2012-05-14
A simplified and abridged version of
the book Jesus of
by
Desmond O’Donnell omi
desomi@eircom.net
Previous
articles by Des
INTRODUCTION:
Moses
was the greatest prophet of the Old Testament. The
Book of Deuteronomy promised a new Moses. After
Moses who lead God’s people through the
Moses
was a special prophet because he had spoken with God. He had seen only God’s
back but not his face. Now
In
the beginning of his Gospel,
At
the time of Jesus birth,
John
the Baptist called ardently for a new way of thinking and acting. He announced
that a greater person than he was about to appear. He asked people to accept
baptism from him as a symbol of their turning away from sin and towards God.
Jesus asked for John’s baptism in order to show solidarity with all
people who sinned but who wished to turn towards the goodness of God. Jesus
accepted humankind’s guilt on his shoulders by stepping into the place of
sinners as he would do by his death on the cross which he later spoke of as his
baptism. At his baptism by John, a voice came from Heaven, ‘This is my beloved
Son’. This was an anticipation of his Resurrection, and the Eastern Church
sees a deep connection between this moment and the Feast of the Epiphany.
The
action of going down into the water is Jesus’ descent into
suffering-with-others and transforming human suffering. His baptism was a
descent into the house of the evil one who holds people captive. We are all very
much captive to powers that anonymously manipulate us. Our reception of the
Sacrament of Baptism is the gift of participation in Jesus’ world-transforming
struggle that took place in his descent into and ascent out of the
At
this moment of his Baptism, Heaven, where God’s will is perfectly fulfilled,
stands open above Jesus who fulfils God’s will on earth. There is a
proclamation of Jesus mission – not merely of what he does
but of who he is - God’s beloved Son. Finally, with the presence of the
Spirit, the mystery of the Trinitarian God begins to emerge.
Liberal
scholarship has interpreted this moment as a vocation experience for Jesus at
the end of his life in
THE
TEMPTATIONS OF JESUS
The
descent of the Holy Spirit on Jesus anointed him as the Messiah. He later
presented himself and his mission, when he said, ‘The spirit of the Lord is
upon me, for he has anointed me’ (Lk. 4.18) At his anointing the kingly and
priestly office were bestowed on him in the presence of
To
our surprise, the Spirit then leads him into the desert to be tempted by the
devil. He now enters the utter depths of the drama of human existence. He must
go through, suffer through the whole of it in order to transform it. In Hebrews
we read, ‘For because he himself has suffered and been tempted, he is able to
help those who are tempted’ (Heb. 2.18). And ‘we have not a high priest who
is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has
been tempted as we are, yet without sin’ (Heb. 4.15). Jesus’ temptations –
like his Baptism – are an anticipation of the struggle he endured in every
step of his mission.
The
desert is the opposite of the garden of Eden, and it becomes a place of
reconciliation and healing. The wild animals become friends of humanity as they
minister to Jesus. Creation, torn asunder by strife, once more becomes the
dwelling place of peace. Today,
Temptation
pretends to show us a better way, saying that what is real is right
there in front of us – power and bread. At the heart of all temptations is the
act of pushing God aside, because we perceive him as secondary, superfluous or
annoying, in favour of bread and power. The God question is the fundamental one.
What must the Saviour of the world do or not do ?.
That is what the temptations of Jesus are about.
In
the first temptation Jesus is asked to prove that he is the Son of God by
turning stones into bread. The demand for proof is a constantly recurring theme
in the story of Jesus’ life. History
has frequently asked, ‘If you exist, God, then you’ll just have to show
yourself’ and ‘If the Church is really supposed to be yours, you’ll have
to make that much more obvious than it is at present’. The tragedy of world
hunger leads many to ask, ‘Shouldn’t it be the first test of the redeemer to
give bread to the world’. And ‘It you claim to be the
Quoting
the Old Testament, Jesus replies, ‘Man does not live by bread alone, but by
everything that proceeds from the mouth of God’ (Deut. 8.3).
Bread is important, freedom is more important but most important is
unbroken fidelity and faithful adoration. The
aid offered by rich countries to developing ones has been purely technical and
materially based. The West has thrust aside indigenous religions, ethical and
social structures, and filled the resulting vacuum with its technocratic
mind-set. We have given stones in place of bread.
The
issue is the primacy of God, who is the reality without whom nothing else
can be good. The goodness of the human heart can ultimately come only from the
One who is goodness itself. Obedience
to God develops an attitude that is capable of providing bread for all.
In
the second temptation. Jesus is again invited test God by providing a spectacle,
a moment of great excitement. The devil’s ruse is connected with the
The
modern worldview is that God speaks only in the Bible and that he cannot act in
history. The Bible must be read with faith and in reading the Bible the
fundamental questions is: What picture of God are we working with ?. The answer
to this question is decided by the picture we form of Christ.
Is he, who remained without worldly power, really the Son of the living
God ?
Some
say that the issue of the second temptation is one of ‘bread and circuses’.
After bread has been provided, the titillation of an exciting spectacle has to
be offered too. But this cannot be the point of the passage since there were no
spectators. The point is revealed in Jesus’ reply, ‘You shall not put the
Lord you God to he test’ (Deut. 6.16). God
does not have to submit to experiment. The arrogance that would impose
laboratory conditions on God is incapable for finding him.
We
are dealing with the vast question of how we can and cannot know God.
If we discard the whole dimension of love or of interior listening, by
thinking that only what we can experimentally grasp is real, we make ourselves
God.
Christ
did not leap from the temple; he did not tempt God by leaping into the this
abyss, but he did descend into the abyss of death, into the night of abandonment
and into the desolation of the defenceless.
He knew and we know that when we follow the will of God will never lose a
final refuge because the foundation of the world is the love of God in whom we
trust.
In
the third temptation the devil takes the Lord in a vision to a high mountain and
offers him power. After his resurrection, the Lord was given ‘all authority in
heaven and on earth’. This heavenly power is real saving power.
It pre-supposes the
This
third temptation has been repeated throughout history. The powerlessness of
faith, the earthly powerlessness of Christ and his Church were given a helping
hand by political and military might. Faith has often risked being suffocated in
the embrace of power. The struggle to avoid identifying Jesus’ kingdom with
any political structure has to be fought continually. The fusion of faith and
political power always comes with a price, because faith becomes the servant of
power and must bend to its criteria.
Barabbas
appears to have been a resistance fighter, a messianic figure. When the mob
chose him in place of Jesus, they were choosing a messiah who leads an armed
struggle and builds a kingdom of his own, Jesus builds a
Kingdom where losing oneself is the way to life.
Might we still make the same choice today ? Do we really know Jesus at
all ?. Are we giving priority to a
well-organised world where God has a place only as a private concern ?
Do we worship well-being and rational planning ?
The
third temptation makes us ask what kind of action is expected of a Saviour of
the world. The Lord declares that the concept of a messiah does not mean earthly
power, but the Cross. Peter
misunderstood this when he rejected the possibility of Jesus’ death, ‘God
forbid, Lord. This must never happen to you’. The Christian empire or the
secular power of the papacy is no longer a temptation, but the interpretation of
Christianity as a recipe for progress and universal prosperity, and the real
goal of all religions, is the same temptation.
We
must ask, what did Jesus bring if he did not usher in a better world ? In the
Old Testament, two strands of hope are still intertwined – for a worldly
paradise and for a suffering servant of God. But Jesus said to the two disciples
on the way to Emmaus. ‘O foolish men, and slow of heart, to believe all that
the prophets have spoken. (Lk. 24.25) He
has to say this to us repeatedly throughout the centuries.
The
great question in this book is, what did Jesus actually bring ? The answer is
very simple: God. He brought God. Now we know God’s face and the path we have
to take. We know the truth about our
origins and our destiny: faith, hope and love.
It is only because of our hardness of heart that we think about this too
little. The glory of the earthly kingdoms that Satan put before the Lord and
which offered power though wealth, have proven a mere semblance. The glory of
Christ, the humble self-sacrificing glory of his love has not passed away, nor
will it ever do so. The devil divinized power and prosperity, but God alone is
to be worshipped. An unconditional Yes to this includes reverence for our
neighbour as we shall see when look at the Sermon on the Mount.
After
John the Baptist was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee saying, ‘The time is
fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the
Gospel’ (Mk. 1.14,15) The words ‘good news’ fall short of the magnitude of
what is meant by the Greek word evanglion. The Latin word evangelium
was used by the emperors who pretended to be gods, to describe their pleasant or
unpleasant messages. The evangelists used the word evanglium to say that it was not the emperors who could save the
world, but ‘the gospel of God’ (Ro. 15.16).
The announcements of the emperors were just announcements that could not
always bring about what they proclaimed, but God’s word could. The core
content of the Gospel is that the
Everything
depends on how we understand the relationship between Jesus’ proclamation and
his person, between the
A
more recent secularist understanding of the Kingdom, particularly among Catholic
theologians claims that we must move from having the Church at the centre of the
Kingdom, to having Christ there or better to have God as the centre, thus
including all religions. Therefore
it is claimed that everything must move towards having the Kingdom of peace,
justice and environmentalism as a goal. This eliminates missionary activity
directed towards other religions since we all have a common task.
It sounds good but on closer examination it seems suspicious.
Who
is to say what justice is ? How do we create peace ? It all proves to be utopian
dreaming without any content. God has disappeared. Faith and religions are now
directed towards political goals. Only the organization of the world counts.
Religions matters only insofar as it can serve that objective.
This post-Christian vision of faith is disturbingly close to Jesus' third
temptation.
If
we return to the Gospel, we see that Jesus proclaimed the
This
lordship of God announced by Jesus was founded on the Old Testament. In Psalms
47 and 93, 96,97,98,99
Jesus
spoke about the meagre dimensions of the Kingdom within history.
He said it was like a grain, a leaven, a seed.
He expressed its value in describing it as a pearl of great price. To the
Pharisees he said that the Kingdom was in their midst.
The Kingdom is not simply in Jesus’ physical presence; rather it is in
his action, accomplished in the Holy Spirit.
It is in and through him that the
Through
the presence and action of Jesus, God has now entered actively into history in a
wholly new way. ‘The fullness of time has come (
This
interpretation sheds light on the tension between ethics and grace, between the
strictist personalism and the call to enter a new family. We see this in the
story of the Pharisee and the tax collector. The Pharisee tells God only about
himself, and he thinks he is praising God in praising himself. He does not
really look at God at all, but only at himself.
He does not really need God because he does everything right by himself.
The
tax collector knows he has sinned and that he cannot boast before God. He prays
in full awareness of his debt to grace. He sees himself in the light of God. He
has looked towards God, and in the process his eyes have been opened to see
himself. He sees himself in the light of God.
He needs God and because he recognizes that, he begins through God’s
goodness to become good himself. He
is freed from the constraints of moralism, and is set
in the context of a relationship of love to God. This story
shows us that there are two ways of relating to God.
The
Matthew
presents Jesus as preaching the radicality of Kingdom, as a renwal the twelve
tribes by calling his apostles and presenting Jesus as Redeemer rather than a
mere teacher. Thereupon follows three chapters of the Sermon on the Mount in
which Jesus is presented as the new Moses.
Jesus
takes the position which indicates the full authority of the teacher; he sits.
And Matthew has him sit on a mountain. He went to pray on a mountain and he now
teaches on a mountain - the new Sinai. The first Torah was given on Sinai the in
storm, fire and earthquake. The new Sinai has been identified as a hill
overlooking the
The
word ‘disciples’ reminds us that everyone who hears and accepts the word can
become a disciple. Discipleship comes from hearing and accepting, not from
lineage. The New Covenant is open to everyone and those who accept it are the
new
Luke
writes for gentile Christians and so he does not portray Jesus as the New Moses.
He stresses the universal significance of the Sermon.
In
the Sermon on the Mount Jesus recapitulates the Ten Commandments, and gives
added depth to the commandments of the second tablet.
Jesus has not come to abolish the Law of the Prophets. The Beatitudes are
situated with the long tradition of the Old Testament, stressing how blessed is
the person who trusts in the Lord.
The
Beatitudes describe the actual condition of Jesus’ disciples: They are poor,
hungry, weeping, hated and persecuted. The Beatitudes also describe the
attributes of those who follow Jesus. The
standards of the world are turned upside down.
The joy they proclaim is postponed to the next life but they are still
promises for this world. When a person begins to see and live from God’s
perspective, when he or she is Jesus’ companion on the way, then that person
lives by new standards and something of what is to come is already present.
Jesus brings joy in the midst of affliction.
The
apostle Paul described his experience of suffering and survival ‘so that the
life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh’ (2 Cor. 4.11) For Paul,
the Beatitudes cannot be expressed in purely theoretical terms. They are
proclaimed in life and in suffering and in the mysterious joy of the disciple
who is bound to the mystery of Christ. ‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ
who lives in me’ (Ga. 2.20). In his messengers, Christ himself still suffers,
still hangs on the cross. And yet he is irrevocably risen.
The
Beatitudes present a veiled interior biography of Jesus.
He is truly poor, meek, lowly, pure of heart, and the peacemaker who
suffers for God’s sake.
The
first Beatitude, points out that those who in their humility recognize their
need for God, are closest to God’s heart.
In the Old Testament, the poor recognized themselves as the true
The
Sermon on the Mount in itself is not a social programme but it gives great
inspiration to influence our thoughts and actions because faith generates
renunciation and responsibility for our neighbour and for the whole of society.
Only then can social justice grow too. The Church as a whole must recognize that
she has to remain recognizably the community of God’s poor. Any renewal of the
Church can be set in motion only through those who keep alive in themselves the
some resolute humility, the same goodness that is always ready to serve.
Like Francis of Assisi it is only when one lives through and suffers
through the sacred text, that Scripture reaches its full potential for the
future.
The
second Beatitude – ‘Blessed are the meek’ expresses the Hebrew word anawim
and the Greek word praus both of which
mean more than the non-violent. It
means God’s poor as spoken of in the first Beatitude.
The Scripture tell us, ‘’Now Moses the man was very meek’ (Num.
12.3.), and Jesus said ‘Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am
meek and lowly of heart’. A king who would be ‘humble (meek) and riding on a
donkey’ was foretold in (Zech. 9.10). Jesus was that king whose rule does not
depend on political and military might. He is king who renounced violence and
accepted suffering until he was released from it by his Father. The essence of
Christ’s kingship is meekness.
