There are different stages of revelation, he said, noting that each one "is marked by the love of God."
"It's a love that reaches the heart of every person, meeting them in their interior, where the perception of a presence that gives meaning to life is best expressed," he said.
Faith, he said, is "a personal act which testifies to having encountered God who made himself known."
Faith "is never far from love," Fisichella said, explaining that love itself "generates faith and sustains it with the strength of hope."
"Love comes from God and returns to God," he said, and "this completely transforms man, because it renders him capable of relating to himself and others with a love he receives as a gift and which he himself cannot produce."
Fisichella said that "one can think of catechesis as a desire to stay for a long time in order to grow in knowledge of the Lord Jesus," adding that the heart of catechesis is "to make the life of the believer a path where through the knowledge of what is believed we enter into the mystery by celebrating it with the prayer of the entire people of God."
To fully understand this, it's necessary that "it be made easier to understand the impact that catechesis can have on people with disabilities," he said.
Ultimately, the goal of catechesis is "to make it so that God seizes everyone, whatever state they are in, because the primacy lies with him," Fisichella said, stressing that God "finds the most adequate means to communicate his life of love and to make the love he invests in a person felt."
The archbishop pointed to music, song and art, which all bespeak love, he said, allowing those who experience them to understand God in a different way, he said. So "no one is excluded from the Word that God speaks, with which he makes himself known to each one."
He then spoke of the need to promote the "culture of encounter" that Pope Francis speaks of so often, with a special emphasis on friendship, brotherhood and solidarity.
We must learn to take the initiative on this, the archbishop said, explaining that a true culture of encounter "does not stop at a few hurried moments, and in the form of formalities."
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"Rather, it feels the duty to 'entertain' itself with people, of giving one's own time without the hurry that prevents them from entering into depth (of) the encounter with the richness of experience acquired and with the charisms which are offered to each person, no one excluded, for the growth of the entire community."
"A culture of encounter, then, is to welcome the mystery of the brother in order to understand better the mystery of his own existence," Fisichella said, adding that this "culture" must also be a place where "the dimension of the Church, a community that lives communion, becomes the criteria of judgement and testimony of our presence in today's world"
Our responsibility, then, "is to transmit the faith in a living way, and not to create obstacles, so that it reaches everyone, above all those who are preferred by the Lord."
Elise Harris was senior Rome correspondent for CNA from 2012 to 2018.