Jesus a man signed by God 

PART II

In the following lines, I intend to present in particular some thinkers who, without attaining faith in the true Jesus of the Gospel, have nevertheless paused to reflect before Him. They were afraid to accept the Church mandated by Jesus himself to make him known. Even Augustine of Hippo said that he would not have believed the Gospel if the Church had not forced him to do so.

Immanuel Kant

Kant professed a Christianity 'within the limits of pure reason' and he reduced religion to pure moral rationality. Christianity is considered by Kant to be the most perfect of faiths, the purest religion and the closest to reason's ideal model of religion. Even though he has marginalised the Jesus of history, at certain moments he feels its fascination and even the need for it, and when confronted with the mystery of evil, seeing how God wanted to solve it with the project of Jesus' incarnation and how He stands before it, he seems willing to reopen the discourse on the historical Jesus. In any case, even this philosopher could not continue his reflections without stopping for prolonged periods to think about the mystery of Jesus Christ.

Friedrich Hegel

In his Life of Jesus, Hegel - son of Kant - in the account of the Last Supper puts these words, addressed to the apostles, on the lips of Jesus himself: 'Keep in your remembrance the one who gave his life for you, and may my remembrance, my example, be for you a valid means of strengthening you in virtue. [Love one another, love every man as I have loved you; the fact that I lay down my life for my friends proves my love. I no longer call you my disciples or pupils; they often follow their master’s will without knowing why they have to act the way they do; you will bear fruit from your own strength of virtue, if the spirit of love, the force animating you and me, is the same' [343] .You can see that in here there isn’t any God's grace, but there is human virtue, which Hegel emphasises.

For Hegel, Jesus is a man “determined to remain eternally faithful to what was indelibly written in his heart, to worship the eternal law of morality only” [344].

He translates the parables of the Gospel and the Sermon on the Mount into sentences of moral content. In particular, in the context of the Sermon on the Mount, the philosopher states: ”Let your prayer [...] elevate your feeling above the petty aims that men set for themselves, above the cravings whipping them hither and thither, with your thoughts turned to God who reminds you of the law carved in your heart and fills you with respect for it, untouchable by any spur of your dispositions . [...] and, before God, resolve firmly to consecrate your whole life to virtue. This spirit of prayer, expressed in words, could be presented as follows: Father [...] may your kingdom come one day, in which every rational being takes only the law as the rule of his actions [345].

Hegel's Jesus did not quite catch up with the real Jesus of the Gospels, but it is important to know him at least for the extent to which he influenced contemporary Christian philosophy and for the fact that even this great genius of modern philosophy could not help but pause to reflect on the 'Jesus’ case'. Karl Rahner, one of the greatest contemporary theologians, in building the framework of his Catholic theology, agreed to answer the questions posed to him by the children of Hegel.

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[343] - F. Hegel, La vita di Gesù, Das leben Jesu, written in 1795 and published posthumously in 1906, transl. ital. in A. Socci (2009), Indagine su Gesù, Milan, Rizzoli.

[344] - A. Socci, op. cit.

[345] - A. Socci, op. cit.

Karl Marx

Marx passed his baccalaureate examination with his thesis The Union of Believers with Christ in the Gospel of John 15,1-14. In the parable of the vine and the branches, Jesus says that his Father is the vinedresser and calls himself the vine and us the branches (John 15,5). Marx 

adds: "this is the great abyss which separates the Christian virtue from any other and raises it above any other " [346].

In this thesis we also read: “Therefore union with Christ bestows inner exaltation, consolation in suffering, calm assurance, and a heart which is open to love of mankind, to all that is noble, to all that is great, not out of ambition, not through a desire for fame, but only because of Christ. Therefore, union with Christ bestows a joy which the Epicurean strives vainly to derive from his frivolous philosophy or the deeper thinker from the most hidden depths of knowledge, a joy known only by the ingenuous, childlike mind which is linked with Christ and through Him with God, a joy which makes life higher and more beautiful [347].

Eleven years after this thesis, in 1846, in the text Gegen  Kriege, Charles Marx, by then much more mature, specified that the roots of his thought were twofold: the Christian law of universal love for mankind and an analysis of the conditions of the oppressed proletariat  [348].

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[346] - https://marxists.architexturez.net/archive/marx/works/1837-pre/marx/1835chris.htm

[347] - Ibid.

[348] - Cf. C. Marx, Sulla religione, Milan, ed. Sapere, 1971, in G. Gennari, 'Mattino', 3rd October 2015, p. 7.

Benedetto Croce

"Christianity has been the greatest revolution that humanity has ever accomplished. [...] And the revolutions and discoveries that followed in modern times, insofar as they were not particular and limited [...] but invested the whole man, the very soul of man, cannot be thought of without the Christian revolution [...] because the original impulse was and continues to be its own [...] the revolution operated in the core of the soul, in the moral consciousness and by giving prominence to the intimate and proper of this conscience, it almost seemed to acquire a new virtue, a new spiritual quality, which humanity had hitherto lacked [349]. 

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[349] - B. Croce, op. cit., p. 15.

Jean Paul Sartre

A prisoner in the German Nazi concentration camp in Trier, at Christmas 1940, on invitation of colleagues, including some priest friends, Sartre wrote a play about the Nativity of Jesus. I quote two fragments from it: ”Woman, this child you want to give birth to is like a new edition of the world. [...] You will recreate the world” [350].

But the most significant text is the one that let Sartre's atheism to crack at least for a while: ”The Virgin is pale and looks at the child. What should be painted on her face is an anxious astonishment that has only appeared once on a human face. For Christ is her son, flesh of her flesh and fruit of her womb. She carried him in her womb for nine months, she would offer him her breast, and her milk would become the blood of God. Sometimes the temptation is so strong that she forgets that he is God. She holds him in her arms and says: 'My child'.

But at other moments she remains interdicted and thinks: there God is, and she is seized by a religious trembling for that silent God, for that awe-inspiring child.

All mothers at some time have thus stopped before that rebellious fragment of their flesh that is their child, feeling exiled before that new life that has been made with their life and that is inhabited by foreign thoughts. But no child has been snatched more cruelly and more quickly than this one from its mother, because it is God and exceeds in every way what she can imagine...

But I think there are also other moments, quickly transient moments, in which she feels at the same time that Christ is her son, her child, and is God. She looks at him and thinks: 'This God is my son. This divine flesh is my flesh. He is made of me, he has my eyes, the shape of his mouth is the shape of mine, he resembles me. He is God and he looks like me.’

No woman has ever been able to have her God for herself in this way, a child God you can take in your arms and cover with kisses, a warm God who smiles and breathes, a God that you can touch and who laughs. It is in one of these moments that I would paint Mary if I were a painter” [351].

This child would seem to be just a man, and yet he is God: this is the bewilderment in front of which Sartre also stands.

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[350] - J.P. Sartre, Racconto di Natale per cristiani e non credenti, trad. ital. Christian Mariotti Editore, Milan, 2003, pp. 91-92.

[351] - J. P. Sartre, op. cit.

Napoleon Bonaparte

"No person on earth stands in comparison with Jesus [...], his Gospel, his journey through the centuries, everything represents a miracle to me. It is an unfathomable mystery. [...] Between Christianity and any other religion there is an infinite distance. [...] I know men, and Jesus Christ was not just a man. [...] Even the impious have never dared to deny the sublimity of the Gospel that inspires in them a kind of compulsory veneration! [...] While everything about Christ proclaims his divine nature, everything about Zoroaster, Numa, Mohammed, proclaims only their earthly nature.