The
land promised the meek is freedom in a place to worship. This was the main issue
for liberation prior to the exodus from
All
this anticipates the seventh Beatitude, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’.
We are all invited to be and to do what the Son does, so that we
ourselves may become ‘sons of God’.
Only
the person at peace in their hearts can establish peace around and throughout
the world. That there be peace on earth (cf. Lk. 2.14) is the will of God. The
struggle to abide in peace with God is an indispensable part of the struggle for
peace on earth. The former is the source of the criteria and the energy for the
latter.
The
third Beatitude is ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be
comforted’. Those who have lost hope mourn in one way. Those who have had a
shattering encounter with the truth mourn in another way. Judas, struck by his
own fall, did not dare to hope, and hanged himself in despair.
Peter failed also, but struck by the Lord’s gaze, he burst into tears,
began anew and was renewed.
Those
who counteract the dominion of evil, mourn as we read in Ezek 9.4. Today these
people do not run with the pack and refuse to collude with the injustice which
had become endemic. Even though it is not in their power to change the overall
situation, they still counter the dominion of evil through passive resistance of
their suffering, through a mourning that sets bounds to the power of evil.
Mary
and her sister stood with John under the Cross. This small band remained true in
a world full of cruelty and cynicism. They
cannot avert the disaster, so they suffer with it and they mourn. This is the
meaning of compassion. St. Bernard wrote, ‘God cannot suffer but he can suffer
with’. People who choose to suffer
with others do not harder their hearts to the pain of others but suffer under
its power and so acknowledge the truth of God. They are the ones who open the
windows of the world to let the light in.
This
is also expressed in the eighth Beatitude, ‘Blessed are those who are
persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs in the kingdom of heaven’. The
mourning of which the Lord speaks is nonconformity with evil. For his listeners,
the Lord was foretelling the situation of the Church which they were living
through when this was written. Righteousness means fidelity to the Torah and for
us it means faith. The person of faith is the righteous person. And so, this
Beatitude is an invitation to each person and to the Church as a whole to follow
the crucified Christ.
The
Beatitude which states, ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for
righteousness, for they shall be comforted’ is concerned with those who search
for something great, for true justice and for true good. They will mourn and
they will receive comfort. Their interior sensitivity enables them to hear the
subtle signs that God sends into the world to break the dictatorship of
convention. These are the saints of the Old and of the New Covenant. Edith Stein
once said that anyone who honestly and passionately searches for truth is on the
way to Christ.
It
is often said that everyone should live by the religion in which they find
themselves; in this they find salvation. No,
God demands that we become inwardly attentive to his quiet exhortation to
‘hunger and thirst for righteousness’. That is the path open to everyone;
that is the way that finds its destination in Jesus Christ.
’Blessed
are the pure of heart, for they shall see God’. This requires a proper
interplay of body and soul - the totality of the person.
A person’s body must be placed under the discipline of the spirit.
As Psalm 24 states, our inner eye must be purified. Our hands and a pure
heart are necessary in our search for God. The ascent to God occurs in the
descent of humble service, in the descent of love.
In Jesus Christ, God has revealed himself in this descending. (cf. Phil
2.6-9)
Love
is the fire that purifies and unifies intellect, will and emotion, making man
one with himself as it makes him one in God’s eyes.
After the four Beatitudes in Luke we read, ‘Woe to you who are
rich….Woe to you who are full now….Woe to you who laugh now….Woe to you
when men praise you’(Lk. 6.24-26). We recognise here the opposite attitudes
which lock us into outward appearance, into provisionality, into loss of our
highest and deepest qualities, and hence into loss of God and neighbour – the
path to ruin.
Are
the Beatitudes good news ? Much of
the modern mind says that they are not. Yet,
the experience of brutally totalitarian regimes that have trampled upon human
beings have given the world a new appreciation of those who hunger for
righteousness. The abuses of economic power in the cruelties of capitalism have
degraded humans to the level of merchandise. Realising the perils of wealth has
reminded us of the man-destroying divinity of Mammon which grips part of the
world in a cruel stranglehold.
The
Greek world of the epics was aware of man’s deepest sin – hubris.
This is the arrogant presumption of autonomy that leads man to put on the airs
of divinity, to claim to be his own god in order to possess life totally and to
draw from it every last drop of what it has to offer. This results from the
temptation of ostentatious self-sufficiency. Love,
on the other hand runs counter to self-seeking; it is an exodus out of oneself.
And this is the way man comes to himself. This is the high road to life.
It is only on the way of love described in the Sermon on the Mount that
the richness of life and the greatness of man’s calling are opened up.
The
Messiah was expected to bring a renewed Torah – a renewed law.
Paul speaks of the ‘law of Christ’ (Gal. 62).
He says that this law has set us free by allowing us to be led by the
Spirit. This is freedom for the service of good. This Torah of Jesus is totally
new and different, because it fulfils the Torah of Moses.
Jesus
calls for a new attitude towards three fundamental commandments of the Old Law.
He
said, ‘If you would be perfect, go, sell all you have and come, follow me. Perfection, the
state of being holy as God is holy, as demanded by the Torah (Lev. 19.2) now
consists in following Jesus. In this mysterious identification of Jesus and God,
he states that he is on the same exalted level as the Lawgiver – as God. It is
no wonder that the people are ‘astonished’ at the identification of Jesus
with God in the Sermon on the Mount
He
also stated that he is Lord of the Sabbath, and this is because he is now
The
Fourth Commandment to honour parents is central to the Torah, but Jesus – the
new Torah - widens and deepens this commandment – ‘ Whoever does the will of
my Father is heaven is my brother, and sister and mother’ (Mt. 12.50).
Jesus founds a new family by adherence to himself. This seems to
undermine a long established social order but it does not do so. Instead the
Gospel says that concrete juridical and social and political arrangements are no
longer sacred. He frees people and nations to discover what aspects of political
and social life accord with God’s will. The concrete political and social
order is released from the directly sacred realm and from theocratic
legislation. Nevertheless, Secularism today has forgotten the link between
God’s will and concrete legislation.
Jesus
brings a new depth to the old commandments of the Torah. Not only are we not to
kill but we must always offer reconciliation. No more divorce and not only are
we to be even-handed in justice but we must let ourselves be struck without
striking back. Christianity constantly has to reshape and reformulate social
structures and Christian social teaching. There will always be new developments
to correct what has gone before. In the inner structure of the Torah and in the
Prophets critique, and in Jesus message, Christianity finds wide scope for
necessary historical evolution.
The
Sermon on the Mount shows us the right way to live, and how to be a human being.
It tells us that man can be understood in the light of God, and that in what
Jesus does and wills, we come to know the mind and will of God. We see God’s
face in Jesus. If being human is about our relation with God, then speaking with
and listening to God is an essential part of it. This is prayer.
Before
giving us the Lord’s Prayer, Matthew tells us that prayer must not be an
occasion for showing off before others. While
prayer is totally personal for each individual, this does not exclude prayer in
common. It is only by becoming part of the ‘we’ of God’s children that we
can reach God. In the act of prayer,
the personal and the communal always pervade each other.
Matthew
has Jesus also remind us that chatter is not prayer. We pray when in need and in
thanksgiving but prayer must be present as the bedrock of our souls. Prayer is
silent inward communion with God. The more we are directed towards God, the
better we will be able to pray. The affairs of our every day lives have to be
constantly related back to this union with God. This is how we pray without
ceasing.
Prayer
actualises and deepens our communion with God. Our praying can and should arise
from our heart, from our needs, our hopes, our joys, our sufferings, from our
shame over sin, asking for good things and from gratitude.
At the same time we need to use prayers of the Church as a whole lest our prayer
become subjective. Thoughts usually precede words but in praying the Psalms
words precede thoughts. Our minds try to adapt to the words. Prayer is encounter
with the Spirit of God in the word that goes ahead of us. It is not immersion in
the depths of oneself.
Luke
tells us that the disciples saw Jesus at prayer and then asked him to teach them
how to pray. When praying the Our Father it is important to listen accurately to
Jesus’ words. We must also keep in mind that the Our Father originates from
his own prayer-dialogue with the Father. We
are all sheltered in the prayer of men and women who have prayed down the
centuries but we must use our own spirit, and open ourselves to that voice which
comes to us from the Son.
Reflecting
the two tablets of the Decalogue, in Matthew‘s version there are three
thou-petitions and four we-petitions. The primacy of God and his Kingdom are
first established, and this remains present throughout. Because the Our Father
is a prayer of Jesus, it is a Trinitarian prayer. We pray with Christ through
the Holy Spirit of the Father.
With
great consolation we are allowed to say ‘Father’ because the Son is our
brother. In the word ‘Father’ we express the whole history of redemption. We
must allow Jesus to teach us what father
really means. This word is the source of all perfection.
We forgive in order to be like our Father in heaven who shows his
forgiving love to the end, when Jesus forgave his enemies on the cross. The Our
Father does not project a human image into heaven but shows us from heaven –
from Jesus – what we as human brings can and should be like.
Jesus
promises us good gifts more generously than any earthly father can give. (cf.
Mt. 5.44,45) His greatest gift is
the Holy Spirit, God himself. (cf. Lk. 11.13)
Prayer is really about God’s desire to offer us the gift of himself.
Prayer is a way of gradually purifying and correcting our wishes and of slowly
coming to realise that what we really need is God and his Spirit.
God
is every human person’s Father by creating us individually and uniquely.
He did this when he looked at Christ who was to come and he created us in
that image (cf. 2 Cor. 4.4; Col 1.15). The
concept of being God’s children has a dynamic quality. We are not ready-made
but we are meant to become increasingly so by growing more and more into
communion with his Son. The word
‘Father’ is an invitation to live from our awareness of the reality that
‘All that I have is yours’ (Lk. 15.31)
So, to be God’s child is not a matter of dependency but rather of
standing in the relation of love that sustains our existence, giving it meaning
and grandeur.
The
Old Testament uses the word rabamin (translated, compassion) to describe God love for us. At its
deepest, this word means womb, thus expressing the depth and intimate
interrelatedness between God and us. God our Father has all the qualities of a
mother’s love for her children. While God is neither a man nor a woman, and
while mother is never a biblical title for God, it is an image describing his
love for us.
Only
Jesus can say ‘my Father’ and only within the ‘we’ of the disciples can we
call God ‘Father’. This is because only in communion with Jesus Christ do we
really become children of God. It also requires that we surrender ourselves to
communion with the other children of God. The
Our Father overcomes all boundaries and makes us one family. While we have
different earthly fathers, we all come from one Father.
Hallowed be thy Name
This
reminds us of the second commandment of the Decalogue. When Moses asked God his
name, God replied, ‘I am who I am’. The
Israelites were perfectly right in refusing to utter God’s name YHWH so as to
avoid degrading it to level of pagan deities.
God did not refuse Moses’ request. He established a relationship
between himself and us and puts himself within reach of our invocation.
Martin
Buber said that we Christians should pick up the polluted fragments of the
divine name. We must hallow the name
which has so often been shamefully misused.
Do I stand in reverence before the mystery of the burning bush, before
God’s incomprehensible closeness, even to the point of his presence in the
Eucharist where he truly gives himself entirely into our hands ?
Thy Kingdom Come
With
this petition we acknowledge first and foremost the primacy of God. Where God is
absent, nothing can be good. ‘Seek first the
With
the petition ‘Thy Kingdom come’, the Lord wants us to recognise that the
first and essential thing is a listening heart, and to order our actions in this
way. The
Thy will be done on Earth as it is in
Heaven
Heaven
is where God’s will in unswirvingly done.
The essence of Heaven is oneness with God’s will, the oneness of will
and truth. We pray that earth may become heaven.
What
is God’s will ? Man has knowledge of God’s will in his inmost heart. This is
conscience. (cf.
Because
our being comes from God, we are able, despite all the defilement that holds us
back, to set out on the way to God’s will. Jesus said, ‘My food is to do the
will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work’ (Jn.4.34 and on the
Give us this day our daily bread
Although
the Lord directs us to the essential, to ‘the one thing necessary’, and told
us not to be anxious about our lives, he knows about our daily needs.
He invites us to pray for our food. This food comes from the cosmic
powers outside our control, and so we have no reason for pride in ourselves.
Yet, we have the right and the duty to ask for what we need. We are free and
truly ourselves when we open up to God.
We
pray for our bread. This means that we
pray for bread for others also. St .John Chrysostom emphasises that ‘every
bite of bread, one way or another, is a bite of the bread that belongs to
everyone’. The Lord is telling us, ‘Give them something to eat yourselves’
(Mk. 6.37)
St.
Cyprian reminds us that anyone who asks for bread is poor. This prayer
presupposes the poverty of Christ’s disciples. It presupposes that there are
people who have renounced the world, its riches and its splendour for the sake
of faith. These people no longer ask for anything beyond what they need for
life. Jesus says, ‘It is right for the disciple to pray for the necessities of
life only for today’.
There
must be people who leave everything to follow the Lord, people who radically
depend on God. These people present
a sign of faith that shakes us out of our heedlessness and out of weak faith.
This petition presupposes that the community of Jesus’ closest disciples
followed him in a radical way, renouncing worldly possessions. They also point
to a future which is more real than the present.
We
pray for our daily (epiousios) bread.
The evangelists coined this word and there are two interpretations of it. One is
‘what is necessary for existence’. The
other translation is bread for the future, for the following day. This would
refer to bread for a new world. Most of the Fathers of the Church understood the
petition to refer also to the Eucharistic table.
It can also be a sign of the festive character and beauty of the world,
the vine and wine.
In
John 6, Jesus begins with the hunger of the people for bread for life, but he
does not stop there. He then reminds his listeners that man’s real food is the
Logos, the eternal Word, the eternal meaning from which we come and towards
which our life is directed. Then he promised himself under the appearance of
bread in the Sacrament. The eternal Word becomes truly manna.
When we consider Jesus’ message in its entirely, it is impossible to
expunge the eucharistic dimension from this petition in the Our Father. The
Eucharist is in a special sense our
bread, the bread of Jesus’ disciples.
Forgive us our trespasses as we
forgive those who trespass against us
This
petition presupposes a world in which we trespass against one another.
