Jesus a man signed by God 

1.  Jesus Christ: history, faith and reason

Faith and reason

Before narrating the story of Jesus of Nazareth and reflecting on the faith of the early Christian Church, it must be recalled that, while reason and reasonableness are indispensable to faith, rationalism, i.e. wanting to prove everything empirically and considering only what is demonstrable, visible and testable to be true, can become a great danger to faith. If, over time, thousands of heresies have attacked the solid 'theological body' conveying the content of the faith of the primitive community, especially in the last two centuries, some scholars have resorted to an approach aimed at somehow erasing the Christian Mystery.

Some, stripping him of all divine prerogatives, have considered Jesus only as a man: extraordinary yes, holy, the greatest prophet, but only a man. This attitude is called 'critical position' or 'critical historicism'. Others preferred to see him as a myth, without seeking any further reference to history: this is precisely what is known as the 'mythical position'. Still others even went so far as to deny his existence, but this latter position had not even been worth refuting.

 Annex I – Non-Catholic Thinkers          

 Annex II  –  Attacks on Cristianity [2]  

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[2] - Mt. 28, 1-20; Mc. 16, 1-20; Lc. 24, 1-53; Gv. 20, 1- 31; 21, 1-24 

In Jerusalem they say a man is risen

After Jesus was crucified and buried, his enemies rejoiced at having eliminated once and for all that man so inconvenient to those in power, both political and religious. Herod, Pilate, Annas and Caiaphas felt relieved of the thorn in their side that Jesus represented for them all. A small group of disciples remained, men and women, but without their master they would have died out in a flash, for by the morning of the third day two of them had left to go home and the others would soon follow. The friends of Jesus fell into a silence of great disappointment.

They had hoped that he would finally rid the land of its enemies and become the King of Israel, but their king was dead.

That small group had not yet realised that Jesus was dead, when they were overwhelmed by an extraordinary and totally unpredictable experience: they met him alive. The news that Jesus had risen again shortly reached the colonnades and courtyards of the Temple, reached the Antonia tower. The Pharisees, Scribes, Sadducees and shortly afterwards also the Essenes and Zealots heard that news: their feast, which was to continue for another week, was disturbed by this nightmare. Meanwhile Jesus' disciples were also slowly resurrecting along with their Master.

After the Resurrection

After realising that Jesus was a man like us in everything, but not only, in that he surpasses us with a qualitive leap since he is the bearer of an integral humanism, of a human freedom in its fullness and, consequently, sinless and holy and a temple where God dwells, we follow for a moment the path of the community that knew him and, after his resurrection experience, sought to understand not only who he had been, but also who he continued to be for them.

The early community read the Scriptures anew to understand who Jesus is

Immediately after the extraordinary experience of Jesus' resurrection, the disciples and the small community of the first hour had to ask themselves: "But, then, who was and who is Jesus? Have we understood nothing?" The great joy of knowing the Jesus alive was mixed with the confusion of being unprepared to welcome a reality that so astonishingly surpassed them. As the disciples' minds slowly became enlightened and they began to realise that they had been travelling companions of the most extraordinary man in the history of all time, they also began to reformulate a new question: "What Kingdom then? What had Jesus meant by those speeches on the Kingdom? We hoped that it was He who would liberate Israel, but instead?".

Until the previous Friday, when in the evening they received the news that Jesus had really died and was being buried, until then the Kingdom speech had been as clear and transparent as a diamond: a new politics, a Kingdom of justice at last, with no more poor, no more sick, no more weeping; the proud would be deposed rest from their thrones and the humble would be elevated, but now? In these three years has no one understood? And what could they have understood? Jesus did not make the revolution, he did not liberate Israel from the Romans, but then who was Jesus?

One must consider that the primitive community and the disciples of Jesus were Jews who were faithful to the Eternal Israel and therefore to the Holy Scriptures. That is why they used to search if they could find any answers in the scriptures themselves and reread them together and do as Jesus had done with the disciples of Emmaus: he had taken up the scriptures with them, showing them everything that referred to him, to understand precisely who Jesus was and who he continued to be, the newly resurrected Christ.

They read the Covenants to understand who Jesus was

The disciples, meanwhile, begin to re-read the covenants between Adonai and his people. With Adam and Eve, who had become sinners, God makes a first covenant: for his part, he decides not to let them die, as he had previously threatened, and forgives them; meanwhile, he also asks the man and the woman to do their part. The man will transform the earth with effort, and the woman will give birth in pain.

The pain that appears for the first time in this context is not primarily a punishment, let alone a revenge of God, but the consequence of a covenant (as will be the cross, the consequence of the new and eternal covenant). Aa Covenant followed with Noah, to save at least a part of that people, then comes the Covenant with Abraham, to multiply that people, and again the Covenant with Moses, whom he gives a Law to save that people.

And finally, the disciples, and perhaps some of the first community, had just witnessed the New and Eternal Covenant celebrated by Jesus at the Last Supper and consummated the next day on Calvary for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus too, like the Patriarchs, had made a covenant for the salvation of his people.

A covenant is a pact, a handshake. In a plastic language, I want to think of Jesus, on the one hand, shaking hands with God the Father as a sign of covenant and, on the other, holding out his hand to man: brother, sister or family member. With these handshakes forgiveness passes from God to man and the New and Eternal Covenant has been signed forever.

The first community had thus realised that the New and Everlasting Covenant of Jesus fit with full consistency into the framework of the ancient Covenants. After rereading the covenants God had made with the Eternal Israel, that first community reread the Prophets, and how God had accompanied their people up to the last times, when a Messiah would finally come to establish God's new government.

We read the Prophets to understand who Jesus was

In the centuries before Jesus, the Prophets had always been saints who had spoken in the name of God. Jesus' disciples, reading the texts that these saints had written, better understood the prophet Jesus. Over the centuries, the prophets had been the spokesmen of God himself. They had blessed and cursed in the name of God. They had anointed priests and kings. God blessed the people if they obeyed them, while he punished it with sickness, deportation and death if they did not listen to them. By the hand of God they performed great wonders, healed the sick, raised the dead and were believed to have been spared from death itself.

Then comes the last prophet, Jesus Christ, who does not present himself as one who punishes or foretells the future, but as a public spokesman for God. He speaks as a representative of an Other who sent him: God himself. Jesus is a prophet like Elijah, Elisha and Moses himself, in that, like them, he heals and performs miracles. He is also recognised as such because he is a rejected, persecuted and killed prophet. He is, however, not just a prophet, but the Prophet who inaugurates the era of the Messiah, so much so that after him no 

more prophets appear in Israel [3].

The people of Israel, knowing by now that the Messiah was to come, put a stop to inspired books and, since the arrival of Jesus, as I have already said, no more prophets were sent [4].

Jesus was the last after a long period: prophethood had already died out by the time of Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. In that first century of the new era, the destroyed temple was not rebuilt and the fire of the sacrifices was also extinguished.

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[3] - "If we want to express ourselves with a summarising category, it must be said that he had to appear with the specific traits of the prophet: not of the rabbi - since he is not characterised by the faithful explanation of the Torah - nor only of the teacher of wisdom - since the core of his proclamation, the kingdom, has almost nothing to do with the sapiential tradition" (R. Penna, I ritratti originali di Gesù il Cristo. Inizi e sviluppi della cristologia neotestamentaria, Cinisello Balsamo, San Paolo Edizioni, 2010, p. 168).

[4] - Muslims recognise another prophet, Muhammad, who is said to have been commissioned by God to transmit to the Islamic people the same revelation made to Abraham and Jesus.

Prophets announce the Messiah

Over three hundred biblical quotations speak of a messiah (anointed one), an anointed one of Adonai or of messianic times. The prophecies never clearly specified who this envoy of God would be and how he would present himself. It cannot be argued, however, that the people of Israel were expecting a messiah along the lines of King David or Solomon or the Roman emperors, but rather a Son of Man who, according to Daniel, was to appear on the clouds of heaven: a supernatural being clothed in human guise and entrusted with the final judgement. The people of Israel, however, after centuries of waiting, awaited the arrival of this saviour- liberator in the very first century of the Christian era 5].

In this regard, Isaiah declares: 'I, the Lord, have formed thee and established thee as the covenant of the people and the light of the nations, to open the eyes of the blind and to release the captives from prison and to set at liberty those who dwell in the night' [6]. and Daniel adds: 'The God of heaven will inaugurate a kingdom that will never be destroyed' [7]. The expected Messiah therefore has a clear royal connotation, but in the prophet Isaiah himself - at least in him - another characteristic also emerges, which presents him precisely as the 'Suffering Servant' [8], the 'man of sorrows'.

Indeed, the prophecies about the coming of the Messiah oscillated between dreams of a great empire and a 'Suffering Servant'. Jesus' disciples, however, were at least able to understand that He was to be that long-awaited Messiah, even if they could not place Him in a reliable framework. Only at the end of the Master's life were the disciples able to read and understand certain texts such as that of the Suffering Servant in which Isaiah states that he was despised and rejected by men: "a man of sorrows, experienced in suffering [...] he was mistreated and opened not his mouth, like a lamb led to the slaughter", or Psalm 21, which reads: "A pack of dogs surrounds me, / a band of wicked men besieges me; / they have pierced my hands and my feet, / I can count all my bones. / They look at me, / they look at me: they divide my garments, on my dress they cast their lot".

However, it is clear that Jesus Christ was the key to reading all the pages of the Old Testament that had spoken of the Messiah. The twelve had clearly understood that Jesus was the Messiah, but while he was still alive, they had assumed just as clearly that he was the liberator from the Roman invaders, even though an armed revolt could not be imagined in this political change, because Jesus had precisely proclaimed love for his enemies. And, since he had manifested a superior strength, which no one had ever shown to have, it was to be expected that he would be the one to carry out, albeit in a peaceful manner, the task of liberation. 

Everyone dreamed of the time of the Messiah. The time had come. Jesus had become this hope: at last a life without war, abundant food, the good fragrant bread, wine, milk and honey as they had always hoped for the arrival of the Messiah. The apostles had heard Jesus pronounce words bearing great content such as love, justice, forgiveness, mercy, suffering- death-resurrection, but all this had to be conditional upon a liberation from enemies, the implantation of a new political structure, which would allow them to live in a new kingdom, with a different politics, promised for centuries. This change, however, had to take place without any war, as I have already said, because Jesus had precisely preached love for the enemies and not their death, and now, after the resurrection, it was clear that the Messiah had gone far beyond their expectations.

For some, however, the problem still existed: 'If war is not waged against Rome, then what is to be done? Are we to passively accept slavery?". The Romans were still there with their soldiers, their army, their extravagance and their punishments. Roman personnel continued to pass through the streets of Jerusalem from time to time with wheelbarrows loaded with nails - sometimes half a metre long - to terrorise their subjects, so that they would not dare to step outside the boundaries of their subjection.

All this led the disciples to think that they had to head in a new direction, one that was not armed struggle. Does this mean, perhaps, that nails, crosses and subjection were all right with Jesus? Certainly not, but in order to realise the new Kingdom and the new politics of God, it was necessary to enter into a new mentality and convert to the way of thinking proposed by Jesus Christ: if, in fact, they had followed his lead, loving their enemies, there would have been no more wars; forgiving others, there would have been no more vendettas, no more violence; if then they had all broken the loaves and washed the feet of their neighbour, providing for the needy as members of the family, would also have brought the poor back to their dignity, so that they could rise from misery.

The way had been clearly laid out by Jesus, but men failed to live this new gospel. Jesus had brought light into the world, but "darkness did not overcome it" [9]. Even today, if we, obedient to the words of our Saviour Jesus Christ, lived as He told us, if we thought, spoke and acted as He did, loving as He loved, we would already be living here, on earth, the Kingdom preached by Him and destined to extend into eternity. If the Jews had believed in Jesus Christ like that small Christian community, and if the Romans had also believed like one of their centurions, the Kingdom of God would have been realised visibly: the Romans would have returned home and they could all have melted their swords to make ploughs and thus experience a true time of the Messiah, a new Kingdom of God.

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[5] - Hug Schonfield, a scholar of the Dead Sea papyri, argues that if one considers 586 as the date of the beginning of Israel's enslavement in Babylon and subtracts the 70 years of exile and the 490 years that remain, one can deduce that the 'end of times' was expected around the year 26: it was precisely from that date that the Essenian monks expanded their monastic buildings in the desert, where they especially invited young men to retreat (Qumran) to await the messiah and the final messianic time. Moreover, the astrologers of Babylon expected the arrival of the 'ruler of the world' around 7 BC. Israel awaited this messiah-liberator as a king, whereas the prophecies presented him in different ways.

[6] - Is. 42:6.

[7] - Dn. 2.

[8] - Is. 53, 4 ff. 

[9] - Gv. 1,5.

The evangelists narrate

After the Resurrection and after having reread in the pages of the Covenants and the prophets that which referred to Jesus, the disciples and the early community now reread his behaviour, his miracles and his speeches, in order to know better who the Christ is and nourish their faith in him. The evangelists and the early community recorded in writing all this experience of the early Church, which continues to nourish our faith even today in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John [10].

Annex III - The Gospels, narrative works 

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[10] - For a more in-depth analysis of the evangelists, I refer to R. Penna, op. cit., ch. V, Le redazioni sinottiche.

His time [11]

The life of Jesus took place between the year 6-7 and the year 30 of our Christian era [12]. His town of origin was Nazareth, in the territory of Galilee, a semi-pagan region and therefore despised by the pure Israelites; his family was Jewish, and the language spoken Galilean Aramaic, the dialect that would make Peter recognise him in the courtyard of the High Priest [13] . Jesus certainly also knew ancient Hebrew, necessary for reading the Holy Scriptures: Instinsky, Jeremias, Black and others [14] elaborate on this data.

Jesus lives significant times in Nazareth, in his family. His mother is Mary, the wife of a carpenter, Joseph. Almost certainly Jesus himself was a carpenter. Luke says that he was born in Bethlehem and at the age of twelve he was introduced to Jerusalem. After his baptism, Jesus began his public life, which, according to the evangelist John, may have lasted three years in Galilee in the lake region and then in Judea, in Jerusalem. In just a few years, Jesus managed to convey, in his speeches and parables, a message destined to change the world.

The great speeches containing the proclamation of the Kingdom of God, the beatitudes and love for enemies, and again the parables of the Kingdom and those of mercy become the framework of Jesus’ entire life, who lives out everything he preaches. His miracles of nature, healings and even the reanimation of some dead increase his authority, making the truth of his words concrete. The life of Jesus, made up above all of growth in wisdom and grace, of work, even manual labour, the theophanies of baptism and the transfiguration, his teaching and miracles, the Last Supper, the passion, death and resurrection are what the Gospels report to us with far greater documentation than we have on most of the characters of antiquity.

The disciples of Jesus and their successors narrate everything that is remembered about him especially in the synagogues: his childhood, which offers rich theological insights, then his words, signs, discourses on the Kingdom of Heaven - Kingdom of Justice -, mercy, unconditional forgiveness, the beatitudes and the love that must reach the very heart of enemies.

The breaking of bread is also narrated and celebrated, first for those who have no bread and then for all those in need of forgiveness, and again the washing of the feet, and lastly, death-resurrection-ascension, in one word Jesus Christ is recounted.

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[11] - Mt. 1, 1-2,23; Lk. 1, 1-2,52; Jn. 1, 14 -18.

[12] - On the history of Jesus, the Gospels provide us with a certain amount of critically indisputable information (Cf. Lk. 2, 1).

[13] - Cf. Mt 26:73.

[14] - Cf. especially B. Forte, Gesù di Nazareth, storia di Dio, Dio della storia, Milan, San Paolo edizioni, 2007, p. 195.

Jesus’ family

It’s in Nazareth, where the story of salvation begins. The hills of surroundings, a little discoloured, are now covered with houses, roads, markets, churches, mosques and synagogues, but the attentive pilgrim can distinguish, among others, the stones that witnessed the events which 2000 years ago changed history and divided it in two parts: before and after Jesus Christ. One can glimpse the roads that connect the homes of the relatives of that privileged family: the home of Jesus’ grandparents, where May lived, and that of Joseph, which then hosted the world’s most sacred family for 30 years.

Even today, we can still go to the same fountain as then [15], which, being the only one in the village, every day saw someone from the family going for water and where, according to one tradition, for the first time Mary was dazzled by a light from infinity. If we make a pilgrimage to this holy land, we should stop at the Basilica of the Annunciation, leaving behind all colour, all noise, all worries and to enter, on tiptoe and with infinite modesty, into the intimacy of those walls, just a few meters carved into the rock – where the New and Eternal Covenant was made.

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[15] - That fountain had led to the birth to the hamlet of Nazareth, because, while stopping to water their animals, the caravan drivers took advantage of the supplies and rest in the stables, which had been created to meet this need.

The annunciations

And now, with the Gospels in our hand and the faith of the Church in our hearts, we can read all the richness, the grace, the word and the silence of the family of Nazareth.

An angel had entered Mary’s house and announced to her that she would become the mother of the Messiah awaited for centuries.

When, even today, we enter the walls of this house, we hear again the echo of those words that no wise man of this world could have spoken, but God.

Here, the first Hail Mary was prayed by an angel: 'Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee'. And Mary replied: 'Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord, be it done in me according to your word'. And the Word of God here became a child and came to dwell among us. Mary's cousin then added: 'Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus'.

This prayer was then joined by the whole Church and thus by each one of us to say: 'Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. In this house that was once Mary's, thousands of pilgrims today repeat this same prayer.

After that announcement, Mary, excited, had felt a kind of fear in the face of such great news, but the angel, reassuring her, had told her not to fear, for the Holy Spirit would provide all the grace necessary for this to take place. Joseph was also warned in a dream that the child would be born and that he and Mary would be its guardians. The young couple, invested with the power of God, said yes to this extraordinary project that God himself had just proposed. And now, to narrate what no book author would dare to write, let us open the Gospel and read the most authoritative lines, the ones that have enlightened humanity for 2000 years and that will have no end.

At the beginning of his Gospel, Luke says: "The angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee, called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man of the house of David, named Joseph. The virgin's name was Mary. Entering her, he said: 'Rejoice, full of grace: the Lord is with thee'. At these words she was greatly troubled and wondered what the meaning of such a greeting was. The angel said to her: "Fear not, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And behold, thou shalt conceive a son, and bear him, and call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God shall give him the throne of his father David, and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom shall have no end." Then Mary said to the angel: "How shall this be, for I know no man?" The angel answered her: "The Holy Spirit will descend upon you, and the power of the Most High will cover you with his shadow. Therefore the one to be born will be holy and will be called the Son of God. And behold, Elizabeth also, your relative, in her old age has conceived a son, and this is the sixth month for her, who was said to be barren: nothing is impossible to God." Then Mary said, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord: let it be to me according to your word". And the angel departed from her" [16].

This page - a homily that was proclaimed in the first community and collected by Luke - wants to engrave in the hearts of Christians then and now the fact that, from the very first moment of Jesus' historical existence, that is, from the very conception, God is present as Lord of the history of his son Jesus, who will call him by the most sacred appellation in the world: Father.

I reproduce below the notes for the homily of the catechists collected from Matthew: "This is how Jesus Christ was generated: his mother Mary, being betrothed to Joseph [17], before they went to live together found herself pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Joseph her husband, because he was a righteous man and did not want to accuse her publicly, thought of repudiating her in secret. While he was pondering these things, however, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said: "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary, your wife, with you. For the child that is begotten in her is of the Holy Spirit; she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins." All this took place so that what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled: 'Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son; to him shall be given the name Emmanuel, which means God with us'. When he awoke from sleep, Joseph did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his bride with him; without his having ever known her before, she gave birth to a son, and he called his name Jesus".

At the beginning of this long love story, we have just encountered the two annunciations - those of Mary and Joseph - that reveal and conceal the mystery of the Incarnation as it unfolds. Then the drama of the Infant Mary: at first, feeling, as it were, overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit and being stunned, speechless, perhaps - as one tradition says - running home, fleeing from the fountain, just where she might have received the first inkling of the Divine about her. And finally, realising what had happened to her as an adolescent - but full of grace - could understand it, she could say no more than: 'Yes, I am the handmaid of the Lord'.

Then, the annunciation of Joseph, a boy so clean that he deserves to be called 'righteous' throughout history, well it is he who has to share with Mary the humiliation of being considered unfaithful, without ever being able to explain the truth to anyone, because no one could understand or believe. Only to the two newlyweds who were gestating the Author of the new history, only to them was the mystery revealed, namely that the Holy Spirit had directly performed the miracle of the Incarnation in Mary.

So these young newlyweds, Joseph and Mary, must present themselves head-on, as unfaithful and guilty, in the streets of their village, at the fountain, in the synagogue, in the marketplace of Nazareth, embodying in a dramatic way the beatitude: 'Blessed are you, when they shall say all manner of evil against you for my sake, indeed rejoice, for that is the Kingdom of God'. Varriano argues that 'in this way, both Joseph and Mary had to pilgrimage on the same roads of faith, bitter and joyful at the same time [18].

Even today, after praying within the walls of the tiny house in which tradition places Mary's 'yes', we can pass by the few remains - however sufficient - of the other house, Joseph's, where for thirty years the holy family of Nazareth lived prolonged periods of rest, interspersed

with the more or less itinerant carpentry work, because Nazareth, too small a town, could not have provided work for two men, Joseph and Jesus [19].

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[16] - In his dogmatics, the Protestant theologian Barth, adhering to the position of the early Church, argues that the virginal conception is a sign of the incarnation of the Word; if one accepts the divinity of Jesus Christ, in fact, one cannot indirectly deny his virginal conception.

And the theologian A. Ponte states that the evangelists' concern was to emphasise the supernatural, divine character of this conception. The theologian R. Penna writes: "The virginal conception is particularly emphasised in the dialogue between Gabriel and Mary (cf. Lk 1:30-35) to highlight the divine origin of Jesus to the utmost and, for its part, the structural composition with John the Baptist (two annunciations, two births, two presentations) brings out the incomparable uniqueness of the son of Mary compared to which the other is only a shadow, however substantial" and R. E. Brown, one of the greatest contemporary authors, adds that 'Mary is a Virgin who knew no man, so the child is completely God's work, a new creation'. And, finally, it should be noted that if Luke and Matthew had wanted to create a theological account only, they could at least have corrected some of the dates in the redaction: if they did not, it is likely that they could not.

[17] - Several readings of these verses have been made, but they have remained at the level of hypotheses, without obtaining an authoritative explanation superior to that of the Gospels. Joseph, a descendant of David and legally the husband of Mary, by naming Jesus, legally becomes his father and, by including him in his Davidic genealogy, leads him to inherit the title of Messiah. The Church's reflection recognised Mary as immaculate, that is, without sin, but in the same way it could recognise the same grace for Joseph: the couple from Nazareth were able to live totally for each other and for their son, realising the fullness of marriage. And if, in Mary, the physical event of generating in her body the Son of God, Jesus Christ, is unique, we cannot forget that Jesus becomes the son not only of Mary, but of both Mary and Joseph. The fact, then, that the tradition of the Church has never attributed to the figure of Joseph the characteristic recognised instead to Mary of being 'without sin', with the appellation - taken from Scripture - of 'righteous man', has nevertheless reaffirmed a very similar reality. Joseph, in fact, had to receive from God faith, hope, charity and all the graces and gifts of wisdom, intellect, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and fear of God that were proper to Mary, because they were both "father and mother" of Jesus and custodians of the Incarnate Word. For these spouses, however, the fact of being sinless implies above all the moral aspect, whereas for Jesus the condition of being sinless derives from his totally unique personal (hypostatic) union with God. Among the various interpretations of these pages, the Catholic Church prefers to retrace the itinerary of the annunciations as proposed by the Gospels, both because they have more authority over other hypotheses and readings, and because of the richness and depth of their theological content.

[18] - B. Varriano, Na escola de Nazaré: tornando sagrada a minha familia, Alto da Bela Vista, Cançâo Nova, 2015.

[19]  - It should be remembered that what the Pontifical Biblical Commission in Inspiration and Truth established for the whole of Holy Scripture also applies to this page: "while the theological statements about Jesus have a direct and normative value, the purely historical elements have a subordinate function".

The birth of Jesus

On the orders of a census, Joseph set off with his bride Mary to Bethlehem [20] his town, and there to be registered. Here is Luke's account: 'While they were there, the days of childbirth were fulfilled for her. And when the firstborn was born, she wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, for there was no room for them in the lodging. There were some shepherds in that region who, sleeping in the open, kept watch all night long by guarding their flock. An angel of the Lord came to them and the glory of the Lord shone upon them. They were seized with great fear, but the angel said to them: "Fear not: behold, I announce to you a great joy, which shall be to all the people: today in the city of David a Saviour is born to us, who is Christ the Lord. This is the sign for you: you will find the child wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger". And immediately there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying: 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men, whom he loves'. Of course the shepherds went immediately and found Mary, Joseph and the child laid in the manger" [21].

And Matthew continues: 'In addition to the shepherds, the Magi and astrologers arrived, looking for the King of the Jews, according to some of their interpretations of the stars. When they arrived in Jerusalem where King Herod lived, they went to him and asked, "Where is he who is born, the King of the Jews? We have seen his star appear and have come to worship him". Herod, greatly disturbed by this news and terrified that someone had been born who might steal his power from him, assembled the chief priests and scribes to find out where this king would be born, this Christ, that is, an anointed king. The answer was simple: 'In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet: and thou, Bethlehem, the land of Judah, art not indeed the least of the cities of Judah: for out of thee shall come forth a ruler who shall be the shepherd of my people Israel'" [22].

It should be noted that the above passage was not written immediately after the birth of Jesus, but several years after the Resurrection and Pentecost. If someone had written an article on the birth of Jesus for a chronicle at the end of December in the year 3752 (the Jewish date), he would have roughly written that in a Bedouin camp, amidst natural caves for animals and tents, a married couple travelling, before reaching their relatives, were surprised by the birth of their son and found the warm hospitality of those shepherds there.

Since the Bedouins consider the guest as the presence of God, the whole camp felt obliged to celebrate for that child, who had become like a 'God with us', an Emmanuel.

If the same author had narrated the event a few years later, not as a newspaper blurb, but as an archive text, knowing that that child named Jesus was resurrected and seated at the right hand of God the Father, he would have had to honestly add some details, substantially true, that he could not have written in that article the day after Jesus' birth. And, then, he could have dutifully added that hosts of angels gathered to celebrate and sing: 'Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth to men of good will'. In fact, believing that angels exist, he could not have failed to mention that on the day or night when the true King and Lord of history was born, those same angels made merry. Moreover, to better explain who that child is, he could have added, in poetic language, that the stars of heaven also set out together with the kings of earth to visit him, who had been awaited for centuries and was now confirmed as our Lord [23].

And the fact that the evangelists wrote the account of Jesus knowing Him to be a true king could not fail to arouse the jealousy of Herod, who had sent the Magi to seek out the child, asking to be informed about him on their return, because he too wanted to go and worship Him. But, having been warned in a dream about his true intentions - he actually wanted to kill him - they returned to their country by another route. When Herod realised that the Magi had mocked him, he was furious and sent to kill all the children under two years of age in Bethlehem and throughout the land  [24].

As I mentioned in the introduction, the fact of the massacre of the innocents, which presents several arguments against its historicity and legitimacy, nevertheless brings us valuable historical details, which help us to understand the political world in which Jesus spent his childhood; to learn about the leaders who often did not hesitate to abuse power or use violence to accredit their authority and to raise arms against the people they ruled.

Such elements also lead one to consider how from King Herod - who had been able to have a good number of family members killed and many others on a whim - one could expect any atrocity, including a massacre of innocents.

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[20] - "House of bread" or "House of flesh", already the birthplace of King David, indicated by the prophet Micah (8th century BC) as the birthplace of the Messiah.

[21] - Lk. 2, 1-20.

[22] - Mt. 2:6.

[23] - Since generally the Gospel accounts always start from some concrete fact and then dress it up and enrich it with theological content, scholars report the fact that in those years - precisely 7 B.C., according to a calculation by Kepler based on a 1600-year-old document, namely the Sippar calendar (a 2000-year-old Babylonian document) - a particular astronomical phenomenon occurred, namely the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the constellation of Pisces. According to some astrologers, also called magicians, a particular interpretation could have been given to the astronomical phenomenon, considering Jupiter the sign of the supreme king of the universe and Saturn the planet of the Jews and, again, the constellation of Pisces the sign of the end of time. One could therefore have read: in the land of the Jews (Saturn) was born the supreme king of the universe (Jupiter) and the end of time (Pisces). Thus Matthew would find in these signs the faith of the Church in Jesus as Messiah (cf. Boff, Tornielli, Messori and others).

[24] - Mt 2:16-18.

Jesus, son of the chosen people

Faced with Herod's follies, Joseph may well have fled from that territory and taken refuge in a safer region. And Matthew (2:13-15) might have taken the opportunity to compare that flight to that of the chosen people, who had dwelt in Egypt for a long time and had then fled from Egypt, pursued by the furious Pharaoh, or he might have compared that flight to that of Moses, when he fled to Egypt, taking his wife and child with him, just as it is said of Jesus later.

Circumcision of Jesus [25] and presentation in the Temple

After being circumcised like every Jewish male according to the law of Moses, the child was taken to Jerusalem to be presented to the Lord, as it is written in the law of the Lord: 'Every first-born male shall be holy to the Lord'. So it was necessary to redeem the child in some way, by paying a price to the Temple of God, and then take the child back into one's own hands. To get the child back, Mary and Joseph had in fact offered 'a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons', as prescribed by the law of the Lord. It can be deduced from the type of offering that the family of Nazareth was poor: those who had good opportunities offered much more valuable animals.

Now, in Jerusalem there was a man named Simeon, a righteous and pious man who, like all Israelites, was waiting for the Messiah. Apparently, when he saw the baby of Nazareth, he received confirmation from the Holy Spirit that he was the one Israel was waiting for. Then he took him in his arms with emotion and praised God saying: 'Now, O Lord, you can let me die in peace, according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation'. Simeon, in fact, had before him all that he could have wished to see: all the light visible to a man and all the glory of God now poured out upon the earth. In seeing the Messiah, he saw everything. Then Simeon told Mary that she would not be spared from sorrow, but that she could rejoice because that son was now there to die and rise again and enable all of us to take the same path: to die and rise again like him. When they had fulfilled all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their country of Nazareth.

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[25] - Generally, the child was circumcised by the father, in his own home.

 Nazareth, home of Jesus

It is a remote village in Galilee, with an almost mountainous culture, where the sick and the  poor in general are many, indeed too many. It is situated in a hilly area, far from commercial roads [26]. The peasants in its hills are simple and reserved people, not particularly festive. But on Friday evenings and Saturdays, in the synagogue, or during festivals and pilgrimages, the village knows how to dress up and enjoy the precious village and patriarchal life. Nazareth is not mentioned in any scripture, so much so that, in his writings, the historian Josephus Flavius mentions at least 45 villages in Galilee, some of them very small, without ever mentioning it. Moreover, the region is infamous, and the Gospels have no restraint in writing about it more than once: it seems that it is not good soil for prophets to be born there. One also thinks that nothing good can come from that insignificant village, and instead the Nazarene comes from there.

In fact, however, Matthew and Luke fix the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, the village where the Messiah is to be born and which, however, will never be part of Jesus' story. This child, in fact, does not breathe the air of Bethlehem, but that of Nazareth and it will be called by all the Nazarene. One can consider Bethlehem as his birthplace just to attest that a migrant can be born by chance in any geographic location, during his family's travels, but he still retains his origin, his history linked to a home, a village, an extended family or tribal group, which offer him his true and solid identity.

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[26] - Nazareth is 340 metres above sea level.

The village

In Galilee, at the time of Jesus, communication between villages created many problems as decent roads were rare. The lake of Genezareth itself, an important centre of that region, could only be reached by driving through a valley with no proper roads. Except for a decent roadway between Nazareth and Sefori - then the capital of Galilee - the others were tracks, which became very uncomfortable especially in rainy periods. The village of Nazareth was surrounded by man-made terraces on which vines paraded, while olive and fig trees found their ideal place on the stony ground. Towards the valley, fields of wheat, barley and maize stretched out, a few fruit trees grew on the sides. The houses in Nazareth were generally small, built of stones or mud bricks, while the roof, made of branches and mud, was renewed when rains caused dangerous cracks or leaks.

The house, which was particularly useful for resting, normally consisted of a single room, with well-distributed space between parents, children and, in the corner, housed a few sheep or a donkey. In the area of the house and courtyard, shared between a few families - usually close relatives - large cisterns for water and silos for storing grain, rice or barley [27] were dug into the rock. Mills, ovens and presses were also generally shared.

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[27] - Following archaeological research, a 1st century house, which soon became a place of worship with a few precious floral designs on the side, has been identified as the one in which Mary lived before she went to live with Joseph. It consisted of a large inner grotto, partly hewn out of the rock, and a stone-fronted room, which was dismantled boulder by boulder and taken away as a precious relic at the time of the Crusades, and is today venerated in the sanctuary of Loreto as the house of the Virgin Mary (although this hypothesis has not yet been able to avail itself of any reliable results despite various archaeological investigations).

Jesus records all precious memories

Everything that happened in that family with Joseph and Mary was recorded into the memory of that attentive and intelligent child, who accompanied his mother to the oil mill for the oil, to the bakery for the bread. He was there when the grapes were crushed and pressed for good wine. He had also experienced the time of meals and their preparation, with everything that passed through her mother's hands: the flour, the yeast in the dough, the oil, the eggs, the rice, the vegetables, the fruit, the spices. And when everything was ready, if one ate at home, he had seen the candle fixed on the candlestick so that the room, almost always without windows, would be lit for the meal.

Annex IV - Food in the time of Jesus

The precious memories outside the home

That child also saw the farmers leaving and arriving with oxen to prepare the sowing or the donkeys arriving laden with sheaves of grain. He saw the fatigue on the farmers' foreheads, but also the cheerfulness of the young people and adults who, on Friday evenings, prepared for the festivity by going to the synagogue, a truly precious place where the whole village community came together.

He had then known the comings and goings to prepare for the wedding feasts of relatives or neighbours that coloured not only the family but also the whole village with joy.

Jesus had also witnessed many tears over the mourning of children and caught the sadness on the faces of many sick or poor people who could not provide for their children; one parable even tells of one who comes asking for bread late at night. When he lived in Nazareth, who knows how many times he must have had to provide for someone in need.

Jesus looks further afield

He lives this country life, balanced and rich in experience, bringing everything he sees to the eyes of faith, because he is clinging to the heart of God. In front of the red anemones that appear in the spring on his hills, he thinks that not even Solomon dressed so luxuriously and turns his thoughts to the providence of God who provides, in addition to the flowers, for all the animals of the forest, the sparrows nourished directly by the hand of God. And when he feels the wind passing over his face without understanding where it comes from, he refers it to the creativity of the Holy Spirit, always unpredictable and equally effective. When he sees the chicks under the protective wings of the mother hen, he is saddened for a moment at the thought of so many, indeed too many Jews who, instead of placing themselves safely under the wings of the good God, prefer a sterile independence, or even allow themselves to be carried away by idols that neither speak nor hear.

When he sees the sun coming back after the rain, he turns his thoughts to the mercy of God who sends sunshine and rain on the good and the bad, loving everyone as a father loves his children with no distinction: indeed, if any preference can make room in God's heart, it goes to the most unfortunate, those most in need of affection, mercy and love. Then, when he sees the tender leaves of the fig tree sprouting on the branches, he thinks of the changing weather and the approaching summer and the many signs in nature foretelling a radical change in the weather such as the grey clouds announcing the arrival of the storm or the south wind recalling the arrival of the heat, the colour of the sunset announcing good weather or rain and He, Jesus, thinks of the new time, the time of the Kingdom of God, the time of the liberation and conversion of His people. And Jesus, as a child, records in his soul all these images that arise in and around Nazareth so that as an adult he can transmit his essential message with parables and stories, achieving a language capable of capturing the people living in tune with him [28].

Indeed, that was the environment in which Jesus lived, thus giving his personality the opportunity to grow in "wisdom and grace".

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[28] - "To tune in to Him and grasp His experience of God it is necessary to love life and immerse oneself in it, to open oneself to the world and listen to creation" (J. A. Pagola, Gesù, un approccio storico, Rome, Borla, 2009, p. 57).

The Bar mitzvah

Between the ages of twelve and thirteen, a Jewish male adolescent, and thus Jesus too, arrived at his religious initiation, the bar mitzvah. After this initiation, the community granted him the right to take part in the liturgical assembly and the boy for his part had to learn the formulas for the ceremonies. This day was one of the most exciting in the life of a Jew, if one excludes circumcision, which introduced him into the people of Israel a few days after his birth, thus without his being able to rejoice.

That day Jesus, dressed in the tallit, celebrated the Sabbath office for the first time and went up to the tebà to read a passage from the Law. He felt "of age" for being authorised to speak officially about God and was recognised by the assembly itself. From then on, on countless other occasions He would do the reading in the synagogue, explaining its content. In fact [29], the evangelist Luke (4:16) writes: "Jesus went to the town [30] where he had grown up. In accordance with his custom, on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue and arose to do the reading". In fact, Luke himself (4:31-32) insists that not only in Nazareth, but also when "he had been in Capernaum, a town in Galilee he taught on the Sabbath and people were amazed at his way of teaching because Jesus spoke with authority". This practice was evidently habitual in Jesus and he continued to perform it also in its public life. The religious training he received in his family was completed and reinforced with the Prophets. In the life of the synagogue, however, not only Joseph and Jesus participated, but, since women were also admitted there, Mary was certainly present, even though the explanation of the Bible was reserved for males.

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[29] - From that age on, all boys could read the scriptures and even comment on them, sometimes asking questions or giving answers when they knew them.

[30] - In reality, it was a small town.

Jesus among the teachers in the Temple

In his Gospel, Luke (2:41-50) reports that "his parents went to Jerusalem every year for the feast of Passover. When he was twelve years old, they went there according to the custom of the feast [31]. But after a few days, while they were already on their way back, the boy Jesus remained in Jerusalem, without his parents noticing. Believing that he was in the party, they made a day's journey and then set out to search for him among their relatives and acquaintances; not finding him, they returned in search of him to Jerusalem. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and questioning them. And all who heard him were filled with astonishment at his intelligence and his answers. On seeing him they were amazed, and his mother said to him, "Son, why have you done this to us? Behold, your father and I, distressed, were looking for you." And he answered them, "Why did you seek me? Did ye not know that I must attend to my Father’s affairs?" But they did not understand what he had said to them. So, he went down with them and came to Nazareth and abode to them. His mother kept all these things in her heart. And Jesus was growing in wisdom and age and grace before God and man'.

Even if someone disputes the form of this page, it offers us a digression. The Gospels, never mention of Jesus going to any school, not least because in the past one would have liked to think of a Jesus who already knew everything, even as a child. Every father, in Israel who realised he had a son who was intelligent and had a few more gifts than the others, was captivated by the thought that this son could be the future Messiah. It is however reasonable to think that Joseph, who was responsible for the human, social and religious education of this extraordinary son, realising that he was a very different child from the others and therefore he too and especially he could be the candidate for the great mission of Messiah, should have acted accordingly.

How could one think that Joseph was not prepared to make any sacrifice in order to give his son a proper education? Certainly there were some teachers in Nazareth, but it cannot be ruled out that, wanting to offer him the best, Joseph also thought of Jerusalem, where many young men were introduced to the scriptures and later become rabbis (teachers) in Israel. According to one tradition, there were relatives or certainly friends of Jesus in Jerusalem, although not permanently, it is possible that Joseph invited his son to spend significant time in the holy city.

The page above could show Jesus in some school, confronting his teachers with questions and answers. This is how the accounts of Jesus' childhood end.

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[31] - If one wants to situate this fact, in the chronology of Jesus, one can place it after the Bar mitzvah, which took place around that age. Some think that it could even be the same celebration of the Bar mitzvah, which took place in Jerusalem itself. Normally this act of initiation was done in one's own village in the synagogue, but it cannot be ruled out that some teenagers studying in Jerusalem might make their official entry into the religion of the Eternal Israel in the Temple itself.

Those who have spent their childhood in the midst of war or refugee camps, amidst famine, fleeing from one place to another to escape persecution, or in separate families, or with parents who no longer loved each other, or who have lived simply thrown out onto the street, deprived of a father, mother, or any family, well, those who have experienced such a childhood cannot avoid projecting traumas, various imbalances, or even truly invasive schizophrenias into their adult life.

Where did Jesus spend his childhood? In what context did he grow up as a child, adolescent and adult?

He had breathed the air of his beloved Galilee 'a green, shady and laughing land, the true land of the Song of Songs and songs of love’ [32]. In March and April, the countryside is a carpet of brightly coloured flowers of incomparable splendour. The animals are small, but extremely gentle: swift and lively turtle doves; bluebirds so light that they perch on the grass without bending it; long-haired larks that almost slip between travellers’ feet; brook turtles with lively, tame eyes; storks with a grave and demure appearance that, without any fear, let themselves be approached by man.

In his work, Renan states that in no country in the world do mountains come to inspire higher thoughts [33]. This region without large cities is actually a vast, scattered country, with houses clustered in small hamlets, heavily populated by 'energetic, courageous and hard- working people' [34].

Jesus lived in a corner of this Galilee: Nazareth, a maze of huts, paths, small farmyards, wells, stables, oil presses, wine presses, millstones, troughs, silos, cows, sheep, donkeys, fig trees, olive trees, palm trees and the hills on the horizon, sheltering from the wind, showing the toil of the farmers always full of hope. Our protagonist grows up in a family composed of a father and a mother: both have received a special and unique vocation from the Lord to be up to the task of guarding and accompanying all the dimensions of that child's physical, psychic and spiritual development so unique. The equilibrium of Jesus is thus rooted in a privileged family. From the few strokes of Luke and Matthew, we can also understand the richness of the personalities of Joseph and Mary, who were able to face and overcome conflicts and situations that are certainly beyond our reach.

When we see Jesus deal with the suffering, the sinner or the marginalised, when we notice how he approaches them and listens to them; how he forgives sinners; how he shakes the hand of a dead child to raise her up and revive her; how he blesses children who play and disturb; how he rejoices when his Father reveals his secrets to the little ones and the humble, we will realise that all these feelings of understanding, goodness and mercy reveal to us how rich and balanced Jesus' affectivity is. And we cannot therefore avoid tracing it back to the family environment of Nazareth, where the whole inner world of Jesus took root in a particularly fertile and unique soil for the incarnate Word to grow there.

At home and in the synagogue, one discovers the genuineness of a simple but robust faith. Mary, for her part, and Joseph, for duty's sake, and again the synagogue, which offered him knowledge of the Scriptures, popular prayers, rites, religious songs, prayers of the psalms, also constituted an essential school to provide him with the tools to perfect himself independently, especially in the use of the Scriptures. He had put down roots in a population on the periphery of the world where there was still too much poverty, but this aspect of Nazareth honed Jesus himself to learn how to relate to the sick, the destitute and the poor of everything, who often resorted to him. His extended, patriarchal family, together with the history and geography of Nazareth, offered Jesus the basic elements on which to structure the development and formation of his extraordinary personality.

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[32] - G. Flavius, B. J. III.

[33] - Cfr, E. Renan, Vita di Gesù, Milano Feltrinelli, 1994.

[34] - G. Flavius, B. J. III.

Jesus, sinless teenager

The page of the twelve-year-old Jesus at the temple in Jerusalem, more than for its historical value, which not everyone recognises, has an extraordinary importance in telling us who Jesus is at this moment of his life. He is an adolescent who, like everyone else, leaves childhood behind to become an adult. He realises that his body and soul are maturing physically, intellectually, in wisdom and grace.

It is also the age when the religious man is born, capable of establishing an already very intense relationship with his God. The Bible texts he is reads and prays, probably under Joseph's guidance – one of the prerogatives of Jewish fathers, was in fact the tool to educate their children to faith in the Covenant – awaken his inner world and he begins to realise that those texts find a special ground in him. In this privileged context, he experiences the phase of adolescence, in which every boy discovers within himself all the tendencies and novelties that are about to orientate his life: Jesus too, in this time of grace, glimpses at his vocation [35], even from afar. Just as we refuse to see Jesus in the guise of a magician who, in his childhood years, plays at performing miracles [36], so it is difficult to see in the adolescent Jesus the result of a whole series of stages that he too must reach.

In the page we have just encountered, however, we catch a glimpse of his inner world. It is in these years that Jesus probably realises that he is without sin. The world of friends, peers, family relatives and friends is different. In him, there is no need to correct his actions: he educates his temperament and modifies his character accordingly to what he encounters around him, in his family, among his fellow workers and also as he increasingly clearly discovers his mission. In the meantime, he learns to welcome within himself all that is beautiful and good that God has placed in creation and in history. It is in this context that Jesus becomes ready to welcome the first hints of revelation, on God's part, about his own identity: it is already clear that his life is constituted and centred in God, in whom he perceives the first hints of paternity to him. He feels more and more like a son of God in that he is an Israelite, but not only: when he is found in the Temple, to the reproach of having strayed from the caravan, he replies: ‘You may not know it, but I know that now I must put the things of God, my father, at the centre of my life [37].

At many junctures in his existence, this extraordinary man surprises us, precisely because he surpasses us. When we then try to make a judgement on his inner world, in which his affections, feelings and conscience reside, which has to manage such a complex humanity, because of its exceeding richness, as well as its balance - someone has called Jesus the only man truly balanced in human history -, we realise that we cannot claim to achieve exhaustive knowledge, because it is precisely there, in that inner universe, that God's 'feelings' dwell. In any case, in all the Gospel documentation, we must identify certain elements that make him closer, more knowable and therefore more lovable. In order to understand the psychological traits and inner world of Jesus, we must in fact also observe the environment in which his personality was formed and developed and - always bearing in mind that every man is a mystery - note how in Jesus of Nazareth his actions and words reach such a fullness that we can conclude that it could not be done better and it could not be said better, which filled those who saw him act and heard him speak with admiration and enchantment.

For each step along this path, therefore, it will be increasingly necessary to be accompanied by the light of a robust faith and the Magisterium of the Church itself. If a professor at the Sorbonne in Paris published four volumes to prove that Jesus was mentally ill and others joined in with similar judgments, which do not even deserve to be refuted (although many did); if, as the Gospel itself recounts, at a certain point in Jesus' life, some of his family - his mother and brothers - went to Jesus himself to try to bring him back home thinking that he was no longer in his right mind, and did so probably with the intention of defending him, since they heard that his disciples, 'did not even have time to eat any more', we must conclude that all this happened because in his prophetic behaviour Jesus had distanced himself so much from the common way of thinking and acting, that one could reasonably come to such a judgement.

Instead, it was only the beginning of Jesus' public mission and even his family had not yet visualised the whole of his missionary set-up and could not guess in which direction he would move and what results he would achieve. Even the Pharisees judged him out of his mind after his declaration, albeit implicit, of his own divinity: had he not been so judged, he would have been immediately stoned to death [38]. It is of paramount importance to explore the aspects most significant in the psychology of Jesus in order to get to know him more deeply [39].

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[35] - The inner world of Jesus is not surprising today, since history has encountered other figures of intelligent adolescents, capable of accepting a great vocation within themselves or capable, even at a young age, of finding the strength of martyrdom or at least heroic actions. Moreover, it would not be serious to deny that some of them received revelations long before they became adults.

