"Present and Active Within World History": Schall on "Jesus of Nazareth, Part Two"

"Present and Active Within World History": On Jesus of Nazareth, Part Two | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. | March 10, 2011 | Ignatius Insight

"Through this contact (with Christ) the filth of the world is truly absorbed, wiped out, and transformed in the pain of infinite love. Because infinite good is now at hand in the man Jesus, the counter-weight to all wickedness is present and active within world history, and the good is always infinitely greater than the vast mass of evil, however terrible it is."
— Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week. [1]

"Here, too, the time of the Gentiles is presupposed, for the Lord says that his disciples will be brought not only before courts and synagogues, but also before governors and kings; the proclamation of the Gospel will always be marked by the sign of the Cross—this is what each generation of Jesus' disciples must learn anew. The Cross is and remains the sign of 'the Son of Man': ultimately, in the battle against lies and violence, truth and love have no other weapon than the witness of suffering."
— Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week. [2]

I.

The second volume of Benedict XVI's Jesus of Nazareth takes us through the events of the passion, resurrection, and ascension of Christ. Thus, it continues on the public life of Christ described in the first volume of this extraordinary book. We are, perhaps, used to popes speaking ex cathedra, or to their speaking officially in encyclicals and apostolic letters. We see that they can also speak quietly and persuasively. Here we have a pope who writes a book for no other reason than to tell us how he, personally, sees this Christ whom he serves as the successor to Peter in this world. Benedict does not intend to "define" anything in this book. He rather wants to tell us just how he sees the figure of Jesus. But he tells us because he argues that we can see the basic truth of who Christ was.

If the pope spoke "dogmatically," we might well be turned off. Benedict rather implicitly says, "Look, I do not much care whether you agree with me or not. What I want you to know, if you have time to consider it, is what I hold—and the evidence on which it is based." This approach is not unlike that of G. K. Chesterton who wrote Orthodoxy over a century ago not to argue to the truth of Christianity but rather to explain how he came to recognize that it was true. It is the official function of a pope to see that what was handed on by the Apostles are the same events and teachings that are being handed on today. But it is also of some worth for us to know, apart from the official teachings, just how a given pope understands who Jesus of Nazareth was and is. The two are not contradictory but each gives us a different nuance into the meaning both of our own lives and that of tradition.

In the initial citation above, Benedict remarks that Christ, having taken on Himself the sins of the world, is now, as good itself, "present and active in world history." The remarkable impact of reading the first volume of this book, an impact that is only reinforced in the second volume, is the realization that the Son of God did in fact dwell on this green earth. Much of modern scholarship, no doubt, has been developed in order not have to face the consequences of this fact. It is not just that many people do not see how Christianity is true because they never heard it preached to them. Rather it is that there are others who suspect that it is true but make every scholarly effort to avoid or to deny the fact on supposedly scientific grounds. It is to this latter group that this pope's testimony is particularly pertinent. He knows the scholarship as well as anyone—what it can and does show, what it leaves out.

Christ's presence in the world is always a "sign of contradiction," as Simeon told Christ's mother, Mary, in the Temple. Indeed, as Benedict makes clear in this second volume, the Temple as the place of worship is in Christ's passion and death replaced by the Temple of Christ's body. No longer is the seat of worship in a building, but it is found in a person, who told us to recall "in the breaking of bread" why He came among us. His name is, as He often intimated, the same "I Am" that we saw in Exodus when Moses wanted to know how Yahweh was "called." And His followers are told that they are temples in which His Spirit also dwells, such is their dignity.

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