INSIDE america Way and Answer Coincide Jesus is the man who is the incarnation of the Truth. For this reason, before identifying Himself as the Truth, Jesus calls Himself the Way. To be a Christian is to embrace the Way to the Truth that Jesus is It is not enough to say that Jesus Christ teaches us the Truth about human life. The Christian faith affirms much more. The Truth of life is the Mystery at the origin of all that exists. All religions seek to discover this Truth. Only the Christian, however, will affirm that the Truth became a human being in the womb of a Jewish woman; that He was born as a baby and grew up as a man; that He was followed by people who were struck by the way He lived His life; and that He was executed by some of His opponents but He rose from the dead victorious over space and time and is thus still present in His humanity in our midst. Only a Christian would say this. Jesus is the name of a concrete individual man who is the human embodiment of the Truth that all religions seek. He is the Truth made man. This is what we believe. It is not enough to say that Jesus is the name we give to the Truth. Jesus is the man who is the incarnation of the Truth. For this reason, before identifying Himself as the Truth, Jesus calls Himself the Way. Jesus is the Way to the Truth. To be a Christian is to embrace the Way to the Truth that Jesus is. Jesus is the method by which the Absolute chose to communicate His Truth to human beings. This method cannot be separated from the reality that it makes present. In Christianity, method is not arbitrary. Instead, method and content coincide absolutely. The revelation of the Truth and the method through which it occurs coincide. This makes all the difference; there is nothing in the religious world comparable to this affirmation; there is absolutely nothing like it. And it has immense consequences that characterize the way Christians face reality, the way Christians live the challenges of life, the way we face the problems of life. We do not seek solutions to the problems of life derived from religious sentiments, spiritual approaches, or philosophical convictions. We do not have answers to questions. In each circumstance of life, whatever it is, we seek not an answer but a Presence, the human presence that is the way to the “Answer,” to the Truth. We do not come together as Church to find intellectual answers to our questions about the meaning and purpose of life. This is to reduce the Church to an ideology. We come together not to find answers but to learn how to recognize and affirm a Presence. The Church is not “our way” of finding answers to our religious quest for the Truth; it is the method through which the Truth becomes humanly present to us. As the prolongation of Christ’s presence in the world, it is the method through which the Truth becomes incarnate for us. I am writing this a few days after the tragedy of the tsunami that killed thousands and thousands in Southeast Asia, including so many children. What do we say before such horror? How could God permit this? People think that, as a Christian, I have answers to these questions. But I do not know these answers. The Church cannot answer these questions. It can only give witness to a Presence that is the way the Answer is present in the world. Just a few days after the tragedy, the Church celebrated the Feast of the Holy Innocents. It is amazing that this feast is celebrated within the Christmas octave, the week in which we celebrate the human birth of the Savior of human life. But then, it was His birth that provoked the fury that killed those innocent children. They were His first martyrs, witnessing to the fact that this fury could not destroy His presence. On the Feast of the Holy Innocents, two thousands years later, the Church is celebrating their witness by recognizing it as the fulfillment of Responsorial Psalm 124: “Then would the waters have overwhelmed us; the torrent would have swept over us; over us then would have swept the raging waters.” Our soul has been rescued like a bird from the fowler’s snare. Broken was the snare, and we were freed. We come together as the Church to learn how to recognize the fact of this Presence, and to witness to it in any circumstance of life, especially when there are no answers. Jesus Christ is the way to the Answer. In Him, way and answer coincide.