Feast of the Transfiguration

Theophanes the Greek. The Transfiguration. Early 15th century.

Christ's Tabor radiance is a kind of mirror in which we glimpse the glory that God wills to give his friends. The resplendence of the Transfiguration reveals the fullness of life destined to be ours. The Transfiguration invites us to configuration. We peer into the glory that pours from every pore of the transfigured Christ, we cast off everything unworthy of our personal relationship with the Infinite, and we take on the luster of the Son of God. Jesus gazes back at us with a luminous look of love that make us desire to live his transparent beauty -- to be luminaries. Silently from Tabor's splendor, the Savior begs: "Become what you behold!"

Meditation from Magnificat 

What is revealed here is not only the glory of pure, angelic spirit, but of the spirit through the body, glory of the spiritualized body of man. Not the glory of God alone, not a piece of disclosed heaven, not only the sheen of the Lord as it hovered over the ark of the covenant, but the glory of the God-Logos in the Son of Man. Life above live and death; life of the body, but issue of the spirit; life of the spirit, but issue of the Logos; life of the man Jesus, but issue of the Son of God.

Romano Guardini, The Lord

Lent: Who Do You Say I Am?

From a long ago insert I wrote for our church bulletin. 

Who Do You Say I Am?

Filled with the holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days, to be tempted by the devil. ...

Luke, chapter 4

The common practice today is to measure the Bible against the so-called modern worldview, whose fundamental dogma is that God cannot act in history—that everything to do with God is to be relegated to the domain of subjectivity. And so the Bible no longer speaks of God, the living God; no, now we alone speak and decide what God can do and what we will and should do. And the Antichrist, with an air of scholarly excellence, tells us that any exegesis1 that reads the Bible from the perspective of faith in the living God, in order to listen to what God has to say, is fundamentalism; he wants to convince us that only his kind of exegesis, the supposedly purely scientific kind, in which God says nothing and has nothing to say, is able to keep abreast of the times.

The theological debate between Jesus and the devil is a dispute over the correct interpretation of Scripture, and it is relevant to every period of history. The hermeneutical2 question lying at the basis of proper scriptural exegesis is this: What picture of God are we working with? The dispute about interpretation is ultimately a dispute about who God is. Yet in practice, the struggle over the image of God, which underlies the debate about valid biblical interpretation, is decided by the picture we form of Christ: Is he, who remained without worldly power, really the son of the living God? ...

The point at issue is revealed in Jesus’ answer, which is also taken from Deuteronomy: “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test” (Deut 6:16). ... The issue, then, is the one we have already encountered: God has to submit to experiment. He is “tested,” just as products are tested. He must submit to the conditions that we say are necessary if we are to reach certainty. If he doesn’t grant us now the protection he promises in Psalm 91,3 then he is simply not God. He will have shown his own word, and himself, too to be false.

We are dealing with the vast question as to how we can and cannot know God, how we are related to God and how we can lose him. The arrogance that would make God an object and impose our laboratory conditions upon him is incapable of finding him. For it already implies that we deny God as God by placing ourselves above him, by discarding the whole dimension of love, of interior listening; by no longer acknowledging as real anything but what we can experimentally test and grasp. To think like that is to make oneself God. And to do that is to abase not only God, but the world and oneself, too.

Joseph Ratzinger4,­ Jesus of Nazareth

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We are quite used to thinking of Jesus’ struggle with temptation as a scenario of the devil offering worldly methods which Jesus spurns while worshiping God. This often leads to us considering what we must struggle with or deny in order to follow Jesus.This is valid, however, we have seen this piece of scripture presented so many times that it can be easy to miss levels of meaning aside from struggle with physical desires and denial.

Therefore, it is startling to see Joseph Ratzinger boldly state that Jesus’ verbal battle with the devil is one of Biblical interpretation. It brings us down to earth with a thump. Moving to this different level of understanding scripture offers challenges to our easy doubts of God’s presence in our lives and in our world.

