The eyes of faith: the sense of the faithful and the church's reception of revelation

Epilogue: Ongoing Conversion of the Ecclesial Imagination

293 epilogue Ongoing Conversion of the Ecclesial Imagination The primary task of the teaching office is to teach the meaning and truth of what God has achieved and revealed through Jesus Christ in the spirit for the sake of humanity’s salvation. The norm for inspiring and regulating that task is the foundational apostolic reception of that salvific and revelatory event, as witnessed to in scripture and traditioned by the church. The principle for understanding, interpreting, and applying salvific revelation is the holy spirit. The spirit’s organon for that task is the sensus fidelium. Jesus spoke of eyes that do not see.1 he healed physical blindness, but was as much concerned with spiritual blindness. The eyes of faith are in constant need of Christ’s healing. “in its pilgrimage on earth Christ summons the church to continual reformation [perennem reformationem], of which it is always in need, in so far as it is an institution of human beings here on earth.”2 That perennis reformatio demands perennis conversio, continual conversion to Christ. “each one therefore ought to be more radically converted to the Gospel and, without ever losing sight of God’s plan, change his or her way of looking at things.”3 Continual ecclesial conversion involves continual conversion of the teaching office’s “way of looking at” scripture and tradition, as well as its “way of looking at” 1. mk 8:18: “do you have eyes, and fail to see? do you have ears, and fail to hear? and do you not remember?” 2. UR, 6. Tanner translation. 3. John Paul ii, Ut Unum Sint, 15. 294 ep i lo gue the signs of the times, those signs of God working in new ways here and now, or being impeded from working. The sensus fidelium, we have seen, is the imaginative organon for looking at past and present reality with “the eyes of faith.” Continual conversion includes ongoing conversion of the eyes of faith, the ecclesial imagination. With the eyes of faith, the church and individuals within the church as it moves through history strive to perceive the meaning of scripture and tradition as it applies to new situations. With the eyes of faith, the church imagines the direction and shape of a renewed church for the sake of more effective realization of its mission in the present. The imaginative organon of sensus fidelium enables the church to rejuvenate the tradition with creative fidelity. Continuity with the past is preserved through creative innovation; sameness is maintained through faithful rejuvenation ; unity is preserved through legitimate diversity. however, innovation, rejuvenation, and diversity are not just the result of ongoing understanding, interpretation, and application from the perspective of new times and of new contexts. Within that very process generated by the sensus fidelium, the imaginative organon of sensus fidelium is itself constantly being “attuned” and “calibrated” by the holy spirit, so that the church may more acutely recognize in the signs of the times the new things that God is doing. This constant calibration or attunement of the imaginative organon of the sensus fidelium constitutes an ongoing conversion of the ecclesial imagination by the spirit. This ongoing healing of the eyes of faith involves the church’s perennis reformatio and perennis conversio. ongoing conversion of the ecclesial imagination, of the organon of sensus fidelium, is first of all effected by constant relearning on the part of the church through fresh reception of scripture and tradition. each of the three authorities in the teaching office are authoritative witnesses, to the degree that they are learners from each other as they each receive and apply scripture and tradition in their own distinctive way. only a dialogue of mutual learning between these three authorities assures the church that it is being faithful to the treasure once given, the apostolic tradition, as expressed through the apostolic imagination in scripture. That interaction should be what John Paul ii called an ongoing “dialogue of conversion.”4 The dialogue of conversion needed between sepa4 . ibid., 35. ep i lo gue 295 rated churches must likewise characterize vital dialogue “in the church itself.”5 Cultivating “a culture of dialogue” within the church between these authorities therefore means cultivating a culture of conversion. But that dialogue of conversion within the teaching office is facilitated not only by the church’s dialogue with scripture and tradition, but also by the church’s dialogue with God in the present...