Nevertheless, true fidelity towards a person may on occasion impose on us the duty to withdraw altogether from contact with him. In the case where he would constitute a threat to our fidelity to God, and when we on the other hand feel powerless to help him, our breaking off relations with him is still consistent with our true fidelity towards him: it is destined to promote his spiritual good as well as our own, and is therefore involved in our very love for him so far as love in a higher and ultimate sense implies, above all, responsibility.

Frequently, however, the concept of fidelity towards persons is transferred uncritically to the world of ideas. The unfortunate figure of speech, the Faith of our fathers, is misleading as to the motive for our fidelity towards the Faith; for what can be decisive in this case is only the truth of the Faith, and not the accident that our fathers already happened to believe in it. If this were not so, paganism in its turn could or should never have been supplanted by Christianity. Fidelity to ideas as such is neutral in value only so long as we abstract from the question what ideas are at stake. In reality, there is only one fidelity which is a strict duty: fidelity to truth, fidelity towards Christ.

Dangers of fidelity to false ideals

Not only is fidelity towards errors and false ideals a mistaken attitude; we are also bound to dissolve the bonds that unite us with such cultural or human milieus as cannot withstand the test of confrontation with Christ. Often we cherish certain old and familiar things, ensconcing ourselves in them as in a kind of home, merely because we have lived so long with them, and particularly because they are connected with many memories of our childhood.

Thus, we suffer the world of Christ to penetrate us with its light only so far as it does not interfere with our safe residence in that putative “home.” There is also the danger of attempting so to redraw and to humanize the face of Christ that it may fit into the features of that home.

Many such humanizations and sentimental falsifications are to be found in so-called popular piety, and are expressed even in certain hymns. We must have the readiness to relinquish such all-too-human substitutes, however comfortable we may feel them. We must be filled with the desire to look into the unfalsified countenance of Christ as shown by the Church in her liturgy. We must long to be lifted by Christ into His world, not try to drag Him down into ours. Whatever is of genuine value and appropriate to His world we shall receive back from Him transfigured and resplendent with a new light.

Readiness to change is the core of our response to God

On the measure of our readiness to change depends the measure of our transformation in Christ. Unreserved readiness is an indispensable precondition of the conception of Christ in our souls and it must endure with undiminished vigor all along the path of our transformation. Beyond that, however, as we have seen, it constitutes a central response to Revelation, to God’s epiphany in Christ, and to the call He has issued to us; and therefore, a high virtue by itself.