Every act of trespass involves some kind of injury to truth and to love,
and is thus opposed to God who is truth and love. Guilt calls for retaliation
and here the Lord is telling us that the chain of trespasses can be overcome
only by forgiveness, not by retaliation. The theme of forgiveness pervades the
entire Gospel. We cannot come into
God’s presence unreconciled with our brothers or sisters. Anticipating the
offender, going out to meet the other is the pre-requisite for true worship of
God. God stepped out to us as Jesus
stepped out to his apostles when he washed their dirty feet.
What
is forgiveness really ? What happens
when forgiveness takes place ? It is
more than ignoring or trying to forget. Guilt must be worked through and healed.
Forgiveness exacts a price – first of all from the person who forgives.
He or she must overcome within themselves the evil done to them. It must be
burnt interiorly. It also involves the inner purification of the trespasser. In
forgiving we encounter the limits of our power to heal and to overcome evil. We
encounter the superior power of evil which we cannot muster with our unaided
powers.
God
could forgive our guilt only by allowing himself in his Son to be ‘crushed for
our iniquities’ because ‘by his wounds we are healed’ (Is. 53.4-6).
God became a sufferer in his Son who carried this burden. God’s action
calls us first to thankfulness to him, and then with him to work through and
suffer through evil by means of love.
Lead us not into temptation
The
wording of this petition shocks many people. God certainly does not lead us into
temptation. As with Jesus, it is the devil who tempts. Jesus descended into Hell
as it were, into the domain of our temptations and defeats. In the Book of Job,
God gave the devil a free hand to test Job. Job then shows us the difference
between trial and temptation, and how never to lose faith in God even amid the
deepest darkness. In this petition we are saying to God, ‘I know that I need
trials so that my nature can be purified but I know that you always give me room
to manoeuvre as you did with Job. You take me up by the hand, but don’t
overestimate my capacity. Don’t
set too wide the boundaries within which I may be tempted And remain close to
me’. This dampens our pride, and we recall that God allowed a particularly
heavy burden on those individuals who were especially close to him.
Deliver us from evil
This
is saying ‘Rescue, redeem, free us’. Evil and the Evil One are ultimately
inseparable. Today there are the forces of the market, of traffic in weapons, in
drugs and in human beings, all forces that weigh heavily upon the world and
ensnare humanity. On the other hand there is the ideology of success, of
well-being that tells us God is just a fiction robbing us of enjoyment in life.
In this petition we pray not to be robbed of our faith which enables to
see God, that in our concern for good, we may not lose sight of good itself and
that even when faced with the loss of good, we may not lose the Good which is
God. This prayer certainly sustained the martyrs.
We
are ultimately asking for God’s Kingdom, for union with his will and for the
sanctification of his name. With men and woman of prayer down the ages, we beg
God to set limits to the evils that ravage the world and our lives.
We should ask the Lord also to free the world, ourselves, the many
individuals and the peoples who suffer from the tribulations that make life
almost unbearable. This petition
helps us to examine our conscience about how much we collaborate in breaking the
predominance of evil in the world.
THE DISCIPLES
Jesus
new family is not amorphous. He calls an inner core of people who are to carry
on his mission and give this family order and shape. That is why Jesus formed
the group of the Twelve, a community of his closest disciples. This calling was
a prayer event; it was begotten in prayer, in intimacy with the Father. Their
calling emerges from the Son’s dialogue with the Father and is anchored there.
We cannot simply pick labourers for God’s harvest as an employer picks his
employees. Jesus reminds us that they are chosen by God - ‘Pray therefore the
Lord of the harvest to send labourers into his harvest’ (Mt. 9.38)
The
words ‘he made twelve’ take up the Old Testament terminology for the
appointment of the priesthood (cf. 1 Kings 12.31; 13,.33). This characterises
the apostolic ministry as a priestly ministry. The fact that they are
individually named links them with the prophets of
Mark
says that Jesus appoints the twelve with a double assignment: ‘to be with him,
and to be sent out to preach’. They must be with him in order to get to know
him more than the people who saw him only from a distance. They must recognise
his oneness with the Father and thus become witnesses to his mystery. Preaching
God’s Kingdom is never just words, never just instruction. By announcing him,
the apostles lead their listeners to encounter him.
Because
the world is ruled by the powers of evil, the preaching of the apostles is at
the same time a struggle with those powers. Christianity is a liberation of the
world from the fear of demons. ‘As Paul wrote, ‘There is no God but one’.
He also wrote that there is only one Father from whom all things come and for
who we exist, and also that there is only one Lord, Jesus Christ.
If we belong to him, everything else loses its power; it loses the allure
of divinity. When faith is absent, the world only appears to be more rational.
Today
the Christian is threatened by an anonymous atmosphere that wants to make the
faith seem ludicrous. There is a poisoning of the spiritual clime all over the
world that threatens the dignity of man, even his very existence.
The individual human being, and even communities, seems to be hopelessly
at the mercy of such powers. The Christian knows that he or she cannot master
this threat by personal resources alone. But we are given the ‘armour of
God’ which enables the individual in communion with the whole body of Christ,
to oppose these powers. The apostles receive the power to exorcise and to heal.
Yet the healing miracles of Jesus are subordinate to his becoming Lord in us and
in the world.
Just
as God knows us by name, he chose his apostles by name. The composition of the
whole group is quite heterogeneous. Two
were from the Zealot party: Simon and Judas.
Zeal for the Law gave this movement its name.
At the other extreme within the group, we find Matthew the tax collector
who worked for the reigning power of
Only
Luke tells us that Jesus formed a second group of seventy who were sent out on a
mission similar to that of the Twelve. Seventy was considered to be the number
of the nations of the world. (cf. Ex. 1.5 and Deut. 32.8) This is a hint of the
universal character of the Gospel.
The
women who followed Jesus were assigned a different task. Yet, many women
belonged to the more intimate community of believers and their faith-filled
following of Jesus was an essential element of that community. This was vividly
illustrated at the foot of the Cross and at the Resurrection.
Luke
stresses Jesus’ preferential option for the poor.
His saying that the old wine was good gives ground for interpreting this
as a word of understanding for those among the faithful Jews who remain with the
‘old wine’.
THE NATURE AND PURPOSE OF THE PARABLES
The
deepest theme of Jesus’ preaching was his own mystery, the mystery of the Son
in whom God is among us and who keeps his word; he announces the
It
is striking what a significant role the image of the seed plays in the whole of
Jesus’ message. .Jesus is the sower who scatters the seed of God’s word. He
is also the grain of wheat which dies and yields a rich harvest.(cf. Jn. 12.24)
He said, ‘And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to
myself’ (Jn. 12.32) His ‘failure’ on the Cross is exactly the way leading
from the few to the many, to all towards himself.
A
parable brings distant realities close to the listeners as they reflect on it.
The parable demands the collaboration of the listener who is then led on a
journey. Parables demand a change in
the listener’s life and so they become problems when the listener is unwilling
to change. The possibility of refusal is very real. The parables are ultimately
an expression of God’s hiddeness in this world and of the fact that knowledge
of God always lays claim to the whole person’s repentance.
The Good Samaritan
A
lawyer asked Jesus who was his neighbour. The
conventional answer, for which scriptural support could be adduced, was that
neighbour meant a member of one’s own people.
It was taken for granted by the Samaritans were not neighbours. In Jesus
story, he tells how when the Samaritan discovered the wounded man, he was
touched viscerally. The word ‘compassion’ is inadequate to describe the
scriptural term used. He is struck to his soul by the lightening flash of mercy.
The
issue is no longer which other person is a neighbour to me or not. The question
is about me. I have to become neighbour and when I do, the other person counts
for me as myself. The Samaritan, the foreigner makes himself the neighbour and
shows me that I have to learn to be a neighbour from deep within. My heart must
be open to being shaken up by another’s need.
Then I find my neighbour, or better still, I am found by him.
The
love of friendship in political terms rests upon the equality of the partners.
By contrast, this parable emphasizes the radical inequality of the partners. The
helper finds himself before the helpless victim.
A new universality is entering the scene.
I am brother or sister to all those I meet and who are in need of my
help.
The
people of
And
that applies not only to
The
Church Fathers saw the stripped, half-dead man an image of man in general who
has been alienated, battered and misused throughout history.
The Samaritan is the image of Jesus Christ.
God himself becomes man’s neighbour.
The
two characters in this story are relevant to every human being. Everyone is
alienated, especially from love. We
all need healing and to filled with God’s gifts. But then everyone is also
called to become a Samaritan, to follow Christ and become like him. We live
rightly when we become like him who loved us first’ (cf. 1 Jn. 4.19)
The parable of the two brothers and
the good father
This
is perhaps the most beautiful of Jesus’ parables. It was spoken to the
Pharisees and Scribes who said that Jesus ‘receives sinners and eats with
them’. Luke says that the rejected tax collectors and sinners were also
listening.
The
magnanimous father gives the prodigal son the freedom he asks for who then
becomes a slave, a swineherd. He
wanders into interior estrangement from his father. The Greek word property also means essence.
The son dissipates his own essence, his very self. He lives away from the truth
of his essence. Here we see the modern rebellion against God. But the boy’s
very nature contains a direction and a norm which recognises that a false
autonomy has led him into slavery. He recognises that he is deeply in an alien
land and his return is a pilgrimage towards the truth of his own essence.
The
father goes out to meet him. and on hearing his son’s confession, he
recognises the journey he has made. He has the servant put on the first robe
that the Fathers recognise as the lost robe of grace. They also see the Son and
the Holy Spirit in the father’s open arms. Throughout his life, Jesus
identifies his goodness to sinners with the goodness of the father in the
parable.
The
older brother is angry and refuses to come in, but the father goes out to meet
him too and speaks kindly to him. The source of his anger is the fact that he
too had secretly dreamed of a freedom without limits.
His obedience has made him bitter. There is an unspoken envy of what his
brother was able to get way with. Those who think of themselves as righteous see
God as law; they are in a juridical relationship with God and think that in this
relationship they are at right with him. They need to convert to the greater
God, the God of love and then have their obedience flow humbly from deeper
wellsprings.
In
this parable, the Father, through Christ, is addressing us, the ones who never
left home, encouraging us too to convert more deeply and to find joy in our
faith.
The parable of the rich man and
Lazarus
The
rich bon vivants usually wiped their hands in pieces of bread during a meal and
then threw the pieces on the floor. The rich man refused these to Lazarus, but
as in the Psalms, the cry of the poor rises before God.
The
life of the rich man seemed to prove that cynicism pays and that evil is
rewarded. Because of this the suffering of just people puts them in danger of
doubting their faith. They ask, does God not see ? It is only when the suffering
and just person looks towards God that their perspective becomes broader. He or
she sees that the perspective of the successful cynics is that of animals who
cannot transcend the material realm. The poor see that the seeming cleverness of
the successful cynics is stupidity when viewed against the light.
The
rich man looks up from Hades. He says what many say when they tell God that he
must make himself much clearer by sending someone from the next world who can
give a sign that his word is true. But
Lazarus has risen in the person of Jesus and has come to give us the sign.
God’s sign to us is the Son of Man; it is Jesus himself in his Paschal
Mystery. The parable is inviting us to believe and to follow him, God’s great
sign. It is more than a parable. It speaks of reality, of the most decisive
reality of all history.
This
parable also summons us to the love and responsibility that we owe now to our
poor brothers and sisters both on the large scale of the world and on the small
scale of our everyday life.
THE PRINCIPAL IMAGES OF JOHN’S
GOSPEL
So
far we have limited ourselves to Matthew, Mark and Luke in our attempt to listen
to Jesus and to get to know him. It
is time to turn our attention to the image of Jesus presented by John. In John,
Jesus’ divinity appears unveiled. Instead of parables, we hear extended
discourses.
John’s
Gospel stands firmly on the foundation of the Old Testament: ‘For the Law was
given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ’ and ‘We have
found him of whom the Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote’.(Jn. 1.17
and 45). This Gospel has a rhythm dictated by
The
disciple who wrote John’s Gospel gained his intimate knowledge from his inward
repose in Jesus’ heart, just as Jesus know about the mystery of the Father
from resting in his heart. But while
saying that the author was a witness to what he wrote, the Gospel never
identifies the author by name. The
contents of the Gospel go back to the beloved disciple.
The Gospel is not historical in the sense of a recorded transcript, and
it makes no claims to this. What it is really claiming is that it has correctly
rendered the substance of the discourses so that we can really encounter their
content and the authentic figure of Jesus.
The
Gospel gives us a personal recollection and tells what the author learned from
Church tradition. All the memory is a ‘we’ remembrance. Memory sheds light
on the sense of an event that then acquires a deeper meaning. Memory is an act
that comes from the Logos and leads to it. The unity of Logos and event is the
goal at which the Gospel is aiming. The
remembering and co-remembering is done under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
After the Resurrection, the disciples’ eyes were opened and they ‘remembered’.(Jn.
12.16) The Resurrection teaches us a new way of seeing. It makes it possible to
enter into the interiority of events, into the intrinsic coherence of God’s
speaking and acting.
John’s
Gospel shows us the real Jesus; it is not a Jesus poem
Water
Water
is the primordial element of life and it is therefore also one of the primordial
symbols of humanity – the womb, the rivers and the sea Water symbolism
pervades the Gospel – Jesus’ conversation with Nichodemus and with the
Samaritan woman. In Chapter 5, we observe his involvement in the water libation
at the Feast of Tabernacles, his healing of the paralytic at the Pool of
Bethzatha and of the blind man at the Pool of Siloam. Then there is his washing
of the apostles’ feet, and finally blood and water came from his pierced side
on the Cross. In this latter event, Jesus means to refer to the two main
sacraments of the Church – Baptism and Eucharist.
John
responds to any form of Christianity which wants only word but not flesh and
blood, when he wrote, ‘There are three witnesses, the Spirit, the water and
the blood; and these three are one’. (1 Jn. 5.6-8) Without Jesus bodiliness,
the word loses its power, and Christianity becomes mere doctrine, mere moralism,
an intellectual affair. Who could fail to recognise here certain temptations
threatening Christianity in our own times ? Incarnation and Cross, Baptism, word
and sacrament are inseparable from one another.
In
the context of the Feast of Tabernacles, Jesus said, ‘ If anyone thirst, let
him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said,
‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water’ (Jn. 7.37-39).
He is the new Moses and the life-giving rock. The believer himself
becomes a spring, an oasis which bubbles up fresh uncontaminated water, the
life-giving power of the Creator Spirit.