[...], but how many years did Caesar's empire last? How long did the enthusiasm of Alexander's soldiers last? Instead, for Christ it was a war [...] that lasts to this day. After Saint Peter (for three centuries) the thirty-two bishops of Rome who succeeded him on the cathedra have, like him, all suffered martyrdom. And meanwhile, peoples pass away, thrones collapse and the Church of Jesus Christ remains! [...] My army has already forgotten me while I am still alive [...] That is the power of us great men! A single defeat disintegrates us and adversity takes away all our friends [352].

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[352] - Cfr. Sentiment de Napoléon sur le christianisme, Conversations religieuses collected in Sant’Elena by M. le Général Comte de Montholon and by M. le Chevalier de Beauterne, Waille, Paris, 1843.

Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore

Gandhi, a Hindu, with his great soul went so far as to say: ”I believe that Jesus belongs not only to Christianity, but to the whole world, to all races and peoples”. And Tagore, a Hindu he too, in a book about Jesus, wrote of Him: ”His immense love for me can still wait for my love”.

Albert Einstein

In an interview [353] about his own faith, Albert Einstein said: 'As a child I was educated in both the Talmud and the Bible. I am a Jew, but I am fascinated by the luminous figure of Jesus of Nazareth'.

For so many non-Christian thinkers, and among them the greatest philosophers of these 2000 years who have confronted Jesus Christ, Jesus died that Friday afternoon and left in their hands only the wealth of his moral teachings and his behaviour of the noblest virtue. They did not have time to encounter Him risen and living, but they testified that in Him they had encountered the heart of History and no one to compare with Him.

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[353] - On "The Saturday Evening Post" of 10/26/1929.

The seeds for what was to become the rationalistic view of the Enlightenment against Christianity (the view of those who believe to be true only what is demonstrable by reason), already appear in the early days of Christianity itself. Shortly after the birth of the Gospels in the 2nd century, two pagan philosophers raised doubts. Celsus expressed a major objection in his writings, namely that according to him, the weakness of his human nature was unbecoming for Jesus, a candidate for divinity, and even more so was the lament of his agony and his death on the cross unacceptable. Consequently, the Gospel story was erroneous and therefore the idea of a God becoming man was unquestionably absurd. Origen eloquently replied to Celsus, who fell silent. After him, at the beginning of the 3rd century, Porphyry posed two major questions in 15 books against the Christians: "Can a God suffer?" and "Can a dead man be raised?" He was answered by theologians and Councils.

After Constantine, all these texts disappeared and only a few fragments have come down to us. A thousand years later, with the Scotsman Duns Scotus and even later with the Englishman William of Ockham, both Franciscans, an attempt was made to free faith and reason from their mutual medieval legacies. But, to be more precise, even before that and perhaps without realising it, Francis of Assisi himself, with that crib with the statue of a child similar to the other children of this world, began a revolution by emphasising the humanity of Jesus. The oriental icons of Jesus, the Pantocrator himself were images of a Jesus who was divine and not very human. The crucifix of San Damiano to which Francis himself turns is an example of a crucified Jesus, yes, but not suffering: he is already risen. It will take Giotto to remind us that Christ is also and truly a man who, on the cross, suffers and dies. Giotto painted the crucifix by taking a body from life (Cimabue himself had not yet achieved this).

The Reformation

A century before Descartes, another hyperbolic doubt attacked the apparent solidity of the Church of Rome, queen in both the political and religious spheres. Aware of the difficulty of reading and interpreting the Holy Scriptures, the Catholic Church had reserved this task for itself. With the Councils, the Pope and the bishops tried to reflect on the meaning of the Holy Scriptures and proposed conclusions, usually in the form of dogmas. To attack Rome, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and others proposed a different reading of the sacred texts. The motto became sola scriptura.

The reformers suggested that with this motto every man or woman, religious or secular, could read the Bible by themselves, since Luther and others considered the Scripture to be transparent in itself. They therefore suggested that each reader could individually interpret the sacred texts without any help from the clergy, popes or councils, to prevent them from manipulating them. In this way, independence from Rome was declared.

In the meantime, in the 17th and 18th centuries, the Enlightenment appeared, with an uncontrolled intellectual distrust especially in matters of religion. In Germany, England, France and elsewhere, intellectuals began to doubt not only ecclesiastical structures and hierarchies, but above all dogmas and traditions of all kinds were disqualified. Cartesian doubt, distrust and suspicion were making their way into modern science: since the Enlightenment, physical scientists learnt to be suspicious of anything that was considered mystery, superstition or miracle.

Meanwhile, science began to teach that only what is testable is true, an approach that was termed rational. In a demystified world, without superstitions and without the supernatural, scientists thus claimed to discover how the world really works and it seemed that the world worked just as they said. They thus entered a world emptied of truth and transcendence. The way was however open for the historical critics (Renan, Strauss, etc.), who triumphantly demonstrated how it could not be proved that Jesus had done or said this or that.

On the other hand, there were those who used the same positivist method of archaeology and historiography to assert the opposite and prove that everything really happened exactly as the Bible narrates: this method was even more dangerous than the other. One author ironically reports the intervention of a scholar who claimed to have made serious investigations and discovered that a certain extinct volcano was undoubtedly the "mountain... burning with fire" of Deuteronomy (5:23). Another academic sarcastically asked him if he had also discovered which were the mountains that "leapt like rams" of the Psalm (114:4). These two positions are diametrically opposed: each has some truth in it, but also loads a great deal of ballast.

The critical-scientific hypothesis

According to this exclusively rational method of research, [354] even if Jesus is recognised a truly historical figure as recorded in the Gospels, he must nevertheless be considered to be a phenomenon like so many others, with nothing supernatural, no miracles, no resurrection and no divinity, for the simple reason that these truths cannot be demonstrated by reason. Therefore, for these rationalists Jesus, after death, would have been deified by the disciples, who would have attributed miracles, healings and finally the Resurrection to him. For them, this Jesus is still a schizophrenic who believed or at least claimed to be the Messiah awaited by the people of Israel and recognised as such by the disciples who, later on, turned him into God himself.

One of the first attacks on the Christian conscience came from H. S. Reimarus (1694-1769), who had interpreted the Gospels by erasing the whole dimension of faith: for him, in fact, Jesus would not have performed miracles, would not have resurrected, and would never have thought of founding a religion. The scholar interpreted him as a political Messiah who had founded a temporal kingdom only, with the aim of liberating the Jewish people from foreign domination. For Reimarus, it was the disciples, disappointed by the death of their master, who deified Jesus himself and founded a religion.

Later on, the German theologian Heinrich Paulus (1761-1851), then the French anarchist philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865), along with many others, had spoken of a Jesus without mysteries, without miracles and without the need for acts of faith. For them, it goes without saying that, in order to accomplish the multiplication of the loaves, they must first have brought the bread to the place to distribute it to the poor. And, if there had been the so-called miracle of the wine at Cana, this event would only have been possible if the wine itself had first been brought to the house of the bride and groom, possibly as a wedding gift from Jesus. In this way, they reinterpreted the entire Gospel by reducing it to just any old story, but this thesis did not enjoy great favour, not even among their contemporaries.

