Long on my “need to read” list, I chose volume one of then-Pope Benedict XVI’s Jesus of Nazareth for my Lenten reading, and finished it right after Easter began. The book shook me to my Church-nerd core, and I think my head exploded after every third page or so. For instance: offering evidence that Barabas the “thief” was truly a political rebel leader and therefore appeared more like the traditional messianic figure that Israel was expecting (hence why the people chose him over Jesus!). Or the implication that the “Our Father,” given to the disciples at their request to “pray as he does,” is literally the prayer that God the Son prays to/with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit.
I love little details like this! But this holy and misunderstood servant of God was firing on all cylinders, and the results are as profound as they are Church-trivia worthy.
If you never read this book, or haven’t read it in a long time, I offer below my top 10 tabbed quotes for your enjoyment and reflection.
On the role of prophet:
His task is not to report on the events of tomorrow or the next day in order to satisfy human curiosity or the human need for security. He shows us the face of God, and in so doing he shows us the path that we have to take.
On the multiplication of loaves:
This miracle of the loaves has three aspects, then. It is preceded by the search for God, for his word, for the teaching that sets the whole of life on the right path. Furthermore, God is asked to supply the bread. Finally, readiness to share with one another is an essential element of the miracle. Listening to God becomes living with God, and leads from faith to love, to the discovery of the other. Jesus is not indifferent toward men’s hunger, their bodily needs, but he places these things in the proper context and the proper order.
On Jesus’ Third Temptation throughout history:
The Christian Empire attempted at an early stage to use the faith in order to cement political unity…The powerlessness of faith, the earthly powerlessness of Jesus Christ, was to be given the helping hand of political and military might. This temptation to use power to secure the faith has arisen again and again in varied forms throughout the centuries, and again and again faith has risked being suffocated in the embrace of power.
On the Beatitude of Mourning:
The mourning of which the Lord speaks is nonconformity with evil; it is a way of resisting models of behavior that the individual is pressured to accept because ‘everyone does it.’ The world cannot tolerate this kind of resistance; it demands conformity. It considers this mourning to be an accusation directed against the numbing of consciences. And so it is.
On the thirst and hunger for righteousness:
Does someone achieve blessedness and justification in God’s eyes…because he has declared his opinions and wishes to be norms of conscience and so made himself the criterion? No, God demands the opposite: that we become inwardly attentive to his quiet exhortation, which is present in us and which tears us away from what is merely habitual and puts us on the road to truth.
On a pious Rabbi’s struggle with Christ as “Lord of the Sabbath,” and how it confirms Jesus’ teachings:
Jesus understands himself as the Torah–as the word of God in person…[Rabbi Neusner] is concerned with the consequences of Jesus’ centrality for Israel’s daily life: The Sabbath loses its great social function. The Sabbath is one of the essential elements that hold Israel together. Centering upon Jesus breaks open this sacred structure and imperils an essential element that cements the unity of the People of God…Communion with [Jesus] is filial communion with the Father–it is a yes to the fourth commandment on a new level, the highest level. It is entry into the family of those who call God Father and who can do so because they belong to a ‘we’–formed of those who are united with Jesus and, by listening to him, united with the will of the Father, thereby attaining to the heart of obedience intended by the Torah.
On the “Our Father”:
The Our Father does not project a human image onto heaven, but shows us from heaven–from Jesus–what we as human begins can and should be like.
On the meaning of the divine name (“hallowed be thy 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 a 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.
On why Jesus speaks in parables:
Jesus is not trying to convey to us some sort of abstract knowledge that does not concern us profoundly…He shows us God: not an abstract God, but the God who acts, who intervenes in our lives, and wants to take us by the hand. He shows us through everyday things who we are and what we must do. He conveys knowledge that makes demands of us; it not only or even primarily adds to what we know, but it changes our lives.
On the reaction of the Prodigal Son’s Brother and the temptation of the righteous:
…bitterness toward God’s goodness reveals an inward bitterness regarding their own obedience, a bitterness that indicates the limitations of this obedience. In their heart of hearts, they would have gladly journeyed out into that great ‘freedom’ as well. There is an unspoken envy of what others have been able to get away with. They have not gone through the pilgrimage that purified the younger brother and made him realize what it means to be free and what it means to be a son. They actually carry their freedom as if it were slavery and they had not matured to real sonship. They, too, are still in need of a path; they can find it if they simply admit that God is right and accept his feast as their own. In this parable, then, the Father through Christ is addressing us…encouraging us too to convert truly and to find joy in our faith.