The
cleansing of the Temple shows us that John sees the risen Lord, his body, as the
new temple awaited by all peoples (Jn.2.21)
This new temple is the living indwelling of God in the world, the source
of life for all ages. The person who believes and loves with Christ becomes a
well that gives life, as the saints have been. Around them life sprouts.
Vine and Wine
Bread,
wine and olive oil are gifts typical of Mediterranean culture.
Bread is basic foodstuff, especially of the poor. John speaks of it at
the multiplication of the loaves, and immediately after that in the great
eucharistic discourse. The gift of wine occupies a central place at the wedding
of
The
cross is Jesus’ hour of glory but at this mother’s request in
In
the Song of Songs, the vineyard was an image for a bride. The vineyard is
However,
the vine does need purification. What becomes too big must be brought back to
the simplicity and poverty of the Lord himself. When man and his institutions
climb too high, it is only by undergoing such processes of dying away that
fruitfulness endures and renews itself.
The
parable of the vine occurs in the context of the Last Supper and so has a
thoroughly eucharistic background. The fruit that the Lord expects of us is love
– a love that accepts with him the mystery of the Cross and becomes a
participation in his self-giving preparation of the world for the
The
multiplication of the loaves is an unmistakable sign of Jesus’ messianic
mission and it is also the cross roads of his public ministry which from this
point leads clearly to the Cross. There
is a contrast between Moses and Jesus. The Mosaic background provides the
context for the people’s words, ‘This is indeed the prophet who is to come
into the world’ (Jn..6.14). Because he spoke with God, Moses could bring
God’s word to men. Yet, Moses saw only God’s back. Only the one who is God
sees God – Jesus. Yet, Moses is a mediator and it is he who gives
God’s
becoming bread means that we feed on God, live on God.
In his blood he pours himself out. The Eucharist is emphatically right at
the centre of Christian existence; it is man’s unceasing great encounter with
God. In receiving the Eucharist we
pass through the Cross and anticipate new life in God and with God. Earthly
bread can become the bearer of Christ’s presence because it unites in itself
death and resurrection. And the wine becomes the passion in itself.
The
shepherd pasturing sheep, caring for the weak, is an image of a just ruler,
a king. The Good Shepherd in the
Gospel is an image of Christ the King. God was shepherd of
Peter
is entrusted with Jesus’ own office as Shepherd (Jn. 21.15-17). For this to be
possible, Peter has to enter through the door of the sheepfold which is Jesus. (Jn.
10.7) It is because he does this,
because he is united with Jesus in love that the sheep listen to his voice, the
voice of Jesus himself. The whole
investiture scene closes with Jesus saying to Peter, ‘Follow me’. He must
then unlike the thief who kills, give life abundantly to others as the real
shepherd does.
‘The
good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep’ (Jn. 10.11). He transforms the
outward violence of the crucifixion into an act freely giving life for others.
And the shepherd and his flock know each other (Jn. 20.3f) This knowing
is not possession, but rather an inner acceptance, an inner belonging that goes
much deeper than the possession of things. Children are known but not possessed
by their loving parents. No human being belongs to another. We belong only in a
mutual responsibility to love and support one another. For dictators and
ideologues, human beings are mere things that they possess. God does not use
people; he gave his life for them.
Applying
all this to the world in which we live, we can say this: it is only in God and
in the light of God that we rightly know man. Any self-knowledge that restricts
man to the tangible, fails to engage with man’s true depth. Man knows himself
only when he learns to understand himself in the light of God, and he knows
others fully when he sees the mystery of God in them. Mutual knowledge must
enable men to lead one another into unity with Jesus and into oneness with the
Trinitarian God.
Jesus
mission is universal; there is only one Shepherd. The Logos who became man in
Jesus is the Shepherd of all people. So, there is only one flock; ‘Go
therefore and make all nations my disciples’ (Mt. 28.19) However widely
scattered they are, all people can become one through the true Shepherd. In his
Incarnation and Cross he brings home the stray sheep, humanity; he brings me
home too. The Incarnate Logos is the true sheep-bearer – the Shepherd who
follows us through the thorns and deserts of life. Carried on his shoulders, we
come home. He gave his life for us. He himself is life.
Matthew,
Mark and Luke record Jesus’ question to his disciples about who people think
he is. Peter answers in the name of the twelve, ‘You are the Christ, Son of
the Living God’ (Mk. 16.16). Jesus then foretells his passion and
Resurrection. He says that to be his disciple it is indispensable to lose
one’s life and that without this it is impossible to find it (Mk. 16.24). John
too, places a similar confession on Peter’s lips (cf. Jn. 6.68,69). Peter’s
confession can be properly interpreted only in the context of Jesus’ prophecy
of the Passion and in his words about the way to discipleship. Indeed, in these
words about following the Crucified, one addresses fundamental issues of human
existence as such.
On
his journey to the Cross, shaping his disciples into his new family, the future
Church, Jesus distinguishes his disciples from those who merely listen. It is
characteristic of this community, the Church, to be ‘on the way’
with
Jesus.
This
community’s decision to accompany Jesus rests upon a knowledge of Jesus that
gives a new insight into God. On the one hand, there is external knowledge of
Jesus that, while not necessarily false, is inadequate. On the other hand, there
is a deeper knowledge that is linked to discipleship, to participation in
Jesus’ way. Such knowledge can grow only in that context. In his day, Jesus
was classified by many only as a prophet. Today, too, similar opinions are not
simply mistaken; they are greater or lesser approximations to the mystery of
Jesus but they do not arrive at Jesus’ identity. These opinions leave us with
a human experience of God that reflects his infinite reality in a limited human
way.
Standing
in marked contrast to the opinion of the people is the confession of the
disciples. Mark records Peter saying, ‘You are the Messiah (the Christ)’ and
Luke quotes him, ‘You are the Christ (the anointed one) of God’. According
to Matthew Jesus says, ‘You are the Christ (The Messiah), the Son of the
living God’ and in John’s Gospel we read,’ you are the Holy One of God’.
Jesus’ rebuff to Peter clarifies that Jesus in not just a political messiah.
Jesus also said to Peter, ‘for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you,
but my Father who is in heaven’. It is only the combination of Peter’s
confession and Jesus’ teaching of his disciples that furnishes us with the
full, essential Christian faith. Christians need to teach every generation anew
that Jesus’ way is not the way of earthly power and glory but the way of the
cross.
The
question of the high priest, ‘Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One
?’ (Mk. 14.61) tells us that this interpretation of Jesus had found its way
from circle of his disciples into public knowledge. Following the overflowing
catch of fish, Peter falls at Jesus’ feet in the posture of adoration and
says, ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord’. ‘Lord’ (Kyrios)
is the designation for God that was used in the Old Testament. Having recognised
Jesus earlier as ‘master’, ‘teacher’ and ’rabbi’, Peter now
recognises him as Kyrios. After the promise to leave himself under the appearance of
bread, Jesus asked the disciples if they too would leave. Peter answered,
‘Lord, to who shall we go ? You have the words of eternal life. And we have
believed, and we have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God’ (Jn.
6.68f).
This
is the pre-Easter faith of the Church. At certain key moments, the disciples
come to the astonishing realisation: This is God himself. They were unable to
put all this together into a perfect response and they drew on the Old
Testament’s words of promise: Christ, the Anointed One, the Son of God, Lord.
This faith could arrive at its complete form only when Thomas, touching the
wounds of the Risen Lord, cried out in amazement: ‘My Lord and my God’ (Jn.
20.28). We can never grasp these words completely. They always surpass us. These
words are a never-ending journey for all believers. Only by touching Jesus’
wounds and encountering his Resurrection are we able to grasp them, and then
they become our mission.
Matthew,
Mark, Luke and John create a link between Peter’s confession and the
Transfiguration. In both cases, the issue is the divinity of Jesus as the Son.
In both cases the appearance of his glory is connected with the Passion
motif. Jesus’ divinity belongs with the Cross. Jesus said that his Cross would
be his exaltation. Some scholars
connect Peter’s confession with the Jewish Feast of Atonement – the one time
in the year when the high priest solemnly pronounced the name YHWH. This context
added depth to Peter’s confession.
In
the story of the Transfiguration and in the night spent by Jesus in prayer, the
mountain again serves as the place of God’s particular closeness. He was
tempted on, he preached on, he agonized on, was crucified on and ascended into
heaven from the mountain.
Jesus’
relation to Moses is apparent at the Transfiguration. Light came from Moses
face, but it shone through Jesus. He
is light from light. In Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets speak with
Jesus. They spoke of the Cross, understood as Jesus’ Exodus. Jesus’ cross is
an Exodus. His cross was the hope of
The
disciples ‘were terrified’, and yet Peter said ‘Rabbi, it is good that we
are here’. His intention is to give permanence to the event of Revelation by
erecting tents of meeting, and the cloud may contain a reminiscence of the
Exodus. Peter was able to recognise that the realities prefigured by the Feast
of Tabernacles were accomplished when ‘The Word became flesh and pitched his
tent among us’(Jn.1.14) Jesus is the holy tent above whom the cloud of God’s
presence stands and spreads out to overshadow others.
Jesus has become the divine word of revelation, the Torah.
Between
Peter’s confession and his teaching about discipleship, Jesus said; ‘Truly,
I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they
see the
After
Easter three fundamental titles began to emerge: ‘Christ’ (Messiah),
‘Kyrios’ (Lord) and ‘Son of God’. The
first title taken in itself made little sense outside Jewish culture. It quickly
ceased to function as a title and was joined to the name of Jesus Christ.
The
words ‘Kyrios’ and ‘Son’ both point in one direction. ‘Lord’ had
become a paraphrase for the divine name. It identified Jesus with the living
God. The first Council of Nicea (325), after fierce debates over Jesus Sonship
summed up the results in the word homoousios
(of the same substance). When Jesus called himself ‘the Son’ it was not
meant in a mythological or political sense. It is meant to be understood quite
literally.
Jesus
called himself ‘Son of Man’ and simply ‘Son’. He did not apply the term
‘Messiah’ to himself. In the end, the title Messiah, ‘King of the Jews’
is placed over the cross in three languages for the whole world. The cross is
Jesus’ throne.
This
is the title Jesus most frequently used to speak of himself. And it is found
only on Jesus’ lips, with the single exception of when the dying Stephen said:
‘I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right had of
God’ (Acts. 7.56). He was citing a
saying of Jesus himself – ‘You shall see the Son of Man seated at the right
hand of Power and coming in the clouds of heaven’ (Mk.14.62)
No one could have been condemned to the Cross on account of harmless
moralising. Some dramatic claim must have been said and done. The greatness, the
dramatic newness, comes directly from Jesus. It developed within the faith of
the community through lived discipleship. It was not created.
When
Jesus said that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath and that
the Son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath, he was not expressing a modern
liberal position. The important thing about this saying is the overlapping of
‘man’ and ‘Son of man’. Man receives a freedom that has nothing to do
with caprice. In terms of the Son of Man, in terms of the criterion that Jesus
himself is, man is free and he knows how to use the Sabbath. In the ‘Son of
man’, man is revealed as he truly ought to be.
In
the Book of Daniel we read of four beasts representing secular powers and the
‘Son of Man’ representing the one who brings a new kingdom from God. This
story represents the history of the world. The beasts come from the depths of
the sea while the ‘Son of Man’ comes from above. Daniel uses the image of
the Son of Man to represent the coming kingdom of salvation.
The
first group of sayings about the Son of Man in the New Testament refer to his
future coming to judgement to gather the righteous, the elect. In the second
group of sayings, .Jesus speaks of his present activity as one who had authority
to forgive sins. The third group of sayings identify Jesus with the one who
serves and who suffers death. The term ‘Son of Man’ presents us in
concentrated form with all that is most original and distinctive about the
figure of Jesus – the bringer of true humanity through his having loved us to
the end. The new humanity that comes from God is what being a disciple of Jesus
Christ is all about.
The
Son
As
Christian faith took shape, the titles ‘Son of God’ and ‘Son’ were
blended even though they need to be distinguished. The term ‘Son of God’
derives from the political theology of
The
fulfilment of the promise of dominion over the nations was seen by the early
Christians as the Resurrection of Jesus. This was the long-awaited ‘today’
of the king on his throne predicted in the Psalms. Kingship had lost its
political character. The term ‘Son of God’ is now detached from the sphere
of political power. Jesus rules by
faith and love, from the cross. Christian faith acknowledges legitimate
authority, but it is fundamentally apolitical. It will always collide with
totalitarian regimes and as a result be driven to martyrdom, in communion with
the crucified Christ.
There
is a distinction between terms ‘Son of God and ‘the Son’. Only the Son
‘who is nearest the Father’s heart’ knows the Father because of their
communion. This unity of knowledge implies unity of will. We too are gifted by
God to become his sons by our unity of will with him. We pray for this in the
Our Father. True knowledge of God does not come to Scripture experts. It is
necessary to be ‘simple’. God chooses the weak and the foolish, the pure of
heart and the little ones to receive this knowledge. With this attitude, we can
say, ’Abba. Father’,
‘I
Am’
During
his dispute with the Jews, Jesus said ‘I am he’ (Jn. 8.24). This phrase has
its roots in the Old Testament when Moses heard God ‘I am who am’ at the
burning bush. (Ex. 3.124). The
burning bush is the Cross on which Jesus is exalted to the very height of the
God who is love. The highest claim
of revelation, the ‘I am he’ and Cross of Jesus are inseparably one. It is
at the Cross that the ‘I am’ can be ‘known’, that the ‘I am he’ can
be recognised. The Cross is the self-revelation of God’s reality in the midst
of history for us – ‘then you will know l that I am he’. And this
’then’ is realized repeatedly throughout history, starting at Pentecost.
When
Jesus said, ‘Before Abraham came into being I am’, he puts himself beyond
the world of birth and death. When
he calmed the sea, the apostles were overwhelmed as men were in the Old
Testament before the presence of God. They said ‘Truly, you are the Son of
God’ (Mt. 14.33)
In
John’s Gospel we hear Jesus say, ‘I am the Bread of Life’, ‘the light of
the world’, ‘the Door’, ‘the Good Shepherd’, ’the Resurrection and
the Life’, ‘the Way, the Truth and the Life.