[36] - As it is described in some apocryphal gospels.

[37] - I consider it indispensable to deepen the studies, which are relatively scarce, on the subject of the sinless Jesus as an adolescent and young man: such research could yield unexpected results on Christology.

[38] - Who is this Jesus who prays with such holiness, who lives with such confidence, who knows how to die with such innocence? We are in the presence of a holy folly, of an excess of faith and confidence, of a prodigious outpouring of moral strength, of an incredible purity and goodness. Such a life seems to us a foolishness, and yet it presents itself to us as a divinely beautiful feast. Where in the world has there ever appeared a man who resembles him? All human figures are inept at this. The spiritual and moral physiognomy of Jesus as well as his religious figure transcend the possibilities of the human... Who is this man Jesus? No one can answer that question with definitive certainty but he himself... so we must approach Jesus himself. There is no clearer conscience, no purer heart, no truer lip than his" (K. Adam, Gesù il Cristo, Brescia, Morcelliana, 1995, p. 82).

[39] - The problem of the psychology of Jesus is "one of the most urgent tasks that theology must set itself" (R. Guardini, La realtà umana del Signore. Saggio sulla Psicologia di Gesù, Brescia, Morcelliana, 1958, p. 268).

Physical health, root of a healthy balance

In life, Jesus was privileged not only by an extraordinary balance, but also by good physical health. He was able to cope with long journeys, an outdoor life and a very intense rhythm of life, so much so that - as we read in the Gospel - he even went so far as to worry his family, because at times, he did not even have time to take food with his disciples.

The sick came from afar and could not be put off until he had done something for them: those who came to him were always cured. There is no record that he ever sent anyone back empty-handed, or told them to come back another day because he was busy with some other work. Not only did he go up into the hills at night to pray, but he sometimes spent the whole night in prayer, and for this he must have had uncommon stamina. Even for fasting he needed good health: on long wanderings - sometimes as far as Tyre or Sidon - he had to travel with the bare essentials, something he also demanded of his disciples: "Carry nothing on the journey, neither staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money"[40], and so often he could not fail to fast.

Adam notes that "between the stable in Bethlehem and the hill of Golgotha there is a life even poorer than that of the birds who have their nests, of the foxes who have their dens. "He had no home [...] he had nowhere to lay his head" [...] there is no doubt that Jesus spent hundreds of nights in the open air, [...] only a healthy body could withstand such hardship" [41]. Added to this were the labours of the actual work, instructing the people and then crumbling the contents for the disciples, in addition one had to argue with Pharisees, Sadducees and doctors of the law.

The sick came and went until late, sometimes they could not reach him and had to go to their homes. Once he even went to a little girl to resuscitate her. It is probable that he was also called to Peter's mother-in-law who was ill and certainly went to the house of Lazarus, although he was far away, when they told him that his friend was very ill.

It was then necessary to keep one's eyes wide open to guard against insidious pitfalls, (should we pay taxes to the Romans or not? Should we obey Moses on what he says about women like this or not?), traps designed to catch him in the act.

Then there were the frequent fasts that could only be overcome with very sound health. Gospel readers might be misled into thinking that Jesus did not fast, in fact he once spoke of fasting disqualifying him, but it was at the wedding feast in the presence of the bridegroom. He had also mocked those who fast only to be seen, while another time he had mentioned fasting together with prayer as the preferred means of healing particularly serious illnesses. And who knows how many times he fasted and had to fast, during his itinerant mission, if at least once it is recorded that the disciples took ears of wheat from the fields to eat them: one can understand by this that the refreshments were certainly not all guaranteed.

Although he was able to multiply the loaves for a large number of people, Jesus never performed miracles for himself or his disciples, but only for others. And, again, in the midst of so many illnesses and activity as a healer, not once is there any mention of Jesus being ill [42].

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[40] - Lk. 9:3.

[41] - Cf. K. Adam, op. cit., p. 85.

[42] - At the end of the 1930s, Adam wrote: 'According to the concordant testimony of the Gospels, He must have been a man accustomed to toil, hardy, healthy, robust. And already in this He was distinguished from other famous founders of religions. Muhammad was ill, shaken in his nervous system, when he raised the prophet's banner. Buddha was inwardly undone, enervated, weary of life, when he retired from the world. There is no indication, on the other hand, that Jesus was afflicted by any illness whatsoever. All the sufferings that befell him were caused by his office: they were privations and sacrifices imposed on him by his messianic mission. His body must have been extraordinarily hardened and resistant to fatigue'. (K. Adam, op. cit., p. 83).

Manual labour, a prerequisite for psychological stability

To add a piece to the understanding of Jesus' solid equilibrium, I mention some characteristics of a manual job that probably occupied at least a large part of his life: the carpenter, the name by which he was referred to and called.

Matthew and Mark agree, as Renan points out, that Jesus 'practised his father's trade, that of carpenter, which was not at all humiliating or unpleasant. Jewish custom demanded that even the man devoted to intellectual work learned a trade. The most famous doctors had a trade. Rabbi Johana himself was also a shoemaker and another Rabbi named Isaac was a blacksmith. Similarly St. Paul, who had received a very thorough education, was a curtain-maker or upholsterer [43].

The same apostles, whom Jesus later chose, were mostly fishermen. For Jesus and Joseph, who lived in a small town, this activity was certainly not enough and they often had to move in search of a new building site [44]. In his parables, Jesus manifests the carpenter's interest in all kinds of construction. This appears in a special way when Jesus speaks of a piece of chipboard that might be splashed in the eye, he speaks of a beam, or of the cornerstone thrown away by builders, or of the good and solid foundation for a building that could not easily be damaged by floods or storms, or of the calculation of the expenses to be made in advance to construct a tower or other building [45].

In addition to his professional commitment, Jesus certainly had occasion to engage in odd jobs of manual labour to help some particularly needy family, bearing in mind that the population of Nazareth, as of other villages in Palestine, was very poor. In peasant culture it normally happens that at certain times of the year neighbours make themselves available to help each other for short periods, such as the olive harvest or the grape harvest, sowing and pruning. Certainly Jesus was willing to render these services: from the parables we can see how he understood fields, sowing, harvesting, the economic administration of the harvests of pastures, vineyards and even fishing, at least since he invited professional fishermen into his group, and even housework. This dimension of even strenuous work helped to structure a solid, strong and balanced personality in Jesus.

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[43] - E. Renan, op. cit., p. 152.

[44] - Being a carpenter means planning the construction of a building or a piece of furniture or carrying out a restoration, choosing the material to be worked on and making estimates. The carpenter trains himself to measure wood, cut or saw pieces, plane, sand, nail, glue or set. It is also his job to cut and work stone, hammer it, carve it for bas-reliefs or simple supporting pieces. He must also learn to use the tools at his disposal and, if necessary, make others.

[45] - K. Adam, op. cit., p. 102.

Can we talk about the psychology of Jesus?

As I write this, I must honestly admit that I have already made a judgement on the absolutely unquestionable balance of Jesus in his style and way of life, but I will take up the path with the reader to explore it together. Can one really speak of a 'psychology of Jesus' even though his ego is immersed in the divine? One can and must think about the psychological inner world of Jesus, provided one does so with humility, knowing that one cannot reach all the boundaries we find in our humanity.

Guardini argues in this regard that psychological observation on Jesus is justified because he is totally human, body and soul, and one can follow in him the patterns of human laws, but not exhaustively, because at a certain point they are absorbed by his divine mystery and, even where they can be observed, the full dimension of his behaviour escapes us: in every aspect there is something inexplicable. Jesus' psychological structure is totally human, but not only that. One cannot pigeonhole Jesus into a human psychological structure. And when someone tries to do so, it means they are trying to reduce Jesus to merely human proportions. Jesus does not explain himself with analogies drawn from history, but only with himself [46].

The self of Jesus, being divine, reveals itself to us in part, but exceeds us infinitely. With his insight, Adam states: 'the first characteristic that catches the eye of the psychologist who studies the human physiognomy of Jesus is certainly the note of virile fortitude, of clarity, of impressive loyalty, of rough sincerity, in a word, of heroism, that transpires from Jesus' personality. This was also the first characteristic that bound the disciples to him. The sharp 'yes' and 'no' of his personality were expressed in short and penetrating mottos. These mottos, like parables, are like the outpouring of his will striving for perfection, consistency, inner purity; they clearly bear the imprint of their genuine origin. "If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out". "He who loses his soul, will gain it'; 'No one can serve two masters'. How does this singular and heroic spirit deal with the things and men around him? We shall see that the human side of Jesus cannot be placed on the same level as the common human reality; we shall see that it would be wasted effort to try to classify Him in any category of human types, finding rather in Him an entirely unique character, which can never be explained by analogies drawn from history, but only with Himself [47].

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[46] - "With regard to Jesus, psychological observation is possible, because He is man in body and soul. There are always connections within his life and with human laws; one can follow them but only for a stretch, then they are swallowed up by the mystery of a centre, which one can no longer scrutinise. And, if one looks more closely, one realises that even for that stretch one could not observe and understand it well, because it too has in every point a character that cannot be explained. There is for Jesus no psychological structure, no type, no biography. What one pretends to say about him, in this regard, is vanity, or deception; because often behind the pretended analyses is the desire to reduce Jesus to merely human proportions" (R. Guardini, op. cit., p. 269).

[47] - K. Adam, op. cit., p. 86.

His inner world

In the synoptics we find at least sixty times the passions, emotions, feelings, desires and concerns of Jesus. Matthew gives us a picture of the world of Jesus' feelings and emotions by presenting him as the Messiah with a text from Isaiah: "Behold my servant whom I have chosen; my beloved, in whom I have put the joy of my feelings. I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall proclaim righteousness to the nations. He shall not dispute, nor shout, nor shall his voice be heard in the public squares. He shall not break a reed already cracked, nor quench a dull flame, until he has made justice triumph" [48].

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[48] - Mt. 12:18-20; cf. Is. 42:1-4.

Jesus is not an actor

The miracles of Jesus are performed without propaganda or spectacularisation, without any aim to attract the attention of the spectators. Jesus performs extraordinary actions almost without being noticed, without advertising, and the same open-air baptism or the Transfiguration take place in such a reserved context that hardly anyone noticed them apart  from those directly involved: not apotheosis, not glorification on earth, not self-promotion. The humble and shy Jesus behaves this way because this is his style. But there is a fire in his feelings that can only be found in him.

Jesus' invitation is a command of authority

When he presents the mission to the disciples, Jesus does not discount anything, he does not even wrap up the contents to make them reasonably acceptable. He announces to them that he will send them as lambs in the midst of wolves, without saddlebags or staffs. He warns them that they will be scourged in the synagogues, thrown into prison and persecuted because of him, adding that they will even have to flee to other countries because of the persecutions, and that they will even be betrayed at home, by their brothers and by their own father. And, if this were not enough, Jesus states: "Whoever loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me. To worry about one's life is to lose oneself, while to sacrifice one's life for me and for the gospel is to save oneself' [49]. And it must be emphasised again that the passionate temperament of Jesus - who has an allergy to all that is mediocre, sin, vice, violence, enslavement and all evil - declares war on everything that represents the antithesis of the Kingdom of God.

Carved into us and into history are phrases such as: "You believe that I have come to bring peace to the earth; no, I have come to bring the sword" [50]; "I have come to bring fire to the earth and how I wish it were already burning!" [51]. "In a house of five, three will be against two and two against three. I have come to bring discord between father and son, mother and daughter, daughter-in-law and mother-in-law. Everyone will have enemies in his own house" [52].

Those who, after two millennia, read these words, know how many young people have separated from their families or come into conflict with their families in order to dedicate themselves body and soul to the Kingdom of God. The Gospel reports that a man who had been asked to follow him replied: 'Let me come after my father's death'. But Jesus retorted: "Let the dead bury their dead, but you proclaim and preach the Kingdom of God". And that another had promised him: 'I too, Lord, will come, but let me put the affairs of my house in order', but was thus taken back by him: 'He who puts his hand to the plough and looks back, is not fit for the Kingdom of God' [53].

It is surprising that, as Matthew writes (11:28-30), while manifesting feelings bordering on the human and apparently doing everything to discourage the disciples from following him, Jesus has the courage to say: 'Come to me all you who labour and are weary, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon your shoulders; learn from me that I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls; for my yoke is gentle and my burden light,' until one day he declared: 'Blessed is he who will not be scandalised by me’.

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[49] - Mt. 10:37-39; 16:24-26; Mk. 8:34-37; Lk. 9:23-25; Jn. 12:25.

[50] - Mt. 10, 34.

[51] - Lk. 12, 49.

[52] - Mt. 10, 35-36.

[53] - Mt. 8:21-22; Lk. 9:57-62.

Jesus caresses and whips

Only in a personality like that of Jesus can such contrasting sentiments coexist, at first sight opposing, and yet of absolute coherence. It is the same Jesus who speaks with such an authoritative attitude and who, in front of the children who disturb his catechesis with inevitable cackling, loosens up, interrupts his speeches for a moment and takes time for them: he calls them, probably caresses them or invents some game, so that they do not feel cut off from that enchanted circle of adults.

It is the same Jesus who whips the temple sellers and embraces the children. It is a Jesus of fire who asks for everything: he asks to live each moment intensely, to multiply one's talents so as not to risk coming up empty-handed, and he calls blessed those who have nothing left in their hands to hand over because they have already burnt everything. For Jesus, blessed is he who fights the wolves and kills them all - in fact he sends us into the midst of the wolves - and those who in the fight let themselves to be killed by the wolves themselves. For these reasons we struggle to understand the inner world of Jesus, which almost frightens us and at the same time fascinates us.

Jesus' heart is for the poor

Then there is a feeling we encounter most frequently in the synoptics: compassion or mercy. Faced with crowds of mostly poor people, Jesus feels compassion and takes concrete action, becoming God's provision for each one, multiplying bread and fish for each one of them.

He feels compassion at Cana for the newlyweds left without a banquet and provides them with wine. He has compassion for the sick, the crippled, the blind, the deaf and dumb and heals them with the sole purpose of seeing them well and happy. He asks nothing in return. He just gives. He has compassion for the lepers, cut off from the rest of the world, he heals them, integrates them again and rehabilitates them to return to the family, to the synagogue, to the temple, to the market. He takes care of the mentally ill, the epileptics, those who, victims of severe schizophrenia, are no longer even capable of begging and remain mute, staring into space, so much so that for people they have a demon in their bodies, a mute demon, a demon that shakes them in their illness.

In Jesus, full of compassion, these sick people find recovery and healing, but He especially has pity for those wounded by sin and in need of forgiveness. The compassionate Jesus forgives a paralytic because He has realised how much he needs Him, more than the physical healing: so he gives him this and that. A woman who risked being stoned to death for her infidelity is saved by Jesus' pity and compassion, while a widow outside the town of Naim has the good fortune to meet him as, in despair, she accompanies the burial of her dead son. The mercy of Jesus, who misses no opportunity to intervene, resurrects the boy, returning him to his mother's affection.

A concrete mercy

While the disciples around him appear rather agitated when faced with uncomfortable situations, Jesus always expresses himself in a calm and balances manner in any unforeseen situation: they feel concern when the people following them need feed themselves and they do not know how to solve the problem. They feel annoyance and get nervous in front of the blind man who shouts when Jesus passes by, disturbing them. They feel annoyance in front of the children who, of course, also annoy them and try to push them away, but the balance and wisdom of Jesus solves everything with an imponderable calm: he multiplies the loaves to the first ones, heals the blind man, calls the children to come and play with him and loads them with hugs and kisses, showing them how much he loves them.

And when the disciples become discouraged because they are helplessness, because they cannot heal some particularly complex case, with his compassion Jesus helps them overcome that discouragement, telling them the solution: more prayer and more fasting.

Jesus then shows how compassion and mercy not only enable him to perform miracles, but also pervade his speeches when he wants to convey his own feelings to everyone. The parable of the prodigal son or the merciful father shows how forgiveness was able to recover the life of the lost son, while the story of the Good Samaritan who, moved by compassion, recovers the life of the one who was despised and thrown away by thugs, expresses all the disappointment for those who failed to bring succour. In other circumstances, as Mark reports (3:5), before healing a leper, two blind men, a deaf and dumb man, Jesus shows his inner state with a quiver and a sigh or, again, in front of the incredulity of those who, faced with so many signs, do not believe and continue to ask for more, he does not hide his suffering on his face.

A fire within

In Jesus we also find choleric attitudes, as when he rails against Peter, shouting: "Away from me, Satan!", since the apostle wanted to turn Jesus himself away from his passion and death; or with that other shout: "Away from me, you scoundrels, I do not know you!", when he describes the Last Judgement, addressing those words to those who will not have helped their brothers and sisters in need. And with the same wrath he composes the parables of the ten virgins, five of them idiots, and that of the recipients of talents, in which one of the protagonists foolishly hides his own. Then there are the invectives that Jesus addresses especially to the Pharisees and the doctors of the Law, always as a reaction to sin, especially hypocrisy. In this language we find the cries like those of the prophets Amos, Jeremiah, Hosea or Zechariah - who condemned the betrayals of the Covenants - or of Moses, when he broke the tables of the Law.

To tone down a little the language that would seem anomalous in Jesus, it should be noted that the Pharisees became unbearable enemies of Christians especially forty years after his death and resurrection; this is why it is possible that - as far as the redaction of the texts is concerned - the evangelists themselves were able to emphasise their state of mind only a few decades later. For example, what is presented in the Gospel as a long speech of invective against the Pharisees could instead be a collection of expressions of Jesus scattered over time that, when grouped together, arouse much more marked feelings of adversity.

The speeches are also joined by the episode of the Temple sellers, driven out by Jesus with whips and cries of indignation against the lack of respect for the House of God. But in none of these instances does revenge or gratuitous violence transpire. Jesus has no enemies, but wants to heal everyone. Jesus loved the sellers in the Temple as he loved the children who played with him and whom he embraced because they needed hugs and kisses, while the sellers in the Temple needed a whip and Jesus did not spare them, but always with feelings of undivided love. The ability to keep feelings of anger and undivided love for the same people in the same heart requires a divine balance. After these strong emotional vibrations, Jesus returns perfectly calm and never loses control of the situation [54].

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[54] - He always respects the freedom of his interlocutors, indeed he arouses and promotes it; he does not do violence, he does not suggest, he does not alarm or intimidate. "His actions do not give way to anxiety, nor do they show anxiety or restlessness, but neither do they show passivity or fatalism in accepting a reality of which he always shows himself to be the master. If his judgments are not tender and, at the moment of pointing the way to the good, he does not spare invectives and reproaches (cf. Mt 23:13-39; Lk 11:39-52; 13:32), in him there is calm and calmness, even at the moment of pronouncing harsh and demanding speeches" (G. Tanzella-Nitti, La psicologia umana di Gesù di Nazareth e il suo ruolo in una contemporanea teologia della credibilità, in "Annales Theologici" 27, 2013, p. 278).

Emotion to tears

One day Jesus invites a young man who has shown him that he is worthy to become his disciple, but does not have the courage to leave everything to follow him. This fact, which causes an emotion of disillusionment and bitterness, makes Jesus conclude, almost as an apology, how incompatible is the attachment to riches and the choice of the Kingdom of God.

The feeling of profound compassion even makes Jesus weep, in front of the city of Jerusalem that does not convert and whose destruction he foresees, and, at another time, when his friend Lazarus dies: arriving four days after the funeral, he is emotionally shaken by the grief of Mary and Martha and the other Jews who mourn the death of the young man, so he also bursts into tears.

Then there is the mercy that transcends boundaries, when a woman washes his feet with her own tears and kisses them: this is an unthinkable act in the East, both for the woman, since feet are an impure object, and for Jesus, since a sinner, by touching him, would have made him impure as well, something he is rebuked for.

And, again, in the passion, feelings of mercy overflow to those who are crucifying him and finally with those who die with him, forever fixing the traits of a compassionate personality as only God's can be.

Only God can weep in such a way

Jesus' grief makes him sweat blood: perhaps Jesus is thinking of the reign of justice that the poor in particular were waiting for and that would not easily be realised on earth. He thinks of unrepentant Jerusalem, of Nazareth, of Capernaum, where he had once lived. He thinks of his fate as a suffering servant, but certainly more so of Judas, Peter, Pilate, Herod, and all the people waiting for a heart transplant. The evangelists speak of his fear and anguish [55], his sadness [56]. He needs the closeness of his friends: 'Stay here and keep vigil with me' [57] .His own fail to empathise with him and fall asleep, confessing to him their distance, yet, without reproach, he barely wakes them up, as he would his own children. He calls Judas a friend and not even to Peter does he reproach his betrayal, he simply looks at him, not with a judging eye, but as a brother who has no room in the depths of his being to hold a grudge.

On Calvary he has compassion for his mother, who will remain alone, he hands her over to another son, and asks John to take care of her. And again, the compassion he has for those who are nailed with him makes him give them everything he himself receives: eternal life. Moreover, even though condemned - by Pilate and Caiaphas, by the Sanhedrin and the Roman centuria -, scourged and crucified, he gathers all his energies imbued with mercy to pronounce the defence: 'Forgive them, they are not at fault, they simply do not understand, they do not know what they are doing'. Jesus gathers in himself the spirit of the crucified condemned man and at the same time the spirit of the acquitting judge. Even after the Resurrection, his compassion led him to console Mary of Magdala and the other women he had met on the road to Calvary, and again to be seen by the disciples and all those who were now in despair, thinking they had lost him forever.

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[55] - Mc. 14, 33; Mt. 26, 37.

[56] - Mc. 14, 34; Mt. 26, 38.

[57] - Mt. 26, 38; Lc. 10, 33. Mt 9:35-36; Lc 15:20-24.

Mercy and love

In Jesus, compassion and mercy sentiments are integrated with the more specific sentiment of love: John in particular emphasises this dimension, as he is first and foremost a lover of the Father, for whom he is willing to do anything, even accept the torture of passion and death itself, which is that of a slave on a cross. Jesus loves the disciples and the whole world and expresses this love through service. Throughout his public life Jesus is committed to service: he teaches, heals the sick and forgives sinners, instructing everyone to do as he does. Finally, we see him at the farewell supper, kneeling before his disciples as he washes their feet [58]. Seeing God washing the feet of men is an icon of fire, that fire that will set the world on fire. While bearing the cross himself, Jesus also invites us to follow him by bearing our own, proportionate to our strength [59]. Well, this invitation might lead us to think that being a Christian means only suffering and thus basically living an unhappy life. But we reply by looking to Him.

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[58] - Gv. 13, 1-20.

[59] - Mt. 16, 24.

The joy of Jesus

He is certainly the man who was slaughtered by pain more than any other man who has ever existed and will ever exist on earth, but He is also the man who more than any other experienced the dimension of joy to the fullest extent that a man can experience. Jesus experienced joy in his daily life in Nazareth in such a unique family, in a dimension of affection and love that we can only vaguely imagine. When he held the hand of a dead child and was able to say Talitha Khum to her, or stretched out his hands over the sick to heal them, when he preached the New Kingdom, the Beatitudes and proclaimed the New Commandment and, in a totally unique way, when he spent his nights with the Father in a prayer that united the human with the divine with a joy that no man has ever been able to and will ever be able to experience and, again, during his earthly days, loving every person who passed by or stood beside him, Christ's joy was manifested above all others on earth and, if we are invited to bear the cross behind him, we are likewise invited to embrace the same joy that pervaded his life.

Before I finish, I want to recall that, at his last farewell, Jesus had said that he had longed for that supper with the most intense desire, and we know that on that evening Jesus was celebrating what was to be realised shortly afterwards: death and resurrection [60]. The attitude with which he approached the last hour, the hour of passion, death and resurrection is therefore evident.

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[60] - Lk. 22:14.

Jesus is a Jew. His culture and religion belong to that people. He is nourished by the Law and the Prophets. He too dreams of the day when the Promises will be fulfilled. He too awaits the Kingdom of God and will preach it with all his might. Like every Jew, he too awaits the manifestation of the Messiah, whom he finds more and more in his own flesh and spirit. When he says that he did not come to abolish the Law of Moses, but to complete it, what does that mean? What, then, was missing from the Law of the Ten Commandments? Everything was there in the text, but no one lived it with total obedience. Jesus was the first Jew to put the entire Law and the Prophets into full practice. In this sense he completed what was missing. No one was as Jewish as Jesus Christ.

His Jewish roots

The catechists of the first Christian community, being Jews themselves, emphasise that Jesus is one of them, as he lives in a Jewish family, embedded in the Jewish culture and religion that Jesus himself makes his own. Jesus speaks as a Jew, indeed he is a Jew, a true son of his people. And the books of the Old Testament are, for him too, the texts through which God speaks to his people. Like every Jew, he goes to the synagogue and to the temple in Jerusalem, and in both places he takes his time to preach the newness of the Kingdom of God. He does not preach a new religion, but the Law, the Law of Moses that the people knew in part. In fact, the Law prescribed to keep oneself pure before God and, for this reason, required to wash one's hands, feet, body, dishes, glasses and everything used for food several times. Jesus, too, pursues purity, but that of the heart: he asks us to wash our hearts and purify them of theft, adultery, violence, abuse and all forms of sin [61].

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[61] - Mc. 7, 20-23.

The Sabbath

The Law, moreover, demanded respect for the Sabbath, forbidding all work and even imposing not to walk beyond a certain number of steps. Jesus, too, demands respect for the Sabbath, forbidding in the first place to do evil and inviting to do good, to care for the sick, to help the needy or to perform acts of justice and charity because the Sabbath is for man and not man for the Sabbath.

But I say to you

Jesus is faithful to the Eternal Israel, to the Law and the Prophets, in fact he says: "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish, but to fulfil" [62] (and to live all this). Jesus' teachings, signs, and all his activity were in fact a way of fulfilling the Law and the Prophets. Yet, can he consider himself a Jew when he declares, "You have been told, but I tell you?" [63].

Might one not think that Jesus rejects Judaism and places himself as an alternative or above it? Here is what he states: 'It has been said, "Thou shalt not kill", but I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother shall be brought into judgment [64]. It has been said, "Thou shalt not commit adultery", but I say to you that whoever looks at a woman desiring her has already committed adultery with her in his heart" [65]. In this case, by also explaining the meaning of the other commandment "thou shalt not covet another man's wife" and implying that coveting evil is tantamount to committing it, Jesus helps the Jew to go deeper into the Law itself. "It has been said. 'Do not perjure yourself, but fulfil your oaths with the Lord,' but I say to you do not swear at all" [66].

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[62] - Mt. 5, 17.

[63] - Mt. 5, 21 ff.

[64] - Mt.5, 21-22.

[65] - Mt 5, 27-28.

[66] - Mt 5, 33-34.

The Law in depth

Jesus does not set himself at odds with the commandments, but helps to read them, in fact any faithful and practising Jew can attest: 'These statements certainly touch my daily life; in it murder is unusual, but wrath is habitual, adultery is rare, but fantasizing about it is frequent, false swearing is exceptional, but swearing is normal' [67]. With these expressions, Jesus is actually saying that if you do not want to kill, you should not even risk getting angry with your brother, because you might actually kill him, or if you do not want to commit adultery, you should not even desire a woman, or if you do not want to risk perjury, better not to swear at all. With these words, Jesus does not stand outside the Torah, but explains it in depth and, in this way, the commandments become more direct and urgent [68].

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[67] - Cf. J. Neusner, Un Rabbino parla con Gesù, Cinisello Balsamo, San Paolo Edizioni, 2013, p.70.

[68] - With the first "but I say to you", Jesus wants to take moral behaviour to the highest degree by avoiding even quarrelling with one's neighbour, and with the second "but I say to you" Jesus does not bring an absolute novelty - in fact in the law itself there is also the command to "not covet other men's wives" - but he helps one to stand before the Law and interpret it more consistently; in the third 'but I say to you' he warns that it is not good to swear, but at the same time he warns, at another time, that if you swear, however, you have a duty to fulfil it. Jesus is not at odds with the Torah, with the Eternal Israel, in fact he goes on to emphasise: 'I have not come to abolish, but to complete. Verily I say unto you, until the heavens and the earth pass away, not one iota or one sign shall pass from the Law, without all things being fulfilled" (Cf. Mt 5:17).

Consistent with the Law

Jesus preaches the commandments of Moses. When the holy Jew accepts the yoke of the Torah commandments and puts them into practice, he accepts the Kingdom of God and lives it here on earth. And when Jesus preaches the Kingdom of God, it is in keeping with the Law itself. For the Jew, living the commandments means obeying God who demands a holy life. To the young man who asks what to do to obtain eternal life, Jesus replies: "Keep the commandments! And he asked: "Which ones?" Jesus answered, "Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness, honour thy father and mother, and love thy neighbour as thyself." The young man said to him: "I have always observed all these things, what am I still lacking?". Jesus said to him: 'If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have, give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come and follow me'" [69].

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[69] - Mt 19:16-22.

Jesus: above the Law?

The Jew listening to this Gospel passage might complain, thinking that Jesus puts himself above the Law of Moses. In fact, God, through Moses, commanded the Eternal Israel: "Be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy" [70], so the Jew knows that by living the commandments he becomes holy. For this reason one may ask: "Why is it that, in order to be perfect, Jesus asks that we follow Him and not the Torah?" Jesus - who knows that he is holy, therefore perfect - wanting to indicate to the Jew to follow the Torah in a way concrete and visible, almost plastic, invites him to look to Himself, to live as He lives and proposes Himself as the Way, the Truth and the Life, just as the Torah itself is the Way, the Truth and the Life [71]. Following the Torah therefore means following God, as well as following Jesus himself.

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[70] - Lev. 19:1-2.

[71] - Gv. 14, 6.

Breed of snakes

Can Jesus be considered a Jew if he apostrophises the Pharisees, the authorised representatives of the Law, calling them whitewashed sepulchres, a breed of snakes, or people who burden others with the burdens of the Law, but do not even lift them with a finger? Or again, can a Jesus who, while healing the servant of a pagan centurion, dares to declare: "They will come from the East and the West [the pagans, the unbelievers] and sit down at table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the children of the kingdom [the Jews] will be cast out into darkness?" be considered Jewish? [72] 

The answer is simple: Jesus does not condemn the Torah, but those who, while representing it, do not live it. Jesus is never against the Law, indeed he seems to be a fanatic of the Law itself, more so than the Pharisees who oppose him, in fact he says: "Whoever therefore transgresses a single one of these precepts, even a small one, and teaches men to do likewise, will be considered small even in the kingdom of heaven; whoever instead observes them and teaches them to men, will be considered great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say to you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven". Jesus does not dishonour the Law [73] with these words, but attacks those who do not observe it, or at least not in depth.

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[72] - Mt 8:11-12.

[73] - Mt 5:19-20.

Love for the Torah and Jesus

Can a Jesus who declares: "Whoever loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me  [74] ;   whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me" continue to be a Jew? Is it not the Torah that must be put above all else? Yes, but if Jesus identifies with the Torah, these words are equivalent to: "Whoever loves father and mother more than Torah is not worthy of Torah and whoever loves son or daughter more than Torah is not worthy of Torah".

As Luke relates (12:8-9), Jesus identifies himself with the Law, in fact he lives it to the full. And when he preaches the Kingdom of God, he feels so assimilated to the Kingdom itself, that to possess the Kingdom is to adhere to Him [75].

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[74] - Mt 10:37-39.

[75] - In later times, some of the doctors, Simeon the righteous (in Pirke'Aboth), Jesus son of Sirach (Eccl. 35, 1 ff.), Hillel himself (Talmud of Jerus. or that of Babyl.) almost reached the goal, declaring that justice was the compendium of the Law. Philo, in the Judaeo-Alexandrian world, expressed ideas of high moral holiness in parallel with Jesus, which involved the renunciation of legal practices. Shemaiah and Abtalion also showed themselves to be very liberal casuists on more than one occasion. (Talmud of Babil. Pesachim, 67 b). Rabbi Johanan even went so far as to put the works of mercy above the study of the Law itself (Talmud of Jer. L. Pech, 1); (Cf. E. Renan, op. cit., p.163).

The fullness of Judaism

Jesus is the holy Jew, the prophet who lives the commandments [the Law] to the full, therefore he lives the Eternal Israel of the Jews, realising in himself the integral humanism, the qualitative leap of a new humanity that lives without sin, therefore the Eternal Israel incarnated in a man and the man the image of God, on whose face shines the light of the face of God himself. In Jesus is realised the fullness of Judaism that we call Christianity: we can even say that the New Testament is the Old Testament lived by Him. With this premise of the Jewish Jesus, we enter into the heart of his preaching, signs and actions.

The pillars of Jewish religiosity accepted by Jesus

Prayer

The simple people of Israel nourished a genuine faith, rooted in a religious history stretching back thousands of years. Jesus lived among this people who knew how to pray. Every pious Jew began and ended his day with prayer. This is stated by the historian Josephus Flavius: 'Twice a day, in the morning and in the evening before his rest, he turned to God with a prayer of thanksgiving [it was actually an act of faith], recalling the deeds that God had done since they had come out of Egypt [76].

From the age of thirteen, all Jewish males, adolescents and adults, not only in Palestine, but also throughout the diaspora (a word for the dispersion of Jews throughout the world), faithfully followed this tradition, a cohesive element as were circumcision and the practice of the Law. This prayer was recited standing, facing the Temple in Jerusalem. Jesus also prayed thus: 'Hear, O Israel; the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. Guard these words that I say to you today..." [77]. This was followed by blessings and prayer at three o'clock in the afternoon, when those outside Jerusalem joined spiritually in prayer in the Temple at the hour when the evening sacrifices were offered.

Annex V - The Prayer

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[76] - G. Flavius, Antichità giudaiche, 4, 212.

[77] - Dt. 6, 4.

Fasting

In the spirituality of Israel, along with prayer, we find fasting as a form of prayer itself. Throughout the entire sacred history of that people, this practice of penance, already recommended by Adonai to Moses himself  [78], had been used.

Ahab himself, after hearing the words of Elijah, had torn his clothes and fasted [79]. Jonah invited the people of Nineveh - men, women, from elders to children - to convert by doing penance and fasting. David also fasted long for his son, and again for Saul and his great friend Jonathan when they were killed on Gelboe. And also for the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Adonai himself invites all to penance and fasting to be delivered from calamities: 'Return to me with all your hearts with fasting and weeping, but tear your hearts and not your garments' [80]. And, again, the great heroine Esther, in order to attempt to free her people, does not refuse to risk her own life, but somehow asks to be accompanied by her entire city, asking for a fast without any food or drink for three days and three nights [81].

Just as Moses, in order to meet with Adonai - who will deliver the Law to him - fasted for forty days and forty nights without food or drink [82], so Daniel, with prayers, supplications, fasting and wearing sackcloth, approached Adonai to ask forgiveness of sins for the people of Israel [83].

Jesus himself began his public life with forty days of fasting in the desert [84]. And when the disciples asked why they had not been able to heal some very serious illnesses, Jesus answered that certain illnesses can only be healed by much prayer and fasting [85]. And, since the prophets had already censured fasting, which had become a source of pride, he warned his disciples: "When you fast, wash your face and perfume your head, so that men will not notice that you are fasting, but only your Father who lives in secret will reward you [86].

After Jesus, the apostles also continued to practise fasting. Before setting out on a missionary journey, Paul and Barnabas "fasted and prayed, then laid their hands on Barnabas and Saul and bid them farewell [87]. Similarly, they felt the need to fast when it was necessary to appoint elders for each community: "they prayed and fasted and entrusted them to Him in Whom they had believed" [88]. To his pastoral work, Paul also added, with perseverance, the sufferings for Jesus Christ "in tribulation, necessities, afflictions, scourging, prisons, troubles, labours, watches and fasts" [89].

The Church has continued to recognise fasting [90] as a valuable means to obtain conversion, the pain of repentance and reparation, and which is then transformed into a prayer that implores divine help for the project it intends to accomplish. The saints fasted in solidarity with their sick societies: fasting as prayer is a requirement of man and society that, realising its ills, wants to heal and asks for help from above [91].

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[78] - Lev. 23, 26-27.

[79] - 1 Re 21, 27.

[80] - Gl. 1, 13-14; 2, 12-13.

[81] - Est. 4, 15-16.

[82] - Es. 34, 28.

[83] - Dn. 9, 3-4.

[84] - Mt 4:2.

[85] - Cf. Mt. 17, 21.

[86] - Mt. 6, 17-18.

[87] - Acts 13, 3.

[88] - Acts 14, 23.

[89] - 2 Cor. 6, 5.

[90] - "Fasting was a means by which the Israelites always turned to God with a noble and religious intention, and this fact deeply affected Jewish piety. Jesus did not suppress it, but rather practised it himself, purifying it of everything that could obscure or destroy its true meaning" (D. Gutierrez Martin, O lado humano de Jesus de Nazareth, São Paulo ed., 1997, p. 76).

[91] - Cf. D. Gutierrez Martin, op. cit., p. 81.

Almsgiving

Almsgiving must not crystallise in our minds as the gesture of the offered coin, almost a gesture of etiquette rather than an act of goodness: if it is practised in its true sense, it concretises the sharing and solidarity with those who are destitute and suffer because of their poverty, often lacking housing, food, clothing or medicine. Indeed, God wants to educate his people to ever more genuine acts of love towards their neighbour, perfecting the predisposition to help - already inscribed in the human heart - towards those in need.

Already in the very first pages of the Bible, God asked that, in the towns of God's people, orphans, widows and immigrants could meet people who know how to provide for their needs [92]. And He asked the farmers to leave some of the harvest in the fields, so that it could be used for the migrants, orphans and widows [93]: in this way, the needy did not have to humble themselves to ask, but met providence on their own path.

Some proverbs helped to understand the meaning of sharing: 'If you see a poor man, do not turn away, and God will turn towards you', and again: 'He who helps the poor lends to Adonai, who will give him his good reward' [94], or again: 'He who closes his ears when the poor man asks, he will not receive an answer either' [95], or: 'As water extinguishes fire, so charity extinguishes sins' [96]. But Jesus goes much further: knowing his people, capable of being overcome by the pride of being better than others, he continues to guide them: "When you give alms, let your left hand not know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may remain secret, and then your Father who sees in secret will reward you" [97]. Jesus also insists on the gratuitousness of giving to the poor. Those who make a banquet should especially invite the poor, the disabled, the paralytic, or the blind, because these will never be able to reward and the reward will be received at the resurrection [98]. And, to make it clear that almsgiving is not just the act of dropping a coin into the hand of a beggar, he confronts us with an eloquent parable: a fellow, attacked and robbed by thieves, is rescued and cared for by a Samarian villager, who changes his plans and takes him to a first-aid place, i.e. he does not give a coin to get a coffee afterwards, but solves the unfortunate man's problem and solves it at its root [99].

To a group of listeners, Jesus recommends that they sell their possessions, give everything to the poor, build themselves sacks that will not wear put, and make themselves a treasure that will not be devalued in heaven [100]. Finally, he is not content to propose the alms of the Law, but asks for everything. He asks some young men to leave nets, boats, houses, families and follow Him, who must envy the nests of birds or the dens of foxes: with no more human security, with the reward of a cross on which to offer everything. And He concludes that, at the moment of the Last Judgement, He Himself will invite the merciful to receive the Kingdom of God His Father as a gift, because He had been hungry, thirsty, naked, imprisoned, and had received food, drink, clothing and cordial visits every time a poor person had been helped [101]. Jesus so firmly imprinted this concern for the needy that, after him, the early Church continued to be disciples of those teachings.

Among the earliest Christians we find Tabitha, Cornelius and many others committed to providing for the poor [102], while St. Paul himself praises the generosity of the Churches of Macedonia or the Christians of Antioch who, though poor, were generous in taking up a collection on behalf of the most destitute Christians [103]. And, again, when Paul went to meet the pillars of the Church - Peter, James, John - in Jerusalem and received the official assignment to be sent with Barnabas to evangelise the pagans, he did not receive many recommendations, but only the invitation to remember the poor [104].

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[92] - Dt. 14, 29.

[93] - Dt. 24, 19-22.

[94] - Tb. 4, 7-11; Pr. 19, 17.

[95] - Pr. 21, 13.

[96] - Sir. 3, 30.

[97] - Mt. 6, 1 ss.; cfr. Eccl. 27, 18; 29, 15 e Talm. di Bab. Chagiga, 5°.

[98] - Lc. 14, 13-14.

[99] - Lc. 10, 33-35.

[100] - Lc. 12, 33.

[101] - Cfr. Mt. 25.

[102] - At. 9, 36; 10, 2.

[103] - 2 Cor. 8, 4; Rev. 11, 29.

[104] - Gal. 2, 10.

Pilgrimages

It is not enough for the pious Israelite to isolate himself in his own world of fields or the shores of the sea and be content with his own family. The synagogue itself is not enough to breathe the spirit of the Covenants, the Prophets, the Promises. One must step out of one's own backyard and cultivate wide-ranging aggregations with other relatives, friends and witnesses of the same faith. Religion must be lived together with one's people, otherwise it suffocates and can die. This is the reason for pilgrimages. The nomadism of this people has clung to the soul of these communities, who need to walk together, to camp with extended family members and the family of the Eternal Israel. One's own vineyard, boat, house are not enough and Jerusalem is a Landmark inviting people to celebrate and sing a Magnificat on all feasts. Gutierrez Martin emphasises the festive air during pilgrimages that offers immediate spiritual satisfaction, according to the aspirations of each pilgrim [105].

The destinations of the pilgrimages are charged with history, faith, and especially are pregnant with a divine presence that stems from the memory of extraordinary events in which God Himself was the protagonist, who also established the feasts and pilgrimages: "Three times a year every man shall appear before Adonai, his God, in the sanctuary that He has chosen: during the Feast of the Unleavened, the Feast of Weeks and the Feast of Tents. The faithful never come empty-handed, but bring offerings in proportion to what Providence has bestowed in that year [106].

With Josiah and Hezekiah, local shrines were suppressed and the celebration of Easter, Weeks and Tabernacles was concentrated in Jerusalem [107]. Years later, with the return from exile in Babylon, the centrality of the Temple in Jerusalem would be undisputed and the Holy City would become a universal pilgrimage destination for the Eternal Israel. The true Israelite, whether at home, in exile or in the diaspora, will never again forget his holy city: May my right hand be withered if I forget thee, Jerusalem, and my tongue be glued to my palate if I do not set thee above all my joys' [108]. The Israelite has always worshipped his Temple, for Adonai himself had confided to Moses that he wanted to dwell there with his people [109]. In Jerusalem, the Jews who wanted to delve into the Holy Scriptures were trained. Here the great schools trained young people who could then in turn spread this holy doctrine throughout the world. Perhaps there was no greater joy than when the decision was made to leave for the Holy City: "What joy when they said to me, 'Let us depart and go to the house of Adonai'!"

That departure meant gathering in long caravans of relatives and friends with whom one would spend the most beautiful days of the year, camped around the walls of Jerusalem itself. Jesus could not fail to be involved in the story of the Temple. A few days after his birth, the baby Jesus had been brought to the Temple to be presented to the Lord according to the law of Moses. It was then normal, every year, to make a pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem, even though the Gospels record only one, as a teenager, while he is already there, sitting with the doctors to quench that precocious thirst for God [110]. During his public life, Jesus spent significant time in Jerusalem and teaching in the Temple [111] as a prophet. At times he is found walking in Solomon's [112] porch. On another occasion he demands respect for that house where God dwells and goes so far as to expel traders who have only economic interests, thus also disrespecting those holy walls and the house of prayer [113].

At least once Jesus had entered Jerusalem triumphant and acclaimed, blessed by his friends, who harboured great hopes of a reign of true justice never found in that also holy land. And, in the end, that holy people who had bred, raised, listened to and killed the prophets, were ready to raise on the cross the last prophet, priest and king of the new Kingdom of God.

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[105] - D. Gutierrez Martin, op. cit., p. 82.

[106] - Dt. 16, 16-17.

[107] - 2Re 18,4-22

[108] - Sal. 137, 5-6.

[109] - Es. 29, 43-46.

[110] - Lc. 2, 41-47.

[111] - Mt. 26, 55.

[112] - Gal. 10, 22.

[113] - Mt. 21, 13; Gv. 2, 13-17.

The Law

To reach his maturity, man needs moral laws to direct his acts. The people of Israel recognise that they are privileged to have received their laws from God Himself and this is the reason for the extraordinary importance of the ten words that Moses received on Mount Sinai, amid thunder and lightning, while conversing with Adonai. To help the chosen people fulfil their mission, Moses and the prophets then exemplified the great laws in minor commands, which were added to the previous ones concerning the Sabbath and circumcision. There was, however, a risk that some men would interpret those laws in an overly legalistic manner, compromising the sacred heart of the Law. In Jesus' time, abuses in this sense were many, so much so that, in several cases, He had to forcefully expose them. Especially during the exile in Babylon, the Jewish people did a life review on their ills and concluded that they were caused by their own unfaithfulness to the Law: "We have disobeyed your commandments, we have not kept them, and we have not acted according to all your commands, which you have given us for our good" [114].

Social life and worship were totally imbued with the Law. At certain times it must be said that the outwardness in the practice of the law came at the expense of the inner dimension of the practices themselves. The great allegiances were intended to keep the people firmly united: circumcision, the Sabbath, almsgiving, fasting and prayer were these pillars. Of the period of the Maccabees it was written: 'Many Israelites [unlike others] held fast, and there was no one who could get anyone to eat anything considered unclean. They preferred to die than to defile themselves with these foods and profane the holy covenant. And many did indeed die' [115].

By his very critical stance towards not the Law, but those who betrayed it, Jesus wanted to make his position very clear. In fact, after saying that the law of the Talion had to be overcome, to purify the provisions on marriage, the temple, the Sabbath, hygiene, he concluded: 'Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish, but to fulfil" [116]. He is the one who finally puts the Law into practice, right according to the heart of God. One day, to a scribe who asks him which is the first of all the commandments, he replies: 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your spirit, and with all your strength. Then he adds the second: 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself. There is no other commandment more important than these two' [117].

Those who had asked the question understood that loving in that way was more important than all the holocausts and sacrifices that were burnt on the altar [118]. And, since for the Jews the neighbour was only the Jews, at least the circumcised ones, while the more discerning considered only those who were faithful and obedient to the Torah as neighbours, Jesus goes a step further by saying: 'Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you! Thus you will become true sons of the Father who is in heaven" [119]. In any case, the commandment of love, the pinnacle of the Jewish religion, acquires such a new force in Jesus that it seems to be an alternative commandment, as he himself states: 'I give you a new commandment: love one another, as I have loved you' [120].

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[114] - Dn. 3, 29-31.

[115] - Mac. 1, 62-63.

[116] - Mt. 5, 17.

[117] - Mc. 12, 28-33.

[118] - Deut. 6, 4-5.

[119] - Mt. 5, 44.

[120] - Gal. 13, 34.

5. Jesus begins public life

The world around Jesus

Jesus is about thirty years old. The world around him and God, his father, are calling him to come out of the workshop and the building sites for a new step. Jesus looks around him. The Temple, God's institutional dwelling place, cannot fail to attract him, in fact he will be a faithful pilgrim there. Then there are different groups in Israel such as the Priests, Scribes, Pharisees and others who, in different ways, make up the establishment of the Eternal Israel. All of them, although with different tones, cultivate the hope of a Kingdom of God (and no longer of Rome) and of the imminent arrival of a Messiah who will finally fulfil all religious and political expectations for a new society. Each of these groups has something to say to Jesus and he does not disdain to make his own all that he finds good in them, but his horizon goes much further.