In France again, the French philosopher and historian of religions Joseph Ernest Renan (1823-1892) achieved extraordinary success. His book on Jesus becomes the best seller of the century [355].

He argues that on the day after Easter, the small Christian society performed a true miracle: they raised Jesus in their hearts for the intense love they bore him, so it would be that same community that would decide that Jesus would never die again. Renan himself writes that, in a certain sense, Jesus had already resurrected, so insignificant events such as a simple shift of air, the creaking of a door or the sound of thunder, understood as words pertaining to the resurrection, could suffice to suggest that his body was no longer down here. In this way, the dogma of the resurrection would have been established for eternity [356].

His pupil, the historian of Christianity Charles Guignebert (1867-1939), continued to write on this subject, arguing that Jesus is a fable and only a fable.

Alfred Firmin Loisy (1857-1940), another French historian and biblical scholar, denies the healings, stating that during Jesus’ first stay in Capernaum, sick people had been brought to him for healing. It seems that He wanted to preach the Kingdom of God and convert and not to perform miracles, but people wanted the healings and so the supporters of this thesis say that people attributed them to Him without foundation. These authors observe that Jesus spoke to them with authority and that the sick, troubled and restless souls regained their composure, at least for a while: this was considered a miracle. In this way, with many pages similar to this one, Loisy claims to definitively demystify the halo of mystery that had been created around Jesus.

The analyses of these authors were immediately refuted and within a few years fell into silence.

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[354] - Not to be confused with the modern critical method for the interpretation of Scripture, which has become indispensable especially in the Catholic Church.

[355] - E. Renan, op. cit.

[356] - Cf. E. Renan, op. cit.

Our Lady of Tenderness" by Andrej Rublëv

I would now like to use plastic language to underline what has been said. When I stand before the icon of the Madonna and Child Jesus known as "Our Lady of Tenderness" by St Andrej Rublëv, I connect myself - through prayer - to that mother named Mary, the Mother of Jesus who lived in Nazareth just over 2000 years ago, in a small house whose ruins still exist: the same Mary who lives today with her Son in the glory of God and is the object of my prayer.

This icon, therefore, represents for me two historical characters, with their goodness, tenderness, their intense maternal and filial embrace. I say historical figures because Rublëv wanted to represent them as such. Now, to pronounce on this icon, if I want to use the critical method of authors like Renan and others, who intend to demolish everything that is not historically demonstrable with absolute certainty, I will have to conclude that the large veil covering the head and shoulders and the blue dress of that image have nothing in common with a dress that Mary might have worn in Nazareth.

On the forehead and shoulder are painted two golden spots commonly called stars, which have nothing in common with the stars in the sky, fixed in a space and existing in a historical time. The eyes, nose and mouth obey the canons of Russian iconography, but represent nothing of the historical faces of Mary and Jesus. The colour of the face is totally artificial and the hands themselves, with tapered fingers and no phalanges, do not at all obey the reasonable requirements of a historical portrait. Strictly speaking, I would have no particular reason to remove the background and the frame, but I would honestly have to recognise them as the only remaining elements of that marvellous work of art and icon of faith that for five centuries has been identified as the image of Mary the Mother of Jesus with her Son, both recognised as historical by all Christians around the world.

The mythical hypothesis

Is Jesus just a myth? The unanimous chorus of those who follow this method says yes. Plato saw myths as a means of presenting the questions of the origin or end of the world that Greek science could not explain, but was nonetheless curious to investigate, at least as far as the human was concerned. In modern times, however, myth has also been used to read the Gospels. Strauss, referring to Kant's and then Hegel's principles of pure reason, came to the conclusion that the revealed texts and the facts narrated in the Gospels would only be myths, and argues that the religious ideal of the early Christians produced a myth that materialised in a legend called Jesus. And so, the Christ of the Gospels, considered by Christians to be God incarnate, would only be a myth that is a figment of the imagination.

Strauss himself argues that it is impossible to write a life of the historical Jesus. For him therefore, Jesus of the Gospels cannot be considered a historical Jesus, as we understand him today, but an ideal Jesus drawn by the first Christian generations. The figure of the ideal Jesus greatly influenced the Protestant world. More recently, the Romanian anthropologist Mircea Eliade, the German evangelical theologian Rudolf Carl Bultmann and many others also used myth to express the substance of the spiritual life to interpret and explain all the facts of the Gospel, while stripping them of all historical significance. Less acceptable is the fact that many of these authors, after rejecting the Gospel truths and stripping them of any historical content, nevertheless claim to use and overstate them, with the sad consequence that, through those texts, we encounter a distorted Jesus without history. If, through parables, prototypes, allegories, legends, imaginings, legendary hypotheses – just think of the beautiful images of Adam and Eve, of the tree of life, of the serpent's temptation, etc. - myth can serve to explain truths, it is of no use when it comes to affirming and establishing a historical fact. It is therefore useless to use myth to explain it, all the more so when this fact has been amply documented in recent times, as it was the case with the Gospels, written in the first century after Jesus, and St. Paul's texts, written even earlier: between 53 and 55 AD.

We find it more understandable to speak of myth when referring to a fact many centuries later, as the theologian David Friedrich Strauss argues: for example, the manna in the desert, or the oil and flour multiplied by Elijah for the widow of Sarepta. We could add many more of these miraculous or extraordinary facts, such as the crossing of the Red Sea or the water  brought forth from the rock in the desert. In these cases, there are not many witnesses who can disprove what has been written, but as for the facts or miracles recounted in the Gospels - reported and put in order a few decades after they happened - the use of myth can certainly not be used to understand them or deepen their meaning.

In the 20th century, some scholars go so far as to reduce the figure of Jesus into insignificance and, in particular, Paul Louis Couchoud goes so far as to deny his very existence. The French philosopher, physician and exegete took scepticism to its extreme consequences, concluding his investigations as follows: "Jesus is the greatest Existent in history, and even today he can be considered the greatest Inhabitant on earth, but he never existed, at least in the historical sense of the word: he was not born, he did not die under Pontius Pilate. All this is a mystical fairy tale' [357].  But the philosopher himself had to realise while he was still alive that this thesis did not stand up: he went so far as to say that he still thought that Jesus did not exist, but if he did, he could only have been God, but for this very reason, for the prerogative of God, a God without history. Renan himself, while being very critical on other points, arguing with those who reject the historicity of Christ, states that it makes no sense at all to deny the historical Jesus and that the school that claims to support this thesis 'does not even deserve to be refuted', as I have just said.

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[357] - P. L. Couchoud, op. cit., p. 36.

Positive implications

To conclude this roundup on the attacks of rationalism on the Christian faith, it should be noted that the studies of these authors, although with many serious errors, deserve the merit for having pondered, and also raised many objections, that required answers on the historicity of Jesus. Another positive aspect is the fact that, especially in the 20th century, the Catholic Church, stimulated also by these authors, has, so to speak, awakened to answer to these errors and in this way has deepened a whole series of truths that had been buried under the ashes.

How to situate ourselves before the hypotheses

I present here two readings of Gospel events.

After the death of Lazarus, Jesus meets Martha and invites her to believe that her brother will rise again. She then professes: 'I believe that he will rise again on the last day'. He enlivens Martha's faith and she again believes in the resurrection. It seems that, for some, the great miracle of Jesus ends here, so the second part of the story with the cry to Lazarus: "Come out!" and the subsequent resuscitation of that corpse would be less important or even pointless.