These are all variations on a single theme, that Jesus has come that we
may have life and have it in abundance. This is true human happiness and
’perfect joy’ (Jn. 16.24). It is not just individual joy, but the entire
world having attained unity with God. Jesus gives life because he is God. In the
Creed, the Church joins Peter in confessing to Jesus ever anew: ‘You are the
Christ, the Son of the living God’
A
simplified and abridged version of the book Jesus of
INTRODUCTION:
Moses
was the greatest prophet of the Old Testament. The
Book of Deuteronomy promised a new Moses. After
Moses who lead God’s people through the
Moses
was a special prophet because he had spoken with God. He had seen only God’s
back but not his face. Now
In
the beginning of his Gospel,
At
the time of Jesus birth,
John
the Baptist called ardently for a new way of thinking and acting. He announced
that a greater person than he was about to appear. He asked people to accept
baptism from him as a symbol of their turning away from sin and towards God.
Jesus asked for John’s baptism in order to show solidarity with all
people who sinned but who wished to turn towards the goodness of God. Jesus
accepted humankind’s guilt on his shoulders by stepping into the place of
sinners as he would do by his death on the cross which he later spoke of as his
baptism. At his baptism by John, a voice came from Heaven, ‘This is my beloved
Son’. This was an anticipation of his Resurrection, and the Eastern Church
sees a deep connection between this moment and the Feast of the Epiphany.
The
action of going down into the water is Jesus’ descent into
suffering-with-others and transforming human suffering. His baptism was a
descent into the house of the evil one who holds people captive. We are all very
much captive to powers that anonymously manipulate us. Our reception of the
Sacrament of Baptism is the gift of participation in Jesus’ world-transforming
struggle that took place in his descent into and ascent out of the
At
this moment of his Baptism, Heaven, where God’s will is perfectly fulfilled,
stands open above Jesus who fulfils God’s will on earth. There is a
proclamation of Jesus mission – not merely of what he does
but of who he is - God’s beloved Son. Finally, with the presence of the
Spirit, the mystery of the Trinitarian God begins to emerge.
Liberal
scholarship has interpreted this moment as a vocation experience for Jesus at
the end of his life in
THE
TEMPTATIONS OF JESUS
The
descent of the Holy Spirit on Jesus anointed him as the Messiah. He later
presented himself and his mission, when he said, ‘The spirit of the Lord is
upon me, for he has anointed me’ (Lk. 4.18) At his anointing the kingly and
priestly office were bestowed on him in the presence of
To
our surprise, the Spirit then leads him into the desert to be tempted by the
devil. He now enters the utter depths of the drama of human existence. He must
go through, suffer through the whole of it in order to transform it. In Hebrews
we read, ‘For because he himself has suffered and been tempted, he is able to
help those who are tempted’ (Heb. 2.18). And ‘we have not a high priest who
is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has
been tempted as we are, yet without sin’ (Heb. 4.15). Jesus’ temptations –
like his Baptism – are an anticipation of the struggle he endured in every
step of his mission.
The
desert is the opposite of the garden of Eden, and it becomes a place of
reconciliation and healing. The wild animals become friends of humanity as they
minister to Jesus. Creation, torn asunder by strife, once more becomes the
dwelling place of peace. Today,
Temptation
pretends to show us a better way, saying that what is real is right
there in front of us – power and bread. At the heart of all temptations is the
act of pushing God aside, because we perceive him as secondary, superfluous or
annoying, in favour of bread and power. The God question is the fundamental one.
What must the Saviour of the world do or not do ?.
That is what the temptations of Jesus are about.
In
the first temptation Jesus is asked to prove that he is the Son of God by
turning stones into bread. The demand for proof is a constantly recurring theme
in the story of Jesus’ life. History
has frequently asked, ‘If you exist, God, then you’ll just have to show
yourself’ and ‘If the Church is really supposed to be yours, you’ll have
to make that much more obvious than it is at present’. The tragedy of world
hunger leads many to ask, ‘Shouldn’t it be the first test of the redeemer to
give bread to the world’. And ‘It you claim to be the
Quoting
the Old Testament, Jesus replies, ‘Man does not live by bread alone, but by
everything that proceeds from the mouth of God’ (Deut. 8.3).
Bread is important, freedom is more important but most important is
unbroken fidelity and faithful adoration. The
aid offered by rich countries to developing ones has been purely technical and
materially based. The West has thrust aside indigenous religions, ethical and
social structures, and filled the resulting vacuum with its technocratic
mind-set. We have given stones in place of bread.
The
issue is the primacy of God, who is the reality without whom nothing else
can be good. The goodness of the human heart can ultimately come only from the
One who is goodness itself. Obedience
to God develops an attitude that is capable of providing bread for all.
In
the second temptation. Jesus is again invited test God by providing a spectacle,
a moment of great excitement. The devil’s ruse is connected with the
The
modern worldview is that God speaks only in the Bible and that he cannot act in
history. The Bible must be read with faith and in reading the Bible the
fundamental questions is: What picture of God are we working with ?. The answer
to this question is decided by the picture we form of Christ.
Is he, who remained without worldly power, really the Son of the living
God ?
Some
say that the issue of the second temptation is one of ‘bread and circuses’.
After bread has been provided, the titillation of an exciting spectacle has to
be offered too. But this cannot be the point of the passage since there were no
spectators. The point is revealed in Jesus’ reply, ‘You shall not put the
Lord you God to he test’ (Deut. 6.16). God
does not have to submit to experiment. The arrogance that would impose
laboratory conditions on God is incapable for finding him.
We
are dealing with the vast question of how we can and cannot know God.
If we discard the whole dimension of love or of interior listening, by
thinking that only what we can experimentally grasp is real, we make ourselves
God.
Christ
did not leap from the temple; he did not tempt God by leaping into the this
abyss, but he did descend into the abyss of death, into the night of abandonment
and into the desolation of the defenceless.
He knew and we know that when we follow the will of God will never lose a
final refuge because the foundation of the world is the love of God in whom we
trust.
In
the third temptation the devil takes the Lord in a vision to a high mountain and
offers him power. After his resurrection, the Lord was given ‘all authority in
heaven and on earth’. This heavenly power is real saving power.
It pre-supposes the
This
third temptation has been repeated throughout history. The powerlessness of
faith, the earthly powerlessness of Christ and his Church were given a helping
hand by political and military might. Faith has often risked being suffocated in
the embrace of power. The struggle to avoid identifying Jesus’ kingdom with
any political structure has to be fought continually. The fusion of faith and
political power always comes with a price, because faith becomes the servant of
power and must bend to its criteria.
Barabbas
appears to have been a resistance fighter, a messianic figure. When the mob
chose him in place of Jesus, they were choosing a messiah who leads an armed
struggle and builds a kingdom of his own, Jesus builds a
Kingdom where losing oneself is the way to life.
Might we still make the same choice today ? Do we really know Jesus at
all ?. Are we giving priority to a
well-organised world where God has a place only as a private concern ?
Do we worship well-being and rational planning ?
The
third temptation makes us ask what kind of action is expected of a Saviour of
the world. The Lord declares that the concept of a messiah does not mean earthly
power, but the Cross. Peter
misunderstood this when he rejected the possibility of Jesus’ death, ‘God
forbid, Lord. This must never happen to you’. The Christian empire or the
secular power of the papacy is no longer a temptation, but the interpretation of
Christianity as a recipe for progress and universal prosperity, and the real
goal of all religions, is the same temptation.
We
must ask, what did Jesus bring if he did not usher in a better world ? In the
Old Testament, two strands of hope are still intertwined – for a worldly
paradise and for a suffering servant of God. But Jesus said to the two disciples
on the way to Emmaus. ‘O foolish men, and slow of heart, to believe all that
the prophets have spoken. (Lk. 24.25) He
has to say this to us repeatedly throughout the centuries.
The
great question in this book is, what did Jesus actually bring ? The answer is
very simple: God. He brought God. Now we know God’s face and the path we have
to take. We know the truth about our
origins and our destiny: faith, hope and love.
It is only because of our hardness of heart that we think about this too
little. The glory of the earthly kingdoms that Satan put before the Lord and
which offered power though wealth, have proven a mere semblance. The glory of
Christ, the humble self-sacrificing glory of his love has not passed away, nor
will it ever do so. The devil divinized power and prosperity, but God alone is
to be worshipped. An unconditional Yes to this includes reverence for our
neighbour as we shall see when look at the Sermon on the Mount.
After
John the Baptist was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee saying, ‘The time is
fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the
Gospel’ (Mk. 1.14,15) The words ‘good news’ fall short of the magnitude of
what is meant by the Greek word evanglion. The Latin word evangelium
was used by the emperors who pretended to be gods, to describe their pleasant or
unpleasant messages. The evangelists used the word evanglium to say that it was not the emperors who could save the
world, but ‘the gospel of God’ (Ro. 15.16).
The announcements of the emperors were just announcements that could not
always bring about what they proclaimed, but God’s word could. The core
content of the Gospel is that the
Everything
depends on how we understand the relationship between Jesus’ proclamation and
his person, between the
A
more recent secularist understanding of the Kingdom, particularly among Catholic
theologians claims that we must move from having the Church at the centre of the
Kingdom, to having Christ there or better to have God as the centre, thus
including all religions. Therefore
it is claimed that everything must move towards having the Kingdom of peace,
justice and environmentalism as a goal. This eliminates missionary activity
directed towards other religions since we all have a common task.
It sounds good but on closer examination it seems suspicious.
Who
is to say what justice is ? How do we create peace ? It all proves to be utopian
dreaming without any content. God has disappeared. Faith and religions are now
directed towards political goals. Only the organization of the world counts.
Religions matters only insofar as it can serve that objective.
This post-Christian vision of faith is disturbingly close to Jesus' third
temptation.
If
we return to the Gospel, we see that Jesus proclaimed the
This
lordship of God announced by Jesus was founded on the Old Testament. In Psalms
47 and 93, 96,97,98,99
Jesus
spoke about the meagre dimensions of the Kingdom within history.
He said it was like a grain, a leaven, a seed.
He expressed its value in describing it as a pearl of great price. To the
Pharisees he said that the Kingdom was in their midst.
The Kingdom is not simply in Jesus’ physical presence; rather it is in
his action, accomplished in the Holy Spirit.
It is in and through him that the
Through
the presence and action of Jesus, God has now entered actively into history in a
wholly new way. ‘The fullness of time has come (
This
interpretation sheds light on the tension between ethics and grace, between the
strictist personalism and the call to enter a new family. We see this in the
story of the Pharisee and the tax collector. The Pharisee tells God only about
himself, and he thinks he is praising God in praising himself. He does not
really look at God at all, but only at himself.
He does not really need God because he does everything right by himself.
The
tax collector knows he has sinned and that he cannot boast before God. He prays
in full awareness of his debt to grace. He sees himself in the light of God. He
has looked towards God, and in the process his eyes have been opened to see
himself. He sees himself in the light of God.
He needs God and because he recognizes that, he begins through God’s
goodness to become good himself. He
is freed from the constraints of moralism, and is set
in the context of a relationship of love to God. This story
shows us that there are two ways of relating to God.
The
Matthew
presents Jesus as preaching the radicality of Kingdom, as a renwal the twelve
tribes by calling his apostles and presenting Jesus as Redeemer rather than a
mere teacher. Thereupon follows three chapters of the Sermon on the Mount in
which Jesus is presented as the new Moses.
Jesus
takes the position which indicates the full authority of the teacher; he sits.
And Matthew has him sit on a mountain. He went to pray on a mountain and he now
teaches on a mountain - the new Sinai. The first Torah was given on Sinai the in
storm, fire and earthquake. The new Sinai has been identified as a hill
overlooking the
The
word ‘disciples’ reminds us that everyone who hears and accepts the word can
become a disciple. Discipleship comes from hearing and accepting, not from
lineage. The New Covenant is open to everyone and those who accept it are the
new
Luke
writes for gentile Christians and so he does not portray Jesus as the New Moses.
He stresses the universal significance of the Sermon.
In
the Sermon on the Mount Jesus recapitulates the Ten Commandments, and gives
added depth to the commandments of the second tablet.
Jesus has not come to abolish the Law of the Prophets. The Beatitudes are
situated with the long tradition of the Old Testament, stressing how blessed is
the person who trusts in the Lord.
The
Beatitudes describe the actual condition of Jesus’ disciples: They are poor,
hungry, weeping, hated and persecuted. The Beatitudes also describe the
attributes of those who follow Jesus. The
standards of the world are turned upside down.
The joy they proclaim is postponed to the next life but they are still
promises for this world. When a person begins to see and live from God’s
perspective, when he or she is Jesus’ companion on the way, then that person
lives by new standards and something of what is to come is already present.
Jesus brings joy in the midst of affliction.
The
apostle Paul described his experience of suffering and survival ‘so that the
life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh’ (2 Cor. 4.11) For Paul,
the Beatitudes cannot be expressed in purely theoretical terms. They are
proclaimed in life and in suffering and in the mysterious joy of the disciple
who is bound to the mystery of Christ. ‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ
who lives in me’ (Ga. 2.20). In his messengers, Christ himself still suffers,
still hangs on the cross. And yet he is irrevocably risen.
The
Beatitudes present a veiled interior biography of Jesus.
He is truly poor, meek, lowly, pure of heart, and the peacemaker who
suffers for God’s sake.
The
first Beatitude, points out that those who in their humility recognize their
need for God, are closest to God’s heart.
In the Old Testament, the poor recognized themselves as the true
The
Sermon on the Mount in itself is not a social programme but it gives great
inspiration to influence our thoughts and actions because faith generates
renunciation and responsibility for our neighbour and for the whole of society.
Only then can social justice grow too. The Church as a whole must recognize that
she has to remain recognizably the community of God’s poor. Any renewal of the
Church can be set in motion only through those who keep alive in themselves the
some resolute humility, the same goodness that is always ready to serve.
Like Francis of Assisi it is only when one lives through and suffers
through the sacred text, that Scripture reaches its full potential for the
future.
The
second Beatitude – ‘Blessed are the meek’ expresses the Hebrew word anawim
and the Greek word praus both of which
mean more than the non-violent. It
means God’s poor as spoken of in the first Beatitude.
The Scripture tell us, ‘’Now Moses the man was very meek’ (Num.
12.3.), and Jesus said ‘Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am
meek and lowly of heart’. A king who would be ‘humble (meek) and riding on a
donkey’ was foretold in (Zech. 9.10). Jesus was that king whose rule does not
depend on political and military might. He is king who renounced violence and
accepted suffering until he was released from it by his Father. The essence of
Christ’s kingship is meekness.
