this is more than record: it is through the Scriptures that Christ continues to encounter human kind; to read the Bible as Scripture is to be open to encounter with Christ. The same applies mutatis mutandis to the writings of the Fathers, the history of the Church and its councils, the lives of the saints: all these are ways of encountering Christ, or of understanding the lineaments of such an encounter. And what makes this a possibility is prayer; it is prayer that creates beings capable of hearing