There is a second fact: the multiplication of the loaves. Jesus invites his people to provide food for the crowd away from the houses. The apostles find only five loaves and two fish and Jesus multiplies them and distributes them to everyone. I report an alternative hypothesis: "Someone may have asked the people if they had anything to eat and probably everyone could have had some, even if they kept it well hidden because showing what they had meant sharing it with others. A child, however, may have said, "I'll put my share in," and everyone may have followed his example, to the point that twelve baskets were left over.

These two hypotheses, perhaps original, may help the spirituality of those who read the sacred text, but in 50,000 years' time, those who wish to confront those or other biblical texts will encounter them as they were written. If they are as plausible as it is that Jesus resurrected Lazarus or multiplied the loaves, those texts will always remain the point of reference for anyone who reads them: if Jesus had wanted to behave just as the Gospels say, who could have prevented him from doing so? However, one must ask oneself: could reminding Martha that her brother would be resurrected on the last day have had as great an impact as the resurrection of Lazarus did? And, as for the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves, could Jesus have caused such a frenzy that they wanted him elected king if he had confined himself to the advice to share with others what they had?

Instead, our reflections and those of thousands of other writers on spirituality will remain mere hints, valuable stimuli for conversion, but without replacing the authority of the Bible. We should honestly choose such hypotheses if there is no other scientifically proven one. If, on the other hand, the text is not plausible, we will modify our reading according to the new laws of science, according to what the sacred author wanted to express. In the case of Joshua's 'Stand  still, sun', for example, with today's astronomical knowledge we can affirm that the miracle would have consisted in stopping the earth and not the sun, which was already relatively still, at least in relation to it.

In any case, even those who read this page taking it literally before the scientific discovery I referred to were able to grasp the full theological scope of a divine intervention that the biblical author wished to communicate.

It should be added that it is generally not the theological content that determines or creates sentences, stories or miracles that then have to be demythologised, but rather it is the sentences and facts that motivate a theological reflection, possibly supplemented by a quotation from the Old Testament, or the recollection of a fact from Scripture to give them continuity. In a passage after the birth of Jesus, for example, an exodus to Egypt is described - with similar words and actions repeated almost verbatim - echoing that of Moses, so much so as to suggest that the text is a theological creation.

Some conclude that the evangelist has created a tale, a myth to argue that Jesus is another Moses who liberates his people. Such a hypothesis cannot be excluded a priori, indeed it is to be seriously considered. However, biblical myths arise from real facts. In the example in question, Joseph, frightened by the political situation of a mad Herod, may have tried to emigrate to a safer place, such as Nazareth or another location, and the evangelist, wanting to signify that Jesus is the new Moses, may have taken that fact as a starting point to parallel him with his flight, placing some words such as Egypt, death of the King, return, etc. All this in order not to miss the opportunity of a theological insight that could lead to a better understanding of a page in the life of Jesus. In any case, the study of literary genres, archaeological discoveries and theological insights can broaden knowledge of the facts that nourish and deepen faith.

When research has yielded such scientific and irrefutable results as to offer us not only a hypothesis, but new certainties, we have a duty to accept them in order to nourish our faith more deeply – I think, for example, that if a tombstone were found with the certain date of Jesus' birth, we would all welcome it – or if some document were found that could scientifically prove that Jesus' birth took place in Nazareth instead of Bethlehem, we could accept it without any problem.

If, on the other hand, the studies do not indicate any new, historically proven elements, but only hypotheses, albeit credible and original ones, different from those of the Gospels, in order to nourish our faith, we need only stick to the hypothesis presented by the evangelist, who certainly wanted to convey truths to us. It should be added that a high respected exegete like H. Windows believes that we should consider the Gospel tradition faithful a priori, unless we can prove otherwise. In this way, we would not detach ourselves from history as we understand it today and would fully accept the theological message.

Interpreted facts, but facts

Hypotheses do not satisfy historians and facts are not always testable, especially when millennia separate us from the reported events. If in the New Testament one cannot speak of mythological facts because they occurred relatively close to the time of those who reported them in writing, not even in the Old Testament, a period much further back in time, in which myth would have all the rights of citizenship, not even in those very ancient pages can one take it for granted that everything is myth created by popular imagination without risking major errors. Even facts that are immediately presented in the mythical language of legend, such as the Flood or the Tower of Babel and so on, could refer to facts that are obviously interpreted, but with roots in history.

Let us take a look at the tale that tells of a flood that would have covered the whole world, reaching the mountain tops themselves, which is completely unthinkable from a scientific point of view. Without bothering with the ice ages, in which the melting of a large amount of ice must have caused catastrophic flooding at least four times, destroying most of the living things they encountered, we can find insights much closer to home in the biblical account.

Added to this is the fact that apparently mythical flood tales from ancient times can be found in various parts of the world, such as in Australia, India, Polynesia, or Tibet, Kashmir or Lithuania. Similar myths? A primordial cataclysm? Even in the oldest text of the Hindu religion, the Matsya Purana, which tells of the three submerged worlds, there is mention of King Manu, who, having been warned of an oncoming flood, builds a boat that will house a couple of all the  animals and will eventually stop with the whole crew on a mountain in the Himalayas.

To get the cue to write a text about the deluge, it was not necessary for a flood to cover the whole of Mesopotamia: a flood like those that occurred in Kish, or in Phara, Nineveh or Uruk was enough. Yet it seems that something even bigger happened. A flood that might have inspired the biblical text could be the one discovered by Woolley in the late 1800s.

Excavations in Mesopotamia, carried out at different times by various researchers, rewarded the English archaeologist who, after years of work, found a thickness of three-metre of silt: the sediment left by a probable flood that, around 1700 BC, would have invaded an area stretching from the Persian Gulf to beyond present-day Baghdad, an area 630 km long and 160 km wide. Today, it might hardly be considered a major disaster, but to the people of the time, it seemed as if the whole world had been covered. It was probably the same or a similar phenomenon that provided the inspiration for the story of Utnapistim in the Epic of Gilgamesh, which we find very similar in the tale of Noah.

The story of Utnapistim was preserved in the library of King Ashurbanipal (7th century BC): 13 clay tablets written in Akkadian cuneiform that told a story from the time of King Hammurabi, i.e. a thousand years before the epic of Gilgamesh. In it, as will be mentioned in the Bible, there is talk of a flood and a huge boat, housing animals and Utnapistim's family [358] . Once the preparations are over, he closes the door of the ship from the inside: in the case of Moses, however, it is God himself who closes the door from the outside. The story of Utnapistim ends with the expression 'all mankind had been turned into mud', whereas in Genesis, after the flood had ended, it is noted that "all flesh that moved on the earth had been destroyed".

After analysing the myth of the Flood, which, however, finds references in an extensive archaeological site and in the poem of Gilgamesh, it is necessary to mention another biblical myth, that of the Tower of Babel, also rooted in history. The biblical author could have taken his cue from various sites: to inspire the story of the Tower of Babel, perhaps an escalonian tower such as that of Mari, or Assur or Nineveh, or even more so that of Babylon, would have sufficed. The ziggurat of Babylon, 90 metres high with a base of 91 metres – probably four parallelepipeds each 20 metres high narrowing towards the top and a temple at the top – may have been the inspiration for the biblical text, but the tale of 'Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta', which also tells the beginning of the diversification of languages, may have inspired the biblical text. When the Jews were transported as slaves to Babylon, they could still see this construction that hinted at great faith or human mockery.