The
land promised the meek is freedom in a place to worship. This was the main issue
for liberation prior to the exodus from
All
this anticipates the seventh Beatitude, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’.
We are all invited to be and to do what the Son does, so that we
ourselves may become ‘sons of God’.
Only
the person at peace in their hearts can establish peace around and throughout
the world. That there be peace on earth (cf. Lk. 2.14) is the will of God. The
struggle to abide in peace with God is an indispensable part of the struggle for
peace on earth. The former is the source of the criteria and the energy for the
latter.
The
third Beatitude is ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be
comforted’. Those who have lost hope mourn in one way. Those who have had a
shattering encounter with the truth mourn in another way. Judas, struck by his
own fall, did not dare to hope, and hanged himself in despair.
Peter failed also, but struck by the Lord’s gaze, he burst into tears,
began anew and was renewed.
Those
who counteract the dominion of evil, mourn as we read in Ezek 9.4. Today these
people do not run with the pack and refuse to collude with the injustice which
had become endemic. Even though it is not in their power to change the overall
situation, they still counter the dominion of evil through passive resistance of
their suffering, through a mourning that sets bounds to the power of evil.
Mary
and her sister stood with John under the Cross. This small band remained true in
a world full of cruelty and cynicism. They
cannot avert the disaster, so they suffer with it and they mourn. This is the
meaning of compassion. St. Bernard wrote, ‘God cannot suffer but he can suffer
with’. People who choose to suffer
with others do not harder their hearts to the pain of others but suffer under
its power and so acknowledge the truth of God. They are the ones who open the
windows of the world to let the light in.
This
is also expressed in the eight Beatitude, ‘Blessed are those who are
persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs in the kingdom of heaven’. The
mourning of which the Lord speaks is nonconformity with evil. For his listeners,
the Lord was foretelling the situation of the Church which they were living
through when this was written. Righteousness means fidelity to the Torah and for
us it means faith. The person of faith is the righteous person. And so, this
Beatitude is an invitation to each person and to the Church as a whole to follow
the crucified Christ.
The
Beatitude which states, ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for
righteousness, for they shall be comforted’ is concerned with those who search
for something great, for true justice and for true good. They will mourn and
they will receive comfort. Their interior sensitivity enables them to hear the
subtle signs that God sends into the world to break the dictatorship of
convention. These are the saints of the Old and of the New Covenant. Edith Stein
once said that anyone who honestly and passionately searches for truth is on the
way to Christ.
It
is often said that everyone should live by the religion in which they find
themselves; in this they find salvation. No,
God demands that we become inwardly attentive to his quiet exhortation to
‘hunger and thirst for righteousness’. That is the path open to everyone;
that is the way that finds its destination in Jesus Christ.
’Blessed
are the pure of heart, for they shall see God’. This requires a proper
interplay of body and soul - the totality of the person.
A person’s body must be placed under the discipline of the spirit.
As Psalm 24 states, our inner eye must be purified. Our hands and a pure
heart are necessary in our search for God. The ascent to God occurs in the
descent of humble service, in the descent of love.
In Jesus Christ, God has revealed himself in this descending. (cf. Phil
2.6-9)
Love
is the fire that purifies and unifies intellect, will and emotion, making man
one with himself as it makes him one in God’s eyes.
After the four Beatitudes in Luke we read, ‘Woe to you who are
rich….Woe to you who are full now….Woe to you who laugh now….Woe to you
when men praise you’(Lk. 6.24-26). We recognise here the opposite attitudes
which lock us into outward appearance, into provisionality, into loss of our
highest and deepest qualities, and hence into loss of God and neighbour – the
path to ruin.
Are
the Beatitudes good news ? Much of
the modern mind says that they are not. Yet,
the experience of brutally totalitarian regimes that have trampled upon human
beings have given the world a new appreciation of those who hunger for
righteousness. The abuses of economic power in the cruelties of capitalism have
degraded humans to the level of merchandise. Realising the perils of wealth has
reminded us of the man-destroying divinity of Mammon which grips part of the
world in a cruel stranglehold.
The
Greek world of the epics was aware of man’s deepest sin – hubris.
This is the arrogant presumption of autonomy that leads man to put on the airs
of divinity, to claim to be his own god in order to possess life totally and to
draw from it every last drop of what it has to offer. This results from the
temptation of ostentatious self-sufficiency. Love,
on the other hand runs counter to self-seeking; it is an exodus out of oneself.
And this is the way man comes to himself. This is the high road to life.
It is only on the way of love described in the Sermon on the Mount that
the richness of life and the greatness of man’s calling are opened up.
The
Messiah was expected to bring a renewed Torah – a renewed law.
Paul speaks of the ‘law of Christ’ (Gal. 62).
He says that this law has set us free by allowing us to be led by the
Spirit. This is freedom for the service of good. This Torah of Jesus is totally
new and different, because it fulfils the Torah of Moses.
Jesus
calls for a new attitude towards three fundamental commandments of the Old Law.
He
said, ‘If you would be perfect, go, sell all you have and come, follow me. Perfection, the
state of being holy as God is holy, as demanded by the Torah (Lev. 19.2) now
consists in following Jesus. In this mysterious identification of Jesus and God,
he states that he is on the same exalted level as the Lawgiver – as God. It is
no wonder that the people are ‘astonished’ at the identification of Jesus
with God in the Sermon on the Mount
He
also stated that he is Lord of the Sabbath, and this is because he is now
The
Fourth Commandment to honour parents is central to the Torah, but Jesus – the
new Torah - widens and deepens this commandment – ‘ Whoever does the will of
my Father is heaven is my brother, and sister and mother’ (Mt. 12.50).
Jesus founds a new family by adherence to himself. This seems to
undermine a long established social order but it does not do so. Instead the
Gospel says that concrete juridical and social and political arrangements are no
longer sacred. He frees people and nations to discover what aspects of political
and social life accord with God’s will. The concrete political and social
order is released from the directly sacred realm and from theocratic
legislation. Nevertheless, Secularism today has forgotten the link between
God’s will and concrete legislation.
Jesus
brings a new depth to the old commandments of the Torah. Not only are we not to
kill but we must always offer reconciliation. No more divorce and not only are
we to be even-handed in justice but we must let ourselves be struck without
striking back. Christianity constantly has to reshape and reformulate social
structures and Christian social teaching. There will always be new developments
to correct what has gone before. In the inner structure of the Torah and in the
Prophets critique, and in Jesus message, Christianity finds wide scope for
necessary historical evolution.
The
Sermon on the Mount shows us the right way to live, and how to be a human being.
It tells us that man can be understood in the light of God, and that in what
Jesus does and wills, we come to know the mind and will of God. We see God’s
face in Jesus. If being human is about our relation with God, then speaking with
and listening to God is an essential part of it. This is prayer.
Before
giving us the Lord’s Prayer, Matthew tells us that prayer must not be an
occasion for showing off before others. While
prayer is totally personal for each individual, this does not exclude prayer in
common. It is only by becoming part of the ‘we’ of God’s children that we
can reach God. In the act of prayer,
the personal and the communal always pervade each other.
Matthew
has Jesus also remind us that chatter is not prayer. We pray when in need and in
thanksgiving but prayer must be present as the bedrock of our souls. Prayer is
silent inward communion with God. The more we are directed towards God, the
better we will be able to pray. The affairs of our every day lives have to be
constantly related back to this union with God. This is how we pray without
ceasing.
Prayer
actualises and deepens our communion with God. Our praying can and should arise
from our heart, from our needs, our hopes, our joys, our sufferings, from our
shame over sin, asking for good things and from gratitude.
At the same time we need to use prayers of the Church as a whole lest our prayer
become subjective. Thoughts usually precede words but in praying the Psalms
words precede thoughts. Our minds try to adapt to the words. Prayer is encounter
with the Spirit of God in the word that goes ahead of us. It is not immersion in
the depths of oneself.
Luke
tells us that the disciples saw Jesus at prayer and then asked him to teach them
how to pray. When praying the Our Father it is important to listen accurately to
Jesus’ words. We must also keep in mind that the Our Father originates from
his own prayer-dialogue with the Father. We
are all sheltered in the prayer of men and women who have prayed down the
centuries but we must use our own spirit, and open ourselves to that voice which
comes to us from the Son.
Reflecting
the two tablets of the Decalogue, in Matthew‘s version there are three
thou-petitions and four we-petitions. The primacy of God and his Kingdom are
first established, and this remains present throughout. Because the Our Father
is a prayer of Jesus, it is a Trinitarian prayer. We pray with Christ through
the Holy Spirit of the Father.
With
great consolation we are allowed to say ‘Father’ because the Son is our
brother. In the word ‘Father’ we express the whole history of redemption. We
must allow Jesus to teach us what father
really means. This word is the source of all perfection.
We forgive in order to be like our Father in heaven who shows his
forgiving love to the end, when Jesus forgave his enemies on the cross. The Our
Father does not project a human image into heaven but shows us from heaven –
from Jesus – what we as human brings can and should be like.
Jesus
promises us good gifts more generously than any earthly father can give. (cf.
Mt. 5.44,45) His greatest gift is
the Holy Spirit, God himself. (cf. Lk. 11.13)
Prayer is really about God’s desire to offer us the gift of himself.
Prayer is a way of gradually purifying and correcting our wishes and of slowly
coming to realise that what we really need is God and his Spirit.
God
is every human person’s Father by creating us individually and uniquely.
He did this when he looked at Christ who was to come and he created us in
that image (cf. 2 Cor. 4.4; Col 1.15). The
concept of being God’s children has a dynamic quality. We are not ready-made
but we are meant to become increasingly so by growing more and more into
communion with his Son. The word
‘Father’ is an invitation to live from our awareness of the reality that
‘All that I have is yours’ (Lk. 15.31)
So, to be God’s child is not a matter of dependency but rather of
standing in the relation of love that sustains our existence, giving it meaning
and grandeur.
The
Old Testament uses the word rabamin (translated, compassion) to describe God love for us. At its
deepest, this word means womb, thus expressing the depth and intimate
interrelatedness between God and us. God our Father has all the qualities of a
mother’s love for her children. While God is neither a man nor a woman, and
while mother is never a biblical title for God, it is an image describing his
love for us.
Only
Jesus can say ‘my Father’ and only within the ‘we’ of the disciples can we
call God ‘Father’. This is because only in communion with Jesus Christ do we
really become children of God. It also requires that we surrender ourselves to
communion with the other children of God. The
Our Father overcomes all boundaries and makes us one family. While we have
different earthly fathers, we all come from one Father.
Hallowed be thy Name
This
reminds us of the second commandment of the Decalogue. When Moses asked God his
name, God replied, ‘I am who I am’. The
Israelites were perfectly right in refusing to utter God’s name YHWH so as to
avoid degrading it to level of pagan deities.
God did not refuse Moses’ request. He established a relationship
between himself and us and puts himself within reach of our invocation.
Martin
Buber said that we Christians should pick up the polluted fragments of the
divine name. We must hallow the name
which has so often been shamefully misused.
Do I stand in reverence before the mystery of the burning bush, before
God’s incomprehensible closeness, even to the point of his presence in the
Eucharist where he truly gives himself entirely into our hands ?
Thy Kingdom Come
With
this petition we acknowledge first and foremost the primacy of God. Where God is
absent, nothing can be good. ‘Seek first the
With
the petition ‘Thy Kingdom come’, the Lord wants us to recognise that the
first and essential thing is a listening heart, and to order our actions in this
way. The
Thy will be done on Earth as it is in
Heaven
Heaven
is where God’s will in unswirvingly done.
The essence of Heaven is oneness with God’s will, the oneness of will
and truth. We pray that earth may become heaven.
What
is God’s will ? Man has knowledge of God’s will in his inmost heart. This is
conscience. (cf.
Because
our being comes from God, we are able, despite all the defilement that holds us
back, to set out on the way to God’s will. Jesus said, ‘My food is to do the
will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work’ (Jn.4.34 and on the
Give us this day our daily bread
Although
the Lord directs us to the essential, to ‘the one thing necessary’, and told
us not to be anxious about our lives, he knows about our daily needs.
He invites us to pray for our food. This food comes from the cosmic
powers outside our control, and so we have no reason for pride in ourselves.
Yet, we have the right and the duty to ask for what we need. We are free and
truly ourselves when we open up to God.
We
pray for our bread. This means that we
pray for bread for others also. St .John Chrysostom emphasises that ‘every
bite of bread, one way or another, is a bite of the bread that belongs to
everyone’. The Lord is telling us, ‘Give them something to eat yourselves’
(Mk. 6.37)
St.
Cyprian reminds us that anyone who asks for bread is poor. This prayer
presupposes the poverty of Christ’s disciples. It presupposes that there are
people who have renounced the world, its riches and its splendour for the sake
of faith. These people no longer ask for anything beyond what they need for
life. Jesus says, ‘It is right for the disciple to pray for the necessities of
life only for today’.
There
must be people who leave everything to follow the Lord, people who radically
depend on God. These people present
a sign of faith that shakes us out of our heedlessness and out of weak faith.
This petition presupposes that the community of Jesus’ closest disciples
followed him in a radical way, renouncing worldly possessions. They also point
to a future which is more real than the present.
We
pray for our daily (epiousios) bread.
The evangelists coined this word and there are two interpretations of it. One is
‘what is necessary for existence’. The
other translation is bread for the future, for the following day. This would
refer to bread for a new world. Most of the Fathers of the Church understood the
petition to refer also to the Eucharistic table.
It can also be a sign of the festive character and beauty of the world,
the vine and wine.
In
John 6, Jesus begins with the hunger of the people for bread for life, but he
does not stop there. He then reminds his listeners that man’s real food is the
Logos, the eternal Word, the eternal meaning from which we come and towards
which our life is directed. Then he promised himself under the appearance of
bread in the Sacrament. The eternal Word becomes truly manna.
When we consider Jesus’ message in its entirely, it is impossible to
expunge the eucharistic dimension from this petition in the Our Father. The
Eucharist is in a special sense our
bread, the bread of Jesus’ disciples.
Forgive us our trespasses as we
forgive those who trespass against us
This
petition presupposes a world in which we trespass against one another.
Every act of trespass involves some kind of injury to truth and to love,
and is thus opposed to God who is truth and love. Guilt calls for retaliation
and here the Lord is telling us that the chain of trespasses can be overcome
only by forgiveness, not by retaliation. The theme of forgiveness pervades the
entire Gospel. We cannot come into
God’s presence unreconciled with our brothers or sisters. Anticipating the
offender, going out to meet the other is the pre-requisite for true worship of
God. God stepped out to us as Jesus
stepped out to his apostles when he washed their dirty feet.