It is easy to doubt and to fall back on the well worn phrase “trust but verify.” Indeed, we have been taught this lesson by the world, where business and politics, to name merely two influences, have given us much reason to be wary, cynical and doubtful of claims we cannot see, touch, or prove scientifically.

However, we cannot use these criteria when it comes to friends, loves, children, spouses, or, most importantly, God. With these cherished relationships, we must learn in a way that cannot be quantified. We must release our need to control. We must listen. We must remain open. We must learn. We must trust.

We may not know what questions to ask in order to learn to love God better. Jesus came to bring us the answers before the questions were spoken. We can find them by being open to God’s living word and listening.

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1 Critical explanation or analysis, especially of a text.

2 The theory and methodology of interpretation, especially of scriptural text.

3 Psalm 91 is a prayer of someone who has taken refuge in the security of the temple. Verses 11-12 state, “For God commands the angels to guard you in all your ways. With their hands they shall support you, lest you strike your foot against a stone.” Read the entire psalm to see the statement of God’s promises therein.

4 Pope Benedict XVI wrote Jesus of Nazareth under his own name, Joseph Ratzinger.

Well Said: What did Jesus actually bring, if not world peace, universal prosperity, and a better world?

The great question that will be with us throughout this entire book: What did Jesus actually bring, if not world peace, universal prosperity, and a better world? What has he brought?

The answer is very simple: God.... He has brought God, and now we know his face, now we can call upon him. Now we know the path that we human beings have to take in this world. Jesus has brought God and with God the truth about our origin and destiny: faith, hope and love. It is only because of our hardness of heart that we think this is too little. Yes indeed, God's power works quietly in this world, but it is the true and the lasting power. Again and again, God's cause seems to be in its death throes. Yet over and over again it proves to be the thing that truly endures and saves.

-- Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth

Where Do We Look to Find Jesus?

This insert was in our church bulletin last week and I thought that y'all might like it as well. The new liturgical year is a good time to start afresh and this begins a series that will take us back to basics in looking for Jesus.

Where Do We Look to Find Jesus?

“ This is the context in which we need to read the conclusion of the prologue to John’s Gospel: “No one has ever seen God; it is the only Son, who is nearest to the Father’s heart who has made him known” (Jn 1:18). It is in Jesus that the promise of the new prophet is fulfilled. What was true of Moses only in fragmentary form has now been fully realized in the person of Jesus; He lives before the face of God, not just as a friend, but as a Son; he lives in the most intimate unity with the Father.

We have to start here if we are truly to understand the figure of Jesus as it is presented to us in the new Testament; all that we are told about his words, deeds, sufferings, and glory is anchored here. This is the central point, and if we leave it out of account, we fail to grasp what the figure of Jesus is really all about, so that it becomes self-contradictory and, in the end, unintelligible. The question that every reader of the New Testament must ask—where Jesus’ teaching came from, how his appearance in history is to be explained— can really be answered only from this perspective. The reaction of his hearers was clear: This teaching does not come from any school. It is radically different from what can be learned in schools. It is not the kind of explanation or interpretation that is taught there. It is different; it is interpretation “with authority.” …

Jesus’ teaching is not the product of human learning, of whatever kind. It originates from immediate contact with the Father, from “face-to-face” dialogue—from the vision of the one who rests close to the Father’s heart. It is the Son’s word. Without this inner grounding, his teaching would be pure presumption. This is just what the learned men of Jesus’ time judged it to be, and they did so precisely because they could not accept its inner grounding: seeing and knowing face-to-face. ”

Jesus of Nazareth by Joseph Ratzinger

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Last Sunday we celebrated the Solemnity of Christ the King. This Sunday, we begin Advent and a new liturgical year. How fitting that we begin and end the year with our eyes fixed on Christ as he is the center of our faith and the Church’s reason for existence.

