Jesus, the Creator of Mankind

Stworzenie Adama by Tadeusza Kowalskiego

I think that anyone who has attempted to read John's Gospel quickly realizes that he or she is in deep spiritual waters. Granted, it is the Word of God; but John's Gospel reads differently than many other parts of Scripture. We are dealing with an author who uses not only straight forward statements but often play on words and subtle illusion to communicate the truth about Christ.

In his prologue John asserts Jesus's divinity. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God....And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (Jn 1:1,14). But he brings this same truth out in the subtle details he provides in his narrative too, showing Jesus to be the Creator the Jewish people read of in the Book of Genesis.

The first example can be seen in the Gospel for this Fourth Sunday of Lent, when Jesus healed the man born blind.  I'll begin my quotation with Jesus's words to the disciples:

"...While I am in the world, I am the light of the world."
When he had said this, he spat on the ground
and made clay with the saliva,
and smeared the clay on his eyes,
and said to him,
“Go wash in the Pool of Siloam” —which means Sent—.
So he went and washed, and came back able to see. (Jn 9:5-7)

Just as God, in the beginning, had said "Let there be light" (Gen 1:3), so Jesus came to bring light to the world. God formed Man from the dust of the ground (Gen 2:7); and here Jesus shows His divinity in the recreation of Man, making clay from the ground to restore the man's sight. (Washing in the pool is a wonderful image for how Christ recreates us and heals our spiritual blindness  in Baptism).

The second example that jumps to mind is when Jesus appeared to the Apostles on the night of the Resurrection:

Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” (Jn 20:21-23)

The same God who made the man he had formed from dust into a "living being" by "breath[ing] into his nostrils the breath of life" (Gen 2:7), was there that night recreating them as sons in the only begotten Son! 

Do you see what I mean about John's Gospel? It's all of these little nuances that make Scripture so incredibly deep, and why it merits a lifetime of study.

Fundamentalism - What it is, and isn't

You have undoubtedly heard someone say, "We Catholics are not fundamentalists;" and they are correct.  The problem arises when it is followed by something like, "we're not bound by the social taboos of an earlier time.  As a Catholic, I support 'marriage equality,'" and by that mean redefining "marriage" in a way completely at odds with Scripture and the Catholic Faith. (Think I heard our V.P. say something like that recently.)

When a Catholic, such as Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) says that he or she is not a fundamentalist, they do not mean that they have freedom to reinterpret the doctrinal and moral tenets of the Faith, which as Catholics they believe the truth of which is guaranteed by God.  Or to put it in shorthand:

"I am not a fundamentalist" ≠ "I can say Scripture or the Church has been wrong on a point of faith or morals"

If someone has led you to believe otherwise then he or she has done you a gross disservice.  The Church's morality, given to her by God, does not change.  The authentic Catholic understanding is:

"I am not a fundamentalist"  =  "When I read the Bible I understand that ancient authors, just like today's authors, make use of literal as well as figurative language; and it sometimes takes study to understand which is which."

In her official documents the Church has stated time and again that Scipture was written in a different culture than our own, and makes use of literary genres that we do not.  History was written under different rules.  When you read that a king reigned "X" number of years, the author may have been using a symbolic number (40 was a popular one, meaning 'fullness'), or a multiple of it - never meaning his number to be read as those recorded in the Encyclopedia Britannica. The Bible's authors used idioms and hyperbole just as we do today ... the only difference being that we are unfamiliar with theirs.  (We're like four year-olds who start to squirm when dad tells them an X-Box costs "an arm and a leg.")  And when we Catholics come at the creation accounts in Genesis 1-3, we understand that the author had no intention of writing a scientific account!  What he wrote was 100% true, but communicated in language we might characterize as a "poetic" history, as opposed to a scientific one. (We understand that man and woman were made by God, that the family is willed by God, there was a Fall from grace, etc.)  When we read Luke's account of the Resurrection on the other hand, he was making claims about what witnesses saw, and reporting history in a way familiar to us today.

When Scripture shows God saying, "Thou shalt not kill ..." it is a positive assertion, and we are bound to it.  Same with the host of biblical statements on marriage and sexual morality that a significant number of Christians today, more influenced by the world than by Scripture and 2,000 years of Christian teaching, seem comfortable ignoring and even opposing.  They misunderstand the statement "We are not fundamentalists" to mean "We do not have to be faithful to these hard teachings, these teachings that our culture has started to belittle."

The Jesus of history, the Jesus recorded in Scripture, made a bold assertion.  It should make us pause before we reject what Christianity has always proclaimed to be true:  "If anyone is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels" (Lk.9:26).

 

Of Devo and Divine Inspiration

Photo by Corentin LAMY

On Facebook I saw what can only be described as "the most awesome Halloween picture EVER." (cue echo, "EV-er, ev-er").  It has taken a lot of strength to not copy and paste it here but, not having asked permission, I went with the WikiMedia image at left instead.  

