What does Christian truth properly consist of? What does it bring us for life? What consequences does this have for the Christian Education and for the theological task? In his message to the Pontifical Academies on January 28, Pope Francis, wanted to point out the thread that unites the encyclical on Faith(Lumen fidei, 29-VI-2013) and the exhortation "The Joy of the Evengelium"(Evangelii gaudium, 24-XI-2013). That thread is the relationship between faith, truth and love.

The Pope begins by evoking the very core, the most important of what the encyclical says about faith. Faith is not mere belief, but true knowledge, which brings strength of conviction and light to illuminate life. Now, the knowledge, the conviction and the light proper to faith come from its link with love: "Faith knows insofar as it is linked to love, insofar as love itself carries a light. The understanding of faith is born when we receive the great love of God that transforms us interiorly and gives us new eyes to see reality"(Lumen fidei, 26).

This is what happens starting from meeting with Christ. Pope Francis observes that, on seeing Jesus who had come back to life for ever, the disciples "did not contemplate a purely interior or abstract truth, but a truth that was opened to them precisely in the meeting with the Risen One, in the contemplation of his life, of his mysteries". This contemplation, which they realized with their own eyes, opened a new look at reality. From now on they would be able to see all things and events with "new eyes," the eyes of Christ. He would make them participate spiritually in his own gaze, so that they would learn to look, and therefore to understand things, as he sees and understands them. This is what Christian faith is all about.

From all this, Francis points out, important consequences can be deduced, both for the work of Christians and for the method of theology. To this purpose quotation another passage of the encyclical, where we can find answers to our questions: what is Christian truth like and what transformation does it produce in us?

Truth," we read in Lumen Fidei,"is often reduced today to the subjective authenticity of each individual, valid only for his or her individual life. A common truth frightens us, because we identify it with the intransigent imposition of totalitarianism. But if truth is the truth of love, if it is the truth that opens up in meeting staff with the Other and with others, then it is freed from the confinement of the individual and can become part of the common good... Far from hardening us, the security of faith sets us on the way, and makes witness and dialogue with everyone possible"(Lumen fidei, 34).

Well, says Pope Francis, this path to which faith leads us - a path of witness and dialogue - is the one explained in the exhortation Evangelii gaudium, on the joyful advertisement of the Gospel in today's world.

It proposes a "missionary option" that each Christian and the Church as a whole and each of its parts must take or renew, in order to contribute to the transformation of the whole reality with the advertisement of faith.

What does this transformation consist of, concretely? It is not a matter," the Pope points out, "of doing external, 'façade' works. It is rather (...) to concentrate once more 'on what is essential, on what is most beautiful, greatest, most attractive and at the same time most necessary'(Lumen fidei, 35)". And in this way, he adds in the words of the encyclical, "the proposal is simplified, without losing depth and truth, and thus becomes more convincing and radiant"(ibid.).

This is what the Church, through the voice of the Bishop of Rome, also asks of the members of the Pontifical Academies, where they work intensely on reflection on faith and the relationship between theology and the human sciences.

St. Thomas Aquinas affirms, at the beginning of his Summa Theologica, that theology is a speculative science and therefore also internship. But be careful, by the adjective speculative we should not understand a purely theoretical reflection that does not leave to life. In the same place Aquinas points out that theology - because it is founded on reason and faith - participates in God's own knowledge , essentially linked to love. Theology starts from contemplation and aspires, through the love that this contemplation instills in the believer, to submit or to transmit to others what is contemplated.

Therefore, theology - it could be said today in a more direct way - is wisdom that allows the Christian to know and love God and his works; and, therefore, it leads to live helping others, collaborating in the common good, through friendly dialogue and work to transform this world into a path that we travel with others towards the Father's house.

In this perspective, Pope Francis also addressed the members of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, reminding them that Christian doctrine cannot be understood as pure speculation, although there has been a temptation to see it as such:

"From the earliest times of the Church there has been a temptation to understand doctrine in an ideological sense or to reduce it to a set of abstract and crystallized theories" (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, nn. 39-42). "In reality," the Pope added, "doctrine has the sole purpose of serving the life of the People of God and aims to assure our faith a certain foundation" (speech 31-I-2014).

At final, with the texts that Pope Francis has offered us -Lumenfidei and Evangeliigaudium-we have clear lights for Christian action, the Education in faith and the theological task.

With regard to theology, today it is necessary to rediscover and promote its evangelizing purpose. Theology is wisdom, science -knowledge for causes - that does not always seek to analyze the faith until reaching conclusions of an intellectual nature, but is the science of faith lived (through love), and therefore, of the faith announced and transmitted. And if not, it is not theology.

For this reason it is important to underline the importance of the theological disciplines that today are especially dedicated to evangelization, such as missiology, catechetical theology and, in a broader sense (the whole of ecclesial action), pastoral theology.