The Holy City: Jerusalem

The Eternal Israel sees the city of God in Jerusalem itself. There the Torah is studied and a solemn liturgy is celebrated. The entire life of the Israelites is focused on that city. The Patriarchs, Prophets, Priests and Kings lived projected onto that centre of the world. It is likely that in his youthful years, during his pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Jesus took significant breaks to learn about what was happening in the shadow of the walls of the Holy City, the focal point of Israel's religiosity, faith and all its hopes. It is also possible that his maternal grandparents - according to tradition - lived in Jerusalem at the pool of Siloe: if so, it should not have been difficult for him to carve out extended times to stay there, at the home of his grandparents or some relative. The account of Jesus lost in the Temple, reported by Luke, could be the memory or synthesis of many similar journeys, where he measures himself against the religious authorities, while trying to refine his sense of Adonai's paternity towards him.

The Temple, reason for life for all

The institution of the Temple is the centre of Jerusalem. Everything revolves around it. It is the Dwelling Place of God himself. Every Jew turns to the Temple for prayer. Everyone goes to the Temple to offer the first fruits of the earth or buys animals and offers them in thanksgiving and to ask for forgiveness. The whole of Jerusalem lives thanks to the Temple. The craftsmen, the various carpenters specialised in working wood and stone, the tilers, the stone cutters, the weavers, those who produce oil, wine and the precious perfumes of nard and myrrh, all depend on the Temple.

Some are employed by the priestly caste and the nobles of the city, especially the Sadducees. The vendors and merchants generally provide for the demands of the pilgrims: without the Temple all would have been little more than beggars. The Temple is the raison d'être for all religious people, but it also provides life or at least survival for everyone else. Obviously, if anyone had dared to stand in any way against the Temple, with all that it meant and produced in the religious, political and economic spheres, they would have set themselves against the whole city of Jerusalem and beyond.

The Priests

The priestly caste was institutionally authorised to offer sacrifices for itself and for the people: considered 'holy', they taught the Law understood as the will of God, officiated at the Temple, and represented the ancient nobility. In alternate periods they had great political importance as supporters of the monarchy.

The Pharisees

At the time of Jesus they had already existed for two hundred years. They claimed to be the faithful scholars and interpreters of the Holy Scriptures: Josephus Flavius claims that they were their greatest experts, those who most carefully explained the Jewish law. The Pharisees, who distinguished themselves from the aristocratic, monarchical and thus ruling classes such as the Sadducees, were more populist, democratic and fought for national independence: for these reasons, they had gained popular support. Before disappearing from the theatre of history around 70 A.D., the Pharisees had become so anti-Christian that during the composition of the Gospels, it is possible that the evangelists may have lashed out against this group that had become unbearable.

The Sadducees

They represented the highest class, from which the priests, the administrators of public money, were elected. Religious and political power was in their hands, so they were influential and feared by the people. They were also the representatives of the Jews before the imperial power. With regard to the law of Moses they were not as strict as the Pharisees, nor did they have faith in life after death. At the time of Jesus, it was they who held the judicial power with the Sanhedrin and it was they who were to assume significant importance in the condemnation of Jesus.

The Healers

Similar to the Essenes were the Healers, or physicians, who apparently had a hierarchical structure in their communities. They sought to heal not only the body, but also the sick soul so they needed prayer and not only traditional medicines. Their attention to the suffering and their proposal for the integral salvation of the whole person could not go unnoticed in the eyes of Jesus.

Itinerant preachers

Jesus probably also knew that there were itinerant preachers. Perhaps they were more philosophers than moralists, indeed, often very free in their customs, perhaps influenced by the Greek cynics. Their life of homelessness told Jesus that itinerant preaching from village to village made sense, meeting the simple people of the peripheries who were more willing to listen to the novelty of the Gospel.

The Beggars

Then there were those who chose a life of poverty such as the beggars who, by living from providence, manifest a very precious dimension of life: they too say something to the heart of Jesus.

The Hassiddim

These too, a movement of orthodox Judaism, which probably already existed three centuries before Christ, were a constant call to prayer for the Eternal Israel. They would gather and have an hour of silence before the actual prayer. We also find Jesus in prolonged times of silence and prayer.

The Zealots

Their name translates their zeal for the fulfilment of the law. They had to save the people at all costs, even dying as martyrs to honour the name of the Lord and obtain the deliverance for the people of Israel. They grew tired of waiting for the new Kingdom of God in a peaceful manner and decided to conquer it, at the cost of violence. Being a minority group, without a real army, they limited themselves to acts of guerrilla warfare, hardly tolerated by the Romans and also by the Sadducees.

The Samaritans

In Israel there was a region, Samaria, which to call it cursed is an understatement. Samaria, among the Jews, was a name not to be pronounced. The Samaritans were cordially hated by the Jews and repaid in kind. It was an arid land, hard to cultivate and everywhere with thorny shrubs much like its inhabitants, or so the Jews, their institutional enemies, saw them. The Samaritans had dared to build a temple on Mount Garizim as an alternative to the one in Jerusalem, and so the some said that one must worship the true God in Jerusalem, the others that one must worship him on Garizim.

The Jews then finally succeeded in destroying that temple and gained an indelible hatred for each other. Heretics therefore for each other. Jesus, who sought to overcome all divisions, one day told a parable: he spoke of an unfortunate merchant attacked by robbers on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. He told how a priest and a Levite passed by without stopping, while a Samaritan took care of him, and since Jesus tried to live what he preached, he often tried to supplement his parables and teachings with concrete facts that could say similar things in another language. So one day Jesus, always surprising everyone, decided to cross into Samaria, something the Jews always tried to avoid at the cost of doubling the distance.

Jesus' disciples decided to go and buy something to eat as they could not rely on anyone's hospitality there. Jesus waited for them sitting under some palm trees near a well, well known in the region. Tradition said that Jacob himself had built it. Jesus, who had no allergy to the Samaritans, when he saw a woman coming to the well to water the animals dared to ask her for a drink. The Jews are convinced that the water of the Samaritans is more impure than the blood of pigs, but for Jesus it is all different, however the woman reacts and is surprised that Jesus dares so much. She does not say not to give him a drink, but rebukes him for asking. She is a multiple divorcee and lives with a lover. She does not dare to ask Jesus to take communion with Him, but it is Jesus Himself who asks to take communion with her. He asks for water from Her so that she might realise that she too has much to offer Jesus. Then Jesus reveals to her that he has a water that, if she drinks it, she will never thirst again for ever. Not only that, Jesus proposes that she go and call also her husband, who is not a husband: he too will need to drink of that water, which is for eternal life. Jesus stops at nothing: neither in front of different cultures, nor in front of sinners, nor in front of those who live an irregular life. No one is prevented from approaching this fountain that continues to quench their thirst even today.

The Essenes

Among all those who propose the classical or alternative ways to experience the dimension of the Eternal Israel, there is one who is most in tune with Jesus.

Some, having already realised that the temple, with all that it entailed, was too narrow for them, had sought more genuine paths, at least in their intention: they are the Essenes who, in order to prepare for the end of time and the arrival of the Messiah, withdrew to the desert, to the locality of Qumram, and invited the young especially to join them. In fact, they enlarged the buildings to accommodate more people and await the Messianic Kingdom and the Messiah himself. They were vegetarians and consequently farmers cultivators of fruit and vegetables and connoisseurs of medicinal herbs. They would, according to Pliny, abandon the world with its vanities. The Essenes had indeed deepened the Torah and community life, regarded as an ascetic life, significant values that could attract anyone who was searching for where and how to place their life, centring it on God Himself. It cannot be ruled out that Jesus spent some time in their community, although he would soon realise that it would be tight a place for him to live.

In their monastic life, the Essenes had found an alternative religious structure to the Temple. John the Baptist himself, while not belonging to this community, nevertheless had many elements in common; asceticism, rigour, prayer, penance, fasting, purification, celibate life and a significant awareness of the Messiah's arrival. The Baptist, who had renounced being a priest of the Temple as his father had been, in tune with the Essenes, in order to prepare sincere Jews to receive forgiveness, did not invite them to go to the Temple to offer animals or the first fruits of the field, but invited them to purify their hearts, and this had been a reason to even deserve to be inquisitioned by the Temple.

Jesus, who also frequented John, sympathised with his prophetic preaching, but continued to go and preach in the Temple, for it is there, on that esplanade in Jerusalem, that the most important house in the world stands, where the heart of Israel [121] beats. But the Temple and all that revolved around it, like the Priests, the Pharisees, the Scribes, had something to do with Jesus' aspirations, but no one could close the circle with Him. Even outside the Temple there were the Healers, the mendicants, the Zealots, the Essenes, and all had aspects that interested Jesus' future, but none of these institutions were able to contain his immense soul.

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[121] - Cfr. E. Renan, op. cit., p. 219

A friend in the desert

Among all those who propose the classical or alternative ways to live the dimension of the faith of the Eternal Israel, there is someone who is most in tune with Jesus, a friend and relative who most of all understood God and his people. The Gospels do not go into detail about this friendship between Jesus and John the baptiser, simply because the evangelists did not witness their encounters, but it is difficult to think of the years in Nazareth without this certainly deeply cultivated bond between two men so in tune, who would have sought each other out even if they had lived at opposite ends of the world. If Jesus goes so far as to say that his cousin John is the most extraordinary person he has ever met, indeed the greatest among those born of women, he must have known him well, and since then, more than now, friendship was cultivated through meeting, who knows how many evenings or nights they may have spent together telling each other about their vocation, the hopes of their oppressed people, but also their fears.

Politics was creating problems in many areas and both John and Jesus were looking for the best way to deal with it. Some friends had already grown tired of Roman oppression and had decided to take up arms and think seriously about rebellion against Rome; they called them Zealots. Breathing the new air of the end times and the arrival of the Messiah, whom everyone was expecting much more than in other times, some of them had felt invested with the task of leading Israel to liberation. And what could the two cousins have done? Certainly, Jesus had confided to John all that he knew about his own identity. So, John was perhaps the first to understand that the Messiah had now arrived, if he could present him to his disciples by clearly declaring: 'It is He'. When the two cousins read the story of the great King David, they certainly shuddered to see in him such a precious instrument of God, but they also understood that their lives were not in that direction. And, as they read certain passages from Isaiah, they certainly wondered if those pages might have something to say to them and wondered if that might be their path. Between the two of them it was no longer a mystery that Jesus' mission was that of the Messiah.

At a certain point they realised that they had to begin. Jesus probably proposed to John to begin. They might even have spent some time together: Jesus feels moved in the depths of his spirit to spend time in the desert. Perhaps for a hermit life? A life even more radical than that of John the Baptizer? In any case, Jesus has some big choices to make: he must take the road to liberation that some had already attempted, obviously one without violence. But how? It seems that the great King David had also mapped out a path for the future Messiah to follow, but all that violence did not fit the spirit of Jesus, on the other hand, David's power in the face of those masses of poor people asking to be finally liberated, which Jesus knew he could do, could have been a terrible temptation for Jesus himself.

Temptations in the desert

In the meditations in the desert, the roads facing Jesus become narrow: it is not enough to behave like the servants of the Temple, where Priests, Sadducees, Scribes, Doctors of the Law and Pharisees work; nor to follow the way of the Essenes, the Healers, the Zealots, even the most well-meaning. In order to fulfil the prophecy of the Messiah, the son of David, it is not even necessary to follow the track laid down by the great King David, in whose lineage Jesus himself was included.

He was increasingly immersed in the Father and increasingly drawn to the tears, cries and hopes of his people. The Eternal Israel cried out in him to finally bring about a new kingdom, which was to be a kingdom of righteousness, whose new king could only be God. And all this 'good' to be done could not but manifest itself as a great temptation.

Jesus overcomes the temptations in the desert

The temptations in the desert may have been told by Jesus himself to the disciples in the form of a parable to show that he presents himself as the one who treads the same path as Israel, who had been tempted in the desert in his 40 years of wandering. In the wilderness, Jesus clearly had to renounce being one who performs great signs - like changing stones into bread in order to gain the trust of the people and eventually get himself elected king. He had to give up performing conspicuous miracles - such as throwing himself off the pinnacle of the Temple without harming himself, or assuming the power of a kingdom to which all the kingdoms of this world could have belonged - to finally establish an entirely new one, one of justice, freeing his people from all foreign interference and offering especially to the poor a life of dignity at last in which God's providence and his fatherhood can be experienced every day. He relives in the wilderness the temptations of the chosen people, but while the latter had succumbed, Jesus wins, making his own the teachings that Deuteronomy had drawn from Israel's experience [122].

The desert of tremendous solitude with God - experienced in parallel by Israel and Jesus - showed on the one hand how temptation can be overcome, and on the other hand how Jesus walks on the same path as Moses and the Jewish people, but as a victor, thus showing that He will be the long-awaited New Moses. But precisely in overcoming the temptations of power, Jesus, the new Moses and son of David, will follow neither the path of one nor the other, but will walk on an alternative path that comes to him from another prophet.

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[122] - Cf. J. Dupont, Le tentazioni di Gesù nel deserto, Brescia, Paideia, 2000.

Isaiah

In that desert, one prophet probably occupied the most secret corners of Jesus' soul more than any other: Isaiah. In that prophet, Jesus encounters his own story. The 'righteous' told by the prophet and the 'righteous' living in Jesus are in tune. The suffering servant of Isaiah makes his way into the mind of Jesus and gives him a glimpse of his own path. From the beginning of history, men had wondered about the reason for pain, evil and death. Jesus understood that those questions had to be answered once and for all and, in the pages of the prophet, the Baptizer already saw the path of the privileged proposal of an act of total solidarity, which would finally heal the world. Perhaps a cross?

A brief return to John

Having fought and won, Jesus also achieved a psychological peace, in addition to the peace of God, that had never been lost. While his friend, by the Jordan, preached to lower the hills and fill the valleys to prepare the way for the Lord, Jesus himself prepares to tread that path already glimpsed but still in the shadows. Jesus, having overcome temptation, continues to think about his own mission.

Reading the scripture with his extraordinary intelligence, Jesus feels in tune with it. He realises that those sacred texts and him fit more and more into each other. The written word and that which is in him, more and more become one. Jesus, however, also feels the distance that separates him from the Patriarchs and the Prophets. Of course, he recognises and venerates them, but he feels that he must complete what is missing in those Scriptures. He understands that the Messiah should be Him, but at the same time he senses an unbridgeable distance between what the Prophets had glimpsed when thinking of the Messiah and who he feels Himself to be.

His cousin John the Baptist, the Baptizer is very close to him. They vibrate with a great newness. John understands that He is the Messiah that is expected, or rather he senses that no one more than He is Messiah. He cannot imagine what this will entail. He cannot imagine what kind of Messiah he will be, perhaps another King David, but certainly much more of a King or perhaps a servant King and a suffering servant.

The two cousins feel a void in Israel that must be filled at all costs: little is loved, little is forgiven. The Israelite thinks too much about the things that can make him feel good: a large family, good health, numerous flocks, abundant harvests. These are all recognised as gifts from Adonai, but one also perceives that in prosperity man does not understand reason and becomes like the beasts [123].

The two cousins warn that the mentality must be reversed: in suffering man understands and becomes more and more man and woman. That "just" man of the prophet Isaiah is pounding the heads of the two cousins. They think of some sign indicating rebirth of this new man, of the new Israel. They think of a baptism of penance. In Israel, little forgiveness is asked, little forgiveness is forgiven, and forgiveness is hardly accepted. Here is a first rudimentary sign of forgiveness: baptism with water. To baptise means to wash: to purify the body as a sign to purify the heart, which will become more and more capable of welcoming and offering forgiveness. All this means to love: when I ask forgiveness, I perform an act of love. When I offer forgiveness, I perform an act of love.

In his dialogue with Adonai, Jesus feels him to be more and more merciful, more and more fatherly, and he feels himself to be so loved, so Son, and in his heart the dimension of fraternity makes more and more room: all men and women are his brothers and sisters. The people of whom Jesus feels he is the brother is the brother who has erred so many times, betrayed, lost faith in Adonai, turned to other gods, and all this has been repeated for centuries and centuries. Adonai, so merciful, has always forgiven. Sometimes he chastised the people to help them repent more quickly and return to the embrace of God, therefore Father. Jesus feels that he is on the same path as the Father and feels that this will be his mission: to forgive and teach how to forgive, by he himself forgiving, Jesus is increasingly aware that when his people have learnt to ask forgiveness, to accept forgiveness and to give forgiveness, they will live in the new Kingdom of God.

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[123] - Sal. 49, 13.

Baptism

The mission of the adult Jesus begins here, on the banks of the Jordan, where many came to John the Baptist to listen to the last prophet of ancient history, the last authoritative voice after a long silence from God: the voice of the one who cries out in the wilderness, calling for conversion and forgiveness of sins: forgiveness asked, given, received, and, finally, they came hoping to be baptised [124].

Some would stay long times, in that place, to meditate on what John preached. What was that man, who wore a camel's skin sash, and fed on locusts and wild honey, saying? He cried out in the desert for conversion, asking to lower the mountains and fill the valleys and prepare a level road for the one who had been awaited for centuries. To convert (so it is for every Jew) meant to hear again and take on again the ten words of God, the commands of God that through Moses had been delivered to the Eternal Israel. The penitents who came to John knew that they were the children of a people who had repeatedly promised and swore to obey those laws of God himself, but then how many infidelities! And now they returned to ask forgiveness for having forgotten God, for not having loved and respected their father, mother, brothers, and children. Accompanied by John, they tearfully pleaded for a pure heart and a new spirit: "Have mercy on me O God, in your mercy blot out my sin, cleanse me and wash me from all my guilt".

John cries out that the axe is already laid at the roots: listening to him, the penitents realise that they are those trees that risk being cut down and thrown away if they do not convert. John spares no one and has advice for all, for the small and the great, for soldiers and for kings. There are many who come to be purified, but we must not think of a line of people getting baptised as just any devotional act, which may arise after a serious homily, or after a temporary repentance.

In order to arrive at the ritual proposed by John, one had to have made a true path of conversion, because the fruit of this event became a true renunciation of sin and a new declaration of unconditional trust in Adonai, the Saviour of the Eternal Israel. One arrived at baptism only after serious and reasonable preparation, even over a long period, of weeks and months. Some finally stayed with John as disciples. These penitents received baptism after confessing their sins and especially after rejecting them forever. This baptism was received only once, after which one had to begin a new life, to avoid the deserved punishments and prepare oneself for the last day. Jesus also immerses himself in the water for an act of solidarity that opens the heavens and the Spirit confirms him as the Son and universal brother of all mankind, for which he asks forgiveness.

John begins to cry out along the Jordan for conversion and forgiveness: he has now realised that Jesus will not need to cry out, because he is the bearer of an extra authority, unknown in Israel. John begins, but perceives that it is Jesus who will lead the people to the New Kingdom. John is the first to recognise that there is kingship in Jesus, that Jesus is King in all his fibres, but a servant King, who will walk not the path of glorious power in this world, but the path of Adonai, the path of mercy. Thus too Jesus will enter the water of the Jordan to begin preaching forgiveness with his life. And according to one tradition, after hearing the mysterious voice from heaven that consecrates and recognises Jesus as the Son, John himself says to his disciples: "Behold the Lamb of God, the man who knows how to forgive any sin in the world".

Jesus had come and bathed in the penitential waters of the Jordan. He the healthy Head of this sick humanity of ours that asks to be healed. Jesus, in solidarity with our humanity, purifies us and makes us like him. Jesus now inserts himself into our history and becomes a sharer in our humanity: our sins also become his and for this, on our behalf, he asks and gives forgiveness. At the last supper, in another baptism, he hands himself over again to the Father and to his own for the forgiveness of sins, and the cross will be his last immersion to bring us all up with him and lead us to the resurrection. For Matthew and Luke the Baptist would not have wanted to baptise Jesus knowing him to be without sin, indeed John would have said that he himself wanted to be baptised by Jesus, and at that first refusal of John it seems that Jesus at least agreed to postpone that sign until some time later.

Here the figure of John is not important, while what is important is the baptism on Jesus done directly by the Holy Spirit: at least according to Luke, when it takes place, John is even absent and already in prison, but the baptism takes place in all solemnity. Jesus enters the water, in the sign of drowning (as he will do shortly afterwards on the cross). He, who is in solidarity with all sinners, He who becomes our spokesman in that water where all ask forgiveness for sins, He too, passionate for us, asks forgiveness for this humanity of ours that has also become His and for which He is crazy. And, when He re-emerges, the heavens open, the Father confirms that He has heard the Son's prayer and asks us too to listen to Him.

The cloud that had accompanied the people of Israel with Moses as they came out of slavery in Egypt, the same cloud that rested on Sinai and afterwards on the ark to tell of God's presence and again on Mary at the moment of the Annunciation, is now on Jesus and the Spirit descends on Jesus, while a voice from heaven proclaims that He is the Messiah, the beloved Son who deserves all the pleasure of Adonai, who becomes more and more a father to Jesus, more and more a son.

Here is the great mission of Jesus: at his baptism he asks for forgiveness, at the Last Supper he will give himself for forgiveness and, finally, on the Cross he will cry out again to the Father: 'Forgive them'. In the prayer he left us as an inheritance to turn to the Father, he will urge us to ask: 'Forgive our sins as we too must forgive those who have offended us', and he will seal the last minute of his life with the promise of forgiveness for his fellow man on the cross: 'Today you will be with me in my garden'.

In his interminable nights of ecstasy with the Father, Jesus will now repeat his yes to the mission that the Father himself has entrusted to him: that of solidarity with the whole of mankind.

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[124] - Baptism consisted of immersion in water to signify death to sin and all purification, while the act of rising from the water was understood as the beginning of a new life.

The first community of apostles and disciples

At the beginning of his public life, Jesus gathers around him a group of 12 representatives of the 12 tribes of Israel and other disciples: they will form a mostly itinerant community that will have the privilege of sharing his mission with Jesus and will be in charge of continuing it after him. After a night of prayer, Jesus chooses the Twelve. Some are his close relatives and others he has known more or less since childhood.

Simon and Andrew

Simon (Peter) is elected as the leader of the apostles, but his brother Andrew is the first to meet the master and it is he who will introduce him to him. Andrew had already spent significant time with John the Baptist for his preparation for baptism and had probably stayed with him for a long time as his disciple. His soul, shaped by the preaching of the last prophet in ancient history, was therefore predisposed to understand more than others who Jesus might be.

It was to him and another disciple (almost certainly John, his co-worker in the co-operative) that John the baptiser introduced Jesus, saying: 'Behold the Lamb of God'. That same day, Andrew, invited by Jesus, went to his house and in that meeting, with an intuition that could only come from Heaven, he immediately knew from the first glance of Jesus that He was the Messiah, the one awaited for centuries.

With such an omen, he could not help but run to tell his brother Simon: "We have met the Messiah" and accompany him to Jesus, who as soon as he saw him changed his name: "You shall be called Cephas, Stone". That name was the programme of his life. Shortly afterwards, the two brothers met Jesus by the lake. Invited by Him, they immediately left their nets and followed Him to become, as He had promised them, fishers of men (fishers of souls).

Mesmerised before the transfigured Jesus on the mountain, Simon had said with transport that it would be nice to stop the time in that ecstasy and remain there forever, but Jesus had invited him, James and John to prepare for the hour of darkness. He had also spoken to them of resurrection, but they could not understand. But when he spoke plainly, saying that he would have to suffer, be rejected by the elders, the high priests and the scribes, and be killed, Peter had taken him aside to rebuke him and tell him that he would never allow it. A cry was heard, however, with which Jesus called his apostle Satan, because, although he had good intentions, he wanted to prevent his death and, consequently, the fulfilment of his mission.

When Jesus asked the disciples who they thought he was, Peter came forward: "You are the Messiah, the son of God", in reply Jesus reminded him that what he had said was not of his own intelligence, but had come to him from a revelation from the Father: at that moment he made him head of his Church. When he spoke of the bread that comes from heaven and many of his disciples left, Jesus asked the apostles if they too wished to leave. It was Peter again who answered for all: "But to whom can we go if you alone have the words of eternal life?".

But we realise who Peter is towards the end of Jesus' life. We see him at the threshold of the High Priest's house: after having risked being condemned himself along with Jesus, frightened, he snaps and betrays his Lord, saying that he does not know him. But the most moving icon of Peter is another. Immediately afterwards, on seeing the Lord's face again, he bursts into tears and, knowing him well, feels once again forgiven and restored to his dignity, especially after the resurrection, when Jesus appears to him both personally and with the other apostles.

James and John

They were born in Bethsaida on the shore of the Lake of Genezaret and were part of a small fishing company. When he was called to follow him, Simon was probably overjoyed to learn that Jesus had added his two cousins James and John to the group of Twelve, in fact he was already their friend and co-worker in the same cooperative. At the beginning of Jesus' mission, when he moved from Nazareth to Capernaum, James and John also went with him and lived in the house of Simon and Andrew to which Thomas had also been added. This was the first nucleus of disciples who made community in the same house before starting the itinerant mission.

With their mother Salome and father Zebedee, James and John formed a true family following Jesus. The two brothers were not only apostles, but also among those closest to the Master. Among the disciples was also Salome (Mary Josè), together with Mary of Magdala, Mary of Cleophas and other women, among whom were probably Peter's wife, his mother-in- law and Mary herself, the mother of Jesus. The latter is never called a disciple because she was much more than that, but she must have been often present in that group that was changing the world. Other disciples, male and female, still were part of that first community that, if not living together permanently, often travelled together to the various regions and villages to follow the mission of Jesus.

In the Gospel it is said that James and John had left their nets to follow Jesus, so it is likely that Zebedee remained with the workers to carry on that sort of fishermen's co-operative with which Peter himself had been associated, but in the strong moments and on the occasions when the people were also invited to hear Jesus, certainly Zebedee could not be absent if his wife and even more so his children were so attached to the Jesus phenomenon.

He jokingly called them 'Sons of Thunder' because of their fiery character (but also because thunder is the voice of God). Once, in fact, the two brothers, angered because Jesus had not been welcomed by the Samaritans, proposed to him in order to solve the problem: "Do you want us to call down fire from heaven to exterminate them?" This speaks volumes about their character. With Peter, with whom they had already been friends and co-workers, they formed a special bond, as they had understood a little more than the others who Jesus was.

It was to these three, and to them alone, Jesus had revealed Himself on Mount Tabor in divine splendour, while Moses and Elijah conversed with Him and a confirmation came from heaven saying: 'This is my beloved Son, listen to him'. Jesus granted them this vision to prepare them not to collapse at the moment of his passion, and on the eve of his death he had called them close to him in the hour of agony in Gethsemane, even though they had not lived up to the invitation. In fact, instead of supporting Jesus and praying with him, they repeatedly fell asleep, but after his capture and the flight of all the apostles, shortly afterwards John and Peter tried to reach the place of the trial at least as far as it was possible to enter. While James was the first martyr of the group of apostles, John lived a long life and with his community wrote the Gospel that Origen called "the flower of the Gospels".

Judas (Thaddeus) and Simon (the Zealot)

Most probably they were cousins of the Lord and were also called his brothers. Judas is also called Lebbeus, i.e. brave. This appellation makes him very similar to his cousin Simon, called the Zealot: it is probable that both, if not militants, sympathised with the Zealot movement, convinced by then that it was necessary to conquer by force the new Kingdom of God and finally free Israel from the Roman rule. Having met Jesus, the two brothers tried to enter into his mindset, but basically they did not change their way of thinking.

However, seeing his personality as a thaumaturge and preacher and especially with the divine charisma to perform miracles, the two brothers realised that he was certainly more powerful than all the zealots they had encountered and therefore it was worthy of following Jesus more than any other. They did not necessarily have to expect a bloody war to liberate their country, but they had never abandoned the project of liberation.

At the Last Supper, Thaddeus had asked for an explanation of precisely what Jesus would then expect when he eventually would manifest himself for who he really was, and he said: 'If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and take possession of him'. So it was not so a question of repossessing the land of Israel, but of being possessed by the Father and by Jesus himself.

James the Lesser

In terms of kinship, the closest family to Jesus is most likely that of Cleophas (or Alphaeus) and Mary, Jesus' uncles and disciples. According to apocryphal texts, he was the brother of Joseph and she the sister of Jesus' mother; of their children, one was the apostle James the younger, the other was Joseph, the disciple who, together with Matthias, was later drawn by lot to replace Judas who had died. Cleophas and Mary were also the parents of Salome, wife of Zebedee and mother of James the elder and John. In the family of these uncles, Jesus had therefore chosen s many as three apostles: their son James the younger and their nephews James the elder and John.

Cleophas and Mary were probably the two disciples who perhaps most of all received the blow of Jesus' failure on the cross. They had invested everything in the prophet man. The whole family had been involved in that dream of Jesus: they themselves as disciples, their son Joseph, also a faithful disciple from the very first moment, while their son James and two grandsons James and John were even apostles, and their daughter Salome, mother of the two young men, had been among the most faithful.

Three days after Jesus' death Cleopas, probably with his wife Mary, decided to return home to Emmaus, their village, and on the way, as they mourned the greatest failure in their lives, they met the risen Lord.

Thomas

From the beginning he was called to be an apostle. His figure is linked to an episode that says something about his character, his heart and his faith. After the resurrection, Jesus had appeared to the disciples, but Thomas was not with them.

When they told him that they had seen the Lord, he peremptorily refused to believe, saying that unless he saw his hands with the nail marks and put his fingers in the wounds of the nails and his hand in the wound of his side, he would never believe.

Then, eight days later, when the disciples were together again and Thomas was with them, Jesus appeared and called him to check and touch the wounds. Poor Thomas fell to the ground, only able to say: 'My Lord and my God'. It was said that Thomas' doubt served us more than Mary Magdalene's faith, who believed as soon as she met the risen Lord.

Philip and Bartholomew (Nathanael)

Philip must have been a practical and down-to-earth man, in fact Jesus turned to him and not to others (obviously to test him) when faced with a crowd there was the problem of feeding them. Philip did not underestimate the problem and did the maths on what they had available before concluding that food could not be provided for everyone.

Despite his good learning - in fact, he also knew Greek and had some authority in the group - Philip is fully encompassed in a request he made to Jesus: he did not ask for fire on his enemies, he did not ask for any reward for his service, he did not ask for an explanation for some more difficult parable, he did not ask to be at his right hand, nor did he ask to be at his left, but he asked him: 'Show us the Father and that is enough for us'.

Philip had been fascinated by Jesus' speech when he had spoken of the Father, when he had taught the Lord's Prayer, when he had said that He and the Father were one, and so Jesus merely told Philip what he should already have understood, namely: he who has seen Jesus has also seen the Father. With this reply Philip had by now realised that he had seen everything he had ever wanted to see.

His figure, however, reminds us of a historical encounter that took place at the very beginning of his story with Jesus, when he met him for the first time and was thunderstruck by his intense gaze and his authoritative word that invited him to follow him. Philip had not added a word, there had been no need. In that moment he had felt loved, welcomed, promoted to be part of the Master's inner circle. He realised at that very moment that this man was the one they had been waiting for, for centuries.

The first one he met was his friend Nathanael (son of Ptolemy) to whom he enthusiastically told that he had met the Messiah and that his name was Jesus and he was from Nazareth. His friend's first reaction was one of disappointment, as that infamous region did not lend itself to being the home of a prophet. However, how could Nathanael have believed in Jesus without seeing him? For when he then saw him, he fell on his knees before him, invested with his authority: 'You are the Son of God, you are the King of Israel'. And so another apostle was added to the college of the Twelve.

Matthew

The mere fact of collecting taxes must already have been a reason for not deserving any consideration, but there was worse: those who sat at the gable did so for the Roman enemies. It could have been accepted that it was the Romans themselves who did this detestable work, but it was the Jews themselves who, moreover, knowing the people well, knew how far they could demand and generally extorted everything they could. They then showed deference to Rome and, if they did not go so far as to worship the emperor, they had to show deep veneration to everything Roman. They were therefore detestable and hateful. Therefore, the fact that Jesus says to one of these, 'Follow me', must have filled with consternation those who heard that invitation.

Jesus, however, never ceases to amaze, as he not only invites a person from this category into the group of the Twelve, but even goes so far as to invite himself not only by a publican, but by one of their leaders, when he tells Zacchaeus that he would like to visit him at his home. These chiefs were private individuals, known as 'architelons', who contracted out the tax collection of a locality and who, after handing over what they had contracted with Rome, were free to demand additional taxes for their benefit. In essence, they were institutional thieves.

Jesus would stop at nothing, least of all in front of any categorisation. For Jesus, publicans or Samaritans or public sinners are all potential opportunities for the kingdom of heaven: in fact, Zacchaeus is converted, Matthew becomes an apostle, and public sinners become saints.

On a few occasions, when Jesus felt that someone felt uncomfortable near a Matthew or a Zacchaeus, he told the parable of the Pharisee and the publican: the Pharisee gives thanks for being holy and the publican weeps because he feels he is a sinner, and so he made it even clearer who those he had chosen were.

Judas Iscariot

It is an honoured name, because it was rooted in the fourth son of Jacob from whom the tribe of Judah was derived. All Jews felt honoured by that name. But Judas Iscariot left his name besmirched. After three years as a missionary in the college of the apostles, a trusted man and bursar of the small fraternity, without ever having given scandal or cause for reproach for any reason (except for a few gratuitous judgments made by the evangelists) he ended his life by committing suicide.

The Gospels present him as the one who handed Jesus, on the eve of his condemnation, over to the Sanhedrin indicating that he was the wanted man, greeting and kissing him. It is likely that Judas wanted to force Jesus to begin the struggle for liberation from the Roman yoke by putting him in the position of having to defend Israel by defending himself. At the foot of the cross someone will say: 'If you are the Son of God come down from the cross and we will believe'.

Well, Judas knew that Jesus was that Son of God who could also, as he had performed so many other miracles, come down from the cross, so no one could have done anything against him. To this we must add the fact that Jesus seemed to have been aware of this, since at one point he even told him to finish quickly what he had to do. It seems that the fact was not unknown to the apostles either, for at the Last Supper when it was revealed the one who would deliver Jesus, no one said a word.

Moreover, at Gethsemane, when Judas arrives and greets Jesus by introducing him to those who were coming to arrest him, there is no reaction from the eleven, whereas one would have expected someone like Peter to jump on his neck and tear him to pieces, instead of cutting off the ear of the High Priest's servant.

According to the Gospels, however, in the end, when he realised how the facts were unfolding, Judas understood that he had made a mistake, but he did not have the strength to ask for forgiveness, as Peter had done, and hanged himself. Faced with the conclusion of this apostle's story, it is possible that, during the drafting of the gospels, the evangelists may have at some point cast a pall over him, making him as detestable as possible, calling him a thief, or Satan, or at any rate the traitor.

A group of family and friends

From a first glance at this group, it is immediately apparent that there must have been a special fellowship between them for several reasons, not last that five apostles and, shortly afterwards, at least four disciples were brothers, cousins and brothers-in-law to each other. They were neither Rabbis nor scholars, but definitely they were not ignorant: one of them even knew Greek, another was a clerk in the ugly tax office, and none of them were children of a miserable family, so they could all have attended a normal school.

Another common characteristic: they were all workers and belonged to the same social class. They were not necessarily specialists and versed in the Scriptures, but they knew them from childhood. It is reasonable to assume that they were all faithful to the synagogue, pilgrimages and everything that identified a young person as a serious Israelite. I think one can imagine, for a moment, how Nazareth or the surrounding villages could have been populated with young people mostly very similar to the apostles and disciples of Jesus.

Among the young men and women who were part of this more or less itinerant community, three married couples were particularly involved: first and foremost Joseph and Mary of Nazareth, Joseph's brother Cleopas and his wife Mary, sister or sister-in-law of the Mother of Jesus, Salome and Zebedee.

If we take a closer look at the kinship of this first nucleus of the first community, we see that Joseph and Mary have a brother and a sister (Cleophas and Mary) among the disciples; again among the disciples, their nephew Joseph and niece Salome, and among the apostles, two more nephews (Judas Thaddeus and Simon the Zealot, Joseph's sons or nephews) and again among the apostles, their nephew James the younger and two great-nephews (James the elder and John).

The second couple is very involved: Cleopas (Joseph's brother) and Mary (sister of Jesus' mother) have their son Joseph and daughter Salome among the disciples; among the apostles, their son James the younger and two grandsons (James the elder and John) and, again among the apostles, two grandsons (Judas Thaddeus and Simon the zealot). And lastly, the married couple Zebedee and Salome (son-in-law and daughter of Cleopas and Mary), have among the disciples their in-laws and parents Cleopas and Mary, and their brother-in-law and brother Joseph; among the apostles they have their brother-in-law and brother James the younger and their two sons James the elder and John and, again among the apostles, two cousins Judas Thaddeus and Simon the zealot. Mary then, the mother of Jesus, is never referred to by the name of disciple because she is so much more.

It follows that at least five apostles: James, John, James the younger, Judas Thaddeus and Simon the zealot were cousins of Jesus (as for Judas Thaddeus and Simon the zealot they could have been mere cousins or sons of Joseph, as they are also called brothers of the Lord) and four disciples, Cleopas and his wife Mary, Salome and Joseph, were uncles and cousins of Jesus.

From April to October, Jesus' community could move freely in the villages and more distant regions, as the drier climate allowed them to move without great inconvenience. The winter months, on the other hand, created difficulties for the movement and congregation of the sick and listeners because of the heavy rains. It is likely that during these months the apostles and disciples partly resumed their activities and met together in the synagogue. Meanwhile, at least Simon Peter, Andrew, James, John, Matthew and Jesus were already living in Capernaum in Simon's house with his wife and mother-in-law.

6. Jesus preaches extraordinary news

The discourses of Jesus

The most beautiful sermon of Jesus, his most illuminating parable, the most fascinating story and the most daring reflection are his life itself: that biography first told by the silence of Mary and Joseph, then witnessed by the apostles, the evangelists and their Christian communities. We must add that the story of Jesus was also told by His Church as He walked with us, until today. And the latter is the story of the Jesus we have also encountered.

Jesus speaks to the hearts of his listeners

Jesus speaks and everyone understands him.

To the fishermen he speaks of fish, of nets, of abundant catches and others gone astray; he speaks of boats, of sea, wind, storm; of fears and great expectations. He sends some to fish, he invites others to leave nets, boats, family for a different kind of fishing, the fishing of men. Among them no one dares to say they have not understood.

To the peasants he speaks of fields, of good soils, of poor soils; of sowing, pruning and harvesting; he speaks of stones, of thorny bushes that choke the plants, of wheat, darnel, vines, fig trees, mustard; and again of heavy work, of day labour, of masters, of servants, of good and bad owners, of good and bad servants. In this context he speaks of anger, of impatience, of waiting patiently, of rain and sunshine, both for the good and the bad.

To shepherds he speaks of flocks, pastures and sheep: good and bad sheep, lost sheep and found sheep. He speaks of good shepherds and others who are instead mercenaries; he speaks of mother sheep and lambs; he speaks of the dangers to the sheep, of brambles and wolves destroying the flock and, again, of wolves disguised as lambs to be more devastating. And no one dares to say they have not understood.

To merchants he speaks of money, of talents, of pearls and treasures, of departures on long journeys and returns.

To housewives he speaks of the menial tasks of every day: he speaks of flour, leaven, bread, wine, of lunches and dinners with relatives, friends and sinners; he speaks of busy housewives, of others attentive to listen to him.

To the Pharisees, scribes and priests he speaks of the Law and the laws, the patriarchs, kings and prophets, the temple, the synagogue, the Messiah and the time of the Messiah.

To the tired and fed-up young people who want to leave and to those who return, and again to zealots and politicians, Jesus proposes an alternative Kingdom, a different politics, God's politics.

To the tax collectors and the rich he speaks of justice and solidarity.

To the poor, who suffer hunger or cold, who suffer from their slavery or who are sick, Jesus announces an extraordinary time, a politics based on justice, a new beatitude for them. He then has special words for children, for women who dedicate themselves to service as disciples, for widows, prostitutes and sinners. And to the apostles he does not only speak in parables, but he breaks them down for them, so that they may understand a little more, or at least all that they can understand.

From the synagogue to the new command

The synagogue was full of incisive sayings that constituted a kind of popular religious literature. Even the illiterate knew many maxims and aphorisms. Jesus is Jewish not only because of his ethnic origin, but as part of the theological framework of the people of Israel. The Scriptures, that Jesus reads and meditates upon, are in fact the same as those of his people, to which Joseph, Mary, his apostles and disciples, all the men and women of his generation and many generations before belong. Even after Jesus' death, they continued for a time to attend the Temple and the Synagogue, feeding on the same pages of the Bible.

The virtues of love for neighbour, forgiveness, self-denial and humility have rightly been called Christian virtues, especially since they were lived and preached by Jesus [125]. They were  actually already present, in germ, in Jewish teaching, but Jesus infused a superior spirit into them. Many of the maxims we find on Jesus' lips were rooted in the Proverbs and Prophets of the Old Testament and in the Talmud: without being lived, however, they risked remaining luminous but still dull invitations, waiting for someone to feed on these words and enliven them. The gesture of the Messiah who comes to "complete" the Scriptures also means this: to put into practice and feed fully on these words [126].

Shortly before Jesus, some truly inspired doctors of the Law - such as Simon the Just, Joshua son of Hillel - came to say that justice was the compendium of the Law. Even Philo, in the Judaeo-Alexandrian world, approached Jesus with a high degree of holiness and moral freedom, even going so far as to renounce certain legal practices. And Rabbi Johana went so far as to place works of mercy above the very study of the Law, but none spoke as effectively as Jesus. He laid an eternal stone at the foundation of true religion: if it is essential to mankind, it is he who deserves all the credit for having laid its foundations, with an absolutely new idea, that of a cult founded on purity of heart and on human brotherhood, which, thanks to him, entered the world. Such a sublime idea that the Christian Church has made its own, but which it has struggled to understand and in too many cases even betrayed [127].

Jesus' discourses acquire a very special importance because the contents of His teachings are lived by Himself, in fact many texts that in the Old Testament had no particular importance, in the life of Jesus assume an extraordinary authority, precisely because they become His own life and all the virtues later called 'Christian virtues' deserve this name for having been lived by Jesus Himself. If these maxims in the Old Testament can be compared to the blueprint of a painting, Jesus is the one who painted the picture itself, which obviously goes far beyond the blueprint.

A philosophical principle states: 'Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself'. This is an assertion already found in the Talmud of Babylon [128]. but only when it is recorded by Matthew [129] and Luke [130], as it was declared and lived by Jesus, did it become a living word. More demanding passages can be added such as: 'If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the left also' [131], found in Jeremiah too; 'Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you and pray for those who persecute you', present not only in the Gospel, but also in the Talmud [132]; 'Do not judge and you will not be judged' [133]; 'Forgive and you will be forgiven' [134].

Jesus was also nourished by other texts, concerning the invitation to be merciful like the heavenly Father, or the beauty of giving rather than receiving, or texts on prayer, humility, almsgiving, piety, good works, peace, and many other expressions that came from the synagogues, 'but Jesus put such a sweet accent on them that those aphorisms were new, even though they had existed for a long time' [135].

It cannot therefore be denied that the maxims drawn from Jesus' predecessors achieve a quite different effect in the Gospel than in the lines of the Law or the Talmud [136]. Although not absolutely original in itself, since it also depends on earlier maxims, the Gospel morality nevertheless remains the highest creation of the human conscience, the most beautiful code of the perfect life that a moralist has ever composed.

As Renan again argues, Jesus does not speak against the Mosaic Law, but it is clear that he sees its insufficiency and makes it clear. He continually repeats that more must be done  than what the ancient doctors of the Law said. He prohibits the slightest harsh word [137], forbids divorce [138] and any oath [139], blames retribution [140], condemns usury [141], considers voluptuous desire as criminal as adultery [142], and advocates universal forgiveness of offences [143].

The reason for these maxims of supreme charity is always the same: "that you may be the children of your heavenly Father, who makes the sun rise on the good and on the bad. If you love only those who love you, what merit have you? Even publicans do that. If you greet only your brothers, what merit have you? Even pagans do it. Be perfect as your heavenly Father is" [144]. This last expression represents the 'New' of Jesus.

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[125] - In some cases, today we speak of 'Franciscan poverty', which is already all there in the Gospel of  Jesus, but the poverello of Assisi translated that content into language so close to us that he almost became a new prophet of that virtue.

[126] - No one was more hostile to the forms that stifle religion under the pretext of protecting it than Jesus. He takes up the soul of Isaiah: "What matters the multitude of your victims! I am satiated with them; the fat of your rams disgusts me; your incense annoys me, for your hands are stained with blood. Purify your thoughts; stop doing evil, learn to do good and seek justice" (cf. Is 1:11 ff).

[127] - Cf. E. Renan, op. cit., p. 163.

[128] - Talmud of Babylon, Shab-bath, 31.

[129] - Mt. 7, 12.

[130] - Lk. 6, 31.

[131] - Lk. 6, 29; Mt. 5, 39 ff.; Lam. 3, 30.

[132] - Mt. 5:44; Lk. 6:27; cf. Talmud of Babylon, Shab-bath, 88 b.

[133] - Mt. 7, 1; Lk. 6, 37; cf. Talmud of Babylon, Kethu-both, 105 b.

[134] - "Forgive the offence of your neighbour, and by your prayer your sins will be forgiven you" (Sir. 28, 2).

[135] - Cf. E. Renan, op. cit., p. 163.

[136] - The Talmud was written down later, but the authors of the sayings also used by Jesus are earlier.

[137] - Mt 5:22.

[138] - Mt. 5:31.

[138] - Mt. 5:33.

[140] - Mt 5:38.

[141] - Mt 5:42.

[142] - Matthew 5, 28.

[143] - Mt 5:23.

[144] - Mt. 5, 48.

Story of a mission

He, Jesus, is the true missionary. He did not come among us with lightning and thunder, nor with an army of angels to conquer the world, but He came on tiptoe, in plain clothes, to a Bedouin camp. He, who was God, did not come among us as a God on earth who commands and does what he will. He who was King, indeed King of Kings, came with a crown yes, but of thorns, a reed sceptre and a red rag for a cloak. He who came from God and was returning to Him, at the most solemn moment of his mission takes off his cloak and, taking a towel, (the only liturgical garment Jesus wore, during his life) washes the feet of his disciples, then tears himself to pieces for his own, becoming broken bread.

He then invites his own to go into all the world to wash people's feet and to bend over backwards to give bread to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, wipe the tears of those who weep, and invade prisons to free prisoners. Jesus, the missionary of the Father, comes to set the world on fire, to bring the passion of wanting the good of others, of everyone and especially of the poor. He comes and delivers strange homilies. He speaks of a new politics, even of a Kingdom where those who will command will no longer be dishonest or oppressive politicians, but it will be God Himself. And when He, Jesus, rules, he tells us that even the poor, the hungry, those who mourn will become blessed.

Everyone understands that at last that cry from afar, already written in Deuteronomy, will be realised: 'Let no one among you be poor' [145]. Jesus announces that when God reigns there will be no more violence because people will love their neighbours, whoever they may be, there will be no more revenge because when God reigns people will live by forgiveness and there will be no more wars because people will love their enemies instead of killing them.

