The discrepancy between faith and the life of Christians in John Paul II’s catecheses on the Divine Persons

Abstract

John Paul II undertook a critical assessment of the religious state of con-temporary man. The Pope pointed to a peculiar split and discord that takes place in man, in his heart and conscience. This causes the lack of connection between ecstatic rapture in the temple and everyday life, between faith and expressing it in action. True faith must be supported by concrete acts. So faith in action is needed, in contrast to dead faith, equal to unbelief. John Paul II sees the sources of the crisis between the professed faith in words and its expression in human action in the tainted human thinking by the spirit of this world, in its closure to the truth, submission to secularism and adopting an indifferent attitude. Man’s mind and will have been enslaved by the earthly spirit of modern times. Therefore, man needs the guidance and interior inspiration of the Holy Spirit. He brings about the whole truth and is the source of a kind of anxiety that is needed to cleanse the conscience of false calm and restore its original sensitivity to God’s matters, so that the human being can again correctly distinguish between good and evil. The Pope regrets that contemporary people find it more comfortable to live in falsehood and hypocrisy than in transcendent matters. He himself wants to decide about moral standards, becoming indifferent to Sacred. The Pope makes people aware that believing in Christianity means striving consciously and voluntarily to the fullness of the truth. And this one is only in Christ. Without faith to rest on Him, it will be immature and superficial.