Allow me to paint you a verbal picture:  My friend Jenny is in a black dress, goofy red Devo hat on head, bullwhip in hand, standing in the archway of a home - above which is stenciled, "Be still and know that I am God  - Psalm 46:10"

That image of Jenny came back to me while praying the Rosary, and with it the thought - "How cool to think that when the Lord spoke those words to the psalmist, He already saw them stenciled above Jenny in her costume!" Then my mind started racing.

When God placed words in the mouths of the prophets or the minds of the biblical authors, He already saw us.  God didn't just speak those words to the psalmist.  In His omniscience He saw and personally addressed them to each of His children throughout history, as they would read and hear them at specific moments in their lives. Like St. Paul, that thought makes me cry out, "O the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!" (Rom.11:33).  I bet it wouldn't take much reflection for each of us to recall a verse or two like that.

It may sound trivial now, but I will never forget being 15 years old and absolutely devastated by a breakup (remember your first love?) when my eyes fell on Jesus' words to Peter at the Last Supper, "You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand" (Jn.13:7).  Those words went straight to my heart; Jesus used them to speak directly to me.  And believe me, it's a message I've returned to many times since.

Another example, one that has rippled throughout millions of lives, was when Therese of Lisieux read Proverbs 9:4 and Isaiah 66:12-13 in a notebook of passages from the OT.  Therese's Little Way of perfection burst into being when she read, "If anyone is a very little one, let him come to Me," and "As a mother caresses her child, so shall I console you.  I shall carry you at My breast, and I shall swing you on My knees." Her encapsulation of the Gospel - that Jesus will lift us up through grace and bring us into His heavenly presence, if we but faithfully love and cling to Him as children - has encouraged Christians the world over!

Didn't St. Augustine have a similar experience?  Paul addressed his epistle to the Christians in Rome, but the Holy Spirit meant its words directly for Augustine too.  In his Confessions he wrote:

I seized, opened, and in silence read that section on which my eyes first fell: "Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, in concupiscence" (Rom.13:13-14). No further would I read; nor needed I: for instantly at the end of this sentence, by a light as it were of serenity infused into my heart, all the darkness of doubt vanished away.

What about you?  What verse(s) has God used to speak directly to your heart?  I would love to hear your stories.  "The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.  And before him no creature is hidden, but all are open to the eyes of Him to Whom we must give an account" (Heb.4:12-13).  

Happy All-Hallow's-Eve! 
____________________
Cautionary Note:  When a particular verse of Scripture seems to speak directly to you like this, you have to make sure that what you think you hear doesn't contradict the larger teaching of the Faith.  Does the word you've heard in any way contradict a) other verses of the Bible? b) Sacred Tradition? or c)  the dogmas of the Faith?  If it does then you've heard incorrectly.  That was the error Martin Luther fell into when Romans 1:17 and 3:21 "struck his conscience like lightning."  He interpreted them to mean that we are "justified by faith alone," as opposed to by "faith and works" (James 2:24), as taught by Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium of the Church. In the case of the Reformation, "often enough, men of both sides were to blame" (Vatican II's Decree on Ecumenism, 3), but Luther's insistence on his mistaken interpretation played a significant part.

Resurrection & The New Moses

I have always found it curious that Matthew's Gospel omits Jesus' appearances in Jerusalem following His Resurrection and focus instead on Galilee.  When the women ran from his empty tomb to tell the apostles, "Jesus met them and said 'Hail!'  And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshiped Him.  Then Jesus said to them, 'Do not be afraid; go and tell my brethren to go to Galilee, and there they will see Me" (Mt.28:9-10).  No narrative of Jesus appearing to the Eleven in the Upper Room or on the road to Emmaus; Matthew simply continues: 

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.  And when they saw Him they worshiped Him; but some doubted.  And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Mt.28:16-20)

What is Matthew up to?  He was clearly aware of prior appearances of Jesus to the Eleven (Jesus had directed them to a specific mountain in Galilee, something not part of His message to the women; so Jesus appeared to the Eleven while still in Jerusalem) and yet Matthew felt compelled to get to this mountain and Jesus "Great Commission."  Why?

I put that question to the Lord the other day.  I had just finished my re-reading of Matthew, recalled being puzzled by this before, and thought, "I'm just going to ask the primary author!"  (The beauty of reading Scripture is that the same Spirit Who inspired it lives within us!)  And as I simply began to think about Matthew and his Gospel, I recalled the significance of the mountain.  

I would suggest that it is the same Galilean mountain spoken of in Matthew 5:1, "Seeing the crowds, [Jesus] went up on the mountain and when He sat down His disciples came to him.  And He opened His mouth and taught them ..."  The three chapters following that introduction make up the Sermon on the Mount, where Matthew reveals Jesus as the New Moses, completing and deepening the Law that Moses was given atop Mount Sinai.  Again and again we hear Jesus cite the Mosaic Law, "You have heard that it was said ... but I say to you ...," one example being "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.'  But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Mt.5:27-28).  

I believe that Matthew places the emphasis on Jesus' Resurrection appearances in Galilee to drive home His identity as the prophesied New Moses (Deut.18:19-20), dispatching the New Law from His Galilean Sinai, "All authority in heaven and on earth given to Me.  Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them ... teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and behold I am with you always, to the end of the age."  Now that's a Gospel, that's "Good News"!  Amen?