This digression was necessary to emphasise that not only in the New Testament, but even in the Old Testament, which is located much further back in time, the episodes recounted generally refer to historical facts, even if interpreted. One can therefore agree with the sensible assertion that the Bible is not a novel, but a book of facts that, however interpreted, are still historical.

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[358] - Here is how the two stories begin: according to the Sumerian poem (Tablet XI in cuneiform from the Epic of Gilgamesh, Library of Nineveh 7th century BC: "Son of Ubarutu,/ destroy your home/ build a ship/ abandon your riches,/ despise your possessions,/ save your life! / put every species of living creature in the ship / Of the ship you are to build,/ the measurements must be well respected', then follows the whole poem, which impressively recalls the biblical text: '[God] said to Noah [...] build an ark of well planed wood and put a male and a female of every species of animal in the ark, so that they may be saved with you'.

Inconsistency of the mythical and critical explanation

To conclude this roundup, it should be pointed out that Renan's book on the life of Jesus - the best-selling publication of the century, which seemed to have given a breakthrough in the reading of biblical texts - after having been widely refuted, lost all its parascientific claims within a few years: in many countries of the world, this current of thought was not even taken into account, and in books on biblical exegesis, the book is hardly ever cited by any author.

After forty years, Loisy successfully resumed the discourse but, again, many contemporary theologians and philosophers showed its inconsistency. With similar success, the Jesus Seminar appeared for a few years at the end of the 20th century, with 150 'scholars' who, in different ways, tried to revitalise the theories of rationalism, presenting a Jesus who was simply a man, without miracles or resurrection. In less than ten years, however, with the death of J. D. Crossan, one of the founders of such a "new and already old vision", also ended the enthusiasm  of this entire school.

Renan himself, thinking to strengthen his thesis of a Jesus without divinity, had written in his time: 'Only Truth can last a long time.... All that is true is stable and enduring. On the contrary, what is false is not lasting. The false builds nothing, whereas the little house of truth is made of steel and rises continually' [359].

It should also be noted that 20th century philosophers, theologians and biblical scholars have refuted the above theses, and attested to the foundations of Catholic theology with scrupulous documentation. By way of example, in the more than 700 pages of a Catholic volume on Jesus Christ, there are quotations from more than 1,300 different authors, who have obviously spent their entire lives studying the Mystery of Jesus: this fact tells us with what professionalism they have worked to help us deepen our faith.

We can therefore conclude that the so-called rationalist 'scholars' or supporters of the mythical thesis of the last two centuries, having claimed to nullify the importance of Jesus, in just a few years have fallen back into the silence of history, while the Carpenter of Nazareth continues to nourish the spirituality of humanity.

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[359] - E. Renan, op. cit., p. 15

Could Jesus be a creation of the primitive community?

Some scholars have claimed to assume as probable that the Gospels were created by the primitive community, specifically the community of the first 30-50 years AD. This thesis has met with exaggerated success (albeit briefly), which is why I devote a few lines to it. Now, this same community knows a Jesus who went beyond the limits of history, a Jesus who was already before Abraham and whose kingdom would have no end. These early Christians believe that Jesus conquered death, that he lives beyond the historical human dimension as resurrected, glorious, sitting at the right hand of the Father, supreme Judge, immortal, giver of immortality and saviour. Well, how can they create such an extraordinary character, a God on earth, using such human and often banal language, while living with such an icon of Jesus before their eyes? At birth they only record that he was born: wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. At death they barely record: he rendered his spirit. How then can they invent a Jesus – a candidate to be Messiah – who lives for thirty years as a carpenter in an unknown village, little more than a hamlet, in an almost infamous region? They do not even say whether he went to any school.

Jesus is presented as a man who goes to the synagogue or the temple like every Jew, whom we find tired, sitting by a well or asleep in a boat, so that he does not even hear the storm and the cries of his friends. If someone really wanted to deify Jesus, how could he claim that he was even believed to be possessed and that some of his relatives had believed him to be insane? One day he is in danger of being thrown off a cliff, so he has to hide and flee. Ultimately, he ends up being nailed to a cross as a slave and blasphemer: in front of the very admirers who might hope to see him come down from that wood, he stays there and ends his life in the utmost humiliation and disappointment of the disciples and everyone. This is behaviour hardly befitting a God, had he been invented by the primitive community.

Moreover, in his stories and parables one encounters everyday things: fishermen, boats, nets, fish; peasants ploughing the fields, sowing and harvesting; women doing the simple housework, such as kneading flour for bread and adding yeast, or who, for a few lost coins, turn the whole house upside down or patch a worn-out dress. A Jesus who, in order to talk about God, instead of taking his hearers to transcendental philosophical and theological reflections, shows the birds flying, the wild flowers of the field, the hair of the head. Had they really invented the character Jesus, these Christians could have magnificently described at least the greatest miracles and emphasised the extraordinary. Instead, for the resurrection of a widow's son, he touches the stretcher with the dead man and simply invites him to get up; for the resurrection of his great friend Lazarus, three words are enough for him: "Lazarus come out"; to bring a little girl back to life, two words: "Talithà Kum!".

What magic words does he use for miracles? Here are a few: "get up and walk"; "stretch out your hand"; "see!"; "be healed"; "be cleansed". These miracles are recounted in plain language, without frames or comments. The evangelists are just interested in the facts and that is all. And again: if they want to make this Jesus a God, how can Christians put the prayer of the psalm on his lips: "My God, why have you forsaken me?" or present him as God, if he says he does not  even know when the end of the world will come? Or, instead of choosing among his apostles some intellectuals - Pharisees or scribes - or some Temple priests, Jesus chooses fishermen, a hated tax collector, a revolutionary zealot and violent, two brothers who do not want to miss the opportunity to occupy a government position in the new kingdom promised by Jesus himself. Not only that, he puts a kleptomaniac to be the bursar of his community and, as leader of the twelve, he chooses one who is already married, who should still have been taking care of the family. If all this were not enough, how could the inventors of Jesus, at the moment of his birth in Bethlehem, have the angels give the announcement to shepherds, who were precluded from testifying in court? And could these hypothetical counterfeiters ever, after the resurrection, have made Jesus appear first to a woman who, like all women in the Jewish world, was not held in any esteem to be a credible witness? In fact, someone like St Paul, deeply embedded in his culture does not even mention that fact, but presents the first appearance of the risen Jesus to Peter.

One of the greatest Protestant theologians of the last century, the Swiss Karl Barth (1886-1968), considers it impossible to think of the primitive community as the creator of the deified Jesus precisely because of this language that is so bare, so essential, so lacking in frills, which in no way befits a strategy aimed at creating an apotheosis of Jesus, to make him God.

Why is Jesus so 'human'?

On Tabor, during his transfiguration in front of three disciples, an extraordinary event does not take place, as we often think: in that case Jesus simply shows what he is, while extraordinary was the fact that he concealed his divinity until then in a body and a life so human that not even the slightest suspicion leaked out. In fact, coming down from this mountain, he imposed absolute silence on his three friends about what they had seen. And when he performed particularly significant miracles, he often asked for silence.

 Jesus could not say exactly who he was because they would not have been able to understand him: if – at least the disciples –had realised who he was, how could they have lived with him, walked, worked, fed, tired, rested, cried or feasted, lived everyday life beside such a dazzling light?