Yet, often that very task can be more difficult than one might imagine. There are many interpretations of Christ presented in books, on television, and in movies. Newly unearthed “Gospels” told by Thomas, Peter, or Judas are not found in the Bible but flourish on store bookshelves. Popular thrillers such as the Da Vinci Code are sold as fiction but claim roots in older nonfiction texts. Ancient heresies are dusted off, given a new name, and taught as spiritual truths. We are told that there is no such thing as an absolute truth in this relativistic age and that all of the world’s main religions are basically the same. In other words, we continually have new, misleading information given to us with an authoritative tone. No wonder we are confused.

As Catholics we do not have to look for Jesus all alone. The Church has written down her teachings to help us understand Holy Scripture and Tradition in one handy book: the Catechism. If you haven’t opened your Catechism lately, take a look the next time you have a question. Use it for daily meditative reading. There is a wealth of over 2,000 years of cumulative Christian wisdom between those covers.

More recently, “Jesus of Nazareth” was written by Pope Benedict precisely to help us fix our eyes firmly on the real Jesus shown in the Gospels. No one sees the swirl of confusion, misinformation, and flawed scholarship to which we are subjected more clearly than one who carries the papal shepherd’s crook. He takes us back to Scripture in order to show us Jesus Christ clearly, as well as providing much good material for meditation.

In the weeks to come, we will look for the real Jesus using these books as well as other informed sources. We will also consider occasionally some of the difficult questions of modern times in the light of Church teachings. We will fix our eyes on Christ together.

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Jesus of Nazareth by Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) is available at the St. Jude Library.

Seeing Jesus at Prayer

I knew Jesus would go off to pray alone. You can't read the Gospels without seeing that constantly mentioned. However, it never, ever occurred to me that there were a few occasions that he had the disciples with him. What would they have learned about the nature of Jesus? What would they have learned about prayer ... and the Father ... and themselves?

Leave it to Pope Benedict to give us penetrating insights in Jesus of Nazareth. These two paragraphs are far apart and you must go read both sections about Peter's confession that Jesus is the Lord, the Son of God, (in answer to Jesus' question of who do the disciples say he is) and the Transfiguration for full clarity. Though in truth, the Pope's personal thoughts on Jesus are sufficiently deep water that I foresee reading this book many more times to fully plumb the depths.

In Luke -- and this is entirely in keeping with his portrait of the figure of Jesus -- Peter's confession is connected with a prayer event. Luke beings his account of the story with a deliberate paradox: "As he was praying alone, the disciples were with him" (Lk 9:18). The disciples are drawn into his solitude, his communion with the Father that is reserved to him alone. They are privileged to see him as the one who -- as reflected at the beginning of this book -- speaks face-to-face with the Father, person to person. They are privileged to see him in his utterly unique filial being -- at the point from which all his words, his deeds, and his powers issue. They are privileged to see what the "people" do not see, and this seeing gives rise to a recognition that goes beyond the "opinion" of the people. This seeing is the wellspring of their faith, their confession; it provides the foundation for the Church.

... Luke is the only one of the Evangelists who begins his account by indicating the purpose of Jesus' ascent [for the Transfiguration]: He "went up on the mountain to pray" (Lk 9:28). It is in the context of Jesus' prayer that he now explains the even that the three disciples are to witness: "And as he was praying, the appearance of his face was altered, and his clothing became dazzling white" (Lk 9:29). The Transfiguration is a prayer event; it displays visibly what happens when Jesus talks with his Father: the profound interpenetration of his being with God, which then becomes pure light. In his oneness with the Father, Jesus is himself "light from light." The reality that he is in the deepest core of his being, which Peter tried to express in his confession -- that reality becomes perceptible to the senses at this moment: Jesus being in the light of God, his own being-light as Son.

