Monsignor Rino Fisichella, revisiting Dei Verbum, addresses the question of Tradition, one of the most important themes for understanding the present.
Being heirs to a heritage such as Tradition has nothing to do with harking back to lost formulas. Understanding ourselves as heirs of the past, on the contrary, entails an awareness of a relationship that creates continuity with history.
Tradition makes it possible to understand the present
Speaking of tradition today means being hastily labeled a traditionalist because it seems to be something belonging only to the past. But tradition is a condition of life without which the present cannot be understood and no future can be created.
In the age of the Internet, all this becomes even more evident. The culture of immediacy, of “now and right away,” is rapidly absorbing traditional categories of space and time, introducing them into a context devoid of reference points.
Yet, precisely within such a framework, the need for criteria that help preserve what is worthy and transmit what has been received emerges even more clearly.
It is within this development that the need for tradition emerges forcefully. Peoples communicate with one another, and the history of one becomes known to another, creating a kind of complementarity.
Tradition refers to various human experiences that are necessary because they form a heritage humanity needs in order to live and find its way.
The Church has its own Tradition
In many respects, one could say that everything Christians possess belongs to Tradition and has been transmitted through Tradition. Above all, it is an oral transmission that has enabled the formation of the sacred books and many other practices that endure to this day as the foundational signs of faith.
One of the fundamental elements on which this faith lives is its transmission, which marks Christian history from generation to generation. Indeed, the appeal to tradition is not merely a memory of the past; rather, it constitutes the recognition of a cultural heritage that belongs to all humanity.
Tradition entails, first and foremost, the transmission of revelation, which finds its fulfillment in the person of Jesus. This is God's will, which, through this living transmission, continues to bring about humanity's salvation.
By transmitting the Gospel of Christ, the Church makes it evident that his revelation endures and continues in the world as a true instrument of salvation.
Of course, the Church adds nothing to what the Apostles have handed down and, in any case, its work of faithfully transmitting it entails an ever-new and fruitful understanding of the one revealed mystery.