What
is forgiveness really ? What happens
when forgiveness takes place ? It is
more than ignoring or trying to forget. Guilt must be worked through and healed.
Forgiveness exacts a price – first of all from the person who forgives.
He or she must overcome within themselves the evil done to them. It must be
burnt interiorly. It also involves the inner purification of the trespasser. In
forgiving we encounter the limits of our power to heal and to overcome evil. We
encounter the superior power of evil which we cannot muster with our unaided
powers.
God
could forgive our guilt only by allowing himself in his Son to be ‘crushed for
our iniquities’ because ‘by his wounds we are healed’ (Is. 53.4-6).
God became a sufferer in his Son who carried this burden. God’s action
calls us first to thankfulness to him, and then with him to work through and
suffer through evil by means of love.
Lead us not into temptation
The
wording of this petition shocks many people. God certainly does not lead us into
temptation. As with Jesus, it is the devil who tempts. Jesus descended into Hell
as it were, into the domain of our temptations and defeats. In the Book of Job,
God gave the devil a free hand to test Job. Job then shows us the difference
between trial and temptation, and how never to lose faith in God even amid the
deepest darkness. In this petition we are saying to God, ‘I know that I need
trials so that my nature can be purified but I know that you always give me room
to manoeuvre as you did with Job. You take me up by the hand, but don’t
overestimate my capacity. Don’t
set too wide the boundaries within which I may be tempted And remain close to
me’. This dampens our pride, and we recall that God allowed a particularly
heavy burden on those individuals who were especially close to him.
Deliver us from evil
This
is saying ‘Rescue, redeem, free us’. Evil and the Evil One are ultimately
inseparable. Today there are the forces of the market, of traffic in weapons, in
drugs and in human beings, all forces that weigh heavily upon the world and
ensnare humanity. On the other hand there is the ideology of success, of
well-being that tells us God is just a fiction robbing us of enjoyment in life.
In this petition we pray not to be robbed of our faith which enables to
see God, that in our concern for good, we may not lose sight of good itself and
that even when faced with the loss of good, we may not lose the Good which is
God. This prayer certainly sustained the martyrs.
We
are ultimately asking for God’s Kingdom, for union with his will and for the
sanctification of his name. With men and woman of prayer down the ages, we beg
God to set limits to the evils that ravage the world and our lives.
We should ask the Lord also to free the world, ourselves, the many
individuals and the peoples who suffer from the tribulations that make life
almost unbearable. This petition
helps us to examine our conscience about how much we collaborate in breaking the
predominance of evil in the world.
THE DISCIPLES
Jesus
new family is not amorphous. He calls an inner core of people who are to carry
on his mission and give this family order and shape. That is why Jesus formed
the group of the Twelve, a community of his closest disciples. This calling was
a prayer event; it was begotten in prayer, in intimacy with the Father. Their
calling emerges from the Son’s dialogue with the Father and is anchored there.
We cannot simply pick labourers for God’s harvest as an employer picks his
employees. Jesus reminds us that they are chosen by God - ‘Pray therefore the
Lord of the harvest to send labourers into his harvest’ (Mt. 9.38)
The
words ‘he made twelve’ take up the Old Testament terminology for the
appointment of the priesthood (cf. 1 Kings 12.31; 13,.33). This characterises
the apostolic ministry as a priestly ministry. The fact that they are
individually named links them with the prophets of
Mark
says that Jesus appoints the twelve with a double assignment: ‘to be with him,
and to be sent out to preach’. They must be with him in order to get to know
him more than the people who saw him only from a distance. They must recognise
his oneness with the Father and thus become witnesses to his mystery. Preaching
God’s Kingdom is never just words, never just instruction. By announcing him,
the apostles lead their listeners to encounter him.
Because
the world is ruled by the powers of evil, the preaching of the apostles is at
the same time a struggle with those powers. Christianity is a liberation of the
world from the fear of demons. ‘As Paul wrote, ‘There is no God but one’.
He also wrote that there is only one Father from whom all things come and for
who we exist, and also that there is only one Lord, Jesus Christ.
If we belong to him, everything else loses its power; it loses the allure
of divinity. When faith is absent, the world only appears to be more rational.
Today
the Christian is threatened by an anonymous atmosphere that wants to make the
faith seem ludicrous. There is a poisoning of the spiritual clime all over the
world that threatens the dignity of man, even his very existence.
The individual human being, and even communities, seems to be hopelessly
at the mercy of such powers. The Christian knows that he or she cannot master
this threat by personal resources alone. But we are given the ‘armour of
God’ which enables the individual in communion with the whole body of Christ,
to oppose these powers. The apostles receive the power to exorcise and to heal.
Yet the healing miracles of Jesus are subordinate to his becoming Lord in us and
in the world.
Just
as God knows us by name, he chose his apostles by name. The composition of the
whole group is quite heterogeneous. Two
were from the Zealot party: Simon and Judas.
Zeal for the Law gave this movement its name.
At the other extreme within the group, we find Matthew the tax collector
who worked for the reigning power of
Only
Luke tells us that Jesus formed a second group of seventy who were sent out on a
mission similar to that of the Twelve. Seventy was considered to be the number
of the nations of the world. (cf. Ex. 1.5 and Deut. 32.8) This is a hint of the
universal character of the Gospel.
The
women who followed Jesus were assigned a different task. Yet, many women
belonged to the more intimate community of believers and their faith-filled
following of Jesus was an essential element of that community. This was vividly
illustrated at the foot of the Cross and at the Resurrection.
Luke
stresses Jesus’ preferential option for the poor.
His saying that the old wine was good gives ground for interpreting this
as a word of understanding for those among the faithful Jews who remain with the
‘old wine’.
THE NATURE AND PURPOSE OF THE PARABLES
The
deepest theme of Jesus’ preaching was his own mystery, the mystery of the Son
in whom God is among us and who keeps his word; he announces the
It
is striking what a significant role the image of the seed plays in the whole of
Jesus’ message. .Jesus is the sower who scatters the seed of God’s word. He
is also the grain of wheat which dies and yields a rich harvest.(cf. Jn. 12.24)
He said, ‘And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to
myself’ (Jn. 12.32) His ‘failure’ on the Cross is exactly the way leading
from the few to the many, to all towards himself.
A
parable brings distant realities close to the listeners as they reflect on it.
The parable demands the collaboration of the listener who is then led on a
journey. Parables demand a change in
the listener’s life and so they become problems when the listener is unwilling
to change. The possibility of refusal is very real. The parables are ultimately
an expression of God’s hiddeness in this world and of the fact that knowledge
of God always lays claim to the whole person’s repentance.
The Good Samaritan
A
lawyer asked Jesus who was his neighbour. The
conventional answer, for which scriptural support could be adduced, was that
neighbour meant a member of one’s own people.
It was taken for granted by the Samaritans were not neighbours. In Jesus
story, he tells how when the Samaritan discovered the wounded man, he was
touched viscerally. The word ‘compassion’ is inadequate to describe the
scriptural term used. He is struck to his soul by the lightening flash of mercy.
The
issue is no longer which other person is a neighbour to me or not. The question
is about me. I have to become neighbour and when I do, the other person counts
for me as myself. The Samaritan, the foreigner makes himself the neighbour and
shows me that I have to learn to be a neighbour from deep within. My heart must
be open to being shaken up by another’s need.
Then I find my neighbour, or better still, I am found by him.
The
love of friendship in political terms rests upon the equality of the partners.
By contrast, this parable emphasizes the radical inequality of the partners. The
helper finds himself before the helpless victim.
A new universality is entering the scene.
I am brother or sister to all those I meet and who are in need of my
help.
The
people of
And
that applies not only to
The
Church Fathers saw the stripped, half-dead man an image of man in general who
has been alienated, battered and misused throughout history.
The Samaritan is the image of Jesus Christ.
God himself becomes man’s neighbour.
The
two characters in this story are relevant to every human being. Everyone is
alienated, especially from love. We
all need healing and to filled with God’s gifts. But then everyone is also
called to become a Samaritan, to follow Christ and become like him. We live
rightly when we become like him who loved us first’ (cf. 1 Jn. 4.19)
The parable of the two brothers and
the good father
This
is perhaps the most beautiful of Jesus’ parables. It was spoken to the
Pharisees and Scribes who said that Jesus ‘receives sinners and eats with
them’. Luke says that the rejected tax collectors and sinners were also
listening.
The
magnanimous father gives the prodigal son the freedom he asks for who then
becomes a slave, a swineherd. He
wanders into interior estrangement from his father. The Greek word property also means essence.
The son dissipates his own essence, his very self. He lives away from the truth
of his essence. Here we see the modern rebellion against God. But the boy’s
very nature contains a direction and a norm which recognises that a false
autonomy has led him into slavery. He recognises that he is deeply in an alien
land and his return is a pilgrimage towards the truth of his own essence.
The
father goes out to meet him. and on hearing his son’s confession, he
recognises the journey he has made. He has the servant put on the first robe
that the Fathers recognise as the lost robe of grace. They also see the Son and
the Holy Spirit in the father’s open arms. Throughout his life, Jesus
identifies his goodness to sinners with the goodness of the father in the
parable.
The
older brother is angry and refuses to come in, but the father goes out to meet
him too and speaks kindly to him. The source of his anger is the fact that he
too had secretly dreamed of a freedom without limits.
His obedience has made him bitter. There is an unspoken envy of what his
brother was able to get way with. Those who think of themselves as righteous see
God as law; they are in a juridical relationship with God and think that in this
relationship they are at right with him. They need to convert to the greater
God, the God of love and then have their obedience flow humbly from deeper
wellsprings.
In
this parable, the Father, through Christ, is addressing us, the ones who never
left home, encouraging us too to convert more deeply and to find joy in our
faith.
The parable of the rich man and
Lazarus
The
rich bon vivants usually wiped their hands in pieces of bread during a meal and
then threw the pieces on the floor. The rich man refused these to Lazarus, but
as in the Psalms, the cry of the poor rises before God.
The
life of the rich man seemed to prove that cynicism pays and that evil is
rewarded. Because of this the suffering of just people puts them in danger of
doubting their faith. They ask, does God not see ? It is only when the suffering
and just person looks towards God that their perspective becomes broader. He or
she sees that the perspective of the successful cynics is that of animals who
cannot transcend the material realm. The poor see that the seeming cleverness of
the successful cynics is stupidity when viewed against the light.
The
rich man looks up from Hades. He says what many say when they tell God that he
must make himself much clearer by sending someone from the next world who can
give a sign that his word is true. But
Lazarus has risen in the person of Jesus and has come to give us the sign.
God’s sign to us is the Son of Man; it is Jesus himself in his Paschal
Mystery. The parable is inviting us to believe and to follow him, God’s great
sign. It is more than a parable. It speaks of reality, of the most decisive
reality of all history.
This
parable also summons us to the love and responsibility that we owe now to our
poor brothers and sisters both on the large scale of the world and on the small
scale of our everyday life.
THE PRINCIPAL IMAGES OF JOHN’S
GOSPEL
So
far we have limited ourselves to Matthew, Mark and Luke in our attempt to listen
to Jesus and to get to know him. It
is time to turn our attention to the image of Jesus presented by John. In John,
Jesus’ divinity appears unveiled. Instead of parables, we hear extended
discourses.
John’s
Gospel stands firmly on the foundation of the Old Testament: ‘For the Law was
given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ’ and ‘We have
found him of whom the Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote’.(Jn. 1.17
and 45). This Gospel has a rhythm dictated by
The
disciple who wrote John’s Gospel gained his intimate knowledge from his inward
repose in Jesus’ heart, just as Jesus know about the mystery of the Father
from resting in his heart. But while
saying that the author was a witness to what he wrote, the Gospel never
identifies the author by name. The
contents of the Gospel go back to the beloved disciple.
The Gospel is not historical in the sense of a recorded transcript, and
it makes no claims to this. What it is really claiming is that it has correctly
rendered the substance of the discourses so that we can really encounter their
content and the authentic figure of Jesus.
The
Gospel gives us a personal recollection and tells what the author learned from
Church tradition. All the memory is a ‘we’ remembrance. Memory sheds light
on the sense of an event that then acquires a deeper meaning. Memory is an act
that comes from the Logos and leads to it. The unity of Logos and event is the
goal at which the Gospel is aiming. The
remembering and co-remembering is done under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
After the Resurrection, the disciples’ eyes were opened and they ‘remembered’.(Jn.
12.16) The Resurrection teaches us a new way of seeing. It makes it possible to
enter into the interiority of events, into the intrinsic coherence of God’s
speaking and acting.
John’s
Gospel shows us the real Jesus; it is not a Jesus poem
Water
Water
is the primordial element of life and it is therefore also one of the primordial
symbols of humanity – the womb, the rivers and the sea Water symbolism
pervades the Gospel – Jesus’ conversation with Nichodemus and with the
Samaritan woman. In Chapter 5, we observe his involvement in the water libation
at the Feast of Tabernacles, his healing of the paralytic at the Pool of
Bethzatha and of the blind man at the Pool of Siloam. Then there is his washing
of the apostles’ feet, and finally blood and water came from his pierced side
on the Cross. In this latter event, Jesus means to refer to the two main
sacraments of the Church – Baptism and Eucharist.
John
responds to any form of Christianity which wants only word but not flesh and
blood, when he wrote, ‘There are three witnesses, the Spirit, the water and
the blood; and these three are one’. (1 Jn. 5.6-8) Without Jesus bodiliness,
the word loses its power, and Christianity becomes mere doctrine, mere moralism,
an intellectual affair. Who could fail to recognise here certain temptations
threatening Christianity in our own times ? Incarnation and Cross, Baptism, word
and sacrament are inseparable from one another.
In
the context of the Feast of Tabernacles, Jesus said, ‘ If anyone thirst, let
him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said,
‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water’ (Jn. 7.37-39).
He is the new Moses and the life-giving rock. The believer himself
becomes a spring, an oasis which bubbles up fresh uncontaminated water, the
life-giving power of the Creator Spirit.
The
cleansing of the Temple shows us that John sees the risen Lord, his body, as the
new temple awaited by all peoples (Jn.2.21)
This new temple is the living indwelling of God in the world, the source
of life for all ages. The person who believes and loves with Christ becomes a
well that gives life, as the saints have been. Around them life sprouts.