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[145] - Dt. 15, 4.

Jesus prepares a heart for God

The rich young man who had asked Jesus what he should do to have eternal life was told to follow the commandments of Moses. He replied that he had always done so, then Jesus specified: "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your belongings and give them to the poor, then you can come with me and follow me". Jesus, however, knew very well that what he was asking for was beyond human strength. For how can you not trust money when you cannot feed your children? How can you not trust money when you need medicine for yourself or those close to you? How can you not trust money when you need to buy books and exercise books for your child who has the right to become a professional worker in the service of his family and society?

One day Jesus gave a glimpse of an answer, saying to look at the birds of the air nourished by God's providence and to look at the flowers of the field that are clothed by the Lord better than kings themselves. In other words, Jesus is saying that it is ultimately much safer, smarter and more profitable to trust God than riches, seemingly so indispensable. Jesus knew, however, that only by divine power is it possible to renounce wealth.

Indeed, he had once said that it was easier for a great rope or even a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. But how then can a rich man become poor? Jesus himself had made it clear that it is impossible without special intervention from God.

Jesus, however, continued to insist. He told one day about a rich man, who did not even see the poor up close, to the point that he let one who lived right outside his door die of hardship. He said that even his dogs at least licked his sores, but he did not even see him, and for this he received the worst punishment. Jesus cried out several times: "Woe to the rich".

He also said this when he told of a man who, after amassing so much wealth, thought he was finally happy. The man had, however, forgotten that he might die that very night. The cry 'vanity of vanities', already preached in the synagogues, is repeated in different ways by Jesus. When he proclaims the beatitudes, he prepares his listeners for that other cry: 'Woe to you rich'. For riches occupy the heart and leave no room for the true God.

It was therefore clear that among the first tasks of the catechumens catechised by Jesus was, first and foremost, the act of emptying the heart of useless and dangerous ballast, wealth, to make room for God himself. It seems that wealth and money cannot live in the same heart where God dwells.

The new command

In his discourses, Jesus arrives at some great syntheses. Of all the Jewish theological disquisitions, Jesus arrives at the essential: "Whoever sees me, sees the Father". Of the great long prayers, Jesus proposes the core: "Pray thus: Our Father...". And all morality, the Law is reduced to the summary: "Love God and your neighbour".

One day a boy asked him: "Who is the neighbour I must love?". The question was not so obvious: for the strictly observant Jew, the neighbour was only those who were faithful to the Torah and to all the 613 laws - even the smallest ones - that stemmed from the Great Law of Moses, while for others the neighbour was the Jews, at least the circumcised ones, certainly not the enemies, who had to be fought instead. For Jesus, the neighbour, the close one, is every person I can reach and who can reach me. When the young man asks him who the neighbour is, Jesus answers partially, so that even a child can understand, by telling the parable of the Good Samaritan.

In a nutshell, he says: 'If someone has an accident and you rescue him by taking him to the hospital, you are being a good neighbour'. But more fully, Jesus answers only when he is on Calvary. Right there he tells us who his neighbour is. As they nail him, who is closer than the one who drives the nails into his hands and feet? Who is closer to him than the one who kills him? Jesus not only does not rail, he defends them before the Father: 'Father, forgive them for they know not what they do'. The Lord is giving his life for these guys. Where is there a greater love?

In Christian love there is a radically new dimension preached by Jesus and lived by Him. When He said that He had come not for the healthy but for the sick, the other statement was better understood: 'I have not come for the righteous but for sinners'. And to those who asked Him how many times one must forgive, He answered that one must always forgive (seventy times seven). Forgiving does not only mean to forget an offence, but to continue to desire the good of the other and to love him. Wanting to describe Christian love, in a letter to a brother, Francis of Assisi wrote that if one has sinned as much as one can sin, he still deserves forgiveness [146].

To love even those who love you is never easy, but to love those who no longer love you, those who have hated you, those who have destroyed your family's honour, those who have caused you financial and moral bankruptcy, those who in a word have become your enemies, is not only difficult, but inhuman, in the sense that human strength is not enough. To love as Jesus asks of us, we need the divine in us. In his discourses, Jesus gives reasons for this preference and tells us that he does all whatever he sees his Father doing, who sends sunshine to the good and the bad and rain to the just and the unjust. Jesus does not hide his preference for the poor, the sick, the sinner.

However, the Jewish Jesus moves further and further away from his roots. The holy Jew loves saints, or at least those who behave like saints, while Jesus goes beyond that boundary and reaches out to the boy who shepherds swine, the sheep caught in the brambles, heals the sick, raises the dead. Jesus forgives sinners, brings the outcasts back into society and to the Temple, stops to dine with the excommunicated, talks to a heretic asking her for a drink, and allows himself to be perfumed by a sinner.

Who is the sinner that Jesus meets and asks to forgive and love? It is certainly not a mischief-maker who deserves some compassion, but one who has squandered all his father's inheritance, one who steals money from the poor for the benefit of the Roman masters, one who has been unfaithful to husband and wife and children. Do these people deserve forgiveness? They deserve nothing, but Jesus forgives them. And he asks us to forgive the sinner as he forgives them.

What if the sinner is not just a murderer, but has tried to suppress you, if he is not just someone who has cheated on his wife a few times, but has entered your private life and stolen yours, considering it his own, and has done it repeatedly? If the sinner is not only a maniac, but has raped your child, or bought others to trade their organs by treating them like rats or rabbits, at which point should we still forgive and love, according to Jesus' teaching? He explains to us in fact that forgiving and loving does not always mean: 'Let us embrace and celebrate', in fact Jesus used the whip with the sellers in the Temple, but with the same hands with which he had embraced the children.

In the face of great crimes, there can be rebuke, advice, demanded and claimed punishment. The children encountered by Jesus had needed caresses and Jesus had caressed them, while the sellers in the Temple had needed a whip and Jesus had whipped them, loving them no less than those innocent children. If so, the Gospel is not one of the many books that fill libraries, but the most difficult of all, the most pretentious. And, among the founders of religions, Jesus is the most disobedient. For he demanded what no one dared to demand: to ask to love those who one cannot love, at least with human strength. So, the Gospel is an atomic bomb that we handle like a carnival firecracker.

Once, the Pharisees seeing that Jesus had gone to eat with some sinful publicans, asked the disciples why Jesus ate with such unworthy people. He, who had heard the chatter, replied: "Look, it is not the healthy who need the doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners" [147].

And Jesus goes preaching this message in the villages, in the countryside, along the lake, in the synagogues and sometimes even in the Temple in Jerusalem. When Jesus gathers the group of disciples to continue his own mission, he sends them into the world to preach the Kingdom of Heaven to all; he sends them to heal the sick, to raise the dead, to cure lepers, to cast out evil spirits; he sends them to bring peace, to set the world on fire; he sends them as lambs in the midst of wolves and asks them to always be simple like doves, but careful and prudent like serpents. He asks them to trust in Providence and not in themselves, and he also asks them to testify to this trust by not carrying gold, silver, nor money in their pockets, nor a travelling bag, nor two tunics, nor sandals, nor staffs. He often repeats to them, as I said above, to look at the birds in the sky or the flowers in the field, which are nourished and clothed by God himself, to look at the hairs on our heads and know that not even one can fall out without God himself wanting it, or else when he reminds them that the farmer after throwing the seed into the field whether he sleeps or frets, from that grain a plant is born and then an ear of wheat, and if that were not enough, another time he invites us to look at the stars, which we will never be able to count and instead the Lord takes the luxury of calling them all by name, one by one.

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[146] - "In this I want to know if you really love the Lord and love me his and your servant, if you will behave in this way, namely, that there is no brother in the world who, having sinned as much as it is possible to sin, after having seen your eyes, does not go away without your forgiveness, if he asks for it; and if he does not ask for it, you ask him if he wants to be forgiven. And if, afterwards, he sins a thousand times before your eyes, love him more than me...".

[147] - If a mother has one healthy, one sickly and one seriously ill child, who will she love more? It is clear that to the third one she must devote much more time and also give more affection to relieve him. If a mother has a really good son and a restless one and a third a professional criminal, who will she love more? Or rather, who should she love more? Or again, which of the three children needs love the most? Jesus' claim may even become reasonable (Cf. R. Rosso, Il dialogo dei monaci).

The beatitudes

After Jesus had been on the mountain praying, on his way down to the plain he found a large number of people waiting for him at the foot of the mountain. When he stopped and sat down, his disciples approached to him. Then taking the floor, he taught them, saying, 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the afflicted, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those persecuted for righteousness' sake, for the Kingdom of God belongs to them all". And he said again: "Blessed are you, when they shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice and exult, for great is your reward in heaven" [148].

Jesus' words are so far from what those people could understand. One thing they could understand, however: with the arrival of the Messiah, a new king would be enthroned, God himself, and from that moment on, even the poor would be able to lift up their heads and no one would be poor any longer. This text is almost the preface to another text that brings us not blessings, but curses, i.e. warnings: 'Woe to you who are rich, woe to you who are full, who now laugh, and woe when all men say good things about you'.

In Mary's song, Luke also offers us a beatitude for the humble, because they will be elevated, and a warning to the powerful, because they will be overthrown from their thrones, and again a warning to the rich, which reads: while the hungry will be filled with goods, they, the rich, will be 'sent back empty-handed'.

These beatitudes or blessings are confirmation that God protects the beggars, the poor, the humble, the sad, the distressed, the suffering, the widows and orphans. That is why Christ, after beginning by announcing the consolation of the poor and the humble, the hungry and the afflicted, immediately presents himself as the one who had been heralded through Isaiah: "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me; he has invited me to bring the glad tidings to the poor"; "Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven"; "He has sent me to bind up the wounds of the brokenhearted ... to rejoice the afflicted"; "Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh" [149]; "To rejoice the afflicted in Zion and give them a crown instead of ashes, oil of gladness instead of mourning clothes, a song of praise instead of a sad heart" [150].

A large proportion of those who followed Jesus and listened to him were sick, or at least had been sick. They had all experienced deprivation of food, clothing, medicine, they had all experienced affliction when widowed or when, having lost a son, they were in great need of consolation. They were meek people, never aggressive, nor inclined to appropriate anyone's belongings. Those simple country people, farmers, housewives and shepherds, had a clean heart and were there to hear and see something of God. All eager to live a peaceful and quiet life, they had not always been spared the consequences of war or family divisions.

Others had suffered grave injustices from those in power and, as a result, had always been right. And, not infrequently, they suffered the calumnies of those who wanted to take advantage of them. However, indiscriminately, even as children, they had all heard that better times were coming and, indeed, that someone would come who would meet their expectations. So the time had come, but not everyone had realised it, and Jesus was there to confirm that both that awaited time and that man sent by God to establish that totally new Kingdom had arrived.

Jesus was announcing that the Kingdom of God was at hand: it was no longer a power administered by proud, pretentious and capricious men, but a kingdom finally administered by God himself, by a totally different policy. As they waited to be healed or to find some solution to their daily problems, those people heard words echoing in their heads like: 'Blessed are you, poor people, who weep or mourn today, for when God's kingdom on earth begins, you too will be blessed'.

They had already heard of people being healed by Jesus and even being sated, and so it was a sign that the blessed time of a new Kingdom was indeed beginning. They expected, however, that at any moment Jesus would be anointed king, and then also overcome his enemies and begin the new time of peace. Meanwhile Jesus proclaims the beatitudes. He is not saying: 'Blessed is he who is poor', but affirms that in the new kingdom, the kingdom of heaven, in God's new policy, the poor will be blessed and no-one will be poor any more, at least not as poor as before.

To prepare for the new kingdom, Jesus begins to preach: 'He who has two tunics, let him give one to him who has none', then he invites the apostles to give food to the hungry, indeed, he also provides good wine to those who are left without a feast. Thus shall the hungry, the thirsty, the naked be blessed: when God begins to administer the world in his own way, they shall no longer hungry, but they will be satiated by their neighbour, nor shall they weep any more for their misery, but they shall be comforted by their neighbours who - in the new kingdom - will have broken bread with them and provided for their clothes; they will have invited them into their homes if they were displaced, and cured if sick, because this is how 'Christians' will live, and this is what that crowd could understand [151].

Blessed are the poor does not mean 'blessed are those who are sick', as I just said. If we paraphrase the psalmist meditating on the human condition of affluence, we can glimpse a foretaste of the beatitudes when he states that the man in affluence - that is, the human being satiated with everything, with numerous flocks and full barns - ends up no longer understanding anything and becomes like the beasts [152].

Consequently, we can turn the text around and read in it that man in suffering understands life more and more and becomes more and more a man, more and more a woman (and more and more 'blessed').

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[148] - Mt. 5:11-12.

[149] - Lk. 6, 20-21.

[150] - Is. 61, 1-3; Lk. 4, 18-19. Cf. also Contro Marcione by Tertullian.

[151] - In the 1980s a French sister asked the Mother of the cloistered monastery to live her consecrated life to God on the road. She began her pilgrimage. The little she had she gave to others and kept for herself just a small bag with a Bible and a flute inside. She would stop at crossroads and, if she saw some woman or a married or engaged couple, she would ask for a lift. Any direction was fine with her. After a few minutes or a few hours, seeing that she had nothing, they would ask how she lived and from whom she got her salary or if she had any bank accounts, and she would very simply explain that she had none of these things and no bank account either, but she the intention to 'provoke God and Him alone to take care of her'. Likewise, she did not receive any offerings. When someone wanted to make one, she thanked: 'Surely you know some poor people too, make your offering to them. I already have those who think for me, I lack nothing. You probably have a bank account and when you need money you have to go and withdraw it, possibly queuing. When I need money, I turn to Him and my Lord never keeps me waiting, because He is very free. He has few people like me to think about. He knows that you are intelligent and good and have already provided for all your security, so you do not need to bother Him, the Lord. Instead, for those who, like me, are without anything, just like the birds in the sky or the flowers in the field, the Lord provides directly". If she was a guest in some family sharing meals or spending the night, after a few hours her disarming presence became like an earthquake within those walls. I met her when, by chance, she had arrived in Turin on a day of strike at the gates of Fiat, between two armies lined up: those who were behind the gates for fear of losing their jobs and those who were lined up outside demanding justice, cursing each other with the most offensive and vulgar words and shouts. The sister arrived in those hours. At one point she took her flute and began to play as she entered between the two factions. At first, her music was drowned out by the shouting, but slowly all that shouting quieted down and only the flute could be heard calling for courage and justice to each other, with the extremely authoritative language of the beatitudes proclaiming:

'Blessed are those who have the spirit of the poor, for to them belongs the Kingdom of God'.

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[152] - Cf. Ps. 49, 13.

Blessed are those who put the kingdom of God into practice

Instead of attempting difficult considerations in order to understand the beatitudes (blessings), we can assume that we read the following expression in a stall book: "After an hour of agony, Jesus he came down from the cross continuing to preach the Gospel and perform miracles, becoming more and more famous and dying of old age, full of years'. Well, faced with such news (posed only as a hypothesis), we would feel very uncomfortable. And we would be no less disappointed if, in front of a crucifix hanging on the wall, we heard someone say: 'Behold, that naked man nailed to a cross must have been the most wretched man that ever existed on the earth', or if we were told again that a hundred years ago, those one and a half million Armenian martyrs, men, women and even children, instead of accepting to be stripped of everything, left without food, drink or clothes, had not allowed themselves to be tortured and killed for Jesus Christ.

I think how bitter and ultimately how disillusioned we would be if we heard these words in front of an supposed saint: 'Blessed are you who are rich, blessed are you who are full, blessed are you who now laugh, and blessed are you when all men say well of you'. So, faced with the opposites of the beatitudes, we can see how sensible Jesus' beatitudes are, even if they are extremely counter-current.

And now let us try to ask ourselves: is it possible for man, with all his frailty, to live this page of the Gospel? I dare answer yes, just as I dare call God "Our Father", just as I dare declare that Jesus is my brother and that the Holy Spirit also dwells in me and can give me the strength to do what I could not do alone. The million and a half martyrs just mentioned also answered that it is possible. 

This page is not a paradox

This expression does not mean anything else, but simply states what Jesus proclaims: 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, blessed are they...', etc. It is tempting to think that this is an impossible feat, in fact - like so many others - Luther himself had argued that man cannot live this page of the Gospel, but that only God's mercy can make up for human insufficiency. If I dare to think that it is possible to live the beatitudes, it is because Jesus lived them in the first place in their fullness: if, in fact, he forgave sins as God, he could still live the beatitudes as man. Paraphrasing a response from  the Gospel, we could therefore confidently say: 'what is impossible for man alone, is possible for man with God'.

Let me dwell again on the first beatitude: 'Blessed are the poor in spirit', interpreting it as follows: 'Blessed are those who have the spirit of the poor'. Since this is not a commandment like some imperatives of the Decalogue. It could be declined in this way: "To the extent that you have the spirit of the poor, the Kingdom of God will dwell in you". But to understand what the spirit of the poor consists of, we must go back to that cry that comes from far away, from the Old Testament: "Let no one among you be poor!" [153].

At this point, paradoxically, I have to note that we have to fight all our lives against poverty if we have to live the beatitudes, if we are to have the spirit of the poor, to be one who knows what it means to be poor and behaves accordingly with his neighbour. But who is the rich man? And who is the poor? In common thinking, rich is not he who has a hundred or ten sheep, but rather he who has one sheep more than his neighbour. From a biblical point of view, rich is he who believes he is powerful; he who thinks he has achieved his life's purpose just because he has full barns, or he who puts confidence in his wealth and substitutes goods for God himself. The poor, on the other hand - who are Jesus nailed to a cross and those who follow him - live the page of the beatitudes, because both that cross and that death do not have the last word, but it will be the resurrection that will proclaim the last beatitude.

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[153] - Dt. 15, 4.

Cultivating the spirit of the poor to be blessed means to become like Him

As I write I am in a Gadhia Lohar camp. These Indian gypsies, who forge iron and make various tools, all have a family, a tent, a wagon, a camel, a forge, an anvil, a rapier and a hammer. When one of them marries, they get all this for him, otherwise he could not live. If someone in their group has a health problem or faces any need, the whole group is with him to solve the emergency. There is a maxim among them: 'If you have two loaves and your neighbour has none, share yours, so that both of you may have one': no one among them is rich and no one is poor. They have the spirit of the poor, which is why they approach the beatitudes and suggest to me that the beatitudes are possible.

When our belongings are not just sheep or camels, but health, education, cultural heritage, etc., only if we put all this at the service of the other with a spirit of the poor will we be blessed. If, as the Law of the Kingdom of God demands of us, those who have more share with those who have less, no one will be richer and no one will be poorer.

If, on the other hand, I stay with the poor and build schools, universities, hospitals, factories to provide work, if I distribute bread and dripping to all the poor of the world and burn my life for them, but I do it with the spirit of the rich, of one who is powerful and wants to build a kingdom on this earth, I am a powerful person capable of performing miracles and moving mountains, but all this is of no use.

If I have the spirit of the poor man who shares everything, it will not be difficult for me to know how to accept the consequence of losing my privileges, I will be able to endure a more austere life and understand those who do not make it. Some might argue that enthusiasm can also help us to have the spirit of the poor man for a few heroic moments in life, but that it is difficult to persevere in the long run.

Here is a story that explains the concept: "A dog started barking because it had seen a cat sheltering in a tree. In less than ten minutes, one after the other, all the dogs in the village, hearing the barking, did the same thing; but slowly, after another ten minutes, one after the other they all shut up and only one continued barking: the one who was seeing the cat'.

If we do not see the poor, if we do not want to meet them, if we do not eat, pray and cry with them, we will not 'bark' more than ten minutes and we will never become blessed. And finally, I must remember that Jesus did not say 'blessed are those who choose the poor', but 'blessed are the poor'.

Beatitudes and the cross

We cannot omit a beatitude that is not written verbatim in the Gospel, but which is a synthesis of the beatitudes and the Gospel itself and which Jesus' audience could not have understood: 'Blessed are those who die, for in the Kingdom of God they shall rise again [154].

Blessed are the poor because they become like the Jesus crucified, who has nothing left. He who fed the crowds is deprived of food, He who provided the good wine for the feast receives vinegar, He who wiped away the tears of those who asked Him for comfort is suffocated by the weeping of agony, He who made the paralytics walk is paralysed, feet and hands nailed down. The last possession he can hold in his hands are the two nails. And even if buried in that unbearable pain, he still manages to remember something, he is reminded of the last beatitude he uttered: 'When others say all sorts of evil against you because of me, rejoice': it is precisely the passers-by who insult him who remind him of this last beatitude. Yes, one can rejoice precisely because with Jesus Christ the last word that closes his and my story is not pain, anguish and death. Jesus dies, but his last cry is already hallelujah.

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[154] - B. Forte recalls that "La parola della croce" (1 Cor. 1, 18) shows how "it is in poverty, weakness, pain and the reprobation of the world, that we find God: not the splendours of earthly perfections, but their very opposite, littleness and ignominy become the place of His presence among us, the desert where He speaks to our hearts" (Cf. B. Forte, Storia di Dio e Dio della storia. Saggio di una cristologia come storia, Cinisello Balsamo, San Paolo Edizioni, 2007).

The miracles: Jesus is the good shepherd

Just as the shepherd loves his sheep, Jesus loves his people, the simple people of the villages. He does not come to the villages to explain a new ethic, a deeper religion or philosophy. Jesus knows that his people have other things to think about: the poor people he meets have nothing to worry about, they have to struggle to survive, feed their children, care for the sick at home. In the villages where Jesus passed, poverty was exaggerated. Life expectancy was 30 years and infant mortality high. Sixty per cent of the inhabitants did not reach the age of 16: out of every thousand, more than 300 died children. Most of them, who were still very young when they married, were in any case generally already fatherless or motherless. The dead that Jesus resurrects, and of whom the Gospel speaks, are in fact a boy, a girl, a young man.

There is no mention of the age of the sick, who, however, according to these assumptions, must not have been very old. At a certain point, Zechariah is spoken of as an old man who can no longer even have children because he is advanced in age, but it is also known that, since he was in turn given priestly service in the Temple, he must still be in his fifties.

Based on the data from the pages of the Gospels, some scholars have tried to formulate hypotheses about the kind of life Jesus led during those thirty years in Nazareth. They infer that Jesus belonged to a middle class, where one could live in reasonable conditions or above the norm. On the other hand, I think that, considering how things turned out and his passion for others, he could not have lived in such a context in conditions that were above radical poverty. For what reason?

Simply because the Jesus we know, how could he have tolerated that some family in real poverty would not receive support from him or at least from his family? How could Mary, Joseph and Jesus have refused solidarity help solidarity to any destitute person? If, in fact, the life expectancy of their village, where everyone was poor if not miserable, was only thirty years, one can imagine how food insufficient and medicines must have been lacking, and imagine all the dimensions of social poverty there. It must therefore be noted - not to honour a cheap evangelical pauperism - that Jesus, even though he had sufficient conditions to lead an almost affluent life (there were in fact two of them, in the family, working as carpenters) could never have afforded it, if his neighbour had lived in conditions of deprivation, below the poverty line. In such a context, Jesus immediately encountered the prerequisites for living charity and later proposing his Gospel to his disciples.

In very poor populations, there are many humanitarian activities: setting up a literacy school, a school of hygiene to prevent disease, a school of politics to remove the causes of misery, setting up development projects in the agrarian field, founding hospitals and professionalising health personnel, strengthening people's faith to rebuild new hope. If, however, after an earthquake, the first job to be done is to dig up the buried alive, here Jesus must cure the sick. And the first disease of this people is a very poor, or at least insufficient, diet: that is why diseases attack very easily. In every village and in every family, there are sick people without medicine and without hope. Here health is the first constant concern. Jesus, who loves everyone, consequently wants to alleviate suffering and therefore has no alternative: he must cure the sick.

Jesus' first preaching becomes the exercise of charity, the alleviation of pain. It can also be said that He could have healed all the sick in that region with a single word, but He does this service first of all in order to live charity: He meets them one by one, talks to them, establishes a relationship, revives their trust and hope, in some cases He even frees them first of the sins oppressing them, and then He heals them, that is, He performs a precious act of love. Matthew tells us that Jesus travelled throughout Galilee, teaching in the Synagogue, preaching the good news of the Kingdom and healing all diseases of the people.

His fame spread to all Syria and the sick with various infirmities and in serious states came to him: they were possessed by evil spirits (because their spirit had become sick), epileptics, paralytics and he healed them; then came the blind, lepers and suffering of all kinds.

Again, Matthew tells us that, faced with that multitude, Jesus was grieved to see everyone so weary and dejected, just like sheep without a shepherd [155]. And, since we are told that, at some point, Jesus sends the disciples out to preach and heal on their own, and that they sometimes they return enthusiastic about their success, we are led to think that they learned to live charity by healing.

Consequently, I think we are not straying from historical reality if we assume that the group of young disciples used to wander along with Jesus were not sitting under a tree, in the shade, watching the thaumaturge intent on healing. They too must have been busy treating the simplest cases, cleaning wounds or gangrene, giving advice on hygiene and some prevention, and, of course, handing over the more serious cases to Jesus himself, creating almost a medical camp where everyone is busy around Him with actions never separated from the preaching of the Master.

Once, as Jesus walked away, the people tried to figure out in which direction He was going to join Him; so, getting out of the boat, He found Himself again in front of a great multitude and, with great compassion, He began to heal the sick. On another occasion, as soon as he arrived in Genezareth, he was immediately recognised and the news spread throughout the region: from all parts came sick people of all kinds, trying to touch at least the hem of his cloak, for those who could were healed.

On a later occasion, Jesus had come to the shore of the Sea of Galilee: He went up the hill a little way and many came, bringing lame, crippled, blind, mute and many other kinds of sick, and He healed them. That admiring crowd gave glory to the God of Israel as they saw the mute speaking, the crippled healed, the lame walking, and the blind seeing: now they all rejoiced, for that was to be the new Kingdom of God. Someone had concluded: "He did only good, hearing the deaf and speaking to the dumb". And the people, stunned and admiring, said that such a thing had never been seen in Israel [156].

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[155] - Mt 9:35-36.

[156] - Mt 4:23-24; Mt 9:35-36; Mt 14:13-14; Mt 14:34-36; Mt 15:29-31; Mt 9:33.

Who are the recipients of the miracles

Jesus has before him the good and simple people of Galilee. He has many sick people listening to him, in fact he has almost only sick people: probably those who were well did not move so much. The hearts of his audience are occupied with their personal problems and the expectation of being healed, possibly on that very day.

In Galilee, and in any case in all the regions that Jesus travelled through, the possibilities of consulting doctors or buying medicine were scarce: that is why Jesus immediately warns that, to show how much he loves those people, he must roll up his sleeves and alleviate their suffering. They do not want words, but deeds, and Jesus does not disappoint them. Let it be clear that he does not want to make a spectacle of himself, nor does he want to prove with those extraordinary deeds that he is the Son of God, and therefore he can do whatever he wants, indeed he hides this and often asks people not to talk about it.

Jesus does not even want to astonish and show the Power of God, but to demonstrate with facts that He is taking care of them and that He has infinite compassion for them, for their poverty, their sickness, the problematic situations around them. And now He feels a compassion pressing within Himself that wants to manifest itself by curing all kinds of illnesses.

Even the suspicious are there

For Jesus even miracles become messages, signs, parables of mercy and compassion. Jesus also has children in front of him, and they must be interested. The stories and parables can be heard by everyone, even children, and everyone understands them in relation to their own intelligence. Among that heterogeneous audience there are also the suspicious ones, those who want to instrumentalise him and set traps for him: "Should we or should we not pay tribute to Caesar? Should we stone this woman caught in adultery as Moses commanded us, or do you say otherwise? Why do you heal on the Sabbath?" And there are also the politicians, those who claim to be concerned with religion: the scribes, the Sadducees, the Pharisees and sometimes even the priests of the Temple.

Jesus wants to show himself simple with everyone, but he knows that he must also be astute, so that the truth, not the abstract truth, but the concrete truth of the Kingdom of God, will make its way. Most of those who come to Jesus, as we have said, are sick or have accompanied someone hoping to be healed, and He, who knows how much they need to heal the invisible evils more than those that can be seen, acts as He had done with a paralytic, whose sins He had first forgiven, in order to heal him later of his paralysis. Jesus, however, does not just act as a healer, but catechises.

To those who come, Jesus speaks of the Kingdom of God, conversion, forgiveness, love, and even love for one's enemies. In this way he restores harmony in their lives, offers forgiveness and asks them to offer it to others and not to deny it to anyone. With forgiveness, Jesus restores them to peace with themselves and with others, then goes on to heal the wounds of soul and body by healing the blind, the deaf, the mute, those possessed by unknown evils, epileptics, lepers: his compassion leads him to raise even the dead.

From the desert of Judah to Galilee

Jesus had left the arid and dismal desert of Judah, without vegetation and without life. In the sky, from time to time, the occasional flight of an eagle would appear, and in the nights the howling of hyenas, but more painful than this was John's rigour with his harsh preaching, where God's wrath, his judgement and his punishment were pre-eminent: he cried out against the injustices and betrayals of the people. If this was right, that image of a stern and inflexible God was, however, a narrow one for Jesus.

Nearby, he had also met and almost certainly frequented the community of the monastery of Qumran, where the Essenes, who were also fanatical about the Law and all Judaic prescriptions, conveyed an image of God and religion that would have been in great need of purging. The expectation of a political liberator Messiah against Rome and the penances they certainly did made them sad figures.

Then there was the anger of the Zealots, who also hung around in that arid desert. Jesus returned to his land emaciated and weary from the prolonged fasts, penances and temptations, from which he had emerged victorious, but with a new vision of God, the merciful and compassionate Father, very different from the image he had left both at the monastery of the Essenes and along the banks of the Jordan, where John had baptised. Now Jesus, with the first disciples, was returning, joyful and smiling, to his beloved Galilee: moreover, they were invited to Cana, to a wedding banquet of a relative.

Cana of Galilee: wedding feast

Towards evening, Jesus arrived with the disciples at the house of the future bridegroom, where preparations were being made for the wedding procession to the betrothed's home. The bridegroom, elegant, with a tiara on his head, after greeting the last guests to arrive, set off with his friends, amidst music, tambourines and clapping of hands: they all travelled that short distance with great joy. All the relatives, adults and children had gathered at the house of the fiancée to await the bridegroom’s arrival . Mary, the mother of Jesus, was already there with her relatives. The bride, richly dressed in a dress partly embroidered by her, wore sparkling stones and costume jewellery on her head. As soon as she heard the roll of the drums and the chants of the approaching procession, the young woman covered her face with a veil that she would later remove only that very night, in the bridal chamber. The relatives of the two families greeted each other again and reassembled a procession to return all together to the groom's house, where the wedding would be celebrated and the party organised until the following Saturday. They left with music, singing and drums, and the girls carried lighted oil lamps and, tied to their little finger, a flask for reserve.

As soon as they arrived, they all went to the stone jars, containing water for purification. Before the actual ritual, a container of spikenard and myrrh had to be broken. The house was then filled with perfume, the intensity of which signified how wealthy the two contracting families were. The decisive marriage formula was pronounced only by the groom, in front of the witnesses: 'She is my wife and I am her husband from this day forth and for ever' [157]. The bride remained silent without any declaration, as was the custom. Dancing, music and love songs [158] followed.

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[157] - In some cases it was only said: "You will be my wife".

[158] - "Pour forth my heart glad words / Thou art the fairest among the sons of man / On thy lips is grace spread / God has blessed thee for ever / Thou lovest righteousness and detest ungodliness / Thy God hath anointed thee / With oil of gladness in preference to thy equals. /Thy garments are all myrrh, aloes and cassia' / Sometimes it is the bridegroom who speaks to her. / 'Listen, daughter, look, give ear / Forget your people, and your father's house; / The king will like your beauty. / From Tyre they come bearing gifts. / The richest of the people seek your face. / The king's daughter is all splendour / gems and golden headdresses / with her the virgin companions / are brought to you / led in joy and exultation / they enter the king's palace together / your fathers will be succeeded by your sons / and the people will praise you in eternity" (Ps. 45).

The bride and groom risk a bad impression

The dinner and feasting continued until Saturday. The guests did not remain stuck to the tables or to the courtyard for all those days, but during the day the neighbours returned home for their normal occupations, such as watering the animals or attending to other ordinary tasks, and, in the evening especially, they gathered again. Jesus himself, during those days, had been able to visit other villages, but on Friday evening - or more likely on Thursday evening - he had arrived again at the feast with his own. It was on that occasion that Mary his mother - as John writes - realised that there was a shortage of wine and told her Son, who, at first, must have suggested that it was better not to meddle in such a delicate matter: it would seem he wanted to reproach the relatives for their disorganisation. At his mother's insistence, however, he had the six jars secretly filled with water and, after changing the water into wine, he ordered that they take a taste of it to the head of the table, who was a little annoyed, as they had not revealed to him beforehand that there was that special wine. If he had known, in fact, he would have had it served at the beginning, when the people's palates were able to appreciate it and not when they were already too cheerful.

John - who reports the fact to emphasise the importance of the beginning of the feast of the Messianic time - probably exaggerated some data, such as calculating an extra day: usually wedding feasts began on a Wednesday, but this time, to protract the celebrations, they had begun a day earlier. Another element of surplus was the quantity of wine, which had exceeded 600 litres, moreover served towards the end, when everyone was abundantly merry. John nevertheless wanted to emphasise the beginning of the Messiah's new time, to be inaugurated with great celebration.

Thalità khum

At least at first, the fact of Cana was kept fairly quiet - precisely so as not to cast a bad light on the relatives, who had turned out to be at least distracted in organising the wedding - but another event made people talk a lot about Jesus, so that they realised they were dealing with a truly extraordinary man. A twelve-year-old girl had been ill for several days. The local doctors and healers had treated her, but the situation had worsened. They had perhaps even called in one of those itinerant thaumaturges who healed through prayer, and this saint had also prayed over the girl, but to no avail.

That morning they had heard that Jesus was coming to the village and, at the time of prayer in the synagogue, the little girl's father left to warn Jesus, so that he might possibly say a prayer or even reach the little girl to heal her. In the meantime, the little girl had grown worse and died. As soon as the news came out of the house, relatives and neighbours arrived. Jairo, the little girl's father, was well known and well liked: he was the head of the Synagogue and for this reason, too, everyone came, indeed, some of the closest relatives had torn their clothes, as was the custom in front of particularly dramatic news. Others, as a sign of mourning, had worn a sack [159] and had spread the earth over their heads. Some women, shouting and crying, had rolled their heads in the dust, and those particularly close to the mother had repeatedly rolled in the earth with cries and lamentations.

An elderly man, perhaps the child's grandfather, had scattered ashes on the ground and lay on them, weeping inconsolably. The uncles had meanwhile arrived, covering their beards, and the wives had covered their faces. In the courtyard, under a fig tree, some men were shaving their heads, and those who approached entered the house walking barefoot, their eyes full with tears. The mourners had already sung funeral songs and meanwhile preparations were being made for the funeral, which was to take place a few hours later that same day.

On that day, Jairo, because of his dying daughter, had not, as usual, gone to the synagogue at the time of the meeting, but had joined her when the prayer had ended: Jesus had certainly acted as leader in his stead. As he saw Jesus, this man threw himself at his feet and, in tears, begged him to go to his house to heal his very sick daughter. He agreed, in fact he always agreed to act when it was possible to relieve some tears or otherwise heal someone, and he set out with many people.

As soon as they were on their way, they saw a small group of people who, visibly stunned, were going back to tell Jairo not to bother the Master any more, because in the meantime the little girl had died. The man was speechless, because nothing could be done now. He was too late to call Jesus, but the latter told him not to despair, but rather to trust, even though it was difficult to understand what trust could serve in the face of death.

Jesus continued on his way to the house, but did not allow anyone to follow him, except Peter and the two brothers, James and John. When he arrived, he saw the outpouring of grief that these people were paying to the family, now deprived of the child. The mourning was not so much for the little girl, as children in that society were worth little, but for the father: it was for him that the whole village had moved. As soon as he arrived, Jesus asked everyone to stop their crying, their shouting and all manifestations of grief. He got everyone out of the house and entered him, the dead woman's father and mother, and the three whom he had called with him. He approached the child and, taking her by the hand, awoke her from the dead. He said to her: 'Thalità kum' (stand up, young girl) and the girl reopened her eyes, cured of her illness and awakened from death. But Jesus strictly enjoined not to speak to anyone about this fact.

This was not the only case of reanimation of a corpse that Jesus performed. In the same way he had resuscitated the son of a widowed woman in the town of Naim. The son had died on the very day that Jesus was arriving in that region: he had met the funeral cortege that was accompanying the boy to the cemetery and had delivered him alive to his mother. The case, however, that had the greatest impact in those communities was that of Lazarus, a friend whom Jesus resurrected after four days in the tomb. Why then did Jesus perform miracles? To prove that he was divine? That he was stronger than sickness and death itself? No, Jesus performed miracles because in his compassion he could not bear the suffering of others, the sick without medicine, the poor without work, or those in danger of shipwreck, or those who ran out of wine at a banquet.

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[159] - It was a sackcloth, rough and coarse, worn on the skin and girded at the hips as a sign of mourning.

An epileptic cured

As a healer, Jesus was certainly considered a great exorcist. The spirit world of Persian thought had greatly influenced Israel, who projected what they did not understand into the spirit world, good or bad: all illnesses were considered, for example, the result of various evil spirits, of demons attacking the human spirit.

One day they brought an epileptic to Jesus: according to current thinking, he had a demon in his body that threw him to the ground, leaving him half dead, with plenty of froth in his mouth. Someone also related that this demon had tried to kill him by throwing him into the fire and, another time, by attempting to drown him in water. Jesus, who did not want to be a doctor or even a theologian, but simply to cure the sick person, replied that if, as they said, he had a demon in his body, to cure him he would cast it out. And so he did.

The storm

There is then a series of miracles 'about nature': the calming of the storm, the walking on the waves of the sea, the multiplication of the loaves, the delivery of the statere, the dried fig tree, the transformation of water into wine, mentioned above, the miraculous fishing. Regarding these miracles, some expressed doubts about details that are repeated in stories common in Jewish literature and other cultural circles. However, it should be pointed out that if one speaks of fishing, it is obvious to use similar words that are repeated: nets, fish, boats, sea, water, waves and so on. This is one more reason to argue that the Christian tradition did not consider it unseemly to draw on a common deposit. To perform those miracles Jesus could not have behaved any differently.

One night the apostles went fishing and Jesus was with them. Tired from a gruelling day, he had gone to sleep. On that lake the weather often changes suddenly and a storm arose that frightened those young men, though they were sea wolves: they were afraid of being swept away. It had happened to many not to return, also because theirs were poor people's boats, and therefore particularly fragile.

The waves, repeatedly entering the boat before sinking it, woke Jesus, who rebuked them for their lack of confidence: knowing that he was there with them, they could not justify their fear. At that very moment, He commanded the wind and the storm turned to calm, leaving the boys speechless at that sign and causing them to conclude, "Who is this man to whom the wind and the storm obey?" They had to start wondering who that fellow traveller was.

The apostles had not had the good fortune to have 2000 years of the history of Christianity behind them like we have. They were the first to be confronted with the event of Jesus Christ, unable to read that sign of their time that ushered in the time of the Messiah, awaited for centuries. Now that character who had seemed a myth was there in the flesh, in their boat, challenging their faith.

Jesus, man of compassion

Jesus performs his acts of mercy and compassion everywhere, on the shore of the Lake, on the road, on the hills where he teaches the people who listen to him, in the crowds, in many cities - including Capernaum, Bethsaida, Tyre, Sidon - but also in the villages, in the countryside, in homes, in synagogues. Wherever the people gather, Jesus finds a space to heal a sick person, to free another in spirit, to deliver from the risk of death, or even to raise a dead person.

People sometimes simply ask, or cry out to be received, or simply show up. Sometimes Jesus touches the sick person and lays his hands on him, a gesture that never has the value of an entreaty, but radiates the power of life, conveyed with simplicity, as someone tries to touch his garment or be reached by its shadow. In some cases, a word from Jesus is enough to heal. But people often find it difficult to approach him because of the crowds, once even having to uncover the roof of the house to reach him. In other circumstances, however, they hardly notice that he is with them, so discreet and almost invisible is he: after he had multiplied the loaves and fishes - perhaps it had happened more than once -, while they were in the boat with him, the disciples wept because they had no more bread.

Only one had made it out, rummaging through the whole boat. So sad were they that Jesus had to rebuke them and help them understand that they had the true bread with them, the one that can multiply all the bread in the world: they had already forgotten even the miracles. From this we can also understand why Jesus did them repeatedly, even though sometimes it seems that - as at Cana or with the Syro-Phoenician - he does not want to perform that miracle.

At certain times Jesus wants to test the faith of those before him. Many come to him: women, men, parents with children. We find among his audience scribes, Pharisees, priests, military, religious and unbelievers. Probably more than coming to him to hear extraordinary words, words of eternal life, they are there because they are either sick or accompanying a family member to be healed. They have heard witnesses that they had not normally heard among the healers of the time. When the sick person cannot come, someone comes to intercede for him to be healed, even from a distance. When faced with particular situations, Jesus prays before performing the miracle and, in particularly difficult cases, says that much prayer and fasting is necessary.

There is no shortage of opponents around Him who spy on His behaviour, do not accept His forgiveness of sins, accuse Him of violating the Sabbath, of performing a miracle, of transgressing established rules, even insinuate that He might be a follower of Satan. Some come to Him after having tried others without success. Often people do not expect a miracle, but only a rescue: there is bread to be bought and money is not enough; someone should enter the pool at the right time and ask for help; someone expects alms; others need rescue after having made all attempts to save themselves from a storm.

After the miracles, Jesus often asks for silence: he does not want any acclamations whatsoever. But in each case people are astonished, amazed or even taken aback, while some express joy, praise, gratitude, confession of faith. In the face of such authority, the fame of Jesus spreads through the miraculous witnesses and reaches far and wide. Sometimes he dismisses the miracle-worker by praising his faith or confirming the miracle that has taken place, especially if it happens at a distance; sometimes he sends the miracle-worker home or returns him to his own, sometimes he invites them to proclaim what they have received, or he asks for silence. Yet Jesus never said to anyone: 'I cannot do anything for you today', or 'I am busy, come back tomorrow'. Jesus' compassion and mercy are permanent.

Annex VI - The Miracles

The parables

When Jesus began his public life and preaching, an event exploded in Galilee: good news had come. What Isaiah had already written is now fulfilled: the poor are told of the end of their misfortunes; the prisoners hear that the prison doors will be opened and it is said that all the oppressed will be set free [160]. And the impure spirits flee before Jesus. They all tell one another that the time of salvation has come, meanwhile the blind recover their sight, while the paralytics throw off their crutches and even the deaf hear a new word preached with authority. The sick and even lepers are healed, and the dead themselves rise [161].

But who is it that raises the dead? [162] A prophet? Yes, another Elijah has returned among us. After so long the prophets had stopped speaking, right by the Jordan, for a little while, the people were warmed around the fire of John the Baptist (the Baptizer) who preached conversion to prepare for the new times. Now there is a fire about to set the world on fire. The good news passes from mouth to mouth. It is a Galilean prophet: Jesus Christ. Even sinners are being told: 'Your sins are forgiven' [163]. But who can forgive sins if not God? Then he is the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who comes to save our people, so he will be the King of Israel, but Jesus prevents them from making him king and thinking of him as a political leader, a liberator from the foreign yoke.

The fig tree that, in the winter, seemed dead, leafless, now on its tender branches shows the first buds of spring: it is the season of life coming [164]. And Jesus points to it: "Do you see?". Who knows if, besides noticing the arrival of the new season, those Galileans also realised that the new time, that of the Messiah, had arrived? The people of Israel, a flock without a shepherd, will finally have one [165], and Jesus - who has so much compassion for that shepherdless people, to whom in other times God had offered manna to eat and water to drink in the wilderness - now, in the last time, multiplies bread and fish for them and offers a new wine, for the feast. Even the lost sheep feels that a good shepherd will come after it [166].

The Messiah has arrived, he is at the door and knocks [167]. At Cana, during the wedding (which reminds us the wedding of the Messiah who has arrived), Jesus celebrates the feast of the new wine, indeed he gives it in abundance, to get drunk, because the time of the Messiah, so long awaited, has arrived and together with Him also the time of salvation [168].

Jesus shows with facts and even miracles that he is taking care of them. With images that know how to speak to the people, he announces that the final time has come: the old cloths are no longer to be mended, they are thrown away and replaced with new ones, the wine wineskins, which are worn out, are not suitable for the new wine, on the table the insipid salt is thrown away [169] and replaced with the good one, while on the candlestick the lamp is lit, so that finally all can see and understand [170].

When Jesus speaks and sees his people absent, he shakes them and tries to open their eyes and make them realise that the time available to understand and change their lives is short, it is very short indeed: "You have just heard John telling you. The axe is already on the roots, and the tree is you. God was so patient with your plant that bore no fruit; now he is willing to water it, and will add more fertiliser, but if you produce nothing, you will force the Lord to cut down the tree. You who, from the colour of the setting sun, understand what the weather will be like tomorrow and do not understand what is happening around you today. You have recognised kings and prophets and you do not understand who is with you today". It would not be for Jesus to say this, because they would have to understand it on their own, but there is more there with them than Solomon, more than Jonah or any prophet. Yet they struggle so much to understand.

"The time you have to understand is little enough for you to convert and do penance. You are like that man who has worked all his life to produce and enrich himself to the point that in order to store up all the crops he had to pull down old silos and build new ones, and now he is satisfied, but he has not thought that this night his life may be taken from him. And what will become of all those goods and his power? Or like that other man who was so attached to his riches that he could not even give the scraps from his table to a beggar who knocked on his door every day, to the point that at the end of his life he was rebuked with the worst of punishments, while the beggar received the greatest reward. Or like that doorkeeper who waits for his Lord to arrive and does not know at what time; he may arrive even at midnight, which is why he must be vigilant [171]. If then, because of the long wait, he begins to take advantage of his power by beating servants or partying with drunkards, woe to him" [172].

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[160] - Cf. Lk. 4:18.

[161] - Lk. 7, 22; Mt. 11, 5.

[162] - In the life of Jesus, both his miracles and his behaviour become parables, like his stories that are meant to convey some truth.

[163] - Mk. 2, 5-7.

[164] - Mt 24:32.

[165] - Mt. 15, 24; Lc. 12, 32.

[166] - Lc. 15, 4 ss.; Mt. 18, 12.

[167] - Ap. 3, 20.

[168] - Gv. 2, 11.

[169] - Mt. 5, 13.

[170] - Mc. 4, 21.

[171] - Mc. 13, 33-37; Lc. 12, 35-38.

[172] - Mt. 24, 45-51

Parables and acts of mercy

Jesus however is not only sent to the people of Israel, but in particular to the poor of Israel, to the anawim: he does not come for the healthy, but for the sick, not for the righteous, but for sinners. In his parables, Jesus often speaks of forgiveness, understanding and mercy. His heart is merciful, for the wretched. One certain day, he told of a son who wanted to migrate. At that time, migration to more fortunate countries was very common. Seven out of eight Israelites lived in countries far from their homeland.