Jesus of Nazareth by Joseph Ratzinger (a.k.a. Pope Benedict XVI)

More Relating to That "Boot Camp" for Love

My morning's reading of Jesus of Nazareth (yes, I'm finally back to reading it) dovetails perfectly with yesterday's personal revelation. I think someone's trying to tell me something ...

Let us recall that the parable of the vine occurs in the context of Jesus' Last Supper. After the multiplication of the loaves he had spoken of the true bread from heaven that he would give, and thus he left us with a profound interpretation of the eucharistic bread that was to come. It is hard to believe that in his discourse on the vine he is not tacitly alluding to the new wine that had already been prefigured at Cana and which he now gives to us -- the wine that would flow from his Passion, from his "love to the end" (Jn 13:1). In this sense, the parable of the vine has a thoroughly eucharistic background. The parable of the fruit that Jesus brings forth: his love, which pours itself out for us on the Cross and which is the choice new wine destined for God's marriage feast with man. Thus we come to understand the full depth and grandeur of the Eucharist, even though it is not explicitly mentioned here. The Eucharist points us toward the fruit that we, as branches of the vine, can and must bear with Christ an by virtue of Christ. The fruit 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 -- and hence the true justice that prepares the world for the Kingdom of God.

Purification and fruit belong together; only by undergoing God's purifications can we bear the fruit that flows into the eucharistic mystery and so leads to the marriage feast that is the goal toward which God directs history. Fruit and lo e belong together: The true fruit is the love that has passed through the Cross, through God's purifications. "Remaining" is an essential part of all this. In verses 1-10 the word remain (in Greek menein) occurs ten times. What the Church Fathers call perseverantia -- patient steadfastness in communion with the Lord amidst all the vicissitudes of life -- is placed center stage here. Initial enthusiasm is easy. Afterward though, it is time to stand firm, even along the monotonous desert paths that we are called upon to traverse in this life -- with the patience it takes to tread evenly, a patience in which the romanticism of the initial awakening subsides, so that only the deep, pure Yes of faith remains. This is the way to produce good wine ...

Jesus of Nazareth by Joseph Ratzinger (a.k.a. Pope Benedict XVI)

The Lord's Prayer: "Hallowed Be Thy Name" (part 2)

Continuing the contemplation from Monday of God's name.

It remains true, of course, that God did not simply refuse Moses' request. If we want to understand this curious interplay between name and non-name, we have to be clear about what a name actually is. We could put it very simply by saying that the name creates the possibility of address or invocation. It establishes relationship. When Adam names the animals, what this means is not that he indicates their essential natures, but that he fits them into his human world, put them within reach of his call. Having said this, we are now in a position to understand the positive meaning of the divine name: God establishes a relationship between himself and us. He puts himself within reach of our invocation. He enters into relationship with us and enables us to be in relationship with him. Yet this means that in some sense he hands himself over to our human world. He has made himself accessible and, therefore, vulnerable as well. He assumes the risk of relationship, of communion, with us.

Jesus of Nazareth by Joseph Ratzinger (a.k.a. Pope Benedict XVI)

The Lord's Prayer: "Father"

Whoops! I skipped right around this in posting that first part on prayer the other day. I liked these thoughts on the concepts of being children of God.

... There is is a unique sense in which Christ is the "image of God" (2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:15). The Fathers of the Church therefore say that when God created man "in his image," he looked toward the Christ who was to come, and created man according to the image of the "new Adam," the man who is the criterion of the human. Above all, though Jesus is "the Son" in the strict sense -- he is of one substance with the Father. He wants to draw all of us into his humanity and so into his Sonship, into his total belonging to God.