Already the Old Testament stated that it was not possible to see God and remain alive, but His friends needed to look upon His face without dying, to speak with Him and hear His human voice, to see his smile and his tears, to celebrate with Him in the temple or the synagogue.

Does a biblical scholar without faith have authority?

If a biblical archaeologist, or historian, or theologian wants to make an honest study of the New Testament texts, and in particular of the early community, to fully understand the Mystery of Jesus Christ, but without a deep Christian faith, he will lack one of the main tools to put himself in tune with a community of faith as it was the one that encountered the risen Jesus and believed in Him. If the Bible is not read on one's knees, it ceases to be a book of God.

Usually, a profane historian studies profane subjects and for this very reason it will be difficult, if not impossible, for him to deal with events connected with the transcendent: 'his gaze, in fact, does not always have sufficient perspicacity to penetrate what is pure, delicate, and energetic in a consciousness touched by God, in a consciousness in which God has infused divine inspiration [360]. The apostles preach... because they must preach. A force compels them. Woe if they do not proclaim the gospel!

It is probable that the many scholars of the 19th and 20th centuries, who reduced Jesus to a mere man, or a myth, or a non-existent person, approached him as an object of study, but without love and therefore had no authority to judge him, nor to understand him.

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[360] - K. Adam, op. cit., p. 185.

What have the Gospels written?

When scrolling through the pages of some biography of Jesus, the reader is entitled to expect that importance be given to historical fact, an indispensable element when speaking of someone who existed in our own history, and that He not be spoken of as a character in a novel. If the Christian faith is stripped of the historical dimension, it totally collapses.

Specialists warn us: to get to know the person of Jesus there is a long way to go, with a well-stocked baggage of biblical, theological, moral and historical methodology, enriched then by integrative disciplines: law, anthropology, archaeology, psychology, history, history of religions, geography and politics. In libraries, we see an endless amount of studies and commentaries of all the biblical books that today can competently explain to us the authenticity and authority of many Gospel passages and verses, their historical reliability, theological value and a whole host of data and information that can be gathered around each verse.

Faced with this cadre of specialists who have dedicated their entire lives to biblical study, without being able to consider themselves to have 'arrived' at a satisfactory point in their knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth, I feel compelled to raise the specific problem of the brevity of life, as an insurmountable stumbling block to an adequate knowledge of Jesus. The quest for a deeper understanding of the Mystery of Jesus Christ will continue until the last day of our history. A person's life is therefore not enough to delve into the various aspects of Jesus' personality and thus to be able to "give an account of one's faith" in its fullness. One must, with humility, trust others, but there are saints and heretics among them, and it is not always easy to distinguish one from the other.

Thomas Aquinas, Ernest Renan or Karl Rahner devoted their lives to studying Jesus Christ with very different conclusions. And me, how do I stand before them? I will have to give my own, personal, reasoned, sensible assent of faith. If I am interested in Jesus Christ and want to know him, will I be able to take the New Testament and rely on it? To ground my faith, how will I distinguish between a more or less historically reliable text? And if I have not had the opportunity to study theology or attended courses to delve into the Mystery of Jesus as specialists can, will I not be able to consider myself a Christian?

Amidst so many heresies and adverse theses on the nature of the Gospels – which for some were creations of the imagination, for others authentic stories that cannot be refuted , but explained without mysteries, miracles, or healings, as if Jesus had been, if anything, a good conjurer, who was eventually deified – well, amidst all these theses posited or refuted, can one come to any sensible conclusion? Certainly: one can answer in the affirmative with all honesty, calmly arguing that the Gospels were written by men who knew the story of Jesus, the main events of his life, his miracles, his parables and his speeches. The evangelists placed eye-witness accounts and those of the early Christian community in their writings in order to scrupulously convey to us the truths they knew [361]. albeit often in literary genres to which we are not accustomed; we constantly try to read them with our modern parameters, penalising the contents they were intended to pass on.

In conclusion, if I put my questions to the Gospels – even knowing that not all the words reported can be supported by their legitimacy or sufficient historical reliability – I still rely on the most authoritative texts, the only ones that will lead me to know Jesus Christ. But, reading the Gospels of the infancy, for example, when confronted with the detail of the star accompanying the Magi, one may wonder how to regard this text, given that astronomers did not locate a star at that time that could have become a significant sign. And what answer can I expect, with respect to the census, if there is no other correspondence in the documents of the time besides Matthew, or if I have doubts about the place of Jesus' birth being located in Bethlehem or the massacre of the innocents or other facts? Well, while the verses, taken individually, one by one, might not even belong to modern historiography as we understand it today, one can be sure that they convey true content.

By following this version, one gets closer to history (even in the modern sense) than one would by adhering to a hypothesis that may seem even more original. Joseph Ratzinger, who has devoted three volumes to Jesus Christ, having studied him all his life, is convinced that the figure that emerges from the Gospels is much more logical and, from a historical point of view, also more comprehensible than the reconstructions with which the Pope himself has had to deal with in recent decades. And he concludes: 'I believe that this very Jesus, the one of the Gospels, is a historically sensible and convincing figure [362].

In fact, it must be remembered that the evangelists were not concerned with writing a news article or recording neutral and strictly objective accounts of what Jesus said or did, but rather with passing on a committed testimony, trying to make us understand the meaning of his words and to convey truths based on historical facts. The words of Jesus are messages of life, they are spoken in order to be lived, and ultimately, only those who are willing to live them can fully understand them. Therefore, even though a single word, story, parable, or statement of Jesus may not be supported by all the elements of modern historiography, we cannot feel entitled to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Taken as a whole, the infancy gospels themselves, which seem most problematic s far as their authenticity is concerned, rest on historical facts: John was born, Jesus was born and grew up in a Jewish family, he was imbued with Jewish culture and faith, integrated into the work, festivals and celebrations of his people. Important to Him were His home in Nazareth, the Synagogue, the Temple in Jerusalem. If we take the behaviour, parables and speeches as conveyed by the evangelists as a whole, we will not stray far from history as we understand it today.

A fact such as the massacre of the innocents, for example, which – to be reported only by Matthew and not, for example, by Josephus Flavius (who writes a great deal about Herod) – can be questioned in its historicity and legitimacy, nevertheless gives us precious historical details, useful for understanding the political world in which Jesus spent his childhood: who were the leaders like who, in order to accredit their authority, did not hesitate to abuse power or use violence, to employ arms against the people they were ruling; what King Herod was like, who had been able to have his wife, his mother-in-law, his brother-in-law and three of his children killed, so that any atrocity could be expected of him, including a massacre of innocents.

From the same account we can also understand how the people breathed an air of revolt against the Roman invaders and with how spasmodic hope they awaited some kind of liberation from such power, to the point that these Jewish people, while being able to listen to and accept any serious truth from a prophet, felt a moral duty to put their political liberation first. If there was talk of a Messiah then, he must undoubtedly be a liberator from that slavery, and from this we can also deduce the fact that Jesus' disciples could not think of a Messiah who was not a social liberator.

The Gospels are nonetheless documents of faith and their purpose is not to reconstruct the historical unfolding, as precious as possible, of the life of Jesus, but, as the Belgian theologian Camille Focant emphasises: 'that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name' [363]. And, again, according to biblical scholar Bruno Maggioni, 'the Gospels constitute a literary genre in their own right. They are connected to the historical genre, in that they report memories and traditions that recount things that really happened. The prologue of Luke's Gospel strongly emphasises this attention to the reality of facts. The early Christian communities' need for fidelity to history should by no means be underestimated. Christians were interested in knowing whether the facts narrated – of great importance for their lives – had happened or not. However, the Gospels are not comparable to chronicle accounts. Their fundamental purpose is to nourish faith. That is why they are an inseparable interweaving of history and the interpretation of history itself, and they permit themselves certain liberties that a modern historian would hardly allow himself" [364].