Vine and Wine
Bread,
wine and olive oil are gifts typical of Mediterranean culture.
Bread is basic foodstuff, especially of the poor. John speaks of it at
the multiplication of the loaves, and immediately after that in the great
eucharistic discourse. The gift of wine occupies a central place at the wedding
of
The
cross is Jesus’ hour of glory but at this mother’s request in
In
the Song of Songs, the vineyard was an image for a bride. The vineyard is
However,
the vine does need purification. What becomes too big must be brought back to
the simplicity and poverty of the Lord himself. When man and his institutions
climb too high, it is only by undergoing such processes of dying away that
fruitfulness endures and renews itself.
The
parable of the vine occurs in the context of the Last Supper and so has a
thoroughly eucharistic background. The fruit that the Lord expects of us is love
– a love that accepts with him the mystery of the Cross and becomes a
participation in his self-giving preparation of the world for the
The
multiplication of the loaves is an unmistakable sign of Jesus’ messianic
mission and it is also the cross roads of his public ministry which from this
point leads clearly to the Cross. There
is a contrast between Moses and Jesus. The Mosaic background provides the
context for the people’s words, ‘This is indeed the prophet who is to come
into the world’ (Jn..6.14). Because he spoke with God, Moses could bring
God’s word to men. Yet, Moses saw only God’s back. Only the one who is God
sees God – Jesus. Yet, Moses is a mediator and it is he who gives
God’s
becoming bread means that we feed on God, live on God.
In his blood he pours himself out. The Eucharist is emphatically right at
the centre of Christian existence; it is man’s unceasing great encounter with
God. In receiving the Eucharist we
pass through the Cross and anticipate new life in God and with God. Earthly
bread can become the bearer of Christ’s presence because it unites in itself
death and resurrection. And the wine becomes the passion in itself.
The
shepherd pasturing sheep, caring for the weak, is an image of a just ruler,
a king. The Good Shepherd in the
Gospel is an image of Christ the King. God was shepherd of
Peter
is entrusted with Jesus’ own office as Shepherd (Jn. 21.15-17). For this to be
possible, Peter has to enter through the door of the sheepfold which is Jesus. (Jn.
10.7) It is because he does this,
because he is united with Jesus in love that the sheep listen to his voice, the
voice of Jesus himself. The whole
investiture scene closes with Jesus saying to Peter, ‘Follow me’. He must
then unlike the thief who kills, give life abundantly to others as the real
shepherd does.
‘The
good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep’ (Jn. 10.11). He transforms the
outward violence of the crucifixion into an act freely giving life for others.
And the shepherd and his flock know each other (Jn. 20.3f) This knowing
is not possession, but rather an inner acceptance, an inner belonging that goes
much deeper than the possession of things. Children are known but not possessed
by their loving parents. No human being belongs to another. We belong only in a
mutual responsibility to love and support one another. For dictators and
ideologues, human beings are mere things that they possess. God does not use
people; he gave his life for them.
Applying
all this to the world in which we live, we can say this: it is only in God and
in the light of God that we rightly know man. Any self-knowledge that restricts
man to the tangible, fails to engage with man’s true depth. Man knows himself
only when he learns to understand himself in the light of God, and he knows
others fully when he sees the mystery of God in them. Mutual knowledge must
enable men to lead one another into unity with Jesus and into oneness with the
Trinitarian God.
Jesus
mission is universal; there is only one Shepherd. The Logos who became man in
Jesus is the Shepherd of all people. So, there is only one flock; ‘Go
therefore and make all nations my disciples’ (Mt. 28.19) However widely
scattered they are, all people can become one through the true Shepherd. In his
Incarnation and Cross he brings home the stray sheep, humanity; he brings me
home too. The Incarnate Logos is the true sheep-bearer – the Shepherd who
follows us through the thorns and deserts of life. Carried on his shoulders, we
come home. He gave his life for us. He himself is life.
Matthew,
Mark and Luke record Jesus’ question to his disciples about who people think
he is. Peter answers in the name of the twelve, ‘You are the Christ, Son of
the Living God’ (Mk. 16.16). Jesus then foretells his passion and
Resurrection. He says that to be his disciple it is indispensable to lose
one’s life and that without this it is impossible to find it (Mk. 16.24). John
too, places a similar confession on Peter’s lips (cf. Jn. 6.68,69). Peter’s
confession can be properly interpreted only in the context of Jesus’ prophecy
of the Passion and in his words about the way to discipleship. Indeed, in these
words about following the Crucified, one addresses fundamental issues of human
existence as such.
On
his journey to the Cross, shaping his disciples into his new family, the future
Church, Jesus distinguishes his disciples from those who merely listen. It is
characteristic of this community, the Church, to be ‘on the way’
with
Jesus.
This
community’s decision to accompany Jesus rests upon a knowledge of Jesus that
gives a new insight into God. On the one hand, there is external knowledge of
Jesus that, while not necessarily false, is inadequate. On the other hand, there
is a deeper knowledge that is linked to discipleship, to participation in
Jesus’ way. Such knowledge can grow only in that context. In his day, Jesus
was classified by many only as a prophet. Today, too, similar opinions are not
simply mistaken; they are greater or lesser approximations to the mystery of
Jesus but they do not arrive at Jesus’ identity. These opinions leave us with
a human experience of God that reflects his infinite reality in a limited human
way.
Standing
in marked contrast to the opinion of the people is the confession of the
disciples. Mark records Peter saying, ‘You are the Messiah (the Christ)’ and
Luke quotes him, ‘You are the Christ (the anointed one) of God’. According
to Matthew Jesus says, ‘You are the Christ (The Messiah), the Son of the
living God’ and in John’s Gospel we read,’ you are the Holy One of God’.
Jesus’ rebuff to Peter clarifies that Jesus in not just a political messiah.
Jesus also said to Peter, ‘for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you,
but my Father who is in heaven’. It is only the combination of Peter’s
confession and Jesus’ teaching of his disciples that furnishes us with the
full, essential Christian faith. Christians need to teach every generation anew
that Jesus’ way is not the way of earthly power and glory but the way of the
cross.
The
question of the high priest, ‘Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One
?’ (Mk. 14.61) tells us that this interpretation of Jesus had found its way
from circle of his disciples into public knowledge. Following the overflowing
catch of fish, Peter falls at Jesus’ feet in the posture of adoration and
says, ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord’. ‘Lord’ (Kyrios)
is the designation for God that was used in the Old Testament. Having recognised
Jesus earlier as ‘master’, ‘teacher’ and ’rabbi’, Peter now
recognises him as Kyrios. After the promise to leave himself under the appearance of
bread, Jesus asked the disciples if they too would leave. Peter answered,
‘Lord, to who shall we go ? You have the words of eternal life. And we have
believed, and we have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God’ (Jn.
6.68f).
This
is the pre-Easter faith of the Church. At certain key moments, the disciples
come to the astonishing realisation: This is God himself. They were unable to
put all this together into a perfect response and they drew on the Old
Testament’s words of promise: Christ, the Anointed One, the Son of God, Lord.
This faith could arrive at its complete form only when Thomas, touching the
wounds of the Risen Lord, cried out in amazement: ‘My Lord and my God’ (Jn.
20.28). We can never grasp these words completely. They always surpass us. These
words are a never-ending journey for all believers. Only by touching Jesus’
wounds and encountering his Resurrection are we able to grasp them, and then
they become our mission.
Matthew,
Mark, Luke and John create a link between Peter’s confession and the
Transfiguration. In both cases, the issue is the divinity of Jesus as the Son.
In both cases the appearance of his glory is connected with the Passion
motif. Jesus’ divinity belongs with the Cross. Jesus said that his Cross would
be his exaltation. Some scholars
connect Peter’s confession with the Jewish Feast of Atonement – the one time
in the year when the high priest solemnly pronounced the name YHWH. This context
added depth to Peter’s confession.
In
the story of the Transfiguration and in the night spent by Jesus in prayer, the
mountain again serves as the place of God’s particular closeness. He was
tempted on, he preached on, he agonized on, was crucified on and ascended into
heaven from the mountain.
Jesus’
relation to Moses is apparent at the Transfiguration. Light came from Moses
face, but it shone through Jesus. He
is light from light. In Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets speak with
Jesus. They spoke of the Cross, understood as Jesus’ Exodus. Jesus’ cross is
an Exodus. His cross was the hope of
The
disciples ‘were terrified’, and yet Peter said ‘Rabbi, it is good that we
are here’. His intention is to give permanence to the event of Revelation by
erecting tents of meeting, and the cloud may contain a reminiscence of the
Exodus. Peter was able to recognise that the realities prefigured by the Feast
of Tabernacles were accomplished when ‘The Word became flesh and pitched his
tent among us’(Jn.1.14) Jesus is the holy tent above whom the cloud of God’s
presence stands and spreads out to overshadow others.
Jesus has become the divine word of revelation, the Torah.
Between
Peter’s confession and his teaching about discipleship, Jesus said; ‘Truly,
I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they
see the
After
Easter three fundamental titles began to emerge: ‘Christ’ (Messiah),
‘Kyrios’ (Lord) and ‘Son of God’. The
first title taken in itself made little sense outside Jewish culture. It quickly
ceased to function as a title and was joined to the name of Jesus Christ.
The
words ‘Kyrios’ and ‘Son’ both point in one direction. ‘Lord’ had
become a paraphrase for the divine name. It identified Jesus with the living
God. The first Council of Nicea (325), after fierce debates over Jesus Sonship
summed up the results in the word homoousios
(of the same substance). When Jesus called himself ‘the Son’ it was not
meant in a mythological or political sense. It is meant to be understood quite
literally.
Jesus
called himself ‘Son of Man’ and simply ‘Son’. He did not apply the term
‘Messiah’ to himself. In the end, the title Messiah, ‘King of the Jews’
is placed over the cross in three languages for the whole world. The cross is
Jesus’ throne.
This
is the title Jesus most frequently used to speak of himself. And it is found
only on Jesus’ lips, with the single exception of when the dying Stephen said:
‘I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right had of
God’ (Acts. 7.56). He was citing a
saying of Jesus himself – ‘You shall see the Son of Man seated at the right
hand of Power and coming in the clouds of heaven’ (Mk.14.62)
No one could have been condemned to the Cross on account of harmless
moralising. Some dramatic claim must have been said and done. The greatness, the
dramatic newness, comes directly from Jesus. It developed within the faith of
the community through lived discipleship. It was not created.
When
Jesus said that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath and that
the Son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath, he was not expressing a modern
liberal position. The important thing about this saying is the overlapping of
‘man’ and ‘Son of man’. Man receives a freedom that has nothing to do
with caprice. In terms of the Son of Man, in terms of the criterion that Jesus
himself is, man is free and he knows how to use the Sabbath. In the ‘Son of
man’, man is revealed as he truly ought to be.
In
the Book of Daniel we read of four beasts representing secular powers and the
‘Son of Man’ representing the one who brings a new kingdom from God. This
story represents the history of the world. The beasts come from the depths of
the sea while the ‘Son of Man’ comes from above. Daniel uses the image of
the Son of Man to represent the coming kingdom of salvation.
The
first group of sayings about the Son of Man in the New Testament refer to his
future coming to judgement to gather the righteous, the elect. In the second
group of sayings, .Jesus speaks of his present activity as one who had authority
to forgive sins. The third group of sayings identify Jesus with the one who
serves and who suffers death. The term ‘Son of Man’ presents us in
concentrated form with all that is most original and distinctive about the
figure of Jesus – the bringer of true humanity through his having loved us to
the end. The new humanity that comes from God is what being a disciple of Jesus
Christ is all about.
The
Son
As
Christian faith took shape, the titles ‘Son of God’ and ‘Son’ were
blended even though they need to be distinguished. The term ‘Son of God’
derives from the political theology of
The
fulfilment of the promise of dominion over the nations was seen by the early
Christians as the Resurrection of Jesus. This was the long-awaited ‘today’
of the king on his throne predicted in the Psalms. Kingship had lost its
political character. The term ‘Son of God’ is now detached from the sphere
of political power. Jesus rules by
faith and love, from the cross. Christian faith acknowledges legitimate
authority, but it is fundamentally apolitical. It will always collide with
totalitarian regimes and as a result be driven to martyrdom, in communion with
the crucified Christ.
There
is a distinction between terms ‘Son of God and ‘the Son’. Only the Son
‘who is nearest the Father’s heart’ knows the Father because of their
communion. This unity of knowledge implies unity of will. We too are gifted by
God to become his sons by our unity of will with him. We pray for this in the
Our Father. True knowledge of God does not come to Scripture experts. It is
necessary to be ‘simple’. God chooses the weak and the foolish, the pure of
heart and the little ones to receive this knowledge. With this attitude, we can
say, ’Abba. Father’,
‘I
Am’
During
his dispute with the Jews, Jesus said ‘I am he’ (Jn. 8.24). This phrase has
its roots in the Old Testament when Moses heard God ‘I am who am’ at the
burning bush. (Ex. 3.124). The
burning bush is the Cross on which Jesus is exalted to the very height of the
God who is love. The highest claim
of revelation, the ‘I am he’ and Cross of Jesus are inseparably one. It is
at the Cross that the ‘I am’ can be ‘known’, that the ‘I am he’ can
be recognised. The Cross is the self-revelation of God’s reality in the midst
of history for us – ‘then you will know l that I am he’. And this
’then’ is realized repeatedly throughout history, starting at Pentecost.
When
Jesus said, ‘Before Abraham came into being I am’, he puts himself beyond
the world of birth and death. When
he calmed the sea, the apostles were overwhelmed as men were in the Old
Testament before the presence of God. They said ‘Truly, you are the Son of
God’ (Mt. 14.33)
In
John’s Gospel we hear Jesus say, ‘I am the Bread of Life’, ‘the light of
the world’, ‘the Door’, ‘the Good Shepherd’, ’the Resurrection and
the Life’, ‘the Way, the Truth and the Life.
These are all variations on a single theme, that Jesus has come that we
may have life and have it in abundance. This is true human happiness and
’perfect joy’ (Jn. 16.24). It is not just individual joy, but the entire
world having attained unity with God. Jesus gives life because he is God. In the
Creed, the Church joins Peter in confessing to Jesus ever anew: ‘You are the
Christ, the Son of the living God’