Jesus, the Great "Amen"? (A Summation of Our Faith)

James Tissot, Le Pater Noster

In the Book of Revelation, Jesus described himself to the church in Laodicea as, "the Amen, the faithful and true witness" (Rev. 3:14). We use "Amen" at the end of our prayers - when being led in prayer by another to say, "I agree, so be it," or when praying by ourselves to say "let it be done." We might also use it to express agreement with what someone has said.

Jesus used the word "Amen" much differently, though - not at the end of his statements, but at the beginning. In our modern English translations we often find it rendered, "Truly, I say to you...," or when Jesus used a double-amen, "Truly, truly, I say to you..." There are fifty such occurrences in the four gospels, twenty five in the Gospel of John alone. (Fr. Felix Just, S.J., has a wonderful summary.) Fr. Roch Kereszty, O Cist., was the first to bring this to my attention, and I want to quote from him here:

...the "Amen" of Jesus has a "hidden prehistory;" it is the final act of a dialogue between the Father and Jesus. The word of Jesus is of divine authority because it comes from the Father. Yet the Father's divine word is Jesus' own, not that of an "Outsider" as in the case of a prophetic message. Here we have a first hint of Jesus' personal identity: his absolute authority is based on his absolute dependence on his Father. (Jesus Christ: Fundamentals of Christology, 110-11.)

Ultimately, Jesus' "Amen" is a revelation of the Trinity and of the mystery of the Incarnation. Jesus is the one Who, from all eternity, streams forth from the Father. All that the Father is, He gives; all that the Son is, He receives. As the Letter to the Hebrews tells us, Jesus is "the refulgence of [the Father's] glory, the very imprint of his being" (Heb. 1;3); or, as Colossians says, He is "the image of the invisible God" (Col. 1:15). When the Son became incarnate, He revealed the Father in and through His humanity. His words and actions were those of the divine Son, the perfect image, perfect Word, of the Father (Jn. 1:1; Mt. 11:27). Jesus is the Great Amen, the faithful witness to all that the Father is and does (Jn. 5:19; Rev. 3:14) - praise God!

Alright, now lets look at something St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians: "all the promises of God find their Yes in [Christ]. That is why we utter the Amen through him, to the glory of God" (2 Cor. 1:20).  What beauty - what an amazing summation of the Gospel:  Through grace, through our union with the Incarnate Son, we say "Amen" to all that the Father has said. We say "yes," "let it be so," to God's vision of man and woman, His vision of sexuality, of the family, of community, and of the world. Like Jesus, we receive all we are from the Father and offer ourselves completely back to him in loving gratitude. We live the Apostle Paul's call to offer our "bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God," recognizing that this is authentic "spiritual worship" (Rom. 12:1). In Christ, in His Eucharist, we reach the apex of prayer:

Through him, and with him, and in him, O God, almighty Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours, forever and ever.  Amen.

Praying the "Our Father" at Mass

Our Faith is so immensely deep that we will never stop unpacking it. At Mass, just today, I was struck by the placement of the Our Father within the Liturgy of the Eucharist:

The Our Father could be prayed at any point, but it is only after the Consecration, when Jesus is sacramentally and substantially present with us, that we pray "Our Father." Jesus is present to us in the Liturgy in several different ways - in the other members of the congregation, in the priest through Holy Orders, in the Word  proclaimed to us - but it is only after He becomes substantially present to us in the Eucharist that, together with Him, we say "Our Father." 

It takes my mind to two beautiful passages of Scripture. The first is from John's Gospel, when the Risen Christ sent Mary Magdalen to the Apostles with the message, "I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God" (Jn 20:17). And the second is from the pen of Paul, "Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father!" (Gal 4:6).

The majesty of pronoun "Our" in the Our Father derives from its inclusion of Christ Jesus!

Our Prayer: God's Love for God

"This holy Spirit of Jesus is in us, and he is speaking through us when we pray. Basically prayer means that from the depths of my heart, God speaks to God" - Youth Catechism of the Catholic Church, 496

Reread those words.  They probably would not be the first to jump to mind if someone asked, "What is prayer?"  You and I would probably respond that prayer is speaking with God.  And that is true; but at it's deepest level, Christian prayer is something that God - God the Son, Christ - is doing within us.

"But Shane, I don't feel anything like that happening when I pray."  Well no, you wouldn't. God is higher than our feelings; he is beyond our powers of detection. We know this truth because, like so many others, it was revealed by Christ to the Apostles and handed down to us through Scripture and Tradition.

Our Gospel is that we have been made sons and daughters in the only Son (Jn 1:12-13; 2 Pet 1:4).  In Baptism we received the Spirit of Jesus (Acts 2:38; Titus 3:4-5), who reproduces Jesus' prayer within us (Gal 4:6).  St. Paul wrote how it was no longer him who lived, but Christ who lived in him.  And if Christ lives in us, then he prays in us (CCC 2740).

