A Priest’s testimony
Pope Benedict XVI said, “One does not really know a person if one knows this person second hand… and only experiencing life with God does the evidence of his existence appear.” A young priest who is a Professor of Theology discovered this truth himself. He explained: “For the major part of my life, even after I’d been ordained a priest, my faith for me was like listening to a conversation that someone else was having. Occasionally someone would even say ‘I’ve spoken to God’ and I would get that word second hand. But I would be pleased and I would enjoy listening to what they had to say and what they have learned from God. So attending Mass and being involved in the life of the Church was like a second hand experience, but it comforted me and I didn’t feel unhappy initially.
Then I went on a retreat where many of the people there had encountered the Lord and were joyfully speaking about him. I asked them to pray with me so that I could know him as well. It was then when I first discovered that faith is about a personal encounter between me and God, and that really transformed my faith completely and deepened my relationship with God incredibly.
To know that God was calling me personally and was involved in a personal relationship of love was quite, quite different from a faith which was second hand and was based on what we receive from others. I did trust the faith which was given by others and I did respond to that faith wholeheartedly and I was sincere in that response. But it is quite a different thing and a transforming reality when that faith becomes a personal encounter with the Lord.
Pope Benedict XVI
“The response the Lord ardently desires of us is above all that we welcome his love and allow ourselves to be drawn to him.” (Lent 2007)
Catechism of the Catholic Church
“One must enter the kingdom, that is, become a disciple of Christ, in order to ‘know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven’. For those who stay ‘outside’, everything remains enigmatic.” (546)
Pope Francis: “The Church is built on our relationship with Jesus”
“Jesus intends to give life to his Church, a people no longer founded on heritage but on faith, which means on the relationship with Him, a relationship of love and trust. The Church is built on our relationship with Jesus.” (24.08.2014)
Pope Benedict XVI: Faith
“If Faith does not take on new life, deep conviction and real strength from the encounter with Jesus Christ then all other reforms will remain ineffective.” (speaking to the Roman Curia, 22.12.2011)
Pope Francis: Conversion – What it means
“To convert means to allow the Lord to live and work in us.” (Vespers homily, 25.01.2016)
Pope Benedict XVI: Being a Christian
“Welcoming into their lives the Lordship of Christ, they [make] themselves available to being transformed by his love. This is the basic choice that faces every Christian. I pointed out in my first encyclical: ‘Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a Person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction’.” (L’Osservatore Romano, 19.04.2007)
St John Paul II: Heaven
“Revelation teaches us that heaven is not an abstraction or a place in the clouds, but a living, personal relationship of union with the Holy Trinity.” (L’Osservatore Romano, 29.07.1999)