The young man of whom Jesus speaks in his narration wants to make his fortune outside. He also wants to migrate but, to realise that dream, he needs money and asks his father for it. He would not be entitled to receive the inheritance that he would one day be entitled to after his father's death. The father could also have divided his property with his sons while he was alive, but he would still be left with the usufruct until his death. The son, therefore, would not have been able to emigrate with the money from his inheritance, but the father had agreed and, against all odds, let the boy (unmarried, therefore about 18 years old), who could also have made his fortune, leave. The contract is concluded, the son receives the money, and from that moment on he no longer has any claim to the inheritance. For him, the father is legally dead and he leaves. But, instead of thinking about building his future, he spends all the money on parties and prostitutes, until, having wasted it all, he finds himself in a terrible famine. At that point he looks for work to survive and finds the humiliating job of herding pigs. He starves and cannot even feed himself like his master's pigs [173]. He then decides to return home and, instead of finding his father charging him with just reproaches, he sees him excited with joy at his return, so much so that he embraces him.

The young man has thought of some words to say: 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you, I am no longer worthy to be called your son, treat me at least as one of your servants'. But the father puts his clothes, sandals and ring back on him as he had before. But how does the father justify this "injustice"? Simply by saying: 'He was dead and has come back alive, he was lost and has been found'. That is how the Father in heaven is, that is how Jesus is, that is how we should be. The brother who, on arriving when he hears the feast and the news of his brother's return, gets nervous, he does not think like his father. Jesus knows what his listeners think, especially the Pharisees, scribes and Sadducees. He knows that they chatter and say: 'He is quite right to complain, the elder brother' [174]. but, among the people, others decide to return again and again to hear these words that heal so many wounds.

Jesus, however, has not finished his lesson: he tells again that there was a shepherd with a hundred sheep and, at the usual counting in the evening, he realised that one was missing. He left the flock and set off to look for the lost sheep, until, having found it entangled in the brambles, he picked it up and shouldered it, exhausted as he was after so much walking in the desert. On his return he rejoiced, because that sheep was lost and had been found, was as good as dead and had come back alive. Someone among the listeners must have thought: "For a sheep?".

Jesus again tells of a lady who, having lost a precious coin for its economic or sentimental value, threw the whole house upside down to look for the little treasure and, when she found it, invited her friends to a family party because that coin was lost and was found again.

Jesus thus shows how merciful is the Father who is in heaven: the son who returns at least asks for forgiveness and thus the father's mercy is also more comprehensible; in the second case, the sheep neither returns home, nor can it apologise, but it could at least have given a bleat as a sign of help; but the third case is the most surprising, the coin does not return, it does not apologise for being lost, it gives no sign of repentance, because it could not, and yet it too is celebrated.

The third parable gives the measure of God's mercy: gratuitous. Jesus will say that there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner being converted than over 99 righteous ones. It is probably in this circumstance that another event happened that completed the understanding of the parables. While Jesus was talking about these things, he was probably having lunch in the house of the Pharisee Simon, who had invited him [175]. After hearing these words, a sinful woman [176] burst into tears, then approached Jesus' feet with an alabaster jar, began anointing his feet with that precious perfume and kissing them, then, having bathed them abundantly also with her tears, she loosened her hair and dried it with it [177].

Simon, who did not think as Jesus did, said to himself that if He had been a true prophet He would have known what race that woman was, and would never have let Himself be touched by her. But He asked him a question: between two men, if one had been forgiven 500 denarii (five thousand euro) and another 50 denarii, which one would love that creditor more. Simon rightly replied: 'I suppose the one to whom more was forgiven'. And since Jesus taught not only with words, but by living exactly what he said, in this way his actions continued to instruct.

Some time later, in fact, while Jesus was in the Temple, they dragged a woman caught in adultery before Him for his advice. They declared that, according to the law of Moses, that woman was to be stoned to death, and they asked Him what He thought, since He spoke so much of mercy. But Jesus, having written on the ground [178], stood up and said: 'Let he who is without sin cast the first stone' and they all left. Then Jesus forgave the woman, asking her to sin no more. And when the faith of some men went so far as to uncover the roof of the house where Jesus was speaking because they could not approach Him with a sick man's stretcher, which they lowered from the very roof, in front of Him, before curing the paralysis of the body, He wanted to cure the paralysis of His spirit: "Your sins are forgiven". Jesus did not stop at that divine action and, faced with those who doubted that He could forgive sins, He also healed the paralytic, and so His mercy and compassion became more and more visible.

In some parables, his understanding for others is also striking. He told one day of labourers who were waiting to be taken to work. Some found employment at the beginning of the day, others later, and still others when there was only an hour more to work. In the end, out of all the listener's expectations, Jesus narrates that the master also gave these workers the same pay as he had given those who had carried the whole day's burden. He uses different yardsticks from those of the common people: he does not put work, wages, profit first, but the need of the other.

Among the men who went to work, everyone was in need, everyone had a family, everyone had to provide dinner for the evening. Jesus helps us to understand that the standard of charity has other laws than the common ones. And when one reads a parable like this, one must interpret it in the concrete situations of today's life and look through the eyes of Christ at those who have no work, those who do not have the strength to work, those who are sick and, when they can no longer work because of their lost health, have more need than before to feed themselves, to buy medicine, and therefore more need of wages than when they could work: if we do not close our eyes to these pages of the Gospel, we are making a real revolution in our lives.

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[173] - So far, the story reports a fact that has happened many times. When he tells parables, in fact, Jesus does not invent fictional cases, which do not reach people's hearts, but real facts or at least stories that his listeners can understand very well. If he then wants to construct a new message or allegory, he does so on the fact itself, as in this case, where the mercy of the father goes beyond the boundaries of human history, in fact here God himself is represented.

[174] - Reading this parable, from which we can infer how reasonable it is for a father to forgive a son, we can nevertheless ask ourselves: which father following common logic would have

behaved in that way? Who would have indulged his son's freedom while not being obliged to? And, when the boy returned, who would have spared him a fair reprimand? And also, a fair distribution of assets for the future, especially towards his elder brother?

[175] - On the Sabbath it was common to invite someone to lunch, especially if it was an itinerant preacher.

[176] - It was a prostitute or the wife of a man with a dishonest profession, for example a publican.

[177] - A woman never lets her hair down in public, and a sinner knows that by touching Jesus she makes Him unclean, but He does not care and lets her do.

[178] - In this case Jesus acts like a Roman judge, who first writes the verdict and then pronounces it: he simply writes the answer he will give shortly afterwards.

Why does Jesus speak in parables?

Through the parables that Jesus tells, man can understand by analogy how God behaves: he welcomes his son back, He searches for the lost sheep, He looks for the lost coin, He knows how to expect a tree from a grain of mustard seed, and He also shows how a little leaven can ferment a great deal of dough. He is a God who loves a feast with a wedding banquet for many guests and man is able to understand what he too has to do on earth [179]. The miracles, speeches and parables are a set of signs that tell of the kingdom of God, which Jesus lives in his story and proposes to his community, to the Church.

If Jesus only pronounced truths of faith and offered them as pre-packaged dogmas, we would not strive to deepen and interpret the truths proposed in the light of our own lives, as we are encouraged to do with the parables. By speaking in parables, Jesus leaves a book open to be read and rewritten in future centuries, in different cultures. For even if it seems to conceal part of the truth, the parable has the power to continually enrich the known truth, deepening it and showing its newness from all sides. Parables both reveal and conceal, requiring an effort of interpretation and decision. "They let the mystery of God shine through to those with penetrating eyes and ready hearts: they remain obscure to those who are distracted and whose hearts are burdened" [180].

Some authors, including Harald Weinrich and Vittorio Fusco, argue that in the early days, when celebrating the Eucharist, the Christian community used the Easter narrative as the biblical Word, which somehow set aside all the other Gospel narratives, while, at the end of the second millennium, a much greater risk was emerging: that of absorbing the whole person of Jesus in his stories and parables, which instead cannot claim, in any way, to exhaust the total Jesus [181].

Instead, we must strive more and more to listen to the pre-Easter narrator Jesus as the same Jesus narrated in the Easter story. The parables are not the salvation event, but they refer back to it. In the parables he reveals to us first of all who God is and how he relates to  men, at the same time he speaks of himself and how he behaves with us, proposing that we enter into his mindset, that of the kingdom of God.

To be understood, the parables must not be read as a body in themselves: "they always refer back to the Gospel as a whole" [182] and it is the Gospel that, with the stories of Jesus' life, his speeches and words, can illuminate human existence. Therefore, they are inseparable from the other Gospel episodes, miracles, maxims, aphorisms and sentences. Throughout this Gospel body, the protagonist is always one: Jesus Christ, Priest, King and Prophet.

To understand the parables, we must first think of them as told by Jesus and remember to whom he was addressing them. If, on the other hand, we read them as texts by an anonymous author, they would lose the singular depth that distinguishes them. If, for example, we take the parable of a man who gives thanks for his good deeds before the altar, while a sinner at the back of the Temple asks for forgiveness for his sins, we might conclude that both do what they must; if, however, we know that the first is a Pharisee and the other a publican, everything changes; if, then, again, we realise that it is Jesus who is telling and that among the audience are Pharisees and publicans, the parable takes on a very different value.

If Jesus' parables were the meditations of a wise man talking about man and God, about human life and behaviour, they would not have the force that Jesus himself imparts on them with his authority. In fact, He lives according to the culture of the parables He tells. Like the Good Samaritan, He always stops in front of the unfortunate victim of the robbers, He always stops in front of the sick, the blind, the crippled, the leper and solves each one's problem. Jesus does not say to anyone: 'I cannot do anything for you today' or 'Come back tomorrow, because I am busy today'.

Like the good shepherd, Jesus goes to meet the sinner to forgive him in the condition of a paralytic, of an adulterous woman who does not even expect forgiveness, of a public sinner who openly covers him with tears. In front of poor Lazarus, Jesus does not act like the insensitive rich man who does not even see him, on the contrary, he heals the poor man's wounds and cures the sick, provides him with bread and fish when he is hungry and the best wine when he is feasting, even if he has to perform miracles as he did.

Jesus rewards the one who has received five talents and has made as many bear fruit, while he does not appreciate the lazy man who wastes the precious time of life without producing anything; on the contrary, he warns him that he is heading towards a great misfortune, just like that fig tree that produced nothing: if after so much care, after being hoed, fertilised and watered, it still does not produce anything, it will have to be cut down and removed, so as not to exploit that soil uselessly. If he encounters one who is discouraged and wonders, "What shall I eat tomorrow, how shall I feed and clothe my children?", Jesus invites him to look at the birds of the air and the flowers of the field, for the one does not till the soil and the other does not weave clothes, but the Father who is in heaven provides for them. And, again, he points out that when the farmer sows, whether he is awake or asleep, the seed in the ground germinates.

Then, he wants to free from the obsession with wealth those who think only of riches, of building new silos for crops, of growing bigger and more powerful: in such cases, Jesus invites them to reflect on the vanity and brevity of life - "this night you could die" - and to direct all their labours to God himself. To those who have no patience and want to do justice at once, nor can they bear that others may err, Jesus proposes to look at the field with the darnel, trying to make them understand that if you remove the darnel at the beginning of the season, you will also destroy much of the good wheat, so that you must know how to wait until the harvest, when the master will know how to separate the darnel from the wheat.

In the parables, we have seen how Jesus presents a new man, who is totally committed to the other; for whom indeed the other is more important than himself; a man who offers everything: bread, fish, wine, health, revives and resurrects the other, enlightens him and shows him new paths.

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[179] - Cf. A. Von Speyr, Le parabole del Signore, Milan, Jaca Book, 2008.

[180] - B. Maggioni, Le parabole evangeliche, Milan, Vita e Pensiero, 2003, p. 8.

[181] - V. Fusco, Oltre la parabola. Introduzione alle parabole di Gesù, Rome, Borla, 1983.

[182] - V. Fusco, op.cit., p. 149.

The parables of the Kingdom of Heaven

"Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand". This is the first speech and the first parable that Jesus uses at the beginning of his preaching. He uses the image of a Kingdom to speak of God's new policy. The concept and reality of the Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of God -  which means entering into the mindset of Jesus - encompasses all his parables, all his speeches and prophetic actions, including miracles. Jesus wants to establish this Kingdom of God on earth starting with that people, the little remnant of Israel, so that then that fire can set the whole world on fire. Jesus begins to surprise his listeners who are indeed waiting for a new Kingdom, but that of the end-time community. Many had been waiting for the time of the Messiah. Firstly, the Pharisees claimed to be the ones who would establish the new Kingdom of God in Israel. They, in fact, considered themselves to be the true and holy community, the true people of God. They were aware that they were the true, scrupulous observers of the Law, which they practised down to the smallest detail, observing the 613 rules of the Law itself, so it would be up to them to have the final say on the establishment of the new Kingdom of God. Then there was the significant group of Essenes, who, more than the Pharisees, believed that they were the advocates of a new Kingdom of God in the end times, in fact they wanted to establish a pure community and claimed to be those who could finally form the 'community of the new covenant', emigrating from the city to return to the desert and there re-establish the community of God’s people at the end of time' [183] The Baptist group itself expected the Messiah to be the one who would clean the courtyard, separating the straw from the wheat, the good from the bad.

One day Jesus told the parable of a sower who sowed good seed into the earth, but later a great quantity of darnel sprang up with the wheat: the hidden claim was to receive a Messiah who would finally remove the darnel so as to have a field of wheat only. This was the claim of so many: why does Jesus, who has authority, not clearly divide the righteous from the sinners in order to constitute a people of the righteous, saints as the Holy Scriptures would also suggest? Jesus' vision was different. He does not cast sinners away, indeed he even welcomes them into the group that shares with him the preaching of the Kingdom of God. Jesus' listeners not only expected a new people of saints, they also expected a strong people to ultimately be victorious on all fronts. The zealots demanded it and everyone wanted it anyway. And Jesus, then, tries to make it clear what this great empire will be like: it will be like a mustard seed, the smallest of vegetable seeds, but in its own way it will be able to compete even with the trees [184]. The kingdom of God is like a portion of yeast [185], also a small thing, but it can ferment a great mass of dough for bread. The kingdom of heaven is also like a pearl of great value, yes, but still a small thing [186].

One day, Jesus puts a little child [187] in the middle and declares that this little child is like the kingdom of God: it has every chance of becoming a man, even though it is fragile. And, in the end, Jesus demands that all those little things surpass the others: 'Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Scribes and Pharisees [we could add the Essenes or the Baptist  [188] and Zealots themselves], you will not enter the kingdom of heaven' [189].

A parable that also expresses well the Kingdom of God that was in Jesus' heart is the image of the net that catches a great quantity of fish, good and bad, which will be divided up, but in its own time: the net gathers everything, like that field of wheat that holds wheat and darnel, and the God of that Kingdom will continue to make the sun rise and send rain to the good and the bad, so that in the end God's mercy will triumph.

The gathering of sheep and goats (symbolising good and bad) at the last judgement can also enrich this list. Only at the last judgement will it become clear how the Kingdom of God ends. The net does not distinguish the good fish from the bad ones and in the wheat field at the beginning one does not distinguish the weeds from the wheat, so man is not authorised to judge his neighbour, to make the distinction and division of what is good from what is bad, but only God will have the authority to judge. With these discourses, Jesus wanted to emphasise how demanding the kingdom of God is and what its expectations and demands are. But, ultimately, to understand what the final judgement will be like, we need to be helped again by the previous parables of the Father embracing his found son, the shepherd carrying the lost sheep on his shoulders, or the lady faced with a coin that could do nothing to be found and saved from its perdition.

Annex VII - The Kingdom of God 

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[183] - Cfr. J. Jeremias, As parabolas de Jesus, Paulus, 2016, p. 228.

[184] - Mt. 13, 31

[185] - Mt. 13, 33.

[186] - Mt. 13, 45.

[187] - Mt. 18, 2-4

[188] - Mt. 11, 11.

[189] - Mt. 5, 20.

7. Pilgrimage to the cross 

From the Sea of Galilee, with the disciples, Jesus had begun the journey to Jerusalem. The Feast of Passover was not far away and pilgrims from all parts arrived at the Holy City. The most faithful often made this pilgrimage to reach the house where the God of Israel himself dwelt: the Temple in Jerusalem. For the Jews it was important to reach that place, to ask forgiveness for sins and to give thanks for gifts received, the gift of marriage, the birth of a child, an illness cured, flocks multiplied, good harvests, the end of a war, everything became cause for thanksgiving.

The Passover sacrifices

At the Temple, sacrifices were made offering animals to God: at Easter, a lamb was offered according to the prescriptions given by Moses himself. Thus, the great passage from the slavery of Egypt to the freedom of the Promised Land in Israel was celebrated, a passage from death to life.

Jesus and the disciples had been joined by many pilgrims. Some had been healed by Himself, while others had only heard of Him: on that occasion they would also know Him better and hear Him repeat the words that knew how to heal sick hearts and put in their souls the desire for conversion and that purity of heart that lets you contemplate God and roll up your sleeves for your brothers and sisters.

The last ascent

Before leaving, many had agreed, in fact all those in the village who could attend. The atmosphere was clearly one of celebration, not only religious, but a celebration of being together. Rhythmic chants were alternated by the bells of the sheep or oxen, which had become a somewhat artificial flock, because it lasted only the time of the pilgrimage itself, until those animals would be offered to the Temple. If the journey lasted several days (as in this case) when they encountered oaks, a patch of conifers or, closer to Jerusalem, the majestic cedars and water, they took advantage of the time for meals, rest and, in particular, prayer, which in these cases was done together. In those days, Jesus missed no opportunity to teach and explain the scriptures concerning the Passover, which they were preparing to celebrate.

The pilgrimage, as I have just noted, was also an occasion for celebration and for the extended family to get together in a special atmosphere: it was a propitious time to meet with relatives who lived further apart, to tell each other about the latest events, to arrange marriages, to wipe each other's tears of war and poverty, and to sing together especially what God had accomplished, since he had delivered them from Egypt by accompanying them with a strong arm, on eagle's wings, protected by the cloud and illuminated by fire, and still nourished by the bread from heaven.

When they sang the songs of Israel and of that God who had saved them so many times, these pilgrims were sure of one thing and that was that they would be saved again. It is probable, however, that, in that festive atmosphere, the whole group that had been growing from Galilee to Jerusalem did not realise what was happening in the soul of Jesus, in that arduous ascent [190].

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[190] - From the Sea of Galilee to the hill of Jerusalem, the height difference is an impressive 960 metres.

The last days [191]

Jesus was making his last pilgrimage and preparing for his last Passover, yet he was not weeping over himself, but kept thinking about others, about what was still possible for others to do. Bartimaeus, a blind beggar from Jericho, offered him one more chance to be healed. Sensing that Jesus was passing by, he began crying out for help: "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" and kept repeating that cry until someone began to rebuke him, asking him to stop that clamour, but he continued to cry out even louder to the point that Jesus, hearing, called out to him. When Bartimaeus was told that the master was calling him, he felt instantly healed: he certainly thought that if Jesus met him, he would surely cure him, and so he was.

After his healing from blindness, he did not know how to give thanks other than by joining the group following Jesus, who had given him the greatest gift in life: sight. Meanwhile, the pilgrims, hearing that blind man cry out, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me," and seeing how he had been healed, thought that this was further proof that Jesus was certainly the long-awaited Messiah, and realised that they too could be healed and freed, especially from those foreigners who were sucking their blood.

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[191] - This is followed by a free presentation of the facts of Jesus' passion and death. The texts that relate them are: Mt. 26, 1-27, 66; Mk. 14, 1-15, 47; Lk. 22, 1-23, 56; Jn. 18, 1-19, 42.

Hosana

It was evident that Jesus would become king of Israel, and it was to be hoped that on that very occasion, on his arrival to the city, he would be anointed king. Hearing the blind man of Jericho, the crowd recalled another cry: "Hosana, Hosana!", which in the past had meant: "Poor us! Help us, Lord!", just as that beggar had cried out. It was a cry of supplication, repeated by the priests, which over time had come to mean: "Surely you, Lord, will help us" and so it had become a cry of jubilation.

Each cry for help reminded the people of Israel that the God who had helped so many times would continue to do so, so that the crowd began to rejoice, shouting: 'Hosanna'.

Meanwhile Jesus, with that large following, arrived near Bethany where, a little earlier, something had happened even greater than what had happened with the blind man. In Bethany, in fact, there was a family of great friends of Jesus, who often hosted him when he passed through Jerusalem with his disciples. And, in that very family, Jesus had performed perhaps the greatest miracle of his mission: a young man named Lazarus had been revived by him, four days after his death. And who would not have wanted to see and greet that lucky man, at least? A short stop would perhaps have been sufficient: by now they were close to Jerusalem. When, that crowd had left, at the beginning of the pilgrimage, he had prayed thanking God: "What joy when they said to me: 'Let us go to the house of the Lord'" and finally, at the end of the pilgrimage, he could continue the chant like this: "And now my feet stop at your gates Jerusalem", continuing to praise the name of the Lord and still asking for peace and every good for the Holy City [192].

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[192] - Cf. Ps. 122

Jerusalem

After the last ascent from Bethany, Jerusalem had suddenly appeared, with all its imposing grandeur, protected by the solid walls and splendour of the House of God. And from all sides pilgrims could be seen arriving. Jesus, who knew the Scriptures well, wanted to help his own to understand at least a little of what was happening. That is why he had sent two of them ahead, to borrow a donkey to ride it as he entered Jerusalem, so that he could make his disciples and friends better understand that he was the Messiah, as the prophet Zechariah said: 'Rejoice, daughter of Jerusalem, behold your king. He is righteous, victorious and humble; he comes right to you riding on a donkey" [193].

For a moment the disciples themselves, who had not wished to come to Jerusalem at such a dangerous time, were astonished, then, overcome with enthusiasm, they too began to celebrate with the others. After the excitement of the healed blind man and after seeing the resurrected Lazarus, the crowd was literally thrilled and had clearly understood that this was to be the glorious moment of the Messiah, who would now be recognised by all in Jerusalem.

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[193] - Cf. Zech. 9, 9; Is. 12, 6; Mt. 21, 1-9; Jn. 12, 12-19.

Welcome to the Temple

In previous years, almost everyone had heard the Temple priests welcome them to Jerusalem with the words: "From the Temple of the Lord, we bless you. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord". The crowd around Jesus used the same words to welcome Him: "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna, Hosanna to the son of David. Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest" [194], while they all waved their palms, singing and shouting. This entry of Jesus was in stark contrast to another entry that had taken place a few days earlier, namely that of Herod, who had arrived with all solemnity on his white horse and a large military retinue, to accompany from the tower of his palace all the events of the feast with such a large number of pilgrims.

Jesus therefore arrived as Messiah and also as King, but a king of peace and not like the kings of this world. And he offered one more sign to make it clear who he was. He had indeed arrived at the Mount of Olives, from the direction of Bethphage and Bethany, precisely where the Messiah was expected to arrive in Jerusalem, according to the scriptures. The disciples, who in the meantime had arrived with the donkey, covered him with their cloaks, [195] and Jesus, riding on the colt, continued his entry into Jerusalem, accepting to be acclaimed king, but in a very different way from what the crowd around him thought. Jesus arrives, but - as scripture [196] says - he will be a king who instead of waging war will "break the bows of war: he will be a king of peace, a king of simplicity, a king of the poor. And, finally, he will rule a kingdom stretching from sea to sea, embracing the whole world" [197].

Meanwhile, Jesus' friends began to lay their cloaks on the ground, as they had done in the past: now every honour was to be given to the new king. Some had noticed that tears were streaming down Jesus' face and thought that he might have been moved by the great joy, but in reality the sight of the grandeur of Jerusalem had passed before his eyes like an omen: he had seen that city in the dust of destruction, amidst the cries and death of that slaughtered people and the stones of the walls overturned.

He seems to have whispered to those around him: 'Poor Jerusalem! Had you understood when peace was to be given to you, but now it is late. They will surround you and crush you and your children from all sides, and not one stone will rise above another' [198]. Yet everyone kept waving palms as he passed by, chanting: 'Hosanna! Blessed is the returning [199] kingdom of our father David. Hosanna, blessed is the coming king, in the name of the Lord" [200].

In other circumstances, Jesus had not allowed them to acclaim him as king, but now, as the end of his life draws near, he accepts and even provokes this sign, so that his own slowly understand that his Kingdom is true, but not of this world. He prepares his own to dismiss that image of a kingdom holding power, prestige and glory: first the apostles will have to shift into a new mentality: that of Jesus.

In the meantime, Jesus and his friends conclude their pilgrimage by entering the Temple and receiving the welcome that the priests refused to no one, then he looks at everything with circumspection and obviously sees all the preparations in the Temple for welcoming the pilgrims. The vendors, occupying the spaces allotted to them, carry the lambs to sell to the pilgrims: oxen for the richer, doves for the poorer, and all worship-related merchandise. The moneychangers prepared a large amount of money, with the orthodox shekels of the Temple, without images of the emperor or of Greek or Roman deities: those very figures, considered idolatrous, made dirty the money itself, which could serve neither to pay the tribute, nor to be deposited as an offering in the Temple treasury [201].

Faced with that display, Jesus seethes with indignation, seeing the worship being sold and all that coming and going that hardly befits a house of prayer. Perhaps he would like to cry out the prophecy he has inside, but everyone is too tired and the decision seems to be to return to Bethany with Martha, Mary and Lazarus, who always have their doors open for hospitality. Jesus will have certainly spoken to the apostles about what he felt inside, about all that inconsistency in the Temple and how he felt a great desire to throw it all away, so they see as if it had already happened what in fact only happened the following day.

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[194] - Cf. Ps. 118, 26-27; Mt. 21, 1-9; Lk. 19, 28-39; Jn. 12, 12-15.

[195] - As had been done when Solomon, anointed king of Israel, had come riding on his father David's mule (cf. 1 Kings 1:33-34).

[196] - Cf. Ps. 46.

[197] - Cf. J. Ratzinger, Benedetto XVI, Jesus de Narazaré, da entrada em Jerusalém até a la resurreiçâo, Madrid, Planeta, 2011, p. 18.

[198] - Lk. 19, 42-44.

[199] - Mk. 11, 10.

[200] - Lk. 19, 38.

[201]-  Pilgrims would have arrived with coins to exchange; at the time of Jesus there was a large quantity of them circulating, even ancient ones, which were always valid, especially if they were gold or silver. Aufiero claims that the Temple minted its own Jewish coins, the shekels, with which were exchanged the coins of the various mints of Tyre, Antioch, Syria, Caesarea Marittima and those of Herod the Great, Pilate and the Decapolis. They were distinguished into gold coins (Krusòn), silver coins (Denarius, Didramma, Statere, Argùrion) and bronze coins, to which one can still add the Talent and the Mina, both of which are mentioned in the parables of Jesus. Coins of the time bore the images of Greek or Roman deities such as Jupiter, Minerva, Janus, Apollo, Hercules (for which they were considered impure and idolatrous). The cult had become a source of great wealth: the Temple of Jerusalem was one of the largest banks in antiquity. 

Return to Jerusalem

After the break in Bethany, the Twelve and Jesus returned to Jerusalem, as Jesus still wanted to teach in the Temple and communicate his last messages. As soon as they left Bethany, beginning the first descent, Jesus behaved in a totally unpredictable way. It was not like Him. The Jesus who preaches love, goodness and all the good that man can do seemed to have lost his temper. He approached a fig tree and peered through the leaves, as if searching for fruit. He found nothing and cursed it, saying that no one would ever eat of its fruit again. The biggest surprise about this fact is that there are still no figs in Judea at Easter and, of course, Jesus knew that he would not find any. Someone perhaps thought that he was very tired, tense and no longer able to control himself. No more words were spoken and they proceeded on their way to the Temple, hoping to later understand such an unusual gesture.

Jesus the prophet before the Temple vendors

When he arrived and saw again the spectacle of the previous evening, Jesus especially wanted to tell the disciples especially that what was happening before their eyes, this mixture of sacred and profane, this lack of respect for the holiest place in Judaism, could not be according to God's will. So, entering the Temple, he hurled himself at those who were selling and buying, even overturning the tables of some of the moneychangers and the chairs of the dove sellers, and, defending the purity of the holy place as the prophets Jeremiah and Isaiah had done, he cried out: "Is it not written: 'My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations? But you have made it a den of thieves" [202].

Jesus does not attack the Temple, which, moreover, he loves. In it he teaches and performs signs, but he rejects the abuses, the mixing of faith and commerce; he also challenges the behaviour of the priestly class who, in the name of worship, hoard large amounts of money and exploits the poor. Jesus does not fight the Law or the Prophets, but the corruption of the priestly aristocracy. Jesus is not a mere reformer, but the one who claims to fulfil the Law and the Prophets. Do not think that he threw out all those hundreds of merchants, knowing full well that, with all the surveillance there was, the Temple police and the Roman cohort would have time to intervene.

In reality, Jesus performed a symbolic gesture and probably even a small one, in term of the consequences for the merchants, but one of intense significance. The fact probably fitted into the discourse he was giving, so much so that - it is said - after his outburst he resumed his teaching. And Mark adds that all the people were impressed by these teachings, to the point that the high priests and scribes - who must have been furious against Him - although they well intended to put Him to death, feared Him and did not dare touch Him precisely because of the crowd. The act consciously performed by Jesus, knowing all the risks he ran concerning a potential condemnation, nevertheless was one of the last straws that broke the camel’s back. In this context, while appearing to be a revolutionary zealot, devoured by zeal for the house of God [203], actually Jesus is still a Prince of peace: at the end of that day of great emotion, He indeed shows what kind of zealot He is, and He began to heal the blind and the paralytic who had approached him in the meantime [204].

As Benedict XVI concludes, Jesus counters the trade in animals and the trafficking of money with his healing goodness. This is the authentic cleansing of the Temple. Benedict XVI states that Jesus has not come to destroy by the sword of the revolutionary, but by the gift of healing, by dedicating himself to those marginalised by society and loving them [205].

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[202] - Mc. 11, 17; cfr. Is. 56, 7; Ger. 7, 11.

[203] - Gv. 2, 17; cfr. Sal. 69, 10.

[204] - Mt. 21, 14.

[205] - Cfr. J. Ratzinger, op. cit., p. 32.

The apostles understand the dried fig tree and the Temple

On the evening of that emotionally charged day of preaching and healing the sick, Jesus returned with his own to Bethany. The following morning, going back to the Temple, Jesus' apostles began to understand the mystery of the previous day, when He had cursed the fig tree: for they saw it withered away. Some time earlier, he had told a parable: a master, seeing in his field a fig tree that bore no fruit, told his servant to cut it down, but the latter had insisted on waiting one more year, promising to put manure on it, to hoe it so as to hope for fruit. The day before, Jesus had wanted to finish that parable: well knowing that there was no fruit on the tree, he had sized the opportunity to speak in plastic language and made it clear that, despite the owner's infinite patience, the fig tree is cursed if it continues to bear no fruit.

The day before he had spoken clearly: the fig tree and the Temple are Israel, which bears no fruit. The Temple is like the fig tree - beautiful in appearance, but rich only in leaves, bearing no fruit: grandiose, beautiful in its stones, in the scent of incense and sacrifice, but without a soul. And the Temple shall wither in the same manner as yesterday the fig tree did. It will not advance stone on stone: Jesus has tried once again to confront him with reality, inviting him to conversion, but he knows that, just as the tree that though hoed has not changed at all, so the Temple and Israel will dry up like this fig tree, whose leaves have burnt in a single day. However, Jesus had not yet finished either his preaching or his mission: he had longed with ardent desire to celebrate the Passover with his own, but there was no longer enough time and events were precipitating, so he thought of anticipating the supper itself.

The Last Supper

As his time was running out and the circle of His enemies was closing in on Him, Jesus anticipated a farewell dinner with His own, just like a Passover dinner probably celebrated a day early, on Thursday evening [206].

Probably not all the rites of the Jewish Passover were celebrated that evening, but only Jesus' personal farewell greeting, with a very special character, by which he established his true Passover. Jesus knew that his hour had come to pass from this world to the Father, he knew that he had loved his own who were in the world, he knew that he had loved up to the impossible. And he also knew that the Father had put everything into his hands, that he had come from God and was returning to God....

So, knowing all this, what did Jesus do? He got up from the table, laid down his cloak, knotted a towel around himself, poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet and dry them with the towel with which he had girded himself. The apostles being comprehensibly dismayed, and after Peter’s first refusal because he could not understand, and also after Judas had been given the honour of host by the 'servant' Jesus, the master took up his cloak, sat down and finally said: 'Do you understand what I have done? You call me Master and Lord, and rightly so, for this I am. If therefore I, the Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you too must wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, so that you too do what I have done " [207].

In this symbolic language, by taking on the condition of a servant, Jesus comes to wash and dry our dirty feet, to enable us to come to the banquet, to feast with him. He makes us pure like Him and we can say that it is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us. And now, after Jesus has shown us that we must wash one another’s feet, in front of the unfortunate among the brigands, we can no longer pass by like the priest or the Levite, and in front of those who are hungry, thirsty, or naked, or in prison, we cannot pretend not to see, not to know: the new commandment, the washing of feet is not only the proposal of a higher morality, but of a different one, because He has washed us and made us different.

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[206] - For both the Synoptics and John, the Last Supper is dated Thursday evening, with one difference: the former consider it an Easter dinner, the eve of the great Feast and for them Jesus would have been crucified on Friday, Easter Day (in some cases crucifixion was carried out during the Feast, especially for particularly dangerous criminals, for example those who had attacked the State); John, on the other hand, presents the Last Supper, again on Thursday evening, not as the Easter Supper, but as the eve of the Feast itself. According to him, the Jewish authorities did not enter the Praetorium during the trial so as not to contaminate themselves and to be able to eat the Passover on Friday evening, the eve of the feast (cf. J. P. Meier, A Marginal Jew, 1993). There is also the possibility, as A. Jaubert, according to an ancient priestly calendar from the Libro dei Jubilei, that Easter fell two days earlier that year. According to that calendar, Jesus would therefore have celebrated an early Easter Supper.

[207] - Jn 13:1-15.

The Eucharistic Supper

Peter, Judas, Matthew, James and all the others - each one wrapped up in their own complex world, made up of dreams, hopes, maybe projects of greatness and power that, at times, they had caressed - were certainly also eager to become like Him, to have one day His pure gaze, His so passionate heart and His so beneficent hands. Close to Jesus they had studied and learnt how to become good and talented. Now there they were, with their Master who, that evening, was writing his Testament for them (but also for the whole world) [208].

In those hours, Jesus handed over all his riches, his possessions, all that he had set aside in those thirty-three years, expecting to entrust it to them when they were somewhat more mature. But the poor apostles would have needed much more time to realise the inheritance they were receiving. So, Jesus shared everything with them and especially shard himself and gave himself to them piece by piece. And who could have imagined that, to be understood more and more, the words and deeds of that evening would be repeated millions of times, every day until the end of the world. They would be repeated in homes, churches, basilicas, ships, caves, squares, deserts and mountains. The sign of that evening would be delivered to men, women, children, young, old, strong or sick, but especially to the poor, the recipients privileged to understand and accept that gift. All of them would be nourished by that supper.

So what did Jesus do that was so extraordinary? First he prayed, thanking the Father, then he took up the bread form that table, blessed it and, piece by piece, handed it over to that small assembly, explaining them that it was his body, that it was he who handed himself over to them and invited them to eat it [209]. Then Jesus must have spoken of the Covenants that, at different times, God had made with His people. In those covenants, God on the one hand and mankind on the other had shaken hands, promising to be faithful to each other. God had always been faithful, man never.

Now Jesus and humanity were placed on one side and God on the other, and they shook hands, making a new covenant. So it was that Jesus, as he had done with the bread, also took a cup of wine and offered it to all: just as in the old covenants the pact had been sealed with the blood of offered animals, now that wine was like his own blood, indeed it was his blood, which he himself would shed for all mankind, after being scourged on a pillar and nailed to a cross.

In other words, that evening Jesus took bread and wine and said: 'This bread and wine is my body and blood, it is my very life that I offer and hand over to you; take me, eat and drink this very life of mine, keep it and use it, I offer it to you for a special reason and that is for the forgiveness of sins, so that you may learn to ask forgiveness, to receive it and to offer it to others. And now I ask you to do the same thing, take your life in your hands, break it and offer it and give it to your neighbours to break. By doing so you will remember me" [210].

Who knows whether the apostles were able to applaud [211]. From that moment, for that new-born Church, the new task had become clear: to become "foot-washers" and "broken bread": by that way of behaving, that Church would be recognised as Jesus' disciple. As they left the hall, they realised once again that they were in Jerusalem, with whatever the City was becoming for them: wheelbarrows of nails paraded through the city, soldiers everywhere warned off the unwary, celebration and tension mingled together.

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[208] - The very similar texts of Mark and Matthew, and those of Paul and Luke, are among the oldest writings on the Last Supper dating back to the first community. The letter to the Corinthians reporting the institution of the Eucharist is from 56 A.D., but seems to date from the 30s, as does the passage in Mark, which is to be considered the oldest. These texts are to be considered true and original. Paul's was already, at least in part, used by the liturgy of the early community. The two traditions are intended to truly and faithfully convey the Lord's testament to us. Benedict XVI states that exegetes who have considered Jesus to be a 'political rebel' or a 'mild-mannered meek man' find it hard to recognise that He was capable of such an unprecedented action as the institution of the Eucharist, which no one other than Him could have imagined. When He had spoken of it, after the multiplication of the loaves, He had been left alone with the Twelve, whom He had asked if they would also like to leave.

[209] - Jesus' prayer of thanksgiving, which blesses and transforms the bread and wine, is not a magic formula: it simply gives the fact that we are invited by Jesus to make that prayer with Him, so our prayer of thanksgiving, associated with His, also becomes blessing and transforming.

[210] - Pesch himself comes out of the 'my body' formula understanding it as the total person of Jesus. The texts of the three synoptics and of Paul, although with relatively different traditions, are - as mentioned above - very similar. Concerning the bread, Mark (14:22) and Matthew (26:26) refer to: "This is my body", while Paul (1 Cor. 11:24) and Luke (22:19) specify: "This is my body, which is given for you". With respect to the cup, however, Mark and Matthew state: 'This is my blood, the blood of the covenant, poured out for many', i.e. for the multitude, that is, for all, while Paul and Luke report: 'This is the New Covenant in my blood [...] which is poured out for you'

[211] - They did not applaud: for how could they have understood such extraordinary signs, which would only become comprehensible after the Master's death and resurrection? After four days, humanity would begin its great healing from sin and every Eucharist, together with every act of forgiveness and love, would become the medicine to heal the world.

The passion and death of the Lord

The texts of the passion and death were probably the first Gospel to be meditated upon in the Eucharistic supper celebrated by the Christian community from the very beginning. I introduce the story with a few verses from the letter of Peter: "If after doing good, you suffer patiently, this is a grace in the sight of God. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you might follow his footsteps: he who committed no sin and from whose mouth no deceit was ever found [212]; he who, having been insulted, did no insult, in his suffering made no threat; he who, in his own body, bore our sins on the cross so that we, dead to our sins, might live for righteousness; he by whose wounds you are healed' [213]. It is precisely this Jesus whom we would like to accompany in the last stage of his life handed over to the Father for us.

He had foretold his death to the disciples and did not present it as an accident or an unavoidable misfortune. The disciples understood this well and tried to avoid the danger. But it was no use: the siege was getting tighter and tighter around Jesus. The authorities could no longer tolerate him: his behaviour towards the Law, the Sabbath and the Temple was increasingly becoming a threat to all institutions. His independence towards the Law and the institutions, his words that asked people to side either with Him or against Him, his signs that, in some cases, had placed him on a level with Adonai himself, his actions, all this had prompted the authorities to meet several times to decide on his death. Jesus had foretold his death to his disciples, so that they would stop thinking of him as the future king of Israel in this story. In that sparse community it was no longer a mystery to anyone the path in which he was moving. He could have avoided the conflict with the authorities, or at least postponed it, but by now a decision had to be made: either to flee and take refuge in some nearby region until the storm calmed down, or to face the conflict, not to win it this time, but to overcome it by death.

The disciples at least tried to postpone the conflict, avoiding going to Jerusalem at such a dangerous hour, but Jesus proved adamant. It was clear that He had already decided to go there at that very moment, on the very occasion of the Passover, indeed it can be said that He left for Jerusalem exactly to give Himself up. He still had some prophetic words to say and time was running out: he thought about his last supper, his entry into Jerusalem, his passion and death.

Finally, he told his own people of his decision to leave for Jerusalem. He did not ask for approval, nor did he ask if they would follow him or what their opinion was on the matter, no, none of this, he simply set off. And behind him, a somewhat bewildered group followed him, certainly not without comment, even in a whisper. Someone must have repeated at least in his mind a question that had already been asked other times: You really do not care that we also perish'?

Quite unnerved, after the disciples' reasons had been rejected, Thomas had finally blurted out in that expression: '[All right, if he really wants to] let us also perish with him' [214]. This was undoubtedly an indirect rebuke to Jesus, who by risking him, he was also risking their lives. So, Jesus set out for the final sacrifice, but before him the Father had already delivered him up, in fact he had not spared his own son and had delivered him up for us all [215] And why did he deliver him up? "That whoever believes in him shall not perish, but obtain eternal life" [216]. And what have men done with this extraordinary gift called Jesus Christ? They handed him over to the hands of sinners to be killed [217]: one of the apostles handed him over to the guards and soldiers and these to Anna; Anna hands him over to his father-in-law Caiaphas (the high priest of that year). Caiaphas hands him over to Pilate, Pilate hands him over to Herod and the latter hands him back to Pilate. Finally, Pilate hands him over to the crowd to be crucified. And Jesus shows no resentment at this handing over, in fact he himself hands himself over to the Father: "Father into your hands I commend my spirit".

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[212] - Is. 53:9.

[213 - Pt. 2:22-24, transl. Community of Bose.

[214] - Gv. 11, 16.

[215] - Rm. 8, 32.

[216] - Gv. 3, 16.

[217] - Mc. 9, 31.

At Gethsemani

Even today, anyone who goes to the valley of the Cedron and climbs a little way up the hill in front of the golden gates of the holy city [218], sees the corner of Gethsemani [219]. It was a large natural cave where a family had set up an olive press to squeeze the olives from that valley all covered with the precious twisted trees. When Jesus and his people arrived in Jerusalem, they found enough room to spend the night in that large and spacious cave and with the family of friends who lived there. After the farewell supper, the words of Jesus echoed in the apostles' minds: "We are going up to Jerusalem [...] the Son of Man will be delivered [...] and after three days he will rise again".

Jesus and his followers, singing the hymn, went down the valley, passed the river bed, which is often dry, and climbed a little way up to the cave that would host them that terrible night [220]. By now Jesus had said what he had to say. Now he needed silence and to spend these few hours face to face with his Father. He has earlier declared: "Behold, the hour is coming, and it has indeed come, when you will disperse each one of you on his own, and leave me alone. But I am not alone, for the Father is with me' [221].

The passion narratives are an 'admirable interweaving' of history, theology and art. None of these three dimensions should be lost, because together they tell who Jesus is and, at the same time, express the faith of those who believe in Him. The story of these tales is "the memory of a real and unique event, firmly rooted in its historical actuality" [222]. Bordoni also argues that the episode of Gethsemani is to be considered historical in the sense that it narrates Jesus' last struggle with his destiny before the beginning of the inexorable series of events relating to his passion: he did not flee like his disciples, but remained faithful to the Father [223].

Jesus had told the disciples to stay there in the cave, while he went go just a few steps away to pray, but he did not go alone: he 'took with him Peter, James and John'. He probably tried to involve them in the final moment of His great offering and "began to feel fear, bewilderment, sadness and anguish" [224]. And on those rocks that still today bear witness to the greatest sorrow that ever befell a man, Jesus confided to his three friends that his soul was sad as hell and asked them to watch on keep vigil beside him. "Meanwhile he went a little further away and, prostrating himself with his face to the ground, he prayed.

At this moment he was no longer the man who solemnly commanded the wind and the storm, nor the thaumaturge to whom all flocked to tell him: "If you wish, you can heal us", nor the man who stretched out his hand to a dead child to resurrect her, but the prostrate man, in his extreme weakness, humble, dependent and begging before the Father, to ask him if he could do something for him. He was there like Isaac on the mountain, facing his father who, in tears, had to fulfil an obedience.

Jesus' Father is also obedient to the cry of his humanity that asks to be redeemed, healed. But unlike Isaac who was replaced by a lamb, Jesus, the Son, remained in place until the end, himself as a slaughtered lamb. In the meantime Jesus prayed and said in a loud voice: "Stay with me and keep watch", and He turned away a little, prostrate [225], with his face to the ground, praying, and said: 'Abba, Father, if it is possible at least postpone a little this hour of pain. Yet, not as my humanity would have it, but as you would". Jesus was probably thinking of his community that was still such childlike and seemed to him unprepared to be orphaned and now to take His place. "And meanwhile he offered prayers and supplications", with loud cries and tears, to the one who could save him from death and still prayed: "Now my soul is troubled. What can I say? Father, save me from this hour? Yet I have come to this very hour".

While, on the one hand, Jesus cries out and asks for that hour to be postponed, on the other hand Jesus himself cries out for the Father's will, which is also his will, to be done quickly.

He then returned to his disciples, found them asleep and said to Peter: "So you did not have the strength to watch with me even for an hour? Watch and pray lest you fall during the trial" [226]. Leaving away again for the second time, he prayed, saying: 'My Father, if this cup cannot pass without my drinking it, let thy will be done,' and when he came again, he found them asleep. For their eyes were heavy with sadness and they didn’t know what to answer him. And Jesus said again, "Why do you sleep? Get up and pray, lest you fall during the trial." Leaving them, he departed for the third time to repeat the same prayer. An angel then appeared to him from heaven to comfort him.

 This is one of the moments in which Jesus' humility is expressed in an extraordinary way, his lowering himself to the point of accepting the consolation of someone, even an angel, an icon of God himself. The Word of God incarnate, the Son of God, God himself, the comforter par excellence who revived men and women throughout his life, sympathises so much with his own that he accepts to become a comforted Jesus. Like every man, the man Jesus does not seek the strength to overcome the trial in his humanity, but he begs for it from the Father and thus experiences the fatigue of the trial and the consolation of God. It is a Christian experience that Paul expressed with rare effectiveness: 'we are afflicted in every way, but not driven to extremes; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; dejected, but not destroyed" [227].

Luke the evangelist, who is a doctor, reports the physiological phenomenon, also known to medical science, that Jesus experienced: 'And at the moment of his agony he prayed more and more intensely, to the point that his sweat began to fall on the ground like drops of blood'  [228].

Here at Gethsemani, the whole tragedy of the passion had presented itself before Him as a realistic nightmare that was about to crash down upon Him to destroy all His physical and psychic strength [229]. Prostrate on the ground, his sweat had been replaced by blood itself, a rare but well-known medical phenomenon, that of hematidrosis.

In the Gospels, the only one who documented this fact is Luke, precisely because he was a doctor who could be sensitive to all the details reported about Jesus' passion. Dr. Le Bec described the phenomenon by saying that it appears under very special conditions and is caused by a great physical weakness, accompanied by a psychic collapse, following a deep emotion and panic crisis [230].