One cannot forget, at this point, that faith in Jesus – as Jesuit João Batista Libanio points out – does not depend "absolutely on exegetical and theological studies. These studies are only at the service of deepening the faith, they help to answer the many questions that the Christians ask themselves and nourish an adult faith, but they are not strictly indispensable as such, because the heart of man and the action of the Holy Spirit lie beyond" [365].  In this regard, the Bible, Bible and Christology Commission states: "It may happen to admit too easily the historicity of all the details in certain Gospel accounts, while they may have a theological function according to the literary conventions of the time; or to attribute verbal authenticity to certain words that the Gospels put on Jesus' lips, while they are reported differently in each of the Gospels, but in the same way it must be said that, if we remove the dimension of history from Jesus and his message reported in the Gospels, the Christian faith would simply collapse".

The N.T. scholar Günther Bornkamm adds: 'We certainly cannot seriously claim that the Gospels and their tradition prohibit us from any research into the historical Jesus. They not only permit, but require this effort. Indeed, whatever the opinions of historians on matters of detail, no one can dispute that the Gospel tradition is remarkably interested in the pre-Easter history of Jesus, even if this interest is very different from that of modern historical science'  [366].

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[361] - "Since many have set out to write an account of the events that have taken place among us, as they have been handed down to us by those who witnessed them from the beginning and became ministers of the word, so I too have decided to make careful enquiries into every circumstance from the beginning and to write down for you an orderly account of them, illustrious Theophilus, so that you may be able to see the soundness of the teachings you have received" (Lk. 1,1-4).

[362] - J. Ratzinger, op. cit., p 17-18

[363] - Cfr. Gv. 20, 31.

[364] - B. Maggioni, Impara a conoscere il volto di Dio nelle parole di Dio, Commentary on the Dei Verbum, Padua, 2001, p. 120.

[365] - J. B. Libanio, Creo en Jesu Cristo, Bogotá-Colombia, San Pablo, 2010, p. 42.

[366] G. Bornkamm, Gesù di Nazareth. I risultati di quaranta anni di ricerche sul "Gesù della storia", Turin, Claudiana, 1968, p. 169.

Some examples

All the episodes of the Gospel are, as Maggioni points out, a combination of history, narrative, interpretation and faith. And when we are faced with a very significant theological interpretation, this doesn’t mean that we should not feel entitled to deny its historical origin. [367]

For example, Paul's vocation, reported in three texts by the evangelist Luke himself, helps us to understand how the evangelists narrate the facts. In the first narrative there is only a voice and an invitation to stand up; [368] in the second, Paul is told of his mission by Ananias, while in the third, it is Jesus himself who manifests to him in full his mission to the Gentiles [369].

In these three moments, a maturation resulting from the experience of years of missionary work is evident. Gourgues argues that attributing the "missionary discourse" of Acts 26:16-18 to Christ certainly falsifies the material accuracy of the facts, but not their deeper meaning. Jesus' discourse in fact begins with "I have appeared to you". The fact that Jesus appeared is common in the three texts, whereas the discourse of Jesus that follows is rather what Paul over the years has understood from that appearance, we could say, the discourse that Jesus made in Paul's heart over the years.

Another very significant example is that of the Passion texts in the Gospel that are so similar to others in the Old Testament that one might think that it was reconstructed along those lines. It must be emphasised, however, that the facts interpreted, or theologically enriched with quotations that place the life of Christ more clearly within the plan of God and thus of the prophecies, nevertheless do not cease to be facts. If, then, in the parallel texts, similar situations are described, it is not surprising that the evangelists willingly adopt that vocabulary and sometimes the same imagery.

For example, to show the fulfilment of the Scriptures, it is said that Jesus in front of Pilate remained mute, a gesture that is also plausible, but emphasised probably with the Servant of Adonai in mind: "Mistreated, he humbled himself and did not open his mouth" [370].  A further example can be found in the scene of the outrages, where one is spoilt for choice, so many elements are in common. In Luke one hardly finds a game, a mockery, a taunt against the prisoner Jesus. But the attitude of the guards towards a condemned man was common and was somehow part of the punishments that were inflicted [371]. The scene is transformed by Mark and even more so by Matthew through certain details, giving the account of Luke an unknown scope. Here, in addition to 'hitting' Jesus, he is spat at, reviled, slapped: to describe all this, the evangelists use the same vocabulary used in the third song of Isaiah's servant: 'I lent my back to those who struck me and my cheeks to the slaps, I did not withdraw my face from the outrages and spitting' [372].

Not only is there similarity, therefore, but also the same words and sometimes the same images are used, describing similar behaviour both in Isaiah's time and in Jesus' time. In the description of the Passion and Death of Jesus, these outrages and curses against the condemned man were repeated both during the journey to the place of the gallows and in front of the crucified men themselves, as if to emphasise that the decision of the court was an almost democratic act, shared by the people, which was prolonged in the executors of the condemnation and in those who witnessed and showed agreement with that decision just taken by the judicial authority.

In describing these facts, similar to those of Isaiah's suffering servant, it is understandable that the evangelists, having every opportunity to do so, take the opportunity to make a specific reference to the Scriptures, thus the dividing up of the clothes of the condemned, a very common custom after all forms of capital execution (Mk. 15,24 par. = Ps. 22,19); or, again, the shaking of the heads of passers-by (Mk. 15,29 par. = Ps. 22,8); the mocking of the leaders (Mt. 27,43 par. = Ps. 22,9); the gall offered to Jesus, which was always offered (Mt. 27,34 = Ps. 69, 22); the betrayal (Mk. 14,18 = Ps. 41,10) and, finally, the abandonment of Jesus (Lk. 23,49 = Ps. 38,12) [373]. These are, however, facts that were repeated both at the time of Isaiah and at the time of Jesus.

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[367] - B. Maggioni, I racconti evangelici della passione, Assisi, Cittadella editrice, 2006.

[368] - Acts 9, 6.

[369] - Acts 22, 5-16; 26, 15-18.

[370] - Is. 53, 7.

[371] - Lk. 22, 63-65.

[372] - Is. 50,6.

[373] - Cf. M. Gourgues, Gesù davanti alla sua passione e alla sua morte, Turin, Gribaudi, 1981, p. 13.

First-hand ancient documents

We cannot forget that some biblical writings date back to the very beginning of scripture itself: the Proto-Sinaitic texts belong to this extraordinary period. But even the New Testament, which is almost 2000 years younger, has come down to us with extraordinary first-hand documentation. In 1930, a collection of almost all New Testament books written before 200, when the original was a hundred years earlier, was found in Egypt. And in 1956, an extraordinary document appeared containing almost the entire Gospel of John, which dates back as far as 150 A.D. and was thus copied barely fifty years after its composition. These scrolls are therefore 1800-1850 years old. The total number of ancient New Testament texts amounts to 4,610, plus 70 precious papyri and a large number of fragments. No book of antiquity has been passed down to us with such documentation.