"Prayer" is at the very heart of Jesus' identity.  From all eternity he is the one who makes a perfect return to the Father of the love that has been lavished upon him ... and that love is the Holy Spirit.  When the Son became a man he expressed his relationship to the Father through human thoughts, words, and actions aflame with the Spirit (Lk 10:21).  Jesus' human prayer was unlike any prayer offered since humanity's fall. It was not the prayer of fallen man, a creature making requests or giving thanks to its Creator.  Rather, it was the the prayer of a son, the prayer of the Son - gratefully receiving all that he was and had from the Father, and offering himself in turn through the Spirit.  And Jesus joins us to himself in Baptism and sends his Spirit into our hearts so that he might express his love for the Father through our thoughts, words, and actions!

Any stirring we have to prayer is the action of Christ. Granted, when we start out in the spiritual life, we may petition God for some petty items or experiences. Yet, even when our prayer is lacking in substance, the Spirit is mysteriously at work within us, interceding "according to the will of God ... with sighs too deep for words" (Rom 8:26-27). And if we will open our ears and eyes to the words and actions he has inspired within the Body of Christ, our outward prayer can become a purer manifestation of the prayer of Jesus himself.  

Where should we begin?  The Mass.  The highest point of Jesus' human prayer was at the Cross, where prayer and his gift of self were one (CCC 2605); and that is what becomes present to us on the altar!  We are meant to join ourselves to Jesus' prayer and offering: "Through him and with him, and in him, O God, almighty Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours, for ever and ever. Amen.”  The Mass is a school of prayer: 

• we praise and thank God in the words of his angels and saints
• allow him to speak to us in the inspired words of Scripture
• confess our faith in God and what he has revealed when we pray the Creed
• intercede for the needs of the Church and world
• petition the Father for the same needs that Jesus did at the Last Supper
• pray the very words that Christ gave us in the Our Father
• and make a grateful return of the Fathers love by offering ourselves to him in union with Jesus

The Spirit intends for the perfect prayer of Christ that is manifested in the Mass to spill over into our times of personal prayer too.  The Liturgy of the Hours, prayerful reading of Scripture, and the Rosary; devotions such as the Divine Mercy and the Sacred Heart Devotion; and practices like fasting and the wearing of scapulars - the Spirit has inspired all of these to bring our daily prayer and lives into union with Jesus' prayer and offering made present in the Eucharist.  The Church's liturgical prayer, devotions, and practices bring our minds into conformity with Christ's, so that even our most spontaneous prayers are manifestations of his heart.  

Christian prayer:  God the Son, loving the Father, in the Spirit - through you and me.
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P.S., If you'd like to learn more, please keep an eye out for Through,With, and In Him: The Prayer Life of Jesus and How to Make It Our Own.

The Eucharist in Genesis' Story of the Fall

Tonight at Mass something caught my ear.  I am sure that I have heard the words before; but their significance had not registered. It was the preface to the Eucharistic Prayer (Preface of Sundays in Ordinary Time III):

"For we know it belongs to your boundless glory,

that you came to the aid of mortal beings with your divinity

and even fashioned for us a remedy out of mortality itself,

that the cause of our downfall

might become the means of our salvation,

through Christ our Lord."

Now, I am constantly amazed at the interrelation of the Old Testament and the New, the way that God inspired writers living hundreds, sometimes a thousand, years before Jesus' birth in their recording of history and use of imagery.  Take the first chapters of Genesis for instance:  It relates the Creation and Fall of humanity in language accessible to anyone - real historical events recorded in imagery that even a child can enter into.  But look at how the imagery employed by the author lines up with events in Jesus' life.  (This is what is called a typological reading of Scripture):

Type	Antitype
Garden of Eden	Garden of Gethsemane / Garden Tomb
Adam & Eve chose own will	Christ prayed, “Father, Thy will be done”
Tree of Life Tree of Knowledge	Tree of the Cross
Adam put into a deep sleep, and Eve built up from rib taken from Adam’s side	Christ in the sleep of death, as water (Baptism) and blood (Eucharist) flow from His pierced side, giving birth to the Church

But look back at today's preface to the Eucharistic Prayer - look at what I had missed all these years!

Spiritual and physical death because they ate the forbidden fruit.

Spiritual and (ultimately) physical life because we eat the Body and drink the Blood of Jesus (Jn 6:53-58)

Mind blown.  The Father's means for continually filling us with His Son's divine and human life explains why the author of Genesis was inspired to use the image of eating a forbidden food in the story of the Fall!