As Ricciotti points out, it consists of an intense vasodilatation of the subcutaneous capillaries that tear at the base of millions of sweat glands. In this case, blood mixes with sweat and coagulate on the skin after sweating. This microscopic bleeding occurs all over the skin, causing great pain and making the skin terribly sensitive. It cannot be forgotten that this will make all the tortures that follow much more painful [231].

Facing his passion, Jesus is petrified with pain, anguished and sad as hell, he cries and cries, assailed by a deep turmoil, as he experiences his dramatic agony. In all likelihood he lives these hours afflicted by panic attacks: it must be noted that, although in his mind He clearly knows why He suffers, the panic caused by mortal anguish cannot be controlled. Indeed, we cannot compare Jesus' state with that of martyrs who faced death almost boldly and fearlessly, knowing for whom they were offering their lives. The state of exhaustion of the entire nervous system experienced by Jesus is absolutely no longer under control of the will. Where will he find the strength to get off those rocks on which he made his final surrender to the Father? How will he get up and reach Jerusalem? The city awaits him with few alternatives: if the Sanhedrin will have the last word, Jesus will be stoned to death; if Herod will be the final judge, Jesus knows that he will be beheaded as John the Baptist had been killed not long before; if the Romans with Pilate will decide his fate, he will be scourged or crucified. In any case, Jesus will be taken to Jerusalem by a group of sinister people who will drag him bound to the tribunal of men.

As he returns for the third time to the disciples, Jesus seems to have reached a deep inner peace. With the Father he has probably made it clear that the ultimate moment for him is now, even though the small community is so immature and seems unable to walk alone, Jesus knows that the Spirit of the Lord will guide it [232]. Now Jesus, finding Peter, James and John asleep for the third time, says: "Sleep now, and rest! I have done with the fighting. The last hour is near and the Son of Man is delivered into the hands of sinners. Get up. Let us go. Behold, the one who will hand me over is near" [233].

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[218] - These two large walled doors are not made of metal, but of silicon, but from the hill in front of the Temple, towards South, from some positions they can be glimpsed with reflections of light, so much so that they appear to be golden.

[219] - Aramaic term meaning 'crusher'.

[220] - The host family is probably that of Mark. As Mark himself relates, it must have been the teenager wrapped in a sheet who, when they all fled as soon as they caught Jesus, fled naked leaving the sheet behind. If this boy is the same Mark, as many think, he could only have been a member of that family, if at that hour, wrapped in a single sheet, he had just been awakened by the commotion.

[221] -Jn. 16:31.

[222] - B. Maggioni, I racconti evangelici della passione, Assisi, Cittadella editrice, 1994, p. 6.

[223] - Cf. M. Bordoni, Gesù di Nazareth, Signore e Cristo, Bologna, Edizioni Dehoniane, 2018.

[224] - Already in the Old Testament every righteous person has a path traced out that will be the same as Jesus', that of Gethsemani, of Calvary, where the anguish of the righteous Jesus sums up that of all the righteous in suffering, according to the faith tradition of the Old Testament (cf. M. Bordoni, Gesù di Nazareth, presenza, memoria, attesa, Brescia, Queriniana, 1988, p. 198). At the moment when the Father's will seems the most incomprehensible, Jesus continues to trust his God, he delivers everything into his hands. This act reveals his naked faith and a love totally detached from himself, since he knows very well in whom he is placing his trust, which is transformed into hope: he knows in fact that the will of the Father, that is, his own death on the cross, will become an embrace that reveals that mysterious design (Cf. J. Grelot, L'angoisse de Jesus).

[225] - "Man, in his weakness, but also in his truth, stands before divine omnipotence like Abraham before the Lord (Gen. 17, 3) or like Peter (Lk. 5, 8) and the lepers (Lk. 5, 12;17, 16) before Jesus". (B. Maggioni, op. cit., p. 23).

[226] - "Watch and pray" (Mt 26:41) are imperatives addressed to the disciples and to the Church, two imperatives that turn the episode of Gethsemani into a model: just as Jesus, through vigil and prayer, victoriously overcame the decisive moment of trial, so must the Church. The spirit is ready, but the flesh is weak' (B. Maggioni, op. cit., p. 40).

[227] - 2 Cor. 4, 8-9.

[228] - The biblical scholar G. Ricciotti writes: 'A physiological phenomenon designated as haematidrosis, that is, blood sweat, is known to doctors: the observation had already been made by Aristotle [...], the phenomenon that occurred in Jesus could be the subject of scientific research by physiologists [...]. The physiologist Luke, transmitting this news alone, seems tacitly to invite such research' (G. Ricciotti, Vita di Gesù Cristo, Milano, Mondadori, 2019, p. 556).

[229] - P. Barbet, op. cit.

[230] - Cf. E. Le Bec, Le supplice de la Croix. Etude physiologique des douleurs, Impr. des orphelins-apprentis, 1925.

[231] - Cf. G. Ricciotti, Vita di Gesù Cristo, Milan, Mondadori, 1994.

[232] - It is the moment when Brother Charles de Foucault puts this prayer on Jesus' lips: "My Father, I abandon myself to you. Do with me what pleases you. Whatever you do with me, I thank you. I am ready for anything. I accept everything as long as your will is done in me, in me and in all your creatures. I desire nothing more, my God. I place my soul in your hands. I give it to you with all my heart, and it is a demand of love for me to give myself, to place myself in your hands without measure, with infinite trust because you are my Father".

[233] - Against those who sustained the account of Gethsemani as more theological than historical, E. Schweizer argues how difficult it is to imagine that the Christian community - convinced of the divinity of their Lord - invented on their own initiative the image of a troubled and hesitant Christ at the moment of trial (Cf. E. Schweizer, Il Vangelo secondo Marco, Paideia, Brescia, 1999). Léon-Dufour emphasises how unfounded it is to claim the non-historicity of Gethsemani: "The early Christians knew that Jesus had really experienced agony on the eve of his passion, without however breaking the bond that united him to the Father. Otherwise, why would they have invented a story that portrayed Jesus as so different from the fearless martyrs, such as Stephen or Polycarp?" (X. Leon-Dufour, Di fronte alla morte. Gesù e Paolo, Turin, ElleDiCi, 1982, p. 88).

Judas and the arrest of Jesus [234]

And while he was still speaking, here was Judas who, during the farewell supper, had heard the Master saying: 'One of you will betray me, one who is dining with me'. Well, this apostle, one of the Twelve, (one who had been called, one who had responded, one who had been made an apostle, and like the other apostles had preached the Kingdom of God, healed the sick and cast out demons, one who had prayed with Jesus every day, was ready to hand him over to the temple authorities. Judas, who knew the olive grove of Gethsemane well, because Jesus used to stop there often with his disciples, arrived with some guards sent by the high priests, the Pharisees and the elders, and with a detachment of Roman soldiers and many people, with torches and lanterns, armed with swords and clubs. The traitor had given them a sign: 'The one I will kiss is him, arrest him. And immediately, approaching Jesus, he said, "Hail, Master," and kissed his hand, embracing him.

It was customary for disciples to kiss rabbis on the hand or on the head. Judas offers this affectionate sign, which becomes even more painful because followed by an embrace. A formal greeting would have been less painful. Who knows how many times they exchanged that greeting! Certainly, the words of the psalm passed through Jesus' heart at this moment: "If an enemy had insulted me, I would have borne it; if an adversary had risen against me, from him I would have hidden. But it is you, my companion, my friend and confidant; a sweet friendship bound us together; together we walked joyfully towards the house of the Lord" [235].

Therefore to Judas, Jesus said: 'Friend, why do you do this? With a kiss you betray the Son of Man'. Many interpretations have been given about the character Judas. Some have tried to rehabilitate him. In any case, we must not imagine him as an evil man if, during his years with Jesus, he had been chosen for the great vocation of apostle. He had even been considered a trustworthy man if he was given the task of administering the disciples' though small common treasury (not even Levi, who was supposed to be a connoisseur of economics, was given it). And, moreover, Jesus had delivered into his hands the greatest treasure he possessed, that is, he had been entrusted him with the task of preaching the Kingdom of God, nor can we forget the last word that Jesus addressed to him calling him friend, and it is gratuitous the name of thief given to him by an evangelist when at Cana, following the perfume poured on Jesus, he said that one could sell that perfume and give the proceeds to the poor (an attitude, moreover, consistent with Jesus' thinking).

One hypothesis that has been put forward is that Judas' decision, perhaps shared by some of the disciples, would have been motivated by the fact that Jesus had seemed to postpone indefinitely the beginning of that revolution hoped for by the disciples against the Romans to finally liberate Israel. Judas, therefore, would have been willing to force that decision. It could be assumed that Jesus, finding himself in chains and eventually condemned, would free himself effortlessly and begin the struggle of liberation for his people. Judas, like all the disciples, knew well that if Jesus had also been condemned to be crucified, he would have all the strength not to let himself be touched even by a needle.

As early as Cana, it seems that Jesus was unwilling to start manifesting himself with extraordinary powers (a matter of tempers?) but was somehow forced by his mother. Judas might have thought the same thing, i.e. to force his temper to come to a decision, but this was not the case. However, when he realised that Jesus would not step free, let alone start the revolution, he may have been seized by remorse and anguish that led him to suicide. What in the canonical Gospels throws a real light on the case is the sentence uttered by Peter: 'We have all betrayed the Master'.

So, the case of Judas would not differ much from the desertion from Jesus by almost all the disciples, while the apocryphal Gospel of Judas, also supported by the theologian Hugh J. Schonfield, suggests that there was even an agreement between Jesus and Judas himself. In any case, even in the canonical Gospels, Jesus was aware of Judas' action: at one point he even urged him to do quickly what he had to do.

Even Zeffirelli's screenplay 'Jesus of Nazareth', appraised by the great Catholic biblical scholar Piero Rossano, presents a Judas who had apparently forced Jesus to come to an agreement with Caiaphas and the Pharisees, to open a debate that, however, by deception, turned into a real trial. He was seized with remorse when he realised that his good intent had turned into treachery. Going back to the group of soldiers and armed people who had come to arrest him, for he had well understood what was about to happen against him, Jesus stepped forth and told them, "Who are you seeking?" They answered him: "Jesus, the Nazarene". Jesus replied, "It is me." As soon as he had told them, "It is me", they threw themselves back and they all fell to the ground [236]. But, knowing that his hour had come to pass from this world to the Father, knowing that he had loved his own to the infinite, knowing that the Father had given him everything in his hands, knowing that he had come from God and was returning to God, Jesus performs the last service act for his own - an action already celebrated at the Farewell Supper - and, out of love for the whole world, gives himself up to be killed. Thus, he again questions those men: "Who are you looking for?". They answered: 'Jesus, the Nazarene'. And he replied: 'I have told you that it’s me'. And, at this point, he makes them stand up, precisely because the hour has come, he makes the apostles let him go, and he hands himself over.

In John above all, the Jesus of the Passion always stands up, his head held high, with the authority peculiar to him: it is He who corrects Peter's mistake, He who hands himself over. It is He who sets the disciples free. It was He who decided to go to Jerusalem knowing clearly the risk He was running. Jesus is not naive and knows very well that, after the clash with the sellers in the Temple, his hours are numbered, but he does not run away any more, he does not hide, he does not even return to Bethany where it would be a little safer, but he stops just outside the city in the olive grove in the valley where he always went and where a good number of people were already camped for the Passover. Everyone knew that He was going there as He usually did. Jesus could have an army of angels to defend him, but he renounces it. It is not the others who, by some trickery, slaughter Him: it is He who delivers Himself: 'No one is taking my life, but I myself deliver it ' [237]. So they approached and laid their hands on Jesus and arrested him.

The Temple soldiers had already been sent once to arrest Him, but they had returned empty-handed, apologising: never had anyone spoken as He did. But now they were able to fulfil their mission only because it was Jesus himself who authorised them. At that point, Simon Peter stretched out his hand, drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest, whose name was Malchus, and even cut off his right ear [238]. Then Jesus said to him: 'Enough, put your sword back in its place: all those who strike by the sword shall perish by the sword', and meanwhile he healed his ear" [239].

In such a time of great confusion, he still manages to think of others. While in danger of being killed, he cares for a man who has just been wounded and moreover one who has come to arrest him. Still at this moment, Jesus does not miss the opportunity to repeat with facts that enemies must not hate each other, but forgive and love each other. In that hour he addressed the crowd: 'You have come to seize me with swords and clubs as against a brigand. Every day I was sitting and teaching in the Temple and you did not arrest me. But this is your hour, it is the power of the night".

All this happened so that the scriptures of the prophets could be fulfilled, and also the prophecies about his passion, uttered by Jesus himself, who in fact had said: "The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men; they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise again". And again: 'You will all be scandalised ... for it is written: 'I will strike the shepherd and the sheep of the flock will be scattered'".

After being arrested and dragged away, all the disciples abandoned him and fled. In this abandonment, however, there is the equally important fact that Jesus wanted to save his disciples and explicitly asked that they be set free. Here, too, Jesus shows that he only ever thinks of others, as he has just done with the wounded servant. At this very moment when he should be thinking of himself alone, of not taking any false steps and of concentrating all his energies on his survival, he is actually still thinking of others, right up to the last moment, always and only of others. Facing his arrest, a prelude to a forthcoming trial, and facing his own imminent execution, still sweating blood, Jesus thinks of and cares for those who may need him, in this case the disciples. This is Jesus' hour, not the hour of the disciples', for whom there will be another hour to give their lives for their Lord. Jesus, however - who knew not only the weakness of his own, but also their hearts - had previously prepared a new appointment for a few days later: 'But after my resurrection I will precede you and we will meet in Galilee'.

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[234] - While some scholars struggle to separate the most reliable texts in this passage from those that seem less so, Pesch states with his authority in no uncertain terms that "it is a unitary text that contains no fractures, contradictions, duplications or repetitions in a perfect unity of place and time" (R. Pesch, Il Vangelo di Marco II, Paideia, Brescia, 1982, p. 585).

[235] - Ps. 55, 13-14.

[236] - It is necessary to comment on the expectation of the apostles with regard to the events of that night: when, in Gethsemani, Jesus had pointed to himself as the man they were looking for – and while they all fell down fulminated by such an authority – the apostles themselves had been certain that by now one by one they would all fall to the ground, down to the last prince of this world. According to them, Pilate, Herod, Caesar, the kings of Babylon and all the kings with their armies would surrender their weapons and be converted to the new kingdom of justice, mercy, forgiveness and peace (cf. R. Rosso, Il dialogo dei monaci).

[237] - Jn 10:18.

[238] - In the texts of the Passion and Death, one often encounters these details, such as the right ear, the name of the one who suffers the affront, namely Malchus; the boy who, caught by some soldiers, leaves the sheet in the empty hands of those who wanted to take it and flees naked. It is these elements that historicise the story with details that would be entirely gratuitous.

[239] - Jesus heals the servant by reattaching his ear and then, turning to the one who struck him, asks: "Do you not think I could pray to my Father and have more than twelve legions of angels at my disposal? But how would the scripture be fulfilled that this should happen? Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has prepared for me?"

Before the Sanhedrin

Jesus appeared before the Sanhedrin. At that time, in the Sanhedrin itself there were deep contrasts and factions that were not easily reconciled, just think of the Herodians, Sadducees and Pharisees and the High Priest himself, all very different in mentality, who nevertheless had to make decisions together. Maggioni recalls that this court, even with these differences, was nonetheless the proposed institution to watch over the orthodoxy of the teachers and protect the people from heretical or apostate teachers. When these deceivers of the people (and Jesus was considered to be one of them), who compromised the heart of Jewish religiosity, had to be judged, a rule found in the book of Deuteronomy was used, which even called for the death sentence for them [240].

Although the expression of condemnation was very clear, at the time of Jesus it could have more flexible interpretations and the Sanhedrin hardly went so far as to pronounce a death sentence.

At that time, in fact, many real or alleged heretics were more easily expelled from Jerusalem or left of their own accord, such as the Essenes who took refuge in Qumran, or the Cynics who evaded control with their constant movements, but also the beggars and healers moved far from the centre of the world, Jerusalem. John the Baptist himself, who did not fit easily into normal practice, had withdrawn out of the world, into the desert: in those years, however, the condemnation of stoning was hardly reached even if, shortly after these events, Stephen was one of the victims. The Sanhedrists, however, would be summoned to solve the case of Jesus. Here is how the events unfolded.

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[240]-  Cfr. Dt. 17, 12.

Anne, a dark figure behind the scenes

The detachment of soldiers and the Jewish guards, having seized Jesus, bound him and led him first to Anne, father-in-law of Caiaphas, who was high priest that year. Anna, a former high priest, is considered by many to be the organiser of the whole plot against Jesus. If he had no power to pronounce a capital sentence against Him, he knew that in his own family he would find all the support he needed to carry out her plan. For he could have asked anything of the high priest, who was indeed his son-in-law. For this, Anne sent Jesus to Caiaphas himself, who - as a blind instrument in his hands - would obviously have to countersign all the measures taken by his father-in-law. Anna's advice was in fact orders for Caiaphas and, especially that night, the old father-in-law was trying to avoid any political mistakes that would prevent the plan he had in his head: to put Jesus out of the way for good. And to realise this plan he tried if possible to stick to the quibbles of the Law, but in that case he was also prepared to bypass it, even with false witnesses, in order to achieve his goal.

The Sanhedrin

In the meantime, the Sanhedrin was called and all the chief priests, Pharisees, scribes, Sadducees and elders convened. In this process, however, several Sanhedrists will try, with good intentions, to better understand the Jesus phenomenon, which worries both the religious and political leaders, undermining at its root every oppressive institution. They hope that, by forcing him to defend himself, they would learn from him some new revelation on his account. Among them, however, someone was certainly not there to hear a judgement for or against Jesus, but only to condemn Him, to find true or false motives - it mattered little - that could be interpreted against Him. But, because of those differences within the Sanhedrin, it was not easy to come to an agreement, and it seems that, in the end, at least according to Mark, they did not come to an agreement at all. They went so far as to cry out in conviction that he was guilty of death, but it seems that they could not get beyond this cursing, indeed in the end they had to appeal to another authority and even to that of Rome, although an enemy.

The Pharisees, Sadducees and Caiaphas

The Pharisees, for example, were ambiguous: now for, now against Jesus, even though in the end they were the least dangerous [241].

The Sadducees, among the most dangerous, who represented the aristocratic class in Jerusalem, could never have aligned themselves with the speeches of Jesus and the Herodians, pro-Roman, concerned only with power, could not be too much in agreement with the other.

Then there was Caiaphas - the highest authority at the time - who, being the son-in-law of the former high priest Anna, had to subscribe to all his wishes. We know that Anne had only one goal on that night: the death of Jesus, to be achieved with as little conflict as possible. It was still the Sanhedrin that had to deal with the case of Jesus. And they said: "What shall we do? This man performs many signs. If we let him do, everyone will believe in him and the Romans will come and destroy the Temple and our nation" [242]. The problem for the Sanhedrists is not that Jesus is not credible in his words and miraculous acts, but that he is far too credible for them. Too many believe in him. The Jews, in fact, think that if he already does so many signs and miracles, he will do even more if they let him.

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[241] - They became especially so after 70 A.D., when they turned into bitter enemies of Christians, and since the Gospels were born in those years, it is probable that during their drafting, the evangelists cast their hand precisely against the Pharisees who had become unbearable, making Jesus call them 'snakes', 'whited sepulchres' and all the rest.

[242] - With these words, Caiaphas showed that he knew his history and his country very well and could not but be listened to. In fact, as Maggioni's research reports, one hundred years later, in 132 A.D., a certain Simon had himself proclaimed Messiah with the name Bar Kokhba 'son of the star'. Presenting himself as the son of David, he made himself famous as a skilful warrior and had a good following of rebels. Having occupied Jerusalem, he began a political restoration by even minting his own coins and, the following year, unleashed a Roman counter-offensive that, starting from Galilee, destroyed 50 fortifications and 985 villages. The town of Betar, the last bastion of resistance, was turned into a heap of ruins. The supposed Messiah was obviously killed and half a million Jews found death or exile, and the situation of the remaining Palestinians was far worse than before.

Caiaphas

Caiaphas, who, as already said, held the office of High Priest that year, said to them: "You understand nothing, you do not consider that it is better that a single man would die for the people than to risk that whole nation should perish." He did not declare this as himself, but as High Priest he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation, and not for the nation alone, but to bring back to unity all the dispersed children of God [243].

In fact, when questioned by the High Priest about his disciples and his doctrine, Jesus replied: "I have spoken to the world openly, I have always taught in the Synagogue and in the Temple, where all the Jews gather. Never have I said anything in secret. Why do you challenge me? About what I have said question those who have listened to me: they know what I have said" [244].

Jesus even gives directions on how they should conduct the trial. At one point, one of the guards attending slapped him, saying: "Is this the wat you answer the High Priest?". And Jesus: "If I have spoken evil, prove it to me; but if I have spoken good, why do you strike me?" Jesus' authoritative attitude is always the same. He knows what he says and what he wants. Rather than the accused, he seems to be the judge of the situation, although it is true that he will be condemned in the end, but only because he will allow himself to be condemned.

In the meantime, Peter had followed Jesus from afar, all the way into the courtyard of the high priest: as he warmed himself by the fire, understandably dazed, he sat with the servants, trying to understand what was going to happen in that trial. But all the chief priests and the entire Sanhedrin [245] were looking for a testimony against Jesus to put him to death but they couldn’t find none. For many were bearing false witness against him and their testimonies disagreed with each other.

Eventually, two witnesses stood up together, according to the legislation of the Talmud, which demands double testimony, and declared: "We have heard him saying: I will destroy this temple made by human hands, and in three days I will build another one not made by human hands”. Indeed it was true that Jesus had uttered that statement - speaking of the temple as his body - but, as he had not been understood, they could not have testified correctly. And so their testimony had not agreed either. Rising up and standing in the middle, with apparent benevolence towards Jesus, the high priest questioned him: 'Do you answer nothing to the accusations they make against you? What is the meaning of what they testify against you?".

But He kept silent and made no reply. At that moment, His silence, His refusal to answer legitimate institutional authority, as He would have done before Pontius Pilate, as He would refuse to perform miracles before Herod, could become a legal reason for His death sentence. In fact, Deuteronomy, which asked for cooperation from the accused, stated: "If anyone dares to act presumptuously, not obeying the priest who is placed in that office to serve the Lord, nor the judge, let that man be put to death" [246].

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[243] - Jn. 11:49-51.

[244] - Jn. 18:19-23.

[245] - This totality actually means only a large number of them, for not all were in agreement with that judgement. For example, Joseph of Arimathea was one who did not align himself with the majority.

[246] - Deut. 17:12.

The Sanhedrin comes close to condemnation

In fact, however, the Sanhedrin did not come to a formal condemnation of Jesus, also because it could not be considered a fault for him to presented himself as the Messiah or even as the son of God, in fact Israel itself was also considered a son of God. Again, the high priest questioned him: "I beseech thee, by the living God, tell us if thou art the Christ, the Son of God". And Jesus, after having previously refused to answer the priest, because to that question he felt obliged to answer only to God who had sent him [247], to the question whether he was the Christ, the Son of God, therefore whether he was the Messiah [248], answered going far beyond the expectations of the high priest: "I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven" [249].

Practically, at this point, for the Sanhedrin Jesus himself had concluded the trial by signing his own death sentence with that answer, although many Sanhedrists would still have to wait a few hours before they had the satisfaction to hear the pronouncement of an irrevocable sentence. Then the high priest, tearing his robes, said: "Do we need any more witnesses? Have you heard the blasphemy coming from his mouth? What do you think of it?"

For a Jew, presenting himself as the Messiah, as said above, could not yet be considered blasphemy. On the other hand, if Jesus, quoting Daniel, showed that he was much more than Messiah and presented himself as the equal of Adonai, then that could be interpreted as blasphemy. At that point many of the Sanhedrists replied: 'He deserves to be put to death'.

Then the men who had him in custody, while waiting for a more formal decision by the Sanhedrin, led him into a separate place and began to taunt and cane him and, slapping him, spat in his face; others, having blindfolded his face, quizzed him, "Be a prophet, O Christ, who has struck you?" And they said many other things against him, blaspheming him [250]. At the conclusion of this trial, which goes so far as to find him guilty of death even though it does not go so far as to pronounce an official condemnation, Jesus does not defend himself and does not stand against the Sanhedrin, nor against the priest, but accomplishes his final act of obedience [251].

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[247] - Cf. E. Schillebeeckx, Gesù, la storia di un vivente, Brescia, Queriniana, 1976.

[248]  - If someone had presented himself as Messiah, he could have been accepted or rejected, but he could not have been condemned as blasphemous, in fact some people had been recognised as such without deserving punishment for it (in 45 Theudas; after 53 the Egyptian prophet; in 132 A.D. Bar Kokhba).

[249] - At that moment, Jesus explains the meaning of the name 'Son of Man', which he himself had given himself several times during his life, citing the book of the prophet Daniel (7:13-14), which speaks of a Son of Man who, at the end of time, will come on the clouds of heaven with power and to whom will be given the kingdom that shall have no end.

[250] - These few lines so faithfully reproduce the text of the third song of the Servant: "I gave my back to those who struck me and my cheeks to the slaps, I did not withdraw my face from outrages and spitting" (Isaiah 50:6), that one might think that the Gospel passage simply updates the text of Isaiah, but it should be pointed out that this was the normal behaviour towards a condemned person or those awaiting judgement, both at the time of the prophet Isaiah and at the time of Jesus.

[251] - Jesus is a Jew and, as such, has superiors. The high priest is his 'superior' as is the Sanhedrin. At a certain point in life, He may say: 'My superiors do not understand me, my superiors want to condemn me, they are sending me to the cross'. Yet Jesus, as a holy Jew, obeys. We often say that Jesus did the will of the Father, and that is right, but not in terms of the object of obedience. Jesus obeyed flesh and blood men who were less intelligent than him, less holy than him, and very limited. Jesus obeyed on earth. The Father's will is that the Son be obedient to his 'superiors' to the end, even if the end is a death on a cross (cf. R. Rosso, Il dialogo dei monaci).

Jesus' friendship and the Temple authorities

Meanwhile Simon Peter and another disciple followed Jesus from afar. The other disciple was known to the high priest and entered the hall with Jesus. This detail tells us that, at least officially, the high priest, in the last years of Jesus' life, did not set himself against him or his group of disciples, who were considered to be thaumaturges and men beloved by the people; in fact at times both the scribes and the Pharisees were present at the discussions with him and it is not surprising, as in this case, that the high priest had a special friendship with someone in the group and with Jesus himself.

How could he have preached in the Temple without a consensus not formal but of mutual friendship with Caiaphas, Annas and other religious leaders? It is probable that the rage against Jesus was only a matter of the last period, just as there might have been a great friendship between him and Judas, although then relations soon deteriorated and his behaviour with the Temple merchants - though not so decisive in itself - in fact became the straw that broke the camel's back, so much so that the drastic decision was taken to eliminate him once and for all.

Moreover, had there been a formal break between the high priest and Jesus' group, John would never have dared to enter, that night, to attend the preparation of a trial: he, in fact, could not have pretended, like Peter, to have nothing to do with the Master, since Caiaphas knew him well. Until this day Jesus frequented the Temple: who knows how many times he, his disciples and the religious leaders of Jerusalem must have greeted each other and stopped to chat informally: officially, in fact, they were all pursuing the way of the Eternal Israel.

When Jesus speaks against the scribes, Pharisees and priests, he does not put all of them on the same level, but he addresses the dishonest ones and not those who were sincere. Even when he rails against Capernaum and sends it to hell, he does not speak indistinctly for them all: there he has great friends, with whom he has shared so many expectations and dreamt together of the new kingdom.

The leader of the apostles risks for Jesus

Meanwhile Peter stood outside the door. Then the other disciple - almost certainly John - who was known to the high priest, went out again, spoke to the doorkeeper and let him in as well. Peter tried to follow Jesus as far as he thought was possible. He followed him from afar, but he followed him: one should appreciate the good will of this apostle, who was also aware that he was risking a lot. In fact, he was not naïve and he knew very well that intruding among those people, at that time of night, simply pretending to be a mere onlooker, was not easy, indeed very dangerous, but he had tried to do his part.

Peter denies Jesus

By that time - the night was colder than usual - the servants had lit a brazier, around which they warmed themselves. Meanwhile the doorkeeper asked Peter: "Are you not also a disciple of Jesus the Nazarene of Galilee?" But he denied: "I do not know and do not understand what you say". And he went out into the hall, but he did not escape. Meanwhile he warmed himself with the servants and the guards. And, after a moment, another person, having seen him, began to point him out to those present: "This is one of them". But again, he denied it with an oath: "I do not know that man". And an hour or so later, another of those present, a servant of the high priest who was related to the man whose ear Peter had cut off, added: "But did I not see you myself, with him in the olive grove? Truly you are of those, for you are Galilean, and your dialect betrays you'. But he began to curse and swear: 'I do not know the man of whom you are talking about.

And immediately, for the second time he explodes in anger at being discovered as one of Jesus' circle, even with evidence. By now he risks the same condemnation as the master. If Jesus is condemned, he too will automatically risk the same fate: that is why he loses his temper and snaps. And do not forget that the words of Peter's betrayal can only have been reported to his community by himself.

With humility and shame, after his repentance - perhaps out of solidarity with the apostles who had fled and with his brother Judas who had betrayed - he would thus publicly confess his sin, having to admit with such humiliation: 'We have all betrayed the Master'.

Peter weeps

Jesus meanwhile turned to Peter and looked at him. A glance from the Master was enough to revive a frightened conscience in Peter. At this point, he remembered the word Jesus had spoken to him: "Before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times". And, stepping outside, he wept bitterly. Looking at Jesus and remembering his words, Peter found the strength to acknowledge and mourn his own sin.

The Word of Jesus makes him realise that he has been wrong and makes him weep. He is the prodigal son who returns laden with sin, but who has not forgotten that he has a Father who surely have not stopped loving him. It is the sheep, lost and entangled in the brambles of the desert, that still manages to bleat, because it knows it has a shepherd who cares for it. Like Judas, Peter too has betrayed, but he has not forgotten who Jesus is, and he rises again. "Simon, Simon, behold: Satan has tried to sift you like as they do with wheat. But I have prayed for you, that your faith will not fail. And you then, having been converted, confirm your brothers".

Just before those events, Simon Peter had asked Jesus: "Where are you going?" and Jesus: "You cannot follow me, where I am going now, you will follow me later". Peter resumed: "Why, Lord, cannot I follow you now? I will give my life for you". Jesus replied: "Will you give your life for me? Will you really lay down your life for me? Before the cock crows, before the dawn, you will deny me three times". Then turning to the other disciples too, he said to them: "All of you will be scandalised, for it is written, 'I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will go astray. But, after my resurrection, I will go precede you and we will meet again in Galilee". But Peter answered, "Even if all will be scandalised, I will not".

He said: 'Even if it is necessary to die with you, I will not deny you. And all the others did repeat the same promise [252].

This painful page seems to end with a series of dramatic facts. In just a few hours, Jesus has seen the Temple guards coming to capture Him, Judas' betrayal, His own arrest, the disciples' abandonment, the nerve-racking trial and, lastly, Peter's betrayal, but it is not this offence that ends the Jew’s attack against Him. At the end of the night, in fact, at the dawn’s first light, Peter's tears, glimpsed from afar, restore Jesus hope, indeed the certainty that his group, just like this apostle, will rise again and, if the violence of the Jews and the Romans will even go so far as to kill the Master, it will not succeed in extinguishing the faith in the disciples’ hearts. Thus, Jesus’ first trial ended with the betrayal of Peter, but the new day opens with his tears.

Peter would have had every reason to be discouraged: the first time he had intruded between Jesus and his Cross, shouting in his face that he, the strong Peter, as a trusted guardian, would never allow them to harm his Master, well just then, Jesus himself had regarded him as a Satan; then, in Gethsemane, he, the Rock on which Jesus had claimed to found his Church, had fallen asleep like the others; in the same place he had lost his temper and performed the most misguided action namely trying to defend Jesus with the sword; arrested, he had fled and, in the courtyard of the high priest, had denied him.

After his escape, however, this poor man knows how to retrace his steps and tries to follow Jesus at least from a distance, and after his denial, he weeps all the tears he had left. He becomes the prototype of the disciples and the Church, healed by repentance, by weeping and by the merciful heart of Jesus. Looking at the icon of Peter weeping, even the young men herding swine will find the strength to get up and go home, while the sheep lost in the rocky cliffs, in front of this icon will find the humility to let themselves be picked up, taken from the brambles and carried on their shepherd's shoulders.

After this comfort, Jesus is ready to begin the most dramatic, but also the most important day of his life [253].

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[252] - Schnackenburg and Brown acknowledge that Peter does not evaluate his own weakness in claiming to follow Jesus. That 'why can't I follow you now' says all of Peter's good will, but it also demonstrates a profound ignorance of the mystery of Jesus who is Saviour, for Peter can claim to give his life for Jesus, to give his life in Jesus' place, in defence of Jesus, with him and in his company, but he cannot yet give his life as Jesus did. Peter must wait to be part of that new humanity, which is now near. At this point, Jesus is not yet dead and risen. Humanity has not yet been healed, redeemed. Only after Jesus' death and resurrection, when Peter's humanity has also become new humanity, will he too be able to give his life like Jesus. That "Why can't I follow you now?" shows that Peter has not understood what that cross really is and therefore protests by showing his stubbornness (Cf. R. Schnackenburg, R. E. Brown, Il Vangelo di Giovanni, Brescia, Paideia, 2000).

[253] - Like Isaac who, loading wood, went up the mountain for the sacrifice, so Jesus prepares to go up the mountain carrying the wood of the cross for his last act of solidarity: after him there will be millions of men and women who will follow the same path with martyrdom.

Jesus before Pilate

In the last session of the Sanhedrin, due to disagreements - let it be said that not all Sanhedrists wanted Jesus dead - a decision was nevertheless made even if not unanimous, namely to hand him over to Pontius Pilate. A fact that proves how the Jews were quite embarrassed in making a decision, both for or against Jesus. In any case, the decision to hand him over to Pilate, who was still an enemy of the Jews, was a very serious matter: here lies the Sanhedrin's responsibility and guilt in the condemnation of Jesus.

In the meantime, Pilate was warned that in the early hours of the morning he had to face an urgent trial, because it was a case to be possibly solved before Passover.

The high priests, with the elders, the scribes, the doctors of the law, and the whole Sanhedrin, after consulting once more on how to behave before Pilate, put Jesus in chains, took him out, and handed him over to Pilate himself. Then Judas, the traitor, seeing the Master condemned and seized with remorse, brought back his 30 silver coins to the priests and elders, saying: 'I have sinned, having betrayed innocent blood. But they replied, "What do we care? See for yourself". At that point, having thrown the coins towards the sanctuary, Judas turned back and, after going away, hanged himself [254].

Then Pilate went and met the assembly, whom he asked: "What charge do you bring against this man?" They answered, 'Were he not an evildoer, we would not have handed him over to you.' Then Pilate said, "Take him and judge him according to your law." But the Jews replied, 'We cannot pronounce a death sentence.

The truest fact, however, is that they had not been able to find grounds, unanimously agreed upon, for a death sentence, and also because at that time, as already mentioned, for the Sanhedrin it was difficult to pronounce a death sentence (even if possible). Thus, the word of Jesus, who had foretold what death he was to die of, had been fulfilled [255].

Pilate went then back to the Praetorium, called Jesus and, to begin with, he asked him: "Are you the king of the Jews?". It is obvious that, having preached a new kingdom all his life, even and especially at the end of his life, he had to come to terms with this statement. For Pilate the other accusations were not substantial, to the point that some evangelists do not even report them. Is Jesus king or not? This is the issue interesting Pilate and those who handed him over to him: if they want to have him condemned, they have to move in this direction.

The synecrites who accused him had a big problem to solve (and they failed to solve it). If, in fact, they presented Jesus as an enemy of the Romans, this might have been a good reason for Pilate to condemn him, but they would have deposed in favour of Jesus before that assembly of Jews, more than obviously friendly enemies of Rome. If the Sanhedrin presented Jesus as a heretic or guilty for reasons related to their faith, this would not have interested Pilate in the least, for they had just said that according to their law he deserved death, but this statement had no legal value. However, there is one important fact: the name Jesus carried throughout the region was 'King of the Jews'.[256]. Jesus is not inoffensive. A rebel against Rome is always a rebel, even if his preaching is about God [257].

The first question Pilate asks Jesus is precisely: "Are you the King of the Jews?". And, in reply, he retorts: "Do you say this yourself or did others suggest it to you?". Then Jesus reassures Pilate, adding: "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my own people would have fought to prevent me being handed over to the Jews. But be assured that my kingdom is not of this world ". And, in reply, Pilate wonders why the chief priests have handed him over to him, if he is not a Jew. And he asks Jesus again: "But what evil have you done?".

He, meanwhile, remains imperturbable before the governor. The assembly begins to accuse him: "We found this man who was stirring up the people, forbidding them to pay taxes to Caesar and claiming to be the Messiah king". And the governor questions him: "Are you (really) the king of the Jews?". After answering that his kingdom is not of this world, and after proclaiming his identity just before to the High Priest, now also before the civil authority Jesus testifies to who he is, at the price of his own condemnation: 'You say it, I am king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world: to bear witness to the truth. Whoever is on the side of truth hears my voice". Pilate retorts: "What is truth?".

Then - without waiting for an answer, which he is not so interested in -, addressing the priests and the crowd, Pilate declares: "I find no reason for condemnation in this man ". But they insist: 'He raises the people by teaching throughout all Judea, tarting from Galilee, up to here'.

Then Pilate, on hearing this, asks if the man is a Galilean and, having learned that he belongs to Herod's jurisdiction, sends him to Herod himself, who in those days was in Jerusalem. Like every year, Herod had come to Jerusalem with a good number of soldiers in solemn parade on his white horse, and from his palace he could control all the activity around the temple. Those were always tense days, because precisely during Easter anything could happen. Suffice it to say that the staff alone who took turns serving in the Temple numbered twenty thousand people, and to these must be added all the thousands of pilgrims.

Jesus, therefore, was brought to Herod, who rejoiced greatly: for a long time in fact he had wanted to see him because he had heard of him, and he hoped to see some miracle done by him, or at any rate some good trick, so that he could enjoy himself. Herod questioned him with many questions, but he answered nothing: for he did not look for answers to solve a civil case or a legal problem. He, just like so many others who gambled on the very life of Jesus, was not interested in his fate, nor in his life, nor in his death, but in the spectacle: he wanted to see some nice game that would amuse him or at least some new emotion.

The high priests and scribes who were present accused him vigorously, hoping to get at least some condemnation from him, but Herod just as he was not interested in defending Jesus, so much less was he interested in condemning him, and even less did he hear the accusations of

those Jews he certainly disliked, for as subjects they still had to be enemies. Finally, Herod, having despised and mocked Jesus together with his soldiers, clothed him in a splendid robe and sent him back to Pilate. Pilate and Herod became friends that day. Previously, in fact, they had been at enmity with each other. Pilate, having assembled the priests, the authorities and the people, said: 'You have brought this man to me as a troublemaker of the people. And behold, having examined him before you, I found in him no fault of those of which you accused him: neither did Herod, so that he sent him back to us. Behold, he has committed nothing deserving death. After I have chastised him with scourging, I will release him" [258].

 While still being accused by the high priests and elders, Jesus answered nothing. Then Pilate asked him, "Do you not hear how many things they testify against you?" And Jesus did not utter a single word, so that Pilate stood in amazement.

At Passover the governor used to release a prisoner to the people, whoever they wanted [259]. At that time there were three condemned men in the prison who were probably to be executed before the Passover feast, and it was already the eve of the feast. One of these was called Dimas, the other Gesta and the third was probably a well-known prisoner called Barabbas: he was a brigand and was in prison with the rebels who, in the tumult, had committed murder [260]. Let us not forget that the people wanted and longed for a Messiah like Barabbas: Jesus and Barabbas are two forms of messianism that confront each other. The people and Jesus' disciples would have liked Him to be more like Barabbas, who promised an immediate, concrete liberation from that unbearable yoke of foreigners, in fact in the end they chose him.

The crowd that had rushed in began to demand what he always granted them. While, therefore, they were gathered, Pilate said to them, "Whom do you want to be set free, Barabbas or Jesus, called the Christ?" For he knew who had delivered him out of envy. As he sat on the bench of the court, his wife sent word to him, 'Let there be nothing between you and that righteous man: for I have suffered much today in a dream because of him. But the high priests and elders persuaded the crowd to demand Barabbas and to let Jesus die instead. In response, the governor asked them, "Who do you want me to release to you of the two?" They shouted, "Barabbas". Pilate asked again, "What then shall I do with Jesus called the Christ?" They all shouted, "Let him be crucified!" But he: "What has he done wrong?" And they cried still louder, "Let him be crucified!" Seeing that nothing came of it and the tumult grew louder and louder, Pilate took some water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, "I am not responsible for this blood, see for yourselves!" All the people answered: "Let his blood fall upon us and our children. Then Pilate released Barabbas and had Jesus scourged.

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[254] - "But the chief priests, having collected that money, said, 'It is not lawful to put it into the treasury, for it is the price of blood.' And taking counsel, they bought with it the Potter's Field for the burial of foreigners. Therefore, that field was called the 'Field of Blood' to this day" (i.e. until the end of the 1st century AD) (Matt. 27:6-8).

[255] - If he had been condemned by the Jews, in fact, he would have been stoned to death.

[256] - This name had already been given by the priests after the Maccabean rebellion (143-63 B.C.) Herod the Great himself had given himself that title and now it is Jesus' turn. It is still a dangerous name. It is true that Jesus does not preach revolution, nor does he show himself to be the political leader of any group that might be armed, but his fantasies about the empire of God, his criticism of the powerful, his firm defence of the most oppressed and humiliated sectors of the empire, his insistence on a radical change of situation are a blatant disempowerment of the Roman emperor, the prefect and the high priest appointed by the prefect himself.

[257] - See J. A. Pagola, op. cit., p. 435.

[258] - And why would he chastise him if he was innocent? And why a punishment similar to a death sentence?

[259] - It seems that no written records have been found that testify to the custom of releasing a prisoner, but it is a difficult fact to invent: while remembering the liberation from Egypt, it was understandable to think of the release of a prisoner.

[260] - According to Benedict XVI, the choice between Jesus and Barabbas is not accidental, because they represent two ways of being messiah. The name Barabbas means 'son of the father' and was considered a typical name for a messiah. And Origen even points out that until the third century A.D. this man was called Jesus Barabbas, who makes the same claim to be messiah, but in a completely different way. The choice is therefore between a messiah who leads an armed struggle to liberate Israel and a messiah who proposes a non-violent struggle (Cf. J. Ratzinger, op. cit., p. 179).

Reconstruction of the scourging

I describe here the three types of scourging. The first type was generally performed as an additional punishment to any death sentence, such as crucifixion or beheading. It is important to know that, for a person sentenced to crucifixion, the scourging was an integral part of the sentence itself, and consisted of twenty or so blows because the sentenced person was to remain alive as long as possible (in the case of Jesus it was different, because he was sentenced to scourging as a punishment in itself and therefore without any limit of blows, and only later was he sentenced to crucifixion) [261].

This type of scourging was generally performed either at the prison from which the condemned man left to be executed, or at the place of crucifixion, immediately before it. The horrible scourging was not only executed before crucifixion, but also before capital punishment. Then there was a second type of flagellation: the Jewish one that consisted of forty blows: being scrupulous before the Law, in order not to make a mistake and give one blow in excess, the Pharisees always limited themselves to forty blows, minus one.

If Jesus had been sentenced to scourging by the Jews, he would have had his punishment limited to 39 strokes. Then there was a third type of scourging, the Roman scourging, which had no limit of strokes. The number varied according to the circumstances or the gravity of the crime being punished. When the condemned was particularly fragile, it happened that he died under those blows. It was a punishment in its own right, very similar to capital punishment, and to carry it out, they used the flagrum (a specifically 'Roman' instrument). It consisted of leader strips (there could be six or seven of them), usually double, to the ends of which were attached lead balls or small bones (taken from the legs of lambs) or small lead hammers that, with each blow, caused deep bruising and subsequent bleeding that abruptly weakened the condemned man [262]. Not infrequently, in these cases, the condemned died under the blows, which could often even tear off shreds of flesh, even exposing the bones.

Here are some hints of Roman flagellation, taken from the texts of various eyewitnesses of the time, Romans especially: the scourges whistle, striking the body, which first turns an increasingly vivid pink if the condemned is fair-skinned, then darkens to become purplish, while the bruises become increasingly pronounced, then the stripes swell to blood-filled reliefs and crack and tear as all the blood vessels open up and blood regurgitates from all sides. The flagellators rage on every side of the body, on the neck, especially the chest and abdomen, on the hips, but they do not spare the legs and arms too, and even the head, until no corner of skin is left without pain.

Prior to any capital condemnation, which could consist of the crucifixion of the condemned or his beheading (Titus Livius) or burning at the stake (Josephus Flavius), a scourging was always performed as a punishment torture, which in ancient times was executed on the bodies of the crucified while they were already suspended. This torture was later administered in prison or in the court, before heading to the place of crucifixion. The person who was to be scourged was undressed, to which point the soldiers generally divided the clothes of the condemned, who would remain naked during the transfer from the scaffold to the place of execution (Valerius Maximus, Cicero) [263].

Afterwards, the condemned man was tied with his hands hanging overhead, so that, when it was preliminary to crucifixion, the scourging consisted of about twenty blows and no more, as I have already mentioned, because they wanted him to remain alive as long as possible, nailed to the scaffold and alive. Added to this was the fact that, hanging by the wrists with clasped hands, no one could survive more than fifteen minutes, so only a short punishment could be endured, whereas Roman flagellation was generally executed on the condemned man tied to a pole or column for a much longer time, reaching almost an hour. Only senators, soldiers and women who had Roman citizenship were exempt from this punishment [264].

This flagellation (limited to 20 strokes) or rather 'flogging' was performed with whips similar to those of the Lictors' bundle (fascio littorio). Once this punishment was over, the condemned would be tied to the 'scaffold' on which he would then be crucified so that he would use all his energy to get to the place of execution by trying not to fall: since he had no handholds to lean on, he would hit the ground violently with his face with each fall, prolonging the pain for him and the time of labour for the soldiers [265].

Jesus, therefore, was first condemned to scourging as a punishment in its own right and thus without any limit of blows, as Pilate had commissioned it in lieu of the crucifixion itself. Instead, after this first slaughter, he was also sentenced to crucifixion. And since he expired three hours after the crucifixion, we must assume that He died from that devastating scourging rather than from the crucifixion itself, which could not have killed Him in just three hours [266].

John also recalls that, after the scourging, the soldiers of the governor, having brought Jesus into the Praetorium, gathered the whole cohort around Him and that day, in the barracks, before leaving for the crucifixion, they had the opportunity to play and joke with an alleged king - condemned, of course - making him a carnival king. They put a red rag around him instead of a real royal robe, placed a crown of thorns on his head instead of a golden crown, and replaced the sceptre of kings with a reed in his right hand and, kneeling before him, mocked him: "Hail, King of the Jews," and slapped him. Then, spitting at him, they struck him on the head with the same reed taken from him. After mocking him, they stripped him the cloak clothing him with his clothes, and led him away to be crucified [267].