It is interesting to note that while the oldest manuscripts of Greek authors were reproduced at least 1200 years after they were first written, Plato's Thoughts were written down a good 1300 years after the originals and, again, the copy of Aeschylus' oldest tragedy is barely 500 years old, i.e. 1500 years since he composed it, the chronological distances of papyri and parchments of the N. T., as I have already mentioned, do not exceed 50 or 100 years and some texts of St. Paul much less.

Codices and papyri bearing witness to Jesus

From pagan sources [374] we can cite Tacitus (AD 55-120) who, writing the history of the Roman Empire, when reporting the fire of Rome that occurred in July 64 claims that the Roman people attributed that fire to Nero himself, who, in order to exonerate himself accused the Christians [375].

In a letter of 112 to the emperor Trajan, Pliny the Younger (62-114 A.D.) reports a complaint against a group of citizens: 'They also asserted that all their guilt or error consisted in the fact that they used to assemble on a certain day of the week, before sunrise, and sing a hymn to Christ as to a God'. Around 120 A.D., Suetonius Tranquillus (75-150 A.D.) reports instead that, around the year 49 of the Christian era, Emperor Claudius (41-54) 'expelled from Rome the Jews, who, instigated by a certain Crestos [Christ], often provoked riots'.

A few decades after Pentecost, the Christians were thus already in Rome. Luke also mentions the fire mentioned in Acts, when Paul, having arrived in Corinth, met a Jew convert to Christianity, 'who had arrived shortly before from Italy with his wife Priscilla, following the order of Claudius expelling all Jews from Rome'.

Among the Jewish sources that speak of Jesus, one cannot omit the writings of Josephus Flavius (37-100 AD), who knew the early Christian community well, although he did not sympathise with it. Around 93 A.D., this prominent historian wrote about Jesus as a wise and virtuous man, informing us that he was condemned by Pilate, that the Jews bore some responsibility and that his execution consisted in crucifixion. And Flavius himself again mentions in a text 'Jesus called the Christ', while reporting the death sentence of James, the leader of the 

Jerusalem community, who was stoned to death at Passover 62.

In the Babylonian Talmud there is yet another testimony, which states that Jesus [the Nazarene] "hung him on the eve [of šabbāt and the Passover]" (Sanhedrin 44°): it reports that Jesus' death took place on the 14th of Nisan, as reported in the Gospel of John.

In any case, the testimonies about Jesus are very scarce: Messori informs that the writers of the time dealt exclusively with kings who showed their greatness by force (military victories, large territories). On the contrary, 'the traces Jesus left behind are not those on which official history is based: royal palaces, temples, coins with his name and profile, signs of wars and conquests [...]. The historians, they did not catch Christ, confused as he was in the torrent of oriental events. Instead, they have noted Christianity, which was organising itself as a lively and disturbing 'little group that was impossible to disperse' [376].

Messori himself states that it would be like being surprised to find only a few lines on the 11 September 2001 massacre in an encyclopaedia of the history of sport at the beginning of the millennium. Although there is little documentation, thanks to Tacitus and Suetonius we find confirmation of the presence of Christians in Rome already between 49 and 68, at the time of the emperors Claudius and Nero.

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[374] - Cfr. A. Lapple, La Bibbia oggi. Quando parlano le pietre e i documenti. Cinisello Balsamo, Edizioni Paoline, 1988; R. Penna, L’ambiente storico-culturale delle origini cristiane, Bologna, Dehoniane Editions, 1986

[375] - "Wanting to silence this rumour (against him), Nero blamed others. He punished with cruel tortures those whom the people called "chrestianos" [...] this name originated from Christ, who was condemned to death by the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius" (Annales, XV, 44). This text proves how well Christianity was already present in Rome before 120.

[376] - V. Messori, Ipotesi su Gesù, Turin, SEI, 1983, pp. 239-240.

The witnesses are believers

It must be added, as Penna reminds us, that "access to the story of Jesus, from the documentary point of view, that is, of the written sources that allow us to know it, is essentially possible only through attestations of Christian hand. The narratives concerning [Jesus] have been written, at 99 percent, by Christian authors, that is, by believers in Him, so that His story is substantially obtainable only through a testimony of faith' [377]. Modern biblical research affirms that, of all Christian documentation, the canonical Gospels are the oldest and most reliable documents. History and faith must obviously be given their respective roles. Indeed, the Pontifical Biblical Commission in Inspiration and Truth in Sacred Scripture argues that 'while the theological statements about Jesus have a direct and normative value, the purely historical elements have a subordinate function'.

If, with reasoned confidence, we rely on the Gospel passages, at least recognising the difference in the literary genres used in the writing of the sacred text, we will be able to nourish our faith sufficiently during our existence, also because, objectively, one cannot expect everyone to be able to delve into all the elements of faith due to the brevity of human life, as I mentioned above.

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[377] - R. Penna, Gesù di Nazareth. La sua storia, la nostra fede, Cinisello Balsamo, San Paolo Edizioni, 2008

Who can we entrust ourselves to?

We cannot consider ourselves disciples of Jesus until the question is answered: "To whom shall I entrust myself in order to attain the truth preserved in the Scriptures? To my own intelligence? To the conclusions of my personal research?" Immediately, the question of the brevity of life I have already mentioned emerges: even if I devote all my days studying the sacred texts, still I will not be able to delve into the biblical themes, so numerous and complex.

Will I then rely on the specialists, who have often come to very different conclusions? And if so, who will I choose from Renan, Barth, Rahner or Bultmann? Is the Church a reliable specialist? Personally, I rule out trusting just me, and I also rule out trusting a specialist proposing in turn a new reading of the Bible, albeit with originality. I prefer to choose elsewhere.

The Church can offer me greater trust, indeed, even if only considering it as a human structure, it is able to gather the multiplicity of the various cultural and faith experiences of all its members throughout the world and in every epoch of history, being able to reflect on the various issues through Synods and Councils and, above all, being able to invoke the light of the Holy Spirit.

Since it is a large institution, evolving in slow steps, trusting in it I will not depart from a reasonable and sensible reading of the Bible with its proposals and conclusions.

Finally, I still wonder if the Jesus the Church proposes to us today is really the same Jesus of Nazareth, who made history, in our own history. Is the Jesus proposed today to me by the last  Council the real Jesus, the one that man must know? We should honestly acknowledge that Jesus Christ is much more than what we know. Today we see his face as a reflection on a shiny metal or on the mirror of water. His features are indefinite.

Through the centuries, the face of Jesus has been enriched with new dimensions: the shadow of our cultures is reflected on the image of Jesus the God-man. His knowledge, however, is not only an intellectual question, indeed we can already reach Him after the first announcement of His existence, when we have received the grace to kneel before Him. Let it be clear, however, that we will only be able to know the totally true Jesus on the last day, when history and its cultures are over: then we will see his face as it truly is.

Searching for Jesus in the Holy Scriptures, however, is one of the most fascinating adventures, even if colleagues in the various departments of universities claiming to study exact sciences will marginalise you and probably consider you a relic of the Age of Superstition [378].

To the brother in faith, I would say with St. Paul not to be bitter because you have become "a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men", foolish because of Christ, while others feel wise, weak while others feel strong, despised while others are honoured. Brother, when insulted bless, persecuted endure, slandered comfort. Let us not be sorry to become 'the trash of the world, the refuse of all', if this happens because of Christ, indeed He sympathised with this condition of ours. Let us not be sorry to become like Him  [379].

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