This gives the concept of being God's children a dynamic quality: We are not ready-made children of God from the start, but are meant to become so increasingly by growing more and more deeply in communion with Jesus. Our sonship turns out to be identical with following Christ. To name God as Father thus becomes a summons to us: to live as a "child," as a son or daughter. "All that is mine is yours (??? check this word)," Jesus says in his high-priestly prayer to the Father (Jn 17:10), and the father says the same thing to the elder brother of the Prodigal Son (Lk 15:31). The word father is an invitation to live from our awareness of this reality. Hence, too, the delusion of false emancipation, which marked the beginning of mankind's history of sin, is overcome. Adam, heeding the words of the serpent, wants to become god himself and to shed his need for God. We see that to be God's child is not a matter of dependency, but rather of standing in the relation of love that sustains man's existence and gives it meaning and grandeur.

Jesus of Nazareth by Joseph Ratzinger (a.k.a. Pope Benedict XVI)

The Lord's Prayer: "Hallowed Be Thy Name" (part 1)

Had someone told me this before? I don't think so and yet, again, this seems one of those very obvious, logical pieces of information that I should know somehow. Thank heavens that Joseph Ratzinger presents these ideas so logically and simply that I can remember and absorb.

But in the world of Moses' time there were many gods. Moses therefore asks the name of this God that will prove his special authority vis-a-vis the gods. In this respect, the idea of the divine name belongs first of all to the polytheistic world, in which this God, too, has to give himself a name. But the God who calls Moses is truly God. and God in the strict and true sense is not plural. God is by essence one. For this reason he cannot enter into the world of the gods as one among many; he cannot have one name among others.

God's answer to Moses is thus at once a refusal and a pledge. He says of himself simply, "I am who I am" -- he is without any qualification. This pledge is a name and a non-name at one and the same time. The Israelites were therefore perfectly right in refusing to utter this self-designation of God, expressed in the word YHWH, so as to avoid degrading it to the level of names of pagan deities. By the same token, recent bible translations were wrong to write out this name -- which Israel always regarded as mysterious and unutterable -- as if it were just any old name. By doing so, they have dragged the mystery of God, which cannot be captured in images or in names lips can utter, down to the level of some familiar item within a common history of religions.

Jesus of Nazareth by Joseph Ratzinger (a.k.a. Pope Benedict XVI)

More of this will follow tomorrow.

The Lord's Prayer: What Prayer Is (part 2)

A continuation from yesterday of the excerpt where Pope Benedict speaks about what we learn about prayer in general through Jesus' teaching of the Our Father, a.k.a. The Lord's Prayer. I especially like the contemplations about "formulaic prayer" as a school.

This is what prayer really is -- being in silent inward communion with God. It requires nourishment, and that is why we need articulated prayer in words, images, or thoughts. The more God is present in us, the more we will really be able to be present to him when we utter the words of our prayers. But the converse is also true: Praying actualizes and deepens our communion of being with God. Our praying can and should arise above all from our heart, from our needs, our hopes, our joys, our sufferings, form our shame over sin, and from our gratitude for the good. It can and should be a wholly personal prayer. But we also constantly need to make use of those prayers that express in words the encounter with God experienced both by the Church as a whole and by individual members of the Church. For without these aids to prayer, our own praying and our image of God become subjective and end up reflecting ourselves more than the living God. In the formulaic prayers that arose first from the faith of Israel and then from the faith of praying members of the Church, we get to know God and ourselves as well. They are a "school of prayer" that transforms and opens up our life.

Jesus of Nazareth by Joseph Ratzinger (a.k.a. Pope Benedict XVI)

The Lord's Prayer: What Prayer Is (part 1)

I fell away from reading this book, for a variety of reasons that had nothing to do with the book itself. Back into it, I am once again so thankful for the way it spurs me to think in ways that both new and yet seem like something that we already knew. Ratzinger here speaks about what we learn about prayer in general through Jesus' teaching of the Our Father, a.k.a. The Lord's Prayer.