Pilate came out of the praetorium again and confirmed: "Now I will bring him out to you so that you may know that I find no guilt in him. But they shouted: "Crucify him, crucify him!". Jesus came out with the crown of thorns on his head and clothed in the purple robe [268]. And Pilate declared, "Behold the man." On seeing him, the high priests and the guards cried out, "Crucify him, crucify him!" Pilate said to them, "Take him and crucify him; I find no fault in him." The Jews answered him: 'We have a law, and according to it he deserves death because he has made himself the Son of God'.

Hearing this, Pilate - who was not at all interested in the theological discussions of the Jews - appeared to be frightened and, at least for a moment, also took seriously that cry of the Jewish leaders. So, he went back into the Praetorium and asked Jesus: "Where are you from?". But Jesus did not answer him. Then Pilate repeated: "Will you not answer me? Do you not know that I have power to set you free and power to crucify you?" Jesus answered, "You would not have any power over me, if it had not been given to you from above. Therefore, he who delivered me to you has a greater responsibility". From that moment Pilate tried to free him, but the Jews shouted: "If you free him, you are not a friend of Caesar! For whoever makes himself king sets himself against Caesar' [269].

At this cry, Pilate was truly frightened. The politician would never have wanted to set himself against Caesar, so he tried to conclude the trial quickly. Having condemned Jesus to scourging, now it was a question of condemning him also to crucifixion. Immediately he had him led out and sat in court, in the place called lithostratus, in Hebrew gabbata.

It was the day of the preparation for the Passover, around noon. Pilate said to the Jews, 'Behold your king! But they cried out, "Crucify him quickly!" Pilate asked them, "Shall I then crucify your king?" The high priests answered, "We have no king but Caesar." Then Pilate handed Jesus over to them to be crucified.

Before Jesus and those who followed him the most dramatic scenario imaginable presented itself. Calvary or the place of the skull is located outside the city, but in an area clearly visible, close to the road. Before the crucifixions, poles were already driven between the stones, to support the horizontal wood to which the condemned was nailed or tied. But on the same hill were often found the mangled bones of the unburied crucified, whose flesh was left to the crows. The terrifying spectacle, the smell of rotting flesh and the skeletons left exposed, all of this was there to deter the wickedness of even the most hardened. At least three ploes had been prepared in advance for that day to crucify two common criminals, Gestas and Dimas [270], and probably Barabbas, a famous revolutionary, certainly appreciated by the zealot activist. At the last moment, on that very day, the stipes prepared for him were instead intended for the protagonist of our story: Jesus.

Prior to the crucifixion, the two condemned men had been inflicted about twenty strokes of the scourge as part of the crucifixion itself. The reason for this partial scourging was due to the need to prolong the agony of the crucified, as mentioned above. Jesus, on the other hand, had been condemned to the Roman scourging that Friday morning, thus without any limit of blows, by an irrational punishment of Pilate, which, however, excluded crucifixion - indeed, it seems to have been commissioned as a substitute for the crucifixion itself - then demanded and claimed by the crowd. In fact, Jesus survived only a few hours after this torture and it can rightly be said that his death was caused by the scourging rather than by the crucifixion itself, which could not have killed him in only three hours. Only later, out of fear of the crowd, did Pilate hand Jesus over already scourged so that he could also be crucified: he therefore had to endure all possible pain, the victim of two tortures, both fatal.

There has been much debate about the responsibility for Jesus' death sentence. Some have emphasised the cowardice of Pilate who, while recognising the innocence of the accused Jesus, condemned him both to scourging and to the cross. In fact, Pilate is confronted with a man who for years has been talking about an empire that is not that of Rome and invites people to enter that kingdom. This speech was risky and could become subversive for Pilate who, having to watch out for anything that might disturb the peace of Rome, must be very careful in dealing with this case. Pilate feared that he himself could be accused before the Emperor of Rome (as indeed would happen shortly afterwards).

In order to legitimise anti-Semitism, some scholars have emphasised the responsibility of the Jews who, having handed Jesus over to Pilate not to be judged, but so to be condemned, eventually asked for the crucifixion themselves. But we cannot overlook Jesus' attitude before the religious authorities. They saw in Him one who had placed himself above the Law, the Sabbath, the Temple. They could not forget what He had done and said with the Temple traders just shortly before.

If, therefore, we were to take sides for or against Pilate or the Jews, we should honestly conclude that the real culprit for Jesus’ condemnation was Himself, who had made it clear that no one was taking His life from Him, but it was He who was giving it. For what could Jesus expect from Caiaphas if, having questioned him as to whether he was the Messiah, the Son of God, he was given roof by Himself, adding that He would eventually appear on the clouds of heaven at the right hand of the Power of God? And what could he expect from a frightened Pilate who, on asking him whether Jesus was king, obtained the confirmation that not only was he so, but he had come into the world for this very reason, even though his kingdom was not from here?

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[261] - While various forms of corporal punishment or torture are present in many states around the world today, flagellation is restricted to only a few Islamic countries. In the first ten years of the third millennium, it appears that, in Bangladesh, more than 500 innocent teenage girls, abused by unscrupulous men and thus caught in alleged adultery, died under the blows of flagellation performed directly in the villages by the local Islamic authorities.

[262] - Cf. P. Bardet, La divina passione di N. S. Gesù Cristo secondo il chirurgo, Berruti, 1951, p. 56.

[263] - Authors such as Josephus Flavius, Cicero, Tacitus, Livy, Valerius, Maximus, Seneca, many Church Fathers and contemporary studies by doctors and surgeons wrote about the flagellation and crucifixion and, last but not least, some insights of mystics such as M. Robin, who lived fifty years feeding on the Eucharist alone or T. Newmann, K. Emmerick or even M. Valtorta, who left several contemporary biblical scholars very surprised and who did not disdain to report some of their experiences. The same authors gave me the basis for the reconstruction of the crucifixion.

[264] - Cf. P. Barbet, A paixão de Cristo segundo o cirurgião, Editora Loyola, 1976, p. 5.

[265] - Path to the crucifixion also described by Dionysius of Halicarnassus. The image of Jesus dragging the Cross does not seem to have any historical reason. Suffice it to say that the vertical and the horizontal trunk must have exceeded one hundred kilos. He, like every condemned man, was only supposed to carry the patibulum (the horizontal arm of the cross), while the stipes (the vertical trunk) was already on Calvary stuck to the ground with all the others, so that it formed a forest of poles, the most lugubrious place on earth. Probably, however, after a Roman scourging, Jesus could not remain with sufficient strength to carry a patibulum and was probably helped and dragged Himself by a man (father of Alexander and Rufus) who came from Cyrene.

[266] - If the Shroud of Turin were to receive any more reason for its legitimacy in the future, it would testify to Roman flagellation by a very large number of blows. Let it be said again for the sake of honesty that, if the Turin shroud were not original, very sophisticated tests in the future could prove it, but, on the contrary, never guarantee its authenticity: empirical science cannot prove that the shroud contains a miracle or, in any case, a mystery, realities acceptable only by virtue of faith.

[267] - As for the crowning with thorns, we have no testimony other than that of the evangelists. Having, however, wanted to treat Jesus as a king of mockery, it is also understandable that along with the purple cloth and the reed sceptre there should also have been a crown of thorns, but this was not the custom for crucified persons.

[268 ]-The detail of dressing Jesus in his garments may be an addition by the evangelist for a modest treatment.

[269] -They were certainly not convinced of such great respect for the Caesar of Rome.

[270] - Such names are mentioned in the apocryphal gospels.

Crucifixion and death of Jesus

The most cruel and bleak torment. As they were going out, they came upon a man from Cyrene, who came from the countryside: his name was Simeon and he was the father of Alexander and Rufus [271]. They put the cross on his shoulders so that he would carry it behind Jesus. In fact, after that mortal scourging, He had probably been tied to the horizontal wood of the cross, as it was usually done, so that the condemned man would commit all his energies to reach the place of execution: if he had let himself fall, in fact, finding no support, he would have beaten his face violently to the ground and would also have been crushed by the wood, with an added torture.

But once he had fallen, probably already in agony, Jesus could not even get up from the ground, bound as he was. That is why the intervention of that Cyrenian was requested to drag him at least as far as the scaffold. A large crowd of men and women followed him, beating their chests and mourning him.

Turning towards them, Jesus said: 'Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me. Weep rather for yourselves and for your children, for the time will come when it will be said: blessed are the barren, blessed are the women who have not borne children and suckled them at the breast. Then they will say to the mountains: 'Fall on us', and to the hills: 'Cover us'. If they do this to the green wood (to the innocent), what will happen to the dry wood (to the guilty)?" [272].

When they reached the place called Golgotha, which means "place of the skull", they gave him wine mixed with gall and myrrh. It was a drink that intoxicated and partly anaesthetised the pain, but Jesus, having tasted it, did not want to drink it so as to remain conscious until the last moment. They crucified him later in the morning [273]. Above his head they had fixed the inscription of his condemnation: 'This is Jesus, the King of the Jews'. The priests of the Jews then said to Pilate: "Do not write 'the king of the Jews', write instead that he said, 'I am the king of the Jews'". Pilate replied, "What I have written I have written."

The fact that Jesus preached a new kingdom - even the kingdom of God - could not fail to arouse suspicions of some revolution to dismantle the kingdom that the politicians had established and were defending with all their might. Then they crucified with him two evildoers, one on the right, the other on the left. And Jesus, addressing the crucifiers (especially the mandators), said: 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do'. And the people stood there and watched. Then they divided his garments into four parts, one for each soldier, drawing lots which one belonged to each, but the tunic, woven all in one piece, was seamless (it was probably the precious tunic Herod had clothed him with when he had sent him back to Pilate). Therefore, they said among themselves, 'Let us not divide it, but cast lots to see who shall have it. Thus, the Scripture was fulfilled: 'They divided my garments among themselves, and the tunic they cast lots for'. The soldiers did just that and, sitting there, stood guard over him [274].

Meanwhile, near the cross of Jesus stood his mother and his mother's sister, Mary of Cleophas, as well as other women who stood watch from afar, including Mary the Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the lesser and of Joseph, and Salome, the mother of the sons of Zebedee, who had followed him and helped him in many services when he was in Galilee, and others who had gone up with him to Jerusalem. Together with them, all his friends who had followed him from Galilee had stood far away and watched. Jesus, seeing his mother and beside her the disciple whom he loved, said to his mother: "Woman, behold your son. And to the disciple: "Behold your mother". Thereupon the disciple took her into his home.

One of the hanged criminals blasphemed him: 'Are not you the Christ? Save yourself and us," but the other rebuked him: "Do not fear God either? Yet you suffer the same condemnation. And for us it is right that this should be so, for we are being repaid for what we have done, but he had done nothing that deserved condemnation." Then he said to Jesus, "Remember me when you are in your kingdom". Jesus said to him, 'Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise’.

The notables and passers-by blasphemed him, shaking their heads and saying: 'You who can destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself. If you are the son of God, the chosen one, come down from the cross'. Similarly, the high priests, together with the scribes and elders, mocking him, said: 'He saved others, yet he cannot save himself. If he is the king of Israel, he should come down from the cross and we will believe in him. He trusted in God, let him free him now, if he loves him. For he said: 'I am the Son of God'.

Although Jesus saved others, the fact that he did not come down from the cross does not mean powerlessness, but the offering of his own life, given because he chose to. We recall, at this point, that were at least two groups of people accompanying Jesus: a group of friends who live in pain, almost in front of "a sacred representation" that question them, that makes them ponder everything Jesus said and did, which reaches the culmination of his life in the cross, which accompanies them to repentance and the desire for conversion.

Then there is another 'crowd'. They are those who did everything they could to make him die and are now in front of the crucified playing the role of those who insult Jesus, mock and blaspheme him, acts that were usually done in the face of crucifixions in general or other serious punishments. Insulting and speaking evil in all kinds of ways against the condemned was almost a form of solidarity with the authorities who had decided upon that condemnation, almost a democratic form of saying they were in agreement with those who wielded judicial power, but in front of Jesus it takes a very particular form because those who approved his death now hold his wrong against him, in fact he does not know how to come down from the cross, therefore He is not the messiah and this is a crushing proof.

He was forsaken by Adonai and it seems that even He recognised this, so He is neither messiah nor prophet and what He experienced was a farce and the cross and death prove this, for he who hangs from a cross is cursed by God. But it is also likely that John and some others hoped to the last that he would truly come down from the cross and begin once and for all the great deliverance, the final establishment of the kingdom and the conclusion of history.

From noon until three o'clock in the afternoon darkness fell over the whole earth [275]. Around three o'clock Jesus cried out in a loud voice: "Eli, Eli, lema sabactani?", which means: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?". Some of those present, having heard him, said, "See, call Elijah." But one ran away, dipped a sponge in vinegar, then put it on a reed and gave him to drink [276]. whereupon the stranger who offered the soaked sponge said: "Wait (let us prolong the agony a little longer), let us see if Elijah comes to deliver him".

Then Jesus said in a loudly: "Father I commend my spirit into your hands. Then, uttering a loud cry, he expired. And the veil of the Temple parted in two, from top to bottom. And all the crowds who had gathered to witness the spectacle, thinking again of what had happened, turned back, beating their chests. The enemies walked back largely satisfied and victorious, while the friends had watched until they saw all their hopes nailed to the dead body of Jesus. Everything was over and no one could understand that instead everything was accomplished.

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[271] - Two Christians, probably well known in the early Christian community, precisely because they were the sons of those who had shared the burden of the cross with Jesus in the last hour before his crucifixion.

[272] - This long sentence, (Lk. 23:28-31), which reflects what Jesus might have said, can be seen as placed by the evangelist as Jesus was almost agonising.

[273] - "The agony and death of Jesus are marked on the hours of the day, which are also the hours of liturgical prayer in the Temple: the third, sixth and ninth hours. It is as if it were clear that the true liturgy is performed here on Calvary, along a public road, no longer in the sacred precinct of the Temple" (cf. B. Maggioni, op. cit., p. 266).

[274] - Numerous facts of the Passion refer to Old Testament prophecies. For some scholars, these phrases would only be placed as a theological reflection to echo the Scriptures, in fact, they spoke of scourging, mockery of passers-by, clothes divided or drawn, the sponge soaked in vinegar, the delivery of the spirit, the cry and death, but it should not be forgotten either that the evangelists and the Old Testament writers referred to similar events, where the behaviours mentioned were exactly the same.

[275] - The cloud had accompanied the Jewish people on their journey of liberation and had manifested itself at Sinai, at Mary's Annunciation, at Jesus' baptism and again at the Transfiguration.

[276] - While the first drugged drink of myrrh and wine, offered to Jesus and rejected by him, was intended to intoxicate and anaesthetise pain, the latter drink, posca, soaked in the vinegar-based sponge was for an opposite reason: it quenched the thirst, awakened the dying person by making him regain his senses and keeping him awake for as long as possible by increasing his resistance to suffering, buffered haemorrhages and with the vinegar sharpened the pain of wounds and thus prolonged the agony.

Reconstruction of the crucifixion

I tried to reconstruct in broad strokes the death of a crucified man in situations very similar to that of Jesus Christ, as I did for the scourging [277].

After the nailing and after hoisting the arm of the cross onto the stipes and nailing the feet, the terrible struggle to help the lungs breathe begins. The weight of the body shifts forwards and downwards. The crucified continuously force on their feet and help themselves with their arms to gain a slight body lift to allow them to breathe. The holes in the feet and wrists widen, all slackening. Normally long times pass, with brief unconsciousness and recovery. If the crucified are placed on the so-called 'seat' with their legs spread apart, the torture is prolonged throughout the day and night, extending the agony to impossible times (for some it lasted more than two days).

In the case of Jesus and the two crucified with him, since the crucifixion took place on a Friday, probably it was not planned an exaggeratedly prolonged agony. After being nailed, fixed and suspended, it begins the most dramatic torture one could imagine. When the final hours of agony are reached, with the condemned always conscious - otherwise he would die - foot cramps begin. If he faints, asphyxiation, which arrives immediately, usually wakes him up and forces him to make that continuous effort to breathe. Forced into that position, the muscles in his arms begin to tremble, while his fever increases. The fingers of the hands freeze because the blood no longer reaches them, they become paralysed and cadaveric, but up to the wrists the sensibility is total, so on the pierced feet. Breathing becomes fast, but not deep and increasingly difficult. Exertion fatigues to the impossible, without being able to give any interval of relief. A pulmonary oedema generally forms inside, which even causes the ribs to dilate.

To relieve the respiratory effort, the continuous movement of the abdomen causes an onset of paralysis of the diaphragm, which can no longer cope. Congestion and asphyxia increase and, in some cases, screaming of delirium occurs. All wounds turn a cyanotic colour, necrosis progresses around them. Fever causes the lips to turn bright red. A heartbeat increasingly violent and irregular can be seen under the left costal arch. The first convulsions appear. Fatigue and fever are increasing, while bleeding from the flagellation wounds ceases. From time to time, with the muscles at the level of the kidneys together with the entire spine, he bends outwards, detaching himself from the wood of the stipes from the pelvis upwards, then to immediately he returns to his position. Tetanus produces contractions that repeatedly curve the back from the nape of the neck to the hips, in a complete curve. Fibre and nerve death extends from the tortured extremities to the trunk, increasingly paralysing respiratory motion. Meanwhile, cardiac movement becomes increasingly disordered. The face then changes from flashes of intense red alternating with a pale greenish because of all that blood loss, causing the whole body to collapse, which falls down, with no more support, with the head thrown forward as if dead, and all this repeats itself. The throat burns: the carotids are engorged, the jaws stiffen and a swollen tongue can be seen through the half-open mouth. Breathing, now impossible, turns into gasping. The intervals between one breath and another grow longer and longer. First the abdomen stops, while the chest still heaves with difficulty. The lungs become paralysed. Then comes one last violent convulsion and the crucified man collapses. He may have fainted, but if he does not come to his senses immediately to resume movement, asphyxiation kills him.

One particular detail to be remember is that the execution of the condemned was a men-only affair: they alone would go from the place of condemnation to the place of execution and burial, if there was one.

Roman law did not prevent people from attending the spectacle, indeed it was in favour that one should see what offenders deserved, but of course it was reserved for male men, and the soldiers on guard would have prevented anyone from approaching, which might have been an attempt to rescue the condemned man. It could be possible that women were present at the Passion of Christ, but at a real distance, maybe on the adjacent hillside, which in any case would actually have separated them.

Nor can we assume that there were women along the path where the condemned passed. The macabre procession was often accompanied by drums and, in any case, it was very noisy. If a woman had to pass along the road where the candidates for execution were parading, she would have waited for the procession to pass before entering that path and would have done everything to avoid it and, if she had to pass near the hill of the condemned, she would turn away and cover her face. The cruelty of the execution in itself had to keep the women and even more so the relatives at a distance. Had they been present at that carnage as displayed by all crucifixion iconography, those women would have testified that their hearts were made of stone and, even more, would have shown themselves to be immodest, the condemned being all naked [278].

Probably only John could have collected the testimonies of the last hours, including Jesus' invitation to take care of his mother, while the request to Mary to accept John as her son was implicit in that entrustment or, in any case, it would also have been possible to have John communicate to Mary this wish of Jesus.

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[277] - The authors mentioned in footnote 263 wrote both about the scourging and Jesus' death on the cross.

[278] - Only the Jews, when carrying out the death sentence, allowed a hip band, for modesty's sake, already during the last journey in the direction of the place of execution, which was generally the stoning.

After Jesus' death

The earth was shaken and the rocks split; the tombs opened and many of the bodies of the saints lying there were resurrected. Indeed, after their resurrection, they came out of the tombs, came into the holy city and appeared to many. But the centurion who stood before him and those who were guarding Jesus with him, having seen him die in that way, at the sight of the earthquake and of what it happened, were seized with great fright and said: 'Truly this man is the Son of God'.

Then, so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath [279], they asked Pilate that their legs be broken and the corpses removed [280].

In the texts of the Passion and Death of Jesus, we find Pilate mentioned for the last time in connection with the request for the Lord's burial, the name most guilty of a sentence inflicted on a man whom himself acknowledged to be innocent. Pilate had come to the conclusion of the sentence after saying to his accusers, "What evil has he done?" Without an adequate answer he had asked for the second time: "But what evil has he done?". He then said that in Jesus he found no cause for condemnation, and added: "I have found no fault of those of which you accuse him," and twice he affirmed that "Jesus has committed nothing deserving of death," and by the end of the trial, with the gesture of washing his hands, he solemnly pronounced, almost as a final verdict: "I am innocent of the blood of this righteous man.” Well, after all these pronouncements in recognition of Jesus' innocence and against all trial logic, Pilate sentenced him to scourging and finally to the cross. More than any other, the words of Jesus could be referred to Pilate: 'Forgive him, Father, for he knows not what he does'. We could say that the very representatives of the religious and civil judiciary found no reason to condemn Jesus, a man without sin, who had done all things well.

They just condemned him, but perhaps the man of faith would do well to look for the cause of this condemnation not in a court in Jerusalem, but in those words of Jesus, addressed precisely to Pilate: 'You would have no power over me if it were not given you from above'. And now, back at Calvary where Jesus concluded his mission, the soldiers, having received the authorisation from Pilate to bury the dead bodies, came and broke the legs of the first, then of the second who had been crucified with him. When they came to Jesus, however, because they saw him already dead, they did not break his legs, but one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out [281].  These things came to pass so that the Scripture would be fulfilled: "They shall look upon him whom they have pierced" [282].

For the passion and death of Jesus, the historicity of the narrated events is valid and legitimate, more so than for other texts. At times they are enriched by biblical texts in the form of prophecies or theological reflections, as I mentioned above, so that in some cases they are interpreted facts, but we must not forget that they are always facts [283]. The passion and death of Jesus is not a parable, a theological reflection on pain, but a cry, a cry of solidarity that silenced all the whys about pain and death, while the resurrection gave the answer to all these whys.

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[279] - Day of great preparations for that very solemn Saturday.

[280] - To shorten the agony, which could last even more than a day, some relative or influential person could request that the condemned man's legs be broken, and in some cases this could be granted. In fact, after this last torture, as he could no longer stand on his feet, the condemned man would die in a short time, asphyxiated.

[281] - Cf. Ex. 12, 46: Nm. 9, 12; Ps. 34, 21; Jn. 19, 33-37.

[282] - Zech. 12, 10 b.

[283] - The evangelists want to tell us that what happens on this mountain and is recorded in the Gospels is all true, all historical, and we dare to believe it because the one who saw it, for example John, bears true witness to it, and further adds that he knows that he is speaking the truth, so that others may also believe. At the end of this passion we have the only case in the entire Gospel where an eyewitness is directly appealed to. It is the case of John. The expression "who saw" emphasises the fact of the eyewitness testimony. It is a real and historical seeing, but also a seeing that goes deep. There is in fact no testimony where only the fact is recounted, nor where only a meaning is expressed (Cf. B. Maggioni, op. cit.).

The burial of Jesus

As the most painful evening in the whole story had come, Joseph a rich man from the village of Arimathea arrived. He had just asked Pilate permission to bury the dead body of Jesus. Being confirmed his death with a spear stroke to the heart, Joseph wrapped the body of Jesus in white linen and laid it in his own family tomb that had been dug into the rock and where no one had yet been buried. A large stone had then been rolled to close the tomb. Some women had arrived, among them Mary of Magdala and the other Mary, and they saw where Jesus had been buried. And now when the burial was finished, they had to realise what had happened and no one was prepared for this moment.

The longest night

We can join in the weeping of the Magdalene or the despondent grief of those two disciples who were returning home without any more motivation, and all the friends of Jesus who, on that Friday evening, entered the darkest night in all history. Till last moment, the disciples had refused to believe that Jesus could die before fulfilling his great promise to establish the Kingdom of God, here, in this story. The very instant Jesus delivered his spirit, that tiny group of disciples and friends lost every hope and entered into a grief that no one could put into words. Whatever they could write, would have been to their detriment and humiliation, for they could no longer think anything good. The four evangelists did not say a single word about this despairing night, probably being hopeless, with no plans, devoid of any enthusiasm.

Possibly, some may have wondered whether it still made sense to pursue those values they had heard Jesus preach and which they themselves had begun to announce. Was it still worth being good, loving and forgiving? The poor, the hungry, the imprisoned, the thirsty for justice who had heard the beatitudes had hoped that in the new kingdom all would regain dignity, and that misery would be banished forever, but now Jesus was dead forever and with his burial they had buried themselves too. It seems that Jesus, in the years of his public life, did not spent much time making long discourses on the meaning of grief. The four evangelists, in their passion narratives, bare and almost emotionless accounts, simply narrated his scourging, crowning with thorns, nailing to a cross and killing.

Jesus had simply said: 'Whoever wants to come after me, let him take up his cross and follow me' and he had never dwelled on lengthy reasoning to anaesthetise our pain. He simply suffered and posited this solidarity as a supreme act of love. How could he say that he loved us? We could not see the fire in his heart, but we could feel the scourges and see him mocked with a crown of thorns and a reed sceptre and also see the nails there, on that cross. When the evangelists experienced that the most manly man in all history had been crucified and with the resurrection even that cross had been signed by God, they had nothing more to say about human pain. If pain had meaning in Jesus of Nazareth, it also has meaning in us who are his very body.

Annex VIII - The Fulfilment, 

Jesus gives his life for us. In what way?

How many mothers have died to give birth to a child! How many have died in war to save their families back home! How many have made themselves a shield in front of a family member or a friend to prevent them from being killed! Maximilian Kolbe dies and gives his life for a fellow prisoner like himself and 'saves' him. But how does Jesus give his life for us? Jesus is simply condemned and killed by a court that did not understand him.

Jesus dies as any man condemned for any reason dies and is killed, on a cross, he dies as someone who crashes into the wreckage of a car, or someone who dies poisoned by a disease. Jesus does not die as a hero with more courage and strength than others. Jesus does not die brandishing his sword on the battlements, calling for attack or defence, and falling a martyr for his country.

Jesus does not die like Socrates, luminous and serene almost without considering his death. Nor does Jesus die like the fearful Stephen or other millions of martyrs who proved stronger than their enemies. Jesus could avoid death but no one knows this and he dies like those who have been forced to die. Jesus dies like every man. Throughout his life, he gives his life for us, teaching, healing, praying, just as we too are invited to give our lives for others at all times through the toil of work, through acts of justice and charity through pain and prayer for our neighbours. In this way we too can give our lives for others. Again, to answer how Jesus gives his life for us and saves us, I would add that we, with our humanity united with his Son Jesus, form the Son of God.

It is incomplete to say that Jesus with his Cross saves us, redeems us, heals us: it is more complete to say that Jesus, with his great cross united to our small crosses, saves the world; with his great love united to our small acts of love he loves the world and, again, with his great forgiveness united to our small acts of forgiveness, he forgives the world: He Redeemer and we co-redeemers with him [284].

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[284] - In his death, Jesus has made every man's suffering and death his own. By loving us, He makes us part of Himself, which is why Jesus and each of us are God made flesh, the Total Body. And because Jesus also loves the believers of other religions, He also knows how to welcome their love and pain, which He unites with His own, for the healing and salvation of the world. And again, because Jesus also loves atheists, He also knows how to welcome their love and pain, which He unites with His own for the salvation of the world.

8. The Resurrection

On the third day he rose again

The first chapter of this text gave the shocking news that a man had risen in Jerusalem. We began with that news, because without that premise it would have been difficult to talk about Jesus, his birth, his life, his message and his death. Now let us read what the evangelists have handed down to us about the event that changed human history.

In Jerusalem they say that a man is risen [285]

On the outskirts of Jerusalem, people had woken up early to pack their tents and various household goods onto carts and leave. The Passover feast lasted for a week, but especially those who lived far away, left already on the first day of the week, before dawn. Even from the city of Jerusalem, where many had been guests of relatives, people began to leave to join the caravans of relatives. In the meantime, the first wagons were on their way, which were to pass in front of that white hill, on the top of which could be seen the poles of those who had recently been crucified, thus confirming the threat of punishment for those who had been guilty of some serious crime.

Many, however, looking at those still soiled timbers, shook their heads, remembering the events that had occurred just three days before. Meanwhile the crosses shouted loudly, as a blatant warning to all. Two disciples of Jesus, after realising that by now even their dreams had been crucified on the scaffold's timbers, with their master, sad, defeated and disappointed prepared to return to their village, at least 12 km away from Jerusalem, from which they had been missing for almost three years, albeit with occasional returns. They had had an extraordinary experience, but it was over. They would still meet with the other disciples to see if they could somehow make those dreams come true, but now, without Jesus, everything had become difficult, if not impossible.

It must be added that while these two disciples were preparing to leave as it was still dark, Mary of Magdala who, even earlier, had gone alone to visit the tomb finding it empty, now returned to the tomb with Joan, Mary, Salome the mother of James, and others. They brought with them the aromas to finish embalming that body which had been buried in a hurry on Friday, as it was approaching the time of the Sabbath rest to which every Jew is faithful.

Arriving at the tomb, the women saw it open and two men in heavenly garments urged them not to search among the dead for the one who was alive, for Jesus had risen. They also told them to warn the disciples. Mark tells us that some, frightened and astonished, ran away from the tomb without saying anything to anyone. But the others, with Magdalene, went to warn the apostles, and told them what they had seen: their words, however, were considered to be the fruit of ravings and were not believed. The two disciples of Emmaus had just finished their preparations to leave when they heard the women announce that Jesus had risen, but they gave no heed to those words and set off.

Meanwhile Peter and John, while remaining sceptical, nevertheless ran to the tomb. John arrived there first, stopped at the entrance, from where he saw the cloths laid down and waited for Peter who, as soon as he entered, also found the cloths on the ground and the shroud wrapped in a separate place. John immediately believed, while Peter was not yet prepared. The two apostles returned home. Meanwhile Mary Magdalene, who could not live without her Jesus, stood there again outside the tomb weeping. Two angels in white robes asked her why she was weeping and she replied that someone had stolen her Lord and that she did not know where they had placed him. Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there. She did not realise that the man was Himself, but she heard Him asking her, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?" Believing him to be the keeper of the garden, she answered him, "Sir, if you have taken him away, tell me where you have placed him and I will go and fetch him." Then Jesus called to her, "Mary!" She turned and answered him in Hebrew: "Rabbuni!", which means "Master". Jesus then commanded her not to hold him back, but to go to his brothers and tell them: "I am ascending to my Father, and your Father, my God, and your God". Mary reported to the disciples what she had heard.

Meanwhile, Herod too had made all the preparations for departure. He could not wait to leave Jerusalem. During the feast, there were always tensions in that city and they had not been lacking that year either. Now the people were clearing the large camp of tents that had formed all around the walls from the top of the hill of Zion to the entire valley of the Cedron and the Mount of Olives. Even the whole retinue of Herod's military was on his way out, to solemnly escort the monarch on his white horse.

Passing by the hill of the crucified, the king would probably have rejoiced that Jesus, too, had been put out of the way, as he himself had done with John the Baptist. Those who were most troublesome in those years had ended up, one under the axe and the other on the cross. But as Herod went out, he was disturbed by a news that was already circulating among his soldiers; "they say Jesus is not dead", someone had said that after death he had even risen. As the king passed the stipes stuck on that huge white rock skull, he turned to the right and did not want to look in that direction. He descended towards the valley and took the road in the direction of Bethany.

Annas, Caiaphas and most of the priests including the three hundred who were in charge of the incense offering and the three hundred who were to replace them in the same week spent one of the most beautiful Paschas after they had been taken up by Pilate on Jesus' case and had succeeded in eliminating him for good. But on the very morning of that first day of the week, a black cloud descended on the Sanhedrin, the worst news that could be spread among the enemies of Jesus: they say that the tomb is empty, others say that they have stolen the corpse of Jesus, still others say that in Jerusalem a man has risen.

On the evening of that same day, the two disciples, who had left Jerusalem early in the morning to return home, although happy to see their country again, continued to be gripped by endless sadness and disappointment.

On the way, as they were discussing what had just happened, Jesus himself joined them and continued walking with them. They, however, as if blinded, did not recognise him. Then Jesus wanted to know what they were talking about, and Cleophas was surprised that someone from Jerusalem did not know what had just happened. The pilgrim asked for more detailed information and they described what had happened to Jesus, a prophet powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. They then said that he had been condemned to death by their leaders.

They had hoped that he would be the one to deliver Israel, but by then three days had passed since those events and they had only heard that some women from their group, on their way to the tomb, had seen angels claiming that Jesus was alive. Then he rebuked them for being so unintelligent as not to understand and believe the testimonies of the prophets and began to explain what the prophets had written referring to him. Arriving at their village of Emmaus, the disciples invited the pilgrim to stay with them. Since it was now night, he accepted the invitation. While they were dining, he took bread, blessed it and shared it with them: at that moment they recognised him, but he immediately disappeared from their sight. Then the one confided to the other how much his heart burned to hear him explain the Scriptures. After realising that they had indeed met Jesus, they without delay set out again on their journey back to Jerusalem, to communicate what had happened to the other disciples, who confirmed that, in the meantime, Jesus had also appeared to Peter: after having rushed with John to the tomb and having also seen that empty tomb, he had struggled to believe until he too had met the Lord.

Now, as the two disciples who had returned from Emmaus recounted their experience to the others, Jesus himself appeared to them and said: 'Peace be with you'. Frightened, the men thought they were seeing a ghost, but He showed them His hands and feet so that they could see that He was flesh and blood, and as they continued to doubt, He asked for some fish which He ate in front of them, to show the concreteness of His body.

On the wave of those emotions, which did not even let them sleep at night, one evening some of the disciples decided to go fishing, if only to take their minds off on the lake. Peter made the decision first, followed by Thomas, who came after Jesus had shown himself to the disciples, then Nathanael, the one at Cana, James and John and two others. They got into the boat and cast their nets all night, catching nothing: their minds were far from those nets and  that lake. Early in the morning, they returned to the shore, and a man asked them if they had anything to eat, but they said they had nothing: the man was Jesus, but they did not recognise Him.

But when He commanded them to cast their nets on the right side of the boat, and they did so, they caught so many fish that they could not pull them up. Then John recognised the Lord Jesus first and told Peter, who went to meet him, while the others dragged the full nets ashore. Then they saw fish on burning embers, and bread. Jesus invited them to bring some freshly caught fish to eat, and no one dared ask him, "Who are you?" They sensed, however, that it was Him.

As he broke bread for them and distributed it with the fish, then they could sense that it was Jesus, but instead of rejoicing they were seized with great fear. This was the third time that the Lord Jesus showed Himself to the disciples after the resurrection, but their eyes were still struggling to recognise Him and to believe that He had risen. They had seen the empty tomb, spoken with Him, touched His wounds, and even sat down with Him to eat, yet they still could not believe that what they were seeing and hearing could be true. Meanwhile they were asking themselves a thousand questions to explain the "impossible" experience they were having.

Standing in front of the empty tomb, they thought about the theft of the corpse, or some other mysterious deception. Although the guards, posted to guard the tomb by the Jewish authorities, had fled, it was later said that they had been paid to testify that, while they were sleeping, the disciples had stolen Jesus' corpse. But how to turn over the stone and steal the body without waking anyone? Besides, if they were asleep, how could they say that the disciples had gone to steal that body? If they were awake instead, why would they not have prevented the theft?

The disciples had seen Jesus again, but it could have been a ghost. Some thought that, after so much pain, they had lost their mental equilibrium and were no longer able to understand and reason. When Jesus had spoken of resurrection, they had thought he was referring to the resurrection of the dead, that of the last day. And now their minds could not yet realise that Jesus had died, when they immediately had come upon the experience of the resurrection, a reality so unique that they could not believe it to be true.

Through the centuries, the disciples' doubt became a precious testimony for us: more than the empty tomb or an apparition, the disciples' unbelief, even after seeing him, even today helps us to profess our faith. The women make known what they have seen, but are not believed. Two disciples run to the tomb, but only one believes what he sees. After the disciples of Emmaus narrate their extraordinary experience, Mark the evangelist writes that the other disciples did not believe them. Thomas does not even believe when they all tell him that they have seen the Lord. It seems that the disciples, in no way expecting that resurrection, refused to even believe that the Jesus they saw was the same one as before, the one they had lived with. When they met him on the shore of Tiberias, they seemed even afraid, indeed they were afraid to ask him who he was, even though they realised that it could only be him, Jesus.

Magdalene had mistaken him for the gardener. The disciples of Emmaus had believed him to be a pilgrim like themselves, and when they saw him on the shore of the lake, engaged on preparing a breakfast for them, the others mistook him for a fisherman. Evidently, he had appeared to them with a different physiognomy and a different voice from the one they were used to, perhaps to gradually prepare them to realise that the resurrection was a real fact that was affecting their lives in a totally unexpected way.

By now, the disciples had to rethink everything they had experienced with a new mindset of faith. And when Jesus entered the house with closed doors, but with a body that could be touched, someone began to believe, including Thomas who had peremptorily refused to do so thinking it was a farce, and now there he was, kneeling before his Lord and his God. The resurrected Jesus was not even to be considered a reanimated body come back to life like Lazarus or the centurion's little girl or the son of the widow of Naim, who only regained all the human dimension they previously had and who, some time later, would die again. He had not returned to our history, but had continued in a new dimension, the eschatological one as a living being, beyond history, in the ultimate realities, which we also hope to reach at the end of time.

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[285] - Mt. 28:1-20; Mk. 16:1-20; Lk. 24:1-53; Jn. 20:1- 30; 21:1-25.

Peter, James, John

While the disciples were experiencing the resurrection of Jesus, they found themselves reunited. Peter, James and John then took the floor to recount a day they had experienced with the Lord not long before. Now they were free to tell what they had experienced on Tabor. They had not yet said anything to the others because Jesus himself had strictly forbidden it, ordering them not to say anything to anyone until the Son of Man would have risen from the dead. Although the three poor apostles had never understood what "rising from the dead" could mean and when they would be released from that secret, nevertheless they respected the silence Jesus had asked for: now having lived through his resurrection, they knew they could reveal the extraordinary moment they had experienced on the mountain.

The Lord Jesus had called them that day, as he had done on other occasions, to go along with them to a high mountain. And he was transfigured before them: his face shone like the sun and his garments became as white as the light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with him. Taking the floor, Peter said to Jesus: "Lord, it is good for us to be here! If you want, I will make three huts here, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah". He was still speaking, when a bright cloud covered them with its shadow. And behold, a voice from the cloud said: "This is my Son, the Beloved: in him I have set my pleasure. Listen to him.

On hearing this, the disciples fell with their faces to the ground, seized with great fear. But Jesus drew near, touched them and said: 'Rise up and do not be afraid'. As they raised their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus alone. As they came down from the mountain, Jesus commanded them, "Speak to no one of this vision until the Son of Man is risen from the dead. And they kept that silence. Then Jesus told them again that He, the Son of Man, would have to suffer much at the hands of those who had already done away with John the Baptist. It was at all normal for Jesus to prepare at least some of the apostles to first understand his scandalous death and later also his resurrection.

The return from Emmaus

In the meantime, the two disciples of Emmaus had finished telling all they could remember of what Jesus himself had talked just a few hours before, when they had felt their hearts warmed by listening to the Master. Jesus, in fact, had taken up with them the Scriptures and everything that in them referred to Him.

Jesus is risen, is truly risen

The Resurrection had helped his disciples to understand that the Jesus, crucified a few days before, had not been just a man as the other were. But how did they come to that act of faith in the Resurrection itself? The empty tomb had not been enough to bring those disciples, clever and quite shrewd just as they were, to talk of resurrection. Neither Magdalene nor Peter saw in the empty tomb a sign of a reality they could not imagine at all, while they rather reasonably thought that someone had stolen the corpse. But, after the death of their master, the disciples, and not they only, met him alive. So, they had therefore an extraordinary experience. All the original community, mostly in despair, had such an experience: the fundamental fact is that it had not been a simple apparition, but indeed a community experience, supported by extraordinary signs and a special light offered by the Holy Spirit.

The disciples' doubts

Faced with the reality of Jesus, his resurrection is the last actual answer suitable to nourish our faith. The empty tomb is the first surprise, the apparitions to different people and under different conditions are the evidence of the totally unprecedented reality the disciples are confronted with. The accounts of a totally unexpected event clearly tell us that the apostles could not have created it. The fact, then, that they all died as martyrs makes us think that if they had invented the resurrection story, they would have lost their lives only for a fairy tale well told by themselves or at least by the community they knew well.

The difficulty for the disciples to believe in the risen Jesus tells us that they did not expect it at all, to the point that they could not even believe in the apparitions they had experienced. After seeing the empty tomb and the folded bandages, Peter returns home, but still not believing in the resurrection. Matthew reports that the disciples of Emmaus, after coming back from their extraordinary experience with the Saviour and while telling others about their encounter with Jesus, still harboured doubts in their hearts and some could not believe, to the point of deserving Jesus' rebuke for such a delay in faith. Also, after hearing the testimony of the other apostles who told him of their encounter with the Lord, Thomas could not believe.

Some women, who had had apparitions of angels and Jesus himself had run before the others to announce to the apostles what they had seen and heard, but had not been believed. Other women, even after a vision, were only frightened and closed themselves in silence. The very fact that he was mistaken for a gardener by Mary Magdalene, or for a wayfarer by the disciples of Emmaus, or for a fisherman by some of the disciples, is for us the evidence that he was not immediately recognised in the same likeness and tone of voice, and speaks in favour of the resurrection of Jesus: indeed, had those apparitions been hallucinations or the result of pain beyond measure, the disciples would have imagined Jesus in the same likeness and tone of voice they had known him every day.

Jesus, the living

With Jesus' resurrection, the disciples became Believers. The disciples had cherished the hope that Jesus would be the liberator of Israel, but this dream of theirs had collapsed. Would they in their small community have to be content with the tomb of their master and a dead body to remind them of his message, and nothing more? Would the women have to be content with embalming him, to keep him looking as similar as possible to how he was? "If Jesus had not risen from the dead, Christianity would only consist of a group of Jesus' friends who would keep alive the memory of his teaching and reproduce his paradigm, as best as they could.

If this were the case, Jesus, though one of the great religious geniuses of humanity, would not be the 'Lord', and Christianity, while being a noble morality, would not be the Good News (the Gospel) for all people today' [286]. Christians do not worship an embalmed body, or the message of a teacher, but believe that Jesus is alive, today, because the Father has resurrected him. The disciples believe because they have had the experience of encountering him alive. Paul states that "he has made himself visible" [287]. Jesus himself says to the women: "Why do you seek among the dead the one who is alive?". If there had not been the experience of Jesus alive, Christianity would have died as it remained dead in those three days after Jesus' own burial.

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[286] - J. Dupuis, Introduzione alla Cristologia, Milan, Piemme, 1993.

[287] - Cor. 15, 5-7.

Empty tomb and apparitions

The Gospels speak of the resurrection by presenting the empty tomb, Jesus’ appearances and describe the reactions of those who had this extraordinary experience: how they move, what they did say or heard. People could not say that the empty tomb was proof of the resurrection (in fact, the first people who saw the empty tomb thought of a possible theft). But it would have been equally difficult to speak of the resurrection of Jesus if the tomb had not been empty. Even the apparitions alone were not be enough to truthfully state that Jesus had risen. But it would have been difficult to speak of the resurrection if the disciples had not come across such an unequivocal reality that could give them the strength to believe that for a few hours or a few days Jesus had truly risen.

The signs following the resurrection (empty tomb, apparitions, words heard, words spoken by the disciples themselves) are not necessary to the faith and are of little use to us who have two thousand years of Church history and can count on the testimony of two and a half million martyrs, but the disciples, although they lived with Jesus, did not have this long testimony that we have today. Today we can do without many signs, but for the disciples and for that early community, those signs were indeed necessary. While the empty tomb may be considered irrelevant to us today, it was not so for that early community.

Resurrection means that Jesus is alive beyond our history of space, time, measures, weights, colours, smells, tastes. Jesus resurrects no longer in this history but in 'the history of God'. It is not easy to vivisect all the signs of the resurrection, but it is certain that God offered enough of them for that community to accept the truth that Jesus was now alive forever with the Father and that Jesus was putting into practice his promise in which he had said that he would go to his Father and then (in his own time) return to take us and bring us with him.

The resurrection also shows our way, as Paul explained: if we die with Christ, we shall also  rise with Him. Some would not like to use the term "historical fact" to speak of the resurrection, for it is an event that goes beyond history. It has been said that Jesus was not revived like Lazarus or other dead revived by Jesus himself, as these returned to their former historical life, whereas Jesus did not, so to speak, return, but continued in the meta-historical dimension (beyond history).

 When we speak of God, we imagine him and use words to describe him that are never adequate. We use, to speak of God, all the verbs and adjectives that describe a good man, but God is beyond all that. Similarly, when we think of the resurrected Jesus, we think of him as he was when he lived in Nazareth, but Jesus should not mind that with our thoughts we bring him back into our history, because he himself loved it to the point that he made himself historical for almost forty years.

Those who emphasise the historical aspect of the resurrection event think that, as the two disciples walk to Emmaus and others meet him risen at the lake experiencing his presence, they utter some words, hear new ones, change their speech, change their behaviour which becomes different from the usual, all this is historical in the most genuine sense of the term. So, the Jesus who lives beyond history, modifying history around him indirectly, causes his presence to become in some way 'historical' too. Even if we would like more signs, it must be enough for us that God, after Jesus' resurrection, certainly expressed Himself with such signs, unequivocal and comprehensible, so that the disciples had sufficient means to accept faith in Jesus' resurrection. 

Forty days after the resurrection: the last farewell

After the Resurrection and after his solemn promises: "Now I go and prepare a place for you too" and again "I remain with you every day, until the end of the world" and after his last command: "Now Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel (the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, of forgiveness and love), preach it to all and baptise them all in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit", Jesus visibly left the apostles and the Christian community, who no longer sought him out because they had now realised that they had never lost him, but had found him forever. All that was missing was the strength to come out into the open and defy danger, persecution and death, because they could now believe in the Resurrection.

9. Fifty days after the Death and Resurrection 

Revelation in the Time of Pentecost

A biblical scholar in front of a particularly difficult chapter advised his readers to have a good cup of coffee. I would venture to give the same advice in the face of this last chapter.

All that we have meditated on in these pages reports what the disciples thought and wrote in the period between the Resurrection and Pentecost, which we can call the Time of Pentecost [288]. After Jesus' death, both the Sanhedrin and the politicians realised that the group of his friends did not consist of revolutionary partisans and violent guerrillas and were therefore judged harmless. Instead, the explosive that in fact was incubating, hidden in the disciples, was about to change the history of the world, but no one was able to detect that danger. The disciples, however, certainly did not miss any opportunity to come together to pray and reflect with that portion of the Church that now knew itself to bear the most precious witness in history.

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[288] - A period of about twenty years, in which, after the Resurrection, the primitive community, guided by the Holy Spirit, reached a reasonable synthesis on the Mystery of Jesus who died, rose again, Saviour, true man and true God.

Pentecost

The wheat fields were ready for harvesting and harvest began in the sunnier fields, which had ripened the grain a few days earlier. There was always a need for labour at this time, and some of the disciples best suited for this labour were preparing to help in the fields to earn some money for their small community, which was now preparing with less fear to go out again, for fishing or for some seasonal labour.

