Jesus Christ reveals the Father, Pope emphasizes in audience on Vatican II
January 22, 2026
Continuing his series of Wednesday general audiences on the Second Vatican Council and its documents, Pope Leo XIV emphasized that Jesus Christ reveals God the Father.
The Pontiff’s January 21 audience, which took place in Paul VI Audience Hall, was the third in the series and the second devoted to Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (1965).
“We have seen that God reveals himself in a dialogue of covenant, in which he addresses us as friends,” Pope Leo began (video). “It is therefore a relational knowledge, which not only communicates ideas, but shares a history and calls for communion in reciprocity.”
“The fulfilment of this revelation takes place in a historical and personal encounter in which God himself gives himself to us, making himself present, and we discover that we are known in our deepest truth,” he continued. “It is what happens in Jesus Christ. The Document states that the deepest truth about God and the salvation of man shines out for our sake in Christ, who is both the mediator and the fullness of all revelation.”
In reflecting on Jesus Christ as the One who reveals God the Father, the Pope emphasized that “Jesus reveals the Father to us by involving us in His own relationship with Him,” that “thanks to Jesus we know God as we are known by Him,” and that “Jesus Christ reveals the Father with His own humanity.”
“It is not only the death and resurrection of Jesus that saves us and calls us together, but his very person: the Lord who becomes incarnate, is born, heals, teaches, suffers, dies, rises again and remains among us,” the Pope added. “Therefore, to honor the greatness of the Incarnation, it is not enough to consider Jesus as the channel of transmission of intellectual truths. If Jesus has a real body, the communication of the truth of God is realized in that body, with its own way of perceiving and feeling reality, with its own way of inhabiting and passing through the world.”
The Pontiff concluded:
Brothers and sisters, by following the path of Jesus to the very end, we reach the certainty that nothing can separate us from God’s love. “If God is for us, who is against us?”, writes Saint Paul again. “He who did not withhold his own Son but gave him up for all of us, how will he not with him also give us everything else?” (Rom 8:31-32). Thanks to Jesus, Christians know God the Father and entrust themselves to Him with confidence.
Audiences in series “Vatican Council II through its Documents”
- Introductory catechesis (1/7/26)
On Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (1965):
- God speaks to men as to friends (1/14/26)
- Jesus Christ reveals the Father (1/21/26)
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