The other false form of prayer the Lord warns us against is the chatter, the verbiage, that smothers the spirit. We re all familiar with the danger of reciting habitual formulas while our mind is somewhere else entirely. We are at our most attentive when we are driven by inmost need to ask God for something or are prompted by a joyful heart to thank him for good things that have happened to us. Most importantly, though, our relationship to God should not be confined to such momentary situations, but should be present as the bedrock of our soul. In order for that to happen, this relation has to be constantly revived and the affairs of our everyday lives have to be constantly related back to it. The more the depths of our souls are directed toward God, the better we will be able to pray. The more prayer is the foundation that upholds our entire existence, the more we will become men of peace. the more we can bear pain, the more we wil be able to understand others and open ourselves to them. this orientation pervasively shaping our whole consciousness, this silent presence of God at the heart of our thinking, our meditating, and our being, is what we mean by "prayer without ceasing." this is ultimately what we mean by love of God, which is at the same time the condition and the driving force between love of neighbor.

Jesus of Nazareth by Joseph Ratzinger (a.k.a. Pope Benedict XVI)

I will continue this excerpt tomorrow but wanted to break this up so that we can more easily contemplate it.

The Beatitudes Shown in a Whole New Light

Why did I never think of the Beatitudes this way? It all is so clear once we read it ... obviously that's the advantage of having so many years of study and reflection as Josef Ratzinger does. This is just a tidbit and you really should read what goes before ... and then follow as he takes each of the beatitudes under reflection.

This reflection upon Paul and John has shown us two things. First, the Beatitudes express the meaning of discipleship. They become more concrete an real the more completely the disciple dedicates himself to service in the way that is illustrated for us in the life of Saint Paul. What the Beatitudes mean cannot be expressed in purely theoretical terms; it is proclaimed in the life and suffering, and in the mysterious joy, of the disciple who gives himself over completely to the Lord. This leads to the second point: the Christological character of the Beatitudes. The disciple is bound to the mystery of Christ. His life is immersed in communion with Christ: "It is not longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2:20). The Beatitudes are the transposition of Cross and Resurrection into discipleship. But they apply to the disciple because they were first paradigmatically lived by Christ himself.

This becomes even more evident if we turn now to consider Matthew's version of the Beatitudes (cf. Mt 5:3-12). Anyone who reads Matthews' text attentively will realize that the Beatitudes present a sort of veiled interior biography of Jesus, a kind of portrait of his figure. He who has no place to lay his head (cf. Mt 8:20) is truly poor; he who can say, "Come to me ... for I am meek and lowly in heart" (cf. Mt 11:28-29) is truly meek; he is the one who is pure of heart and so unceasingly beholds God. He is the peacemaker, he is the one who suffers for God's sake. The Beatitudes display the mystery of Christ himself, and they call us into communion with him. But precisely because of their hidden Christological character, the Beatitudes are also a road map for the Church, which recognizes in them the model of what she herself should be. They are directions for discipleship, directions that concern every individual, even though -- according to the variety of callings -- they do so differently for each person.

Jesus of Nazareth by Joseph Ratzinger (a.k.a. Pope Benedict XVI)

The Pharisee, the Sinner, and Looking at God

The one example that Benedict allows himself in the chapter "The Kingdom of God" makes me wish that we had an entire book of his thoughts about the various parables. Once again, we already understood the basic differences between the Pharisee who stands publicly praying aloud and the quietly humble tax collector off to the side (Lk 18:9-14). The comparison is so basic that it can't be missed. If that were enough, we have had it pointed out to us in various homilies, I am sure. But which of them considered the story with the clarity with which Benedict ponders it here? This book is definitely good for my humility ...

The Pharisee can boast considerable virtues; he tells God only about himself, and he thinks he is praising God in praising himself. The tax collector knows he has sins, he knows he cannot boast before God, and he prays in full awareness of his debt to grace. Does this mean, then, that the Pharisee represents ethics and the tax collector represents grace without ethics or even in opposition to ethics? The real point is not the question "ethics--yes or no?" but that there are two ways of relating to God and to oneself. The Pharisee 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. He has no real relation to God, who is ultimately superfluous--what he does himself is enough. Man makes himself righteous. The tax collector, by contrast, sees himself in the light of God. He has looked toward God, and in the process his eyes have been opened to see himself. So he knows that he needs God and that he lives by God's goodness, which he cannot force God to give him and which he cannot procure for himself. He knows that he needs mercy and so he will learn from God's mercy to become merciful himself, and thereby to become like God. He draws life from being-in-relation, from receiving all as gift; he will always need the gift of goodness, of forgiveness, but in receiving it he will always learn to pass the gift on to others.The grace for which he prays does not dispense him from ethics. It is what makes him truly capable of doing good in the first place. He needs God, and because he recognizes that, he begins through God's goodness to become good himself. Ethics is not denied; it is freed from the constraints of moralism and set in the context of a relationship of love--of relationship to God. And that is how it truly comes into its own.

Jesus of Nazareth by Joseph Ratzinger (a.k.a. Pope Benedict XVI)

Temptation of Jesus: In the Temple

Considering the temptation where the devil attempts to lure Jesus into stepping off the temple roof because the angels will "guard you in all your ways...", Benedict takes us into an unexpected direction. Certainly everyone has reflected upon the devil's excellent knowledge of scripture and his ability to pull it from context and twist it for his own uses. The Pope considers this specifically in terms of this temptation and, once again, surprised me.

I could quote the whole darned book for you but will try to feel satisfied with sharing this couple of excerpts for the moment.

First, about scripture:

... The devil proves to be a Bible expert who can quote the Psalm exactly. The whole conversation of the second temptation takes the form of a dispute between two Bible scholars. Remarking on this passage, Joachim Gnilka says that the devil presents himself here as a theologian. The Russian writer Vladimir Soloviev took up this motif in his short story "The Antichrist." The Antichrist receives an honorary doctorate in theology from the University of Tubingen and is a great Scripture scholar. Soloviev's portray of the Antichrist forcefully expresses his skepticism regarding a certain type of scholarly exegesis current at the time. This is not a rejection of scholarly biblical interpretation as such, but an eminently salutary and necessary warning against its possible aberrations. The fact is that scriptural exegesis can become a tool of the Antichrist. Soloviev is not the first person to tell us that; it is the deeper point of the temptation story itself. The alleged findings of scholarly exegesis have been used to put together the most dreadful books that destroy the figure of Jesus and dismantle the faith. ...

The theological debate between Jesus and the devil is a dispute over the correct interpretation of Scripture, and it is relevant to every period of history. The hermeneutical question lying at the basis of proper scriptural exegesis is this: What picture of God are we working with? The dispute about interpretation is ultimately a dispute about who God is. Yet in practice, the struggle over the image of God, which underlies the debate about valid biblical interpretation, is decided by the picture we form of Christ: Is he, who remained without worldly power, really the Son of God?

Secondly, he returns to the question which Jesus answers when he says, "You shall not put the Lord your God to the test." I basically knew the reason for that, as does any faithful believer, but look at how eloquently and elegantly Benedict says it.

We are dealing here with the vast question as to how we can and cannot know God, how we are related to God and how we can lose him. The arrogance that would make God an object and impose our laboratory conditions upon him is incapable of finding him. The arrogance that would make God an object and impose our laboratory conditions upon him is incapable offending him. For it already implies that we deny God as God by placing ourselves above him, by discarding the whole dimension of love, of interior listening; by no longer acknowledging as real anything but what we can experimentally test and grasp. To think like that is to make oneself God. And to do that is to abase not only God, but the world and oneself too.

Jesus of Nazareth by Joseph Ratzinger (a.k.a. Pope Benedict XVI)

Completely off-topic:

I have been to Tubingen. It is a delightful university town and you will find darned few American tourists there. Or, I should say, at least you did when we went. It had the nearest castle to where my brother was living at the time so we went to see it. After Pope Benedict was elected we were all delighted to think of him teaching there and wandering in the same streets that we had for that summer day that I remember so fondly.

The Temptations of Jesus

The temptations of Jesus is one of the passages that I sometimes slide into when meditating on Jesus' baptism. Naturally I was delighted to read the Pope's thoughts on this same passage. As with all scripture, it is so rich and layered and there is so much that applies to our own daily lives which are lived with the constant temptation to do what we like rather than what God asks of us. Here's just a bit of that section.

Moral posturing is part and parcel of temptation. It does not invite us directly to do evil -- no, that would be far too blatant. It pretends to show us a better way, where we finally abandon our illusions and throw ourselves into the work of actually making the world a better place. It claims, moveover, to speak for true realism: What's real is what is right there in front of us -- power and bread. By comparison, the things of God fade into unreality, into a secondary world that no one really needs.

God is the issue: Is he real, reality itself, or isn't he? Is he good, or do we have to invent the good ourselves? The God question is the fundamental question, and it sets us down right at the crossroads of human existence. What must the savior of the world do or not do? That is the question the temptations of Jesus are about. ...

Jesus of Nazareth by Joseph Ratzinger (a.k.a. Pope Benedict XVI)

Jesus' Baptism

This book is so good! I know I've said that before but I just cannot say it enough. As if that weren't enough, last night I was lolling on the couch reading aloud parts to Tom. (Not from this section below, from further ahead in the Tempting of Jesus section.) Astonishingly enough, Tom objected to one concept, saying that he had heard somewhere that such an interpretation meant revisionist thinking.

I was shocked. Shocked!

Tom never (never) has comments like this. I was resisting being annoyed that someone would dare to question The Pope ... and then I remembered that was the entire reason he skirted having the book looked at by the Magisterium. So that people would feel free to talk over the ideas in the book without having The Pope looming in the background.

Obviously his plan is working. How can I be annoyed about that? Well, I can't.

(Also I was pleased because I attributed his conversing about these things to our evening readings together ... though he is less pleased with Beginning to Pray than I hoped. Still, we persevere...)

I became intrigued. "Who said that? I want to read it."

He couldn't remember. But he promised that if he comes across it again he will let me know.

Just a tidbit of some of the book I'm enjoying so much.

A broad current of liberal scholarship has interpreted Jesus' Baptism as a vocational experience. After having led a perfectly normal life in the province of Galilee, at the moment of his Baptism he is said to have had an earth-shattering experience. It was then, we are told, that he became aware of his special relationship to God and his religious mission. This mission, moreover, supposedly originated from the expectation motif then dominant in Israel, creatively reshaped by John, and from the emotional upheaval that the event of his Baptism brought about in Jesus' life. But none of this can be found in the texts. However much scholarly erudition goes into the presentation of this reading, it has to be seen as more akin to a "Jesus novel" than as an actual interpretation of the texts. The texts give us no window into Jesus' inner life -- Jesus stands above our psychologizing (Guardini, Das Wesen des Christentums). But they do enable us to ascertain how Jesus is connected with "Moses and the Prophets"; they do enable us to recognize the intrinsic unity of the trajectory stretching from the first moment of his life to the Cross and the Resurrection. Jesus does not appear in the role of a human genius subject to emotional upheavals, who sometimes fails and sometimes succeeds. If that were the case, he would remain just an individual who lived long ago and so would ultimately be separated from us by an unbridgeable gulf. Instead, he stands before us as the "beloved Son." He is, on one hand, the Wholly Other, but by the same token he can become a contemporary of us all, "more interior" to each one of us than we are to ourselves" (Saint Augustine, Confessions, III, 6, 11).

Jesus of Nazareth by Joseph Ratzinger (a.k.a. Pope Benedict XVI)

By the way, Thursday Night Gumbo is beginning to work their way through this book also and is sure to have interesting posts ... beginning with this one.