As the day of Pentecost was approaching, they were all together in the same place. Suddenly there came a roar from heaven, almost like a rushing wind, filling the whole house where they stood. There appeared to them tongues like tongues of fire that parted and rested upon each one of them, and they were all "filled with the Holy Spirit. It was certainly a day of great revelations, for from that moment the disciples were radically transformed. When they then went out to meet the Jews, at least the observant ones, they began to speak of the great works of God in a new language and the Holy Spirit gave them the gift of making themselves understood by people from the various provinces of Asia, so different in language and culture [289].

All were astonished and perplexed and asked one another, "What does this mean?" Others mocked them and said, "They got drunk on sweet wine". Then Peter explained that this extraordinary time had been foretold by the prophets and went on to proclaim the death and resurrection of Jesus: "Let all the house of Israel therefore know with certainty that God has made that Jesus whom you crucified [290] Lord and Christ", then he invited everyone to conversion and to be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins and to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

And that day about three thousand people accepted Peter's preaching and were baptised. By then, a community had been born and was structuring itself to reach all the ends of the earth. Stephen was the first target. He had presented himself in the public square with such a courage, I would say with such a brazenness as to shout in the faces of his listeners the bitterest truths, such as the guilt of having killed an innocent man by nailing him to a cross, and moreover testifying almost arrogantly that he saw the heavens open and he himself the Son, Jesus Christ, 'coming on the clouds of Heaven'.

Some thought the Last Judgement was beginning, but it was only the Judgement for Stephen, who fell under a shower of stones, surrendering his spirit to his Lord. When the disciples heard Stephen say that he saw the Son Jesus Christ coming on the clouds of heaven, they remembered that "Son of Man" told by the Prophet Daniel. Other disciples allowed themselves to be scourged and laughed in the face of the persecutors, rejoicing and saying that by now the enemies had no more strength to stop this army of rebellious angels who, in the face of all injustice, declared that the New Kingdom of righteousness was about to be implanted and yet that no authority could now stop their preaching.

The forty days plus ten, as has already been mentioned, signify a fullness that could also be considered a more prolonged time: we could simply call it the Time of Pentecost, i.e. all the time needed by the disciples and the first community to interiorize the great events of the death, resurrection and in particular the new faith in Jesus, man and God.

In a perhaps less visible way, the time of Pentecost continues to our days and will extend to the last, accompanying the Church and all humanity, which must reach the fullness of time in Jesus Christ.

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[289] - They were "Parthians, Medes, Elamites, inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene, Romans residing here, Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs" (Acts 2, 9-11).

[290] - Acts 2,36.

The new people on the way: the Church

A small group had received directly from Jesus the task of going into all over the world to bring the good news of the Gospel. In that first community, formed in the first twenty years or so after the resurrection of Jesus, there were the eleven remaining apostles and Matthias, who had replaced Judas; the disciples who, from some testimonies, seem to have been very active in serving the small itinerant community; and, finally, the wealthier ones, who also helped with their family possessions. Among them, some names are also mentioned in the Gospels: Mary Magdalene, Joan wife of Cusa, Herod's steward, Susanna, Mary wife of the disciple Cleophas, Salome, mother of James and John, and others, whose names are not mentioned.

Then there were the disciples: Cleophas, his son Joseph who was drawn with Matthias and had to give up the place of apostle to the latter, and many others. At one point it seems that there were 72 disciples who were particularly committed to the ministry of the word. Then there were the first Jews converted to Jesus Christ (3,000 Jews were baptised on Pentecost alone), the first pagans who became Christians, who were also welcomed into the new people of God, at least seven deacons for the ministry of charity whose names we have, and Paul of Tarsus, one of the most significant Christians of the early Church who was later recognised by the name of Apostle.

The last Apostle: St Paul

It is he who, after persecuting Jesus and Christianity, the very first Christian of whom we have testimony, kneels before Jesus and recognises him as divine. He is the one who sees in the man Jesus the image of a servant who has become in all aspects similar to each one of us, but who under that human guise hides his equality with God himself, of whom he has divested himself to dwell among us.

Some have advanced the hypothesis that the appellation for Paul may be co-founder of Christianity. Paul would be horrified if he heard this said of himself, for he bends his knees along with every living thing that exists in heaven, on earth and even under the earth and proclaims that Jesus Christ is Lord in the glory of God the Father. In his first encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus, he receives a great revelation: to persecute any man, whatever he may be, is to persecute Jesus himself, because each one of us is the body of Christ.

Like the ancient prophets, Paul was given a mission, that of preaching the Gospel, and like the first apostles, Paul also undertook apostolic journeys to proclaim that same Gospel first to the Jews and then to the Gentiles. He founded Christian communities in Galatia, Corinth, Rome and many provinces of the Roman Empire. After proclaiming Jesus Christ, he followed those communities with letters to nourish their faith. Paul preaches and writes that Jesus is Saviour. God had saved the people of Israel through Moses and now he has saved us all through Jesus Christ. In what way? By dying as we do, by rising again as God. And we, being His body, will be saved by rising with Him.

The first Church kneels before Jesus

To this small community of apostles, disciples and God's people will be revealed the true identity of Jesus, Son of Man and Son of God.

You will give Him the name Jesus

Each name of Jesus says something about Him and together they show the development of faith in the early Christian community. The first and most common name appearing in the story of the Messiah is Jesus, widely used in Palestine, which can be translated as: 'the one who is rescued by Adonai' or 'salvation of the Lord' or 'help of the Lord'. This is also the name of Joshua, who succeeded Moses to bring God's people to the promised land, and with this name we are connected to the New Moses. Then the name of Christ is added to this name: the Anointed One, the Messiah, the Son of God and, in liturgical moments, Lord.

At Pentecost, Peter speaks to the multitude: "Let all Israel know, therefore, with certainty, that this Jesus you crucified has been constituted by God himself as Lord and Christ [291] . Therefore the name Jesus Christ Our Lord has become common, so in this name there is the historical Jesus who lived in Palestine and the Christ Messiah, the Glorified, Lord and Son of God. These titles help the community to think more and more clearly that Jesus is the true Messiah, no longer the one who was to overcome the enemies of Israel, but the forces of sin, evil and death. Jesus was then often given the name Son of David, which became synonymous with Messiah, since he was expected to be a descendant of David [292].

Jesus is also designated as the Servant of God in relation to the Suffering Servant of Isaiah. And, still of great importance, and perhaps the most important, is the name Prophet, since he preaches and heals like the Old Testament prophets. Those who expected a prophet of the end times recognised this mission in Jesus. People said that Jesus could be John the Baptist, Elijah or one of the prophets [293]. Jesus is also regarded as a prophet of the end times, since he announces and fulfils them. If the prophecy of Jesus is in some ways similar to the prophecy of the Old Testament, it is nevertheless surpassed, in that it arrives at the forgiveness of sins and the beginning of the realisation of the Kingdom.

Then there are two names in particular that summarise very well who Jesus Christ is: Son of Man and Son of God. The first name emphasises that Jesus, as the Son of man, is also man and the Christ (the anointed one, the Messiah), as the Son of God, is also God. In fact, the first title 'Son of Man' already carries a transcendental content, referred to by Daniel's prophecy that consecrates him already in the 'high places'. It is in fact the name Jesus himself gives himself. He is never called by this name by others, whereas he appears at least 80 times in the Gospels: in the Old Testament book of Daniel we find the passage Jesus himself refers to several times. Jesus is also called Master, Prophet, Son of God, as I said just above, but the most significant title is precisely Son of Man. The prophecy speaks of a stone which, rolling down from the top of the mountain, will crash against a great statue made of gold, silver, bronze and iron mixed with clay. They are the sign of the four kingdoms that will precede the arrival of the Messiah, which will be destroyed [294], after which that stone will become a mountain that will occupy the whole earth, the sign of a new Kingdom "that will never be destroyed", the Messianic Kingdom. That small stone recalls the portion of yeast that swells the dough or the mustard seed that becomes a great tree, or the small pearl that has great value or again the same child who becomes a man: all these signs are used by Jesus to speak of that new Kingdom.

In Daniel's prophecy, a being resembling a Son of Man appears on the clouds of heaven who is given 'dominion, honour and kingdom. His dominion is eternal and will never be destroyed' [295]. Mark's Gospel echoes this text: "You will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming with the clouds of heaven" [296]. The Son of Man also appears with the divine power to forgive sins [297] and is also presented with the apocalyptic tones of the one who will rise on the third day [298]. Jesus, while having a reference to the end times, also refers the name Son of Man to the human dimension of his humiliation up to the cross: "The Son of Man must suffer much" [299] and again: "The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many" [300]. The name Son of God, on the other hand, is very common among the heroes and gods of Greece. In Israel, 'Son of God' is the people of Israel [301] themselves. Children of God are also called angels [302]. The righteous [303] is also called by this name and, finally, Son of God is called the Messiah [304] himself. Regarding these two names, Libanius argues that 'Son of Man' and 'Son of God' render the truth of Jesus [305].

All the names and titles referred to Jesus by himself or given by others ultimately tell us that the man Jesus is the Christ, the son of God the Father and the one who has told us who God is definitively. No one will have to add anything to the plan of salvation that the Father has given us in Jesus Christ. It will be the Holy Spirit who will remind the disciples, time after time, of what Jesus taught  [306]. The earthly life of Jesus, which ended on the cross, has received God’s final approval in the resurrection, and Jesus himself has become the definitive way, the truth and the life for us. Through him we participate in the fullness of humanity, in integral humanism. What he has fully realised is what exists in us in embryonic form and tends towards him. That is why he is the beginning, the end, the Alpha and the Omega.

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[291] - Acts 2, 36

[292] - 2 Sam. 7, 12-16.

[293] - Mt. 16, 14.

[294] - The Neo-Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Greek and Roman kingdoms.

[295] - Dn.7,13-14.

[296] - Mk. 14, 62.

[297] - Mk. 2, 10 ff.

[298] - Mt 20, 19.

[299] - Mk 8, 31.

[300] - Mt 20,28.

[301] - Ex. 4, 22; Hos. 11,1; Jer. 3,4; Is. 43, 6 ff.

[302] - Ps. 89, 6-7.

[303] - Sir. 4,10; Sir 2,13; 16,18.

[304] - In order to approach the self-consciousness Jesus could have had of himself, Romano Penna questions both the cultural environment of the time and the historical moment of Jesus of Nazareth and concludes "we can say that it is entirely legitimate to consider that Jesus thought of himself in terms of sonship towards God and of such a sonship that in practice is devoid of parallels of the same kind and therefore unique in its kind" (R. Penna, op. cit., p. 153).

[305] - Some of the main names of Jesus found in the New Testament texts: Word of life, the Word (the Word), Life, Emmanuel, God with us, Saviour, Redeemer, Saviour of the world, Rabbi, Rabbuni, King, King of kings, Holy One, Holy One of God, Author of our life, He who is to come, the Deliverer, the Nazarene, son of Joseph, Word who came to us in the flesh, Witness of faith, Firstborn among the dead, Beloved, Firstborn among the dead, He who loves us, Prince of the kings of the earth, The One who is, who was, and who is to come, the Living One, the Risen One, the Holy One, the True One, Lion of the tribe of Judah, Root of David, Lord of lords, Glory of God, the Sanctifier, High Priest, Judge of the living and the dead, Head of the Church, Image of the invisible God, Mediator of the new and eternal Covenant, Good Shepherd, etc.

[306] - Jn 14,26.

Jesus, our Saviour

Jesus had been expected as a deliverer of Israel, a saviour. After his death and resurrection, the early Christian community had no doubt that the awaited saviour was indeed Jesus Christ. Since time immemorial, mankind has posed the problem of salvation and sought it in the most unthinkable and distant places. Even today, salvation is sought elsewhere, amidst 'worldly' proposals and solutions. Here are some of them: on the one hand, there are those who would like salvation, but have already given up seeking it, as they are suffocated by so many fears and the greatest of all, the fear of death. These are individuals who have lost joy and have become pessimists by profession, but there are also those who believe they do not need salvation at all, as they are convinced that human beings are satisfied as they are, that they do not need to change anything either in themselves or in society.

Then there are those who have found a form of salvation in the 'forbidden to forbid', eliminating the idea of sin that serves no purpose and barely recognising that there may be guilt complexes from which it is necessary to free oneself. There are those who propose that eliminating the false problems of divorce, abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality as soon as possible, and if there are those who are distressed at the thought of death, simply convince them that it is a false problem and must be forgotten as soon as possible. The list to recognise and warn us against false salvation, extrapolated particularly from the Enlightenment, could continue ad infinitum: already from this negative vision we glimpse, albeit from afar, that what Christian salvation can become, the great truly new event of all history [307].

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[307] - Cf. G. Biffi, Gesù di Nazareth, centro del cosmo e della storia, Turin, Elledici, 2009.

Our salvation is Jesus Christ

Salvation is not something to be relegated to heaven, to the end of time, but a patient work of restoration to be done on this earth, in this history. Salvation is therefore to engage all the forces of earth and heaven to realise in us the human project – as willed by God himself – which, in its fullness, is called Jesus Christ.

Human maturity is to live as Jesus lived, to love as Jesus loved, to die as Jesus died, and thus to receive the gift of the Resurrection as Jesus received it. With the help of the Holy Spirit we proclaim the Creed, which states that Jesus, the Son of God, descended from heaven for us men and for our salvation. He certainly he was not the saviour that some Jews expected as Messiah, that is another King David so much more powerful, that he would conquer the whole world and establish a new kingdom of peace (although probably not many had this conception). In this, Jesus certainly disappointed them. Jesus became king, but with a crown of thorns, a reed sceptre and the cross as his throne.

We believe that God is Love and the purpose for which he created us is that we too can love. Jesus' salvation is therefore this teaching, along with all the gifts we need to make us capable of loving as He has loved us. And because we have always been so incapable of realising this plan, over the millennia, for our salvation, God has sent saints and prophets to manifest His plan, His will, to us, but the work has been arduous: as was to be expected with such fragile creatures as the patriarchs and prophets, it could not be fully realised. At best they had succeeded in proposing to love their neighbour, the members of their own family and clan.

But how to go further? To propose to love those who do not love me or hate me or persecute me, to love an enemy... How could one demand that? To love an enemy is inhuman, so only if we receive some 'divine' in us can we perform such an act. For so many centuries, not even God proposed it, knowing that the time was not ripe. This required one more intervention: that of the Incarnation. In fact, the saints and prophets sent on a mission among we were actually imbued with such fragility that they could not guide us with sufficiently divine authority.

One question is still pressing: "How does Jesus save us? How do the life, death and resurrection of Jesus bring us salvation?". Latin theology has generally responded with the image of 'debt satisfaction': we had sinned and Jesus would pay the debt in our place. This image, however, proves inadequate when subjected to conceptual analysis. What kind of father would God be to demand this kind of bloody satisfaction from his innocent son?

The answer must be found in realising that it is not so much a matter of 'vicarious satisfaction' - a term dear to Latin theology - as of an arcane 'solidarity between Christ and us', whereby what has been done by Him is also ours and benefits us. The solution can only lie in the recognition of a very close bond between Christ and humanity that makes Jesus and all men a single living organism. This native and indestructible solidarity finds its source in the design of God who from eternity conceived and willed Christ as the beginning and the end of all existing human beings.

Biffi goes on to emphasise that sin, the laziness to do good does not prevent God from realising His project because 'the Son of God does not dissociate Himself from His brethren who have become guilty but, remaining the healthy head of a sick organism, becomes for humanity the source of healing and new life' [308]. Indeed, Augustine states: 'Jesus Christ, who is equal to the Father in the form of God and similar to us in the form of a servant, transforms us into the likeness of God.

Having become the son of man, He, the only son of God, makes the many sons of men sons of God' [309]. Today too we can declare with Paul: "for us, though he was rich, he became poor, that we might become rich through his poverty" [310]. And make our own the faith of John: "We are children of God, but what we shall be has not yet been revealed. But we know that when he is revealed, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is" [311].

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[308] - G. Biffi, op. cit. p. 128.

[309] - Augustine, Disc. 194, 34.

[310] - Cf. 2 Cor. 8, 9.

[311] - 1 Jn. 3, 2.

Jesus saves us from death and sin

In its historical journey, humanity, tending towards such a divine plan but still deficient and  lazy in doing good, needs 'salvation' It walks through labour pains, to give birth to the new man - no longer deficient, but saved, that is, made fully man - and Jesus, the Son of God, being part of this humanity, makes it human, that is, saved. By his resurrection, Jesus Christ, the culmination of this humanity, its very head, enables humanity to rise with him. For Jesus said: 'I am going to prepare a place for you, then I will come back and take you with me'. And so, the hope of resurrection will dwell in human history forever.

But how does Jesus save us? By his actions, his words and his being. All of his life, all of his deeds, all of his words are redemptive, that is, they heal the wounds caused by sin, they grow in intensity all along the path of his life up to his passion, death and resurrection, up to the culmination that places him 'at the right hand of the Father'.

How is the life of Jesus salvific? A first answer comes to us from the Greek fathers and emphasises the fact of the incarnation: if our primordial image and likeness with God has, so to speak, decayed, fallen ill, well in Jesus it restores its original beauty, the initial health that we do not contemplate at the beginning of our history, but in God's original design in conceiving man. By remaining the healthy head of a sick body, Jesus becomes the source of healing and new life for all humanity. Through prayer, the sacraments, and the radical love proposed in the Gospel, we become more and more like Him who, as a totally healthy man, heals and saves us.

Towards the identity of Jesus

The disciples and the community look back on all that they have seen and heard in those three years of grace with the Lord Jesus, culminating in his death and then resurrection. The early Church now believes that Jesus, who died, is risen and is now Alive (He, the Creator of life, could not remain a prisoner of death): Jesus is now really, truly, bodily, alive. He is that same Jesus of Nazareth.

He is not only alive in his message, in his example, in the poor, in the community of believers, which are all immanences of Christ, true and indispensable for the life of the Church, but which come after the primordial truth of Jesus Christ corporally alive in his personal identity. The Acts record: "They had only with him some matters pertaining to their particular religion and concerning a certain Jesus, who had died, whom Paul claimed was still alive” [312]. By now the disciples had clearly understood - and the Scriptures had confirmed it - that Jesus was the Messiah, not the one they had exactly waited for in their dreams, but a Messiah who surpassed the picture they had made of him. The Messiah had been expected as a saviour (perhaps a religious political saviour), but then this salvation had gone far beyond their expectations.

They had then accepted in faith the resurrection and the fact that Jesus was alive, and now the last decisive step remained to be taken, to recognise the divinity in the man Jesus Christ. But, for Jews faithful to the solid monotheism of the Eternal Israel and almost fanatical defenders of it, the act of recognising the divinity of Jesus and kneeling before a man still had a long way to go [313].

His holiness, his freedom, his sinlessness and a whole series of judgments and behaviour began to shed new light on the identity of Jesus. The Son, divine in condition, by becoming man continued, in fact, to exist as God, but not claiming to present himself among us as a 'God on earth': on the contrary, he disvested himself of all the divine prerogatives he had and annihilated himself, so to speak, presenting himself among us as human, even assuming the condition of a slave in full solidarity with all men, and finally humbled himself to the point of accepting death and even a death on a cross [314].

In the years when Jesus Christ lived among us, no one could have thought that He was not just a man. In life, Jesus had never made it clear who He really was. How could He have spoken of His divinity while the disciples had not yet experienced His resurrection? It is true that the resurrection alone does not claim to establish Jesus' divinity, but without it would not even be conceivable. To better embrace this mystery, let us contemplate for a moment God creating man. In this act there is an extraordinary project: this child, this creature is destined to incarnate God on earth.

Man will be just that: an incarnate God; this is God's dream: by becoming incarnate, He will be able to realise a dialogue, a unique communion of love with man. God accompanies the long journey of human history - from the time when man, still very much like the animal reality from which he had just detached himself with a qualitative leap that constituted him as man, to the fullness of time. God will accompany this 'human' to love more and more, to overcome the laziness to do good, which we call sin, and to become more and more human, that is, to realise God's project until, in the fullness of time, in a family preserved from sin, a fully human child is born.

In Nazareth, God's plan reaches its culmination. In Jesus’s entire historical existence, in his death and resurrection there is the fullness of the human being, that is, God incarnate, that is, God's initial plan. In Jesus Christ we have the Direction, the Road on which to walk. Now we know how we are to live.

And all the truth that man seeks, he now finds in Jesus, and in him is the fullness of human life. The perfect man therefore is called Jesus Christ, who however makes a qualitative leap from our condition. "We will strive for this fullness, which, however, we will not attain on this earth, but only in the new heavens and new earth, whereas Jesus has already realised it here, in our history"  [315].

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[312] - Acts 25,19.

[313]-  A fact from this period tells us of the solidity of the monotheism of this people. Josephus Flavius, in Guerra giudaica, reports that Pilate had introduced banners with the emperor's bust in Jerusalem, which caused a large crowd of Jews to react, who reached Pilate's residence in Caesarea and protested for five days against this act, which they considered gravely blasphemous. Finally, Pilate summoned them all to the stadium and threatened them with death if they did not desist from the demonstration, but they declared that they were ready rather to die, while they continued to demand absolute respect for their monotheism. Faced with that peaceful, courageous and consistent behaviour, Pilate was impressed and judged it reasonable to withdraw the banners.

[314] - Cf. Phil. 2,6-8.

[315] - Cf. Libanius, op. cit., p. 34.

Jesus speaks with authority

His word is creative and effective, it is like that of the creating Father. The Father says: "Let there be the sky, the moon, the sun, the stars, the earth and the sea, the plants, the animals. And everything exists". In the same way, Jesus says: "Arise, walk, be healed, open your eyes, your ears, your mouth, be cleansed, be reborn" and everything happens. Jesus does not speak like other teachers. He speaks with authority and even simple people understand that there is a fire in Him around which they had not yet warmed themselves. Jesus is a person esteemed by Jews and Romans, by rich and poor alike. The admiration he arouses is the result of an authority that seems reasonably linked to the coherence of life with which he accompanies his teaching.

The novelty of the Gospel does not consist in new laws - they are the ones of the Commandments that the people already had - but with Him they are lived out for the first time in fullness, for Jesus' new command is not to love God and neighbour (a prescription already known), but to love as He Himself has loved us [316]. Only Jesus' authority could have gone so far. When, after attending celebrations in his synagogue for so many years, he came to speak in public, he left his fellow villagers stunned, to the point that they commented: 'Where does this wisdom come from and how does he perform these wonders? Is he not the carpenter's son?" [317]. Both Mark, Luke and John note that the people wondered where all this came from. Jesus had enchanted them with his authority. And the same thing happened not only in the synagogue in Nazareth, but also in the synagogue of Capernaum. "The people marvelled at this doctrine, for Jesus taught as one who had authority and not as the teachers of the Law" [318].

It should be added that Jesus had already shown an extraordinary attitude even as a teenager and Luke had recorded that all who listened to him were stunned to see his understanding and amazed at his questions and answers [319] Then there were the miracles: Jesus commanded wind sea and storm, healed the sick and even went so far as to raise the dead. Yet he was not a Rabbi, nor a priest of the Temple, and he did not present himself with any particular religious or even political identity card, but he imposed himself with the attitude of a prophet, speaking in the name of God, performing miracles and especially healing even the most difficult and malignant cases, to the point that among the sick people it was said: "What word is this that with power and authority commands even the evil spirits and these leave the sick person set free?" [320] It caused great astonishment that Jesus also cured all diseases that affected the brain and were considered incurable. Admiration went so far as to arouse awe and almost fear [321].

His fame spread from all over and reached Syria, Tyre, Sidon [322] and many concluded: 'We have never seen anything like this; today we have seen the unbelievable; nothing like this has ever happened before in Israel' [323]. Moreover, Jesus had used words that, had he thought he was just a man, he could never have uttered: 'It has been said to you (in the Law), but I say to you'; 'Whoever loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me' and, about divorce, he had gone far beyond Moses himself [324], but also about vengeance and hatred of enemies, Jesus had taken a much bolder step [325].

And while he affirms that he does not invalidate a single word of the Law, he has the courage to claim that he has come to complete it (by putting it into practice). And he goes so far as to say, "Who can accuse me of sin?" Whoever utters such a word is either mad or God. He asked his disciples to leave their homes, fields, nets, boats, and family affections [326].

The Kingdom of God is near, you must hurry, there is not even time to bury the dead, you must go because the time of harvest has come and there is much grain to harvest, but the labourers are few. Jesus pushes us, the world must be set on fire. It is useless to accumulate goods, to build new granaries and new silos to amass crops. To his own, Jesus addresses the invitation - which becomes a command - to leave everything, to give goods to the poor, to begin, if anything, to prepare a treasure in heaven. Jesus has the authority to forgive sins that only God can forgive, but not only that: he also has the authority to ask his own (us) to forgive them too.

He, Jesus, loves not only the good, but also the bad, just as the Father sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous and asks his own to love in that way too. Jesus loves enemies, but not only: he also asks his own to love enemies. Indeed, he makes it clear: if you only love those who love you, what are you doing out of the ordinary? And again, unlike his predecessors the prophets, Jesus does not present himself with visions or voices from above, but his words and actions stand by their own power, and he sets himself as the last resort. Jesus' words, his miracles, the speeches he delivered before his disciples with such authority would have helped the early community to embrace the mystery of the very divinity of Jesus Christ.

Every day Adonai had had to forgive his people Israel, now Jesus' disciples were seeing that their Lord had forgiven sins and enabled the whole of humanity to forgive. This Jesus, therefore, could not have been just a man, if only God can forgive sins. The disciples also realised that He had done everything right, without any mistake, and had asked: "Who can accuse me of sin?". Who among men on earth could have said such a strong word, and which evangelist would have had the courage to put such a word in a man's mouth? But then a Jesus who saves us from death and delivers us from sin cannot be just a man.

Jesus is sinless, he forgives and enables us too, to forgive. Jesus rises and enables us too, to rise. And by overwhelming his death, as the master of our body, he also overwhelmed our own death.

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[316] - Gv. 15, 12.

[317] - Mt. 13, 54-56.

[318] - Mc, 1, 22.

[319] - Lc. 2, 47.

[320] - Lc. 4, 36.

[321] - Cfr. Lc. 8, 37; Mc. 5, 42b; Mt. 9, 8; Mc. 4, 41.

[322] - Mt. 4, 24; Mc. 3, 7-8; Lc. 6, 17-18.

[323] - Mc. 2, 12; Lc. 5, 26; Mt. 9, 33 b.

[324] - Mt. 5, 27-37.

[325] - Mt. 5, 21-26; Mt. 5, 38-48.

[326] - Lc. 14, 33; 14, 26; 9, 59-62.

Jesus' words and actions that illuminate his identity

As I said above, Jesus hardly ever presented himself in the singular, with an identity that would show the divinity in him. He never said exactly who he was; in fact, the disciples would not have been able to understand: to make them understand his true identity, not only human but also divine, he offered them a whole series of behaviours and even single expressions, more than sufficient and adequate, they could read and interpret after his resurrection [327].

However, we cannot regard Jesus' identity as the result of a syllogism or a mathematical formula. He shows who he is without giving mathematical demonstrations.

The light of the Holy Spirit and human effort would offer the Christian community an adult faith in the Lord Jesus. He put himself even above family affections. This man could be put above all the most sacred family sentiments only if he is God. But, then, who is Jesus?

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[327] - The type of prayer, the link established between God's kingship and his person, the declarative use of the adverb "amen" and in general the authoritativeness of his speeches, the gash opened by the titles of Son of Man and Son of God, hint at a personal dimension of a depth that is at least unusual, if not unique (R. Penna, op. cit., p. 170).

Sinless man

Being sinless means for Jesus that he has surpassed us with a qualitative leap: Jesus is everything we are, except for sin. He is a man who lives without the dimension of sin, hence, without any laziness to do good: a frailty and laziness existing throughout our lives - as we could at least improve all our actions – but not existing in Jesus as it does in us. In Him, fatigue, tiredness, pain, express His human limitation (He cannot run at the speed of a cheetah, nor fly), His very character and temperament are evolving and can be changed by the environment, people and by Himself, but nothing affects His divine ethics. The dimension of being sinless throughout Jesus' human journey entails, as already said, a qualitative leap from us. So, Jesus is man, totally man, but not only man.

The holiness of Jesus is not comparable to a saint’s one, no it isn’t, because the saint may be without sin, at least a serious sin, but all his actions are perfectible so much so as he must live in a state of permanent conversion; it is different in Jesus, who does not need to perfect himself, or else any moral limitation would have prevented him from asking: 'Who can accuse me of sin?

The freedom offered by God to man so that he may become capable of doing good, in Jesus reached its totality, so that he only did good as God himself  [328]. Indeed, Jesus has always accomplished the good, indeed the best. Jesus' trust and union with God is such that it prevents him from committing sins [329]. His life would be surrendered for forgiveness, that is, for love, and the Father would commit to resurrect him and the entire humanity to which Jesus now belongs [330]. When I say that Jesus has surpassed us with a qualitative leap, I simply want to explain that, just as there is a qualitative leap between the stone and a flower, and between the last one and the animal, and again between the animal and a man, so there is a qualitative leap between our being a man and Jesus Christ. And, then, it becomes more and more clear that Jesus is not just a man. And we, who are part of his very humanity, after his resurrection are qualitatively different from what we were before Jesus Christ.

As we walk the path of Jesus' story, his life also becomes more and more fascinating and luminous for us, and enriched with an authority quite different from that of the scribes and Pharisees: he can ask us to follow him, and not even to wait for our father to die. Jesus has the courage to ask us to love Himself more than our father, mother, wife, children or brothers or any other person on earth.

Jesus can even encourage those who will follow Him, assuring them that the yoke will ultimately be "gentle" and "light" will be the burden He proposes to bear, but He does not hide the fact that, in order to follow Him, one will have to take upon one's shoulders a cross similar to the one carried by the condemned men who often parade on the scaffold: Jesus has the authority to ask for it, for He Himself will take it. At a certain point, Jesus tells a young Jew that if he wants to behave well according to justice and coherently with his conscience, he will have to follow the Law, that is, the Commandments, but shortly afterwards he recommends him: "But if you want to be perfect, come and follow me".

By what authority does Jesus claim to place himself on the same level as the Law, i.e. Adonai? To follow Jesus is it like following Adonai? Therefore, Jesus is not just a man. And who is Jesus, who performs such a surprising action as driving the sellers out from the Temple, them who in any case represented the sacredness of the Temple itself, which was ultimately the home and residence of Adonai himself? So, who is this Jesus?

John had claimed that he was the Word, the Word who was with God and was God himself [331]. Paul that Jesus is divine in nature [332] and placed him above the angels [333]. Jesus then claims to be on the same level as God. "No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son" [334]. Bit by bit, all these expressions shed light on Jesus' divine identity and prevent anyone from thinking of him only as a wise, great, holy entity, without recognising him also as God. A generic appreciation of Christ does not make sense. Either we reject him and despise him or we kneel before him.

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[328] - Could the Galilean prophet have refused to fulfil the divine plan to follow his own design and thus sin? Rather than relying on philosophical theories, let’s look at the facts and question Easter faith: in Jesus' constitution there is such an allergy to sin and vice that temptation can barely approach him, without ever managing to wound or touch him.

[329] - If, as an alternative to martyrdom, you are offered the possibility of trampling on the Eucharist, or performing some other blasphemous act, having received the grace of a solid faith, it will be almost impossible for you to succeed in performing that act. The allergy to evil (which you have received as grace) almost physically prevents you from doing so, even though you remain fully free. Millions of martyrs have confirmed this 'impossibility' of yielding in the face of torture and death when they were made strong in grace. The temptations that God allows to strengthen his sons and daughters are only meant to be overcome and have in themselves no relation to sin. The Gospels present two moments of temptation in Jesus' life, one in the desert and the other in Gethsemani.

[330] - In Jesus "there is no sin" (1 Jn. 3:5; 2 Cor. 5:21) "that we might become through Him the righteousness of God"; "He who knew no sin, God treated as sin". Jesus says: "Which of you can convince me of sin?" (Jn. 8:46). "He committed no sin" (1 Pet. 2:22); "He was tried in all things like unto us, except sin" (Heb. 4:15). Among the authors who have reflected on this theme, mention should be made of Forte, Pannenberg, Golwitzer and Galot.

[331] - Gal 1, 1.

[332] - Phil. 2, 6.

[333] - Heb. 1, 4.

[334] - Mt. 11, 27; Lc. 10, 22.

Beyond history: the greatest gift of Pentecost

Only after a special revelation was that small community of disciples and friends able to kneel before Jesus Christ to worship the God in him. To Peter who had confessed: 'You are the Christ, the Son of God', Jesus had added that he had not been led to that act of faith by reason, or reason, or intelligence, or long reflection, but by a revelation from the Father himself.

The resurrection had confirmed that Jesus was the Messiah, the one awaited for centuries, and had impressed the seal that Jesus was thist Son of Man of Daniel's prophecy who would reach the Final Time and be placed, Himself, for the Final Judgment, on the Last Day. How could a Jew kneel before a man, another Jew, even if he were the greatest of them all? Neither before Moses nor before Elijah had they knelt down to worship them. Adonai is the only God and no one had ever been able to associate with Him. The Jews had allowed themselves to be killed, but they did not kneel before any emperor or even his image.

The resurrection itself, which recognised the man Jesus signed by God himself, did not claim to testify that the risen man was God himself. The Jewish people had already acknowledged some kind of resurrection to others, such as to Elijah or Enoch, without ever considering them as equal to Adonai. Some had presented themselves as Messiahs and quite successfully too, but none dreamed of comparing themselves to God himself. Jesus is the only Jewish man recognised as divine by other Jews.

Couchoud fails to understand how, after Jesus' death and resurrection, a Jewish man, on Judean soil, could be worshipped by other Jews: 'In many regions of the Empire, deifying a particular creature could be a simple matter. In one nation, however, it was quite impossible: among the Jews. They worshipped Adonai, the only God, the transcendent God, the ineffable, whose figure was not even drawn, whose name was not even uttered, who remained separated from every creature by insuperable abysses. To associate a man with Adonai, whoever he was, would have been the greatest sacrilege and the supreme abomination.

The Jews honoured the emperor, but were willing to allow themselves to be stoned to death before confessing on the tip of their lips that the emperor was a god. Similarly, they would have accepted stoning even if they had been forced to affirm this with respect to Moses himself. And would the first Christian whose voice we have heard, Paul, a Jew son of Jews, have most naturally associated a man with Adonai?". This is the miracle before which this author recalcitrates and then continues: "How can it be argued that Paul, a Jew from Cilicia, a Pharisee by education, speaking of a Jew from Galilee, his contemporary, could have used, without  revolting, the sacred texts by which only Adonai is designated?" [335]

This is something at the limits of comprehension, but because it is imposed in such an adverse context, it becomes even more credible evidence. This is a question without an answer for those who have not obtained the grace of faith. The fact, however, that a part of the Jews (disciples and the early community) recognised in Jesus divine prerogatives certainly imposes itself by an extraordinary gift of the Holy Spirit. The disciples and the community had taken up the scriptures and, in particular, some of Jesus' sentences and actions that, in part, could also reveal his divinity, but to arrive at such a radical act of faith one can only assume a new revelatory intervention by God through the work of the Holy Spirit himself. Could a new revelation have occurred at that Pentecost where the Fire of heaven had burnt away the disciples' last doubts? And they could by now testify to the whole Church who Jesus Christ was, the Messiah, the One awaited for all centuries, the Emmanuel, the God with us?

The evangelists must have raised the question that after centuries or millennia Christians would have wanted to know what had happened in that community to reach such a demanding profession of faith in Jesus Christ man and God. Yet not a word, not a sign, not a miracle that would clearly and distinctly reveal the divinity of Jesus, at least as the life, death and resurrection of Jesus himself had been: it is likely that the evangelists could not find human words suitable to convey that utterly new experience, simply because there are probably no words to reveal the mystery of Jesus Christ man and God.

If, on the other hand, everything were all so decodable, it would mean that Jesus would be just like us, and instead our minds must have the humility to be able to wait for the last day to have a complete understanding of the mystery of Jesus. But, before concluding, it must still be said that even if the resurrection as such does not force the conclusion that Jesus Christ is God, it must be recognised that a whole series of Jesus’ words, signs and behaviour, such as: presenting himself sinless with the authority to forgive at the same level as Adonai as lord of the Sabbath, and recognised God in the expressions of Peter, the centurion and Thomas, the Baptism that had opened the heavens and the Transfiguration on Tabor, all of this being signed by the Resurrection itself, places on each of these testimonies the seal of truth that we can believe, obviously with the grace of the Holy Spirit. Finally, to conclude our reflection on Jesus' divinity, we must avoid the confusion of thinking that Jesus' humanity is God or that Jesus' divinity is man: the man in Jesus is true man and God in him is true God [336].

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[335] - P. L. Couchoud, Il mistero di Gesù, Verità o leggenda? C. della Luna, 2018, p.179.

[336] - If we had been able to explain well to our elder brothers, the Jews, and our Muslim brothers that the human nature of Jesus is not God and the divine nature of Jesus is not man, they would feel much more like our brothers.

The Gospels celebrate the divinity of Jesus Christ

All the Gospels are imbued with this truth that was placed in their minds and hearts at Pentecost. The first Judeo-Christian community, at least the Palestinian one, attributed a true cult to Jesus [337]. This was in the first twenty years after Jesus' death, that is, until the writings of St Paul  [338]. When the evangelists write the notes for the homilies of the catechists, the mystery of Jesus the Messiah, the one awaited by all Israel, the Jesus who died and rose again and who has now overcome death for us too, the Jesus who is true man and true God, all this had already become the subject of preaching in the first Christian community. For this reason, before the most salient facts of Jesus' life they often remind catechists not to omit all these dimensions of the mystery of Jesus. Matthew, with the 14+14+14 genealogies, places Jesus in the Davidic lineage and, therefore the awaited Messiah must fulfil all the expectations of the people of Israel generally expressed by the Prophets concerning the Messiah. Immediately afterwards, speaking of the virginal conception of Jesus, he makes it clear that this child, the new man, is the work of the Holy Spirit, hence divine from the very beginning. In the virginal conception of Jesus, Luke emphasises that the Holy Spirit would cover Mary like a cloud and overshadow her with his shadow, clearly recalling when the cloud descended over the Ark of the Covenant and Adonai made himself present, and now, in Mary, not only is a Child being begotten, but in that Child God himself is present. For his part, Mark refers to the solemn epiphany of the Baptism of Jesus, where the heavens open (after they had been closed for so many years without words) and now the Voice from heaven returns and proclaims that this Jesus is the chosen Son of God, in whom He has placed all joy and now asks us to listen to Him. And John, with a mystical outburst, reaches the beginning of time and proclaims that in the beginning was the Word, the Word, and this Word was with God and it was God himself who then became a child coming to dwell among us.

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[337] - "This community did not have to refer to the mystery religions, nor did it have to wait for St Paul's contributions on the divinity of Christ" (cf. C. Vidal Manzanares, El judeo-Christianismo palestino, in "El Siglo 1, Colleccion Paradigma", Spanish ed., p. 274).

[338] - Cf. R. Penna, op. cit., p. 9.

Last Canto

To be helped to understand who Christ is, we must understand who man is, who we are, who I am, who you are, in order to approach more easily the mystery of Jesus Christ, man and God. Let us look at ourselves, created in the image and likeness of God: the Spirit of God was breathed into us, hence God himself. And, from that moment, God has dwelt on the earth. Indeed, if we remove the earth from this human body, only God remains. We even dare to look at the divinity in us.

Here is the story. When God wanted to extend his joy to others, he thought of generating other 'gods' with whom he could dialogue, sing and love, and so he thought of man. He dreamt of him as an incarnate, perfect, sinless God. This was the project of man always that God had always thought of and loved. God gave him a name, Jesus Christ, and dreamt that one day he would appear on earth, at the end of time, the last man in history.

He began to prepare his body by creating the extraordinary beauty of matter that in the first million years of history was clothed in energy, heat, sound and colour, then God placed a soul in infinite fragments of this creation that broke away rolling to the bottom of rivers, then swimming in the seas with the fins of fish, then other fragments began to fly with the wings of butterflies and birds. Others ran through the jungles to reach food, attacking and defending themselves. They endured ice ages and scorching deserts. Hail of fire fell from the sky and chasms opened in their path.

God was ever more carefully preparing the body for this son, this man, this incarnate God. One day, to one of these already highly evolved creatures, he bestowed his own soul, that is, spirit. That divine spirit mixed with earth had become an image of God, one of His children. The divine in us could not have been begotten by a man and a woman, so the Holy Spirit descended and the Power of the Most High with his shadow conceived the Divine in us.

Finally God signed his residence on Earth. This child of God had become a people that grew daily in wisdom and grace, and the Spirit of God, God Himself, gained more and more room in this humanity, still so fragile and lazy to do good, until, in the fullness of time, without waiting for the last day of history, in a sinless family, a woman gave birth to a child: Jesus Christ, in whom God had occupied all the spaces of His humanity.

This child and all the children of the world had become the Son of God. And we have seen his glory. We saw the face of God on earth, but opaque, as in a metal mirror. Jesus, in fact, not meaning to be different from us, did not manifest this beauty of God that he bore within himself: only for a few moments one day on Mount Tabor did he barely let us glimpse it. Every space of his humanity was totally occupied by God himself and he invited us to become like him. How can we give God space in us? By recognising God in others, by giving bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothing the naked and freeing the imprisoned.

God will say to us: "Behold, all this you have done to me".

Annex IX - Jesus and Religions

Prayer to the Father

Holy Father, you so loved the world

that you sent to us, in the fullness of time

your only Son as Saviour.

He became man through the Holy Spirit

and was born of the Virgin Mary;

he shared in everything, except sin,

our human condition.

To the poor he proclaimed the Gospel of salvation,

freedom to the captives,

to the afflicted, joy.

To fulfil your plan of redemption

He willingly gave himself up to death.

And, rising again, he destroyed death and renewed life. [339]

He, your living Word,

(today) is the way that leads us to you,

the truth that sets us free

the life that fills us with joy. [340]

In him you have manifested to us your love

for the little ones and the poor

for the sick and the excluded.

Never did he close himself

to the needs and sufferings of his brothers and sisters.

By his life and word

he proclaimed to the world that you are Father

and you care for all your children. [341]

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[339] - Eucharistic Prayer IV

[340] - Eucharistic Prayer V/b.

[341] - Eucharistic Prayer V/c.

Hymn of love

To have Christ in my life is to have His heart and thus to love as He loved when He lived on earth. If I do not try to love as He loved, I miss the only chance I have to live the dream God has had for me from all eternity. God has dreamed for me a heart that loves like Jesus'. God has invested so much for me – all creation with the galaxies, our earth with mountains and abysses and every living thing that dwells on earth, swims in the waters and flies in the sky – so that I could work as his Son Jesus worked, pray as he prayed, preach as he preached and love as he loved. I exist only for him, Jesus Christ, and without him I am nothing. If I lack Jesus Christ, I lack everything.

If I spoke all the tongues of men and even the tongues of angels, but had not Jesus Christ I would be a broken bell, a clanging bronze. If I had the gift of prophecy and knew all mysteries and all science and still had all faith capable of carrying mountains, but had not Jesus Christ, I would be nothing. And if I distributed all my goods to give food to the hungry and gave my own body to the flames for others, but had not Jesus Christ, nothing would profit me.

Jesus Christ is patient, he is kind, he does not envy, he does not boast. Jesus Christ is not puffed up, he does not offend, he does not seek his own gain, nor is he angry, nor does he think evil. Jesus Christ enjoys everything good, covers everything, believes everything, hopes everything, and endures everything. All the gifts we have received, to serve, will come to an end, but the gift of Jesus Christ never ends.

Atheist or believer?

How can an atheist become a believer and eventually a Christian believer? One such person, who professes to be an atheist, has tried for a long time to reflect on faith and specifically on Jesus Christ, but has not attained faith in Him. He writes: "When they talk to me about faith and specifically about Jesus Christ, I remain confused. I would like to be a believer, but I cannot buy faith at the market, I cannot believe, like many Christians. I see Francis of Assisi kneeling in front of that child Jesus in the crib, but I remain standing, for me that child is like any other, even if as an adult he has reached a human stature that I envy.

I don't believe in miracles, but I do believe that He helped heal and cured so many sick people with a love so great that those ways of loving were real miracles. No one like Him was so wise, the noblest that ever existed, the kindest, no one so merciful and compassionate towards the people of his time, with an unparalleled spiritual elevation, certainly a great prophet, I think the greatest, the greatest of all the founders of religion, the one who aroused the highest senses of fraternity, of justice, of freedom, of peace, which greatly ennoble mankind and which all civilised men, to some extent, now recognise and welcome, and for this reason they could call themselves Christians, and so could I, but I cannot think of Him as a sinless divine man, living among us, like us, let alone as a God on the Cross.

If I had been there on Calvary, I too would have said to Him: 'If you are a child of God, come down from the cross', although I recognise that it would have been a great failure if He had come down. Much of His message would never have stuck in our memory again. I do, however, recognise that He proposed to mankind and thus also to me to live like Him, work like Him, preach like Him, be merciful and compassionate like Him, love everyone indiscriminately like Him, love even enemies like Him.

Jesus showed us that with this humanity of ours, each of us can also live that way, and this proposal fascinates me. If we all believed this and we all became like him, there would be no more wars because enemies would be forgiven and thus integrated into our society, there would be no more violence because we would have begun to love our neighbour unconditionally, and there would be poor no more, because we would have already provided for their needs as well. If I do all this to be happier because doing good is good, if I do all this to be useful at least to others, if not to myself, if I am going to do all this to be a social man, a politician who nevertheless wants to take care of the human family, if I am going to try to do all this, what will I lack to be a Christian?".

Renan, Loisy and Croce could have written this letter [342]. I then wrote to my friend: "If you can live as you have said, you will not be far from the Kingdom of God, but so that you will not be naive, I ask you a question: 'Are you sure you will be able with your human strength alone to forgive and love someone who does not love you, an enemy of yours? Can you, with your own strength, forgive and love again one who has testified falsely against you and had you condemned?

With your own strength do you think you will be able to forgive and love again those who raped your wife or raped your child? Only those who have the divine in them can live the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and only God gives you the divine if you ask Him. While waiting for that gift you can say: "If you exist, O God, you are certainly a father to me. If you exist, you are a God who loves and cares for me, if you exist, give me the gift of believing that you are there, that you love me, and that I too can love you as one of my family'.

Dear friend, when I turn to God, I need to meet one like Jesus Christ who has lived all that I live and can give me divine strength so that I live like Him. I need more than a superior ethic, which even an Indian guru can preach. I need to talk to Him, I need to rejoice or cry with Him, to know that He hears me and that I can listen to Him.

If you can accept the gift of faith from the hands of Jesus Christ, God will not change towards you, but you will change. The practising believer and the practising atheist are both loved by God with infinite love, but there is a great difference between the two: the believer knows that he has a lover and is therefore profoundly happy, while the atheist, who also has God as his lover, does not know this and therefore cannot taste that peace and joy”.

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[342] - Renan's La vita di Gesù and Loisy's too and, again, the question of Croce Perchè non possiamo non dirci cristiani? trace this quest.