “Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation:” Dei Verbum.

In an essay on the Council, I offered my justification for this assertion:

For if God does not truly reveal himself, there is no foundation for the Church. It becomes only a human association and organization. And if God has not given himself definitively in Christ, there is no basis for liturgy. It becomes a merely human gathering, bereft of transcendent reference.¹

In his speech at the conclusion of the Extraordinary Consistory of Cardinals in early January, in what might be taken as the true beginning of his own pontificate, Pope Leo declared:

We can never emphasize enough the importance of continuing the journey that began with the Council. I encourage you to do so. I have chosen this theme, as you know – the documents and experience of the Council – for the public audiences this year. And this journey is a process of life, of conversion, of renewal of the entire Church.”

Thus, in the first public audience of the New Year on January 7th, Pope Leo announced his intention to begin a cycle of catecheses on the Council and a “rereading of its documents.” And he offered a brief synopsis of the Council’s achievement.

Vatican Council II rediscovered the face of God as the Father who, in Christ, calls us to be his children; it looked at the Church in the light of Christ, light of nations, as a mystery of communion and sacrament of unity between God and his people.

Hence, it comes as no surprise that, in the ensuing weeks, the first conciliar document the Pope has chosen to explore is Dei Verbum, not the first promulgated chronologically (which of course was the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium), but first in the sense of foundational.

Leo lays bare the heart of its teaching on divine revelation when he states:

The fulfilment of this revelation takes place in a historical and personal encounter in which God himself gives himself to us, making himself present, and we discover that we are known in our deepest truth. It is what happens in Jesus Christ. [Dei Verbum] states that ‘the deepest truth about God and the salvation of man shines out for our sake in Christ, who is both the mediator and the fullness of all revelation’. (DV, 2).

This Christocentric persuasion permeates each of Vatican II’s constitutions as it does Pope Leo’s magisterium. He begins his catechesis on Vatican II with Dei Verbum because it proclaims the Christological confession that is the Church’s life and very condition for being.

For this reason, Leo also has special regard for Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium—one of the two themes reflected upon in the Extraordinary Consistory. He does not dwell on Francis’s speculations about polyhedrons or his musings concerning time being greater than space. Rather, he underscores the joy of the Gospel, which is Jesus himself. He resonates with the forthrightly evangelical Francis who declares that “the primary reason for evangelizing is the love of Jesus which we have received” and with Francis’s persuasion that such love impels “the need to speak of the beloved, to point him out, to make him known” (EG, 264).

It is no surprise then that, in the audience of February 4th, Leo quotes Evangelii Gaudium approvingly:

Whenever we make the effort to return to the source and to recover the original freshness of the Gospel, new avenues arise, new paths of creativity open up, with different forms of expression, more eloquent signs and words with new meaning for today’s world. (EG, 11)

The dialectic here is that of the Council’s ressourcement and aggiornamento: return to the source in order to proclaim afresh. But this dynamic movement is governed throughout by Dei Verbum’s radical Christo-logic. For the “original freshness of the Gospel” is Jesus Christ himself, whose Light the Church reflects (as the moon reflects the light of the sun) and in whose light it discerns the “signs of the times.” I contend that Leo is recovering the evangelical heart of Evangelii Gaudium without being burdened by its obiter dicta.

A brief but salient example of Pope Leo’s commitment to Dei Verbum’s Christocentric vision and Evangelii Gaudium’s missionary commitment can be found in his Mission Sunday Message issued January 25th. It bears the title: “One in Christ, United in Mission.” Echoing both Benedict XVI and Francis, Leo writes: “being ‘one in Christ’ calls us to keep our gaze fixed on the Lord, so that he may truly be at the center of our lives and communities, the center of every word, action and interpersonal relationship, leading us to say with amazement: ‘It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me’” (Gal 2:20).

Only then can the Church, can we, truly be missionary disciples who, as Pope Leo urges, “make Christ’s love visible and invite everyone to encounter him.” To realize this blessed imperative, he offers Francis of Assisi as a model and bids us “find inspiration in his desire to live in the love of the Lord and to transmit it to those both near and far, because, as he said, ‘his love Who has loved us much is much to be loved’.”

Pope Leo’s seamless appeal to both Dei Verbum and Evangelii Gaudium appears, then, as a fecund series of variations upon the one theme: Jesus Christ, “the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb 13:8). This surely comes as no surprise, since he had already inscribed this Christic cantus firmus in his episcopal motto: In Illo Uno Unum. In the one Christ we are one.

That Pope Leo has chosen Bishop Erik Varden to preach the Lenten retreat to the Curia is surely recognition that the same Christic cantus firmus undergirds Varden’s own splendid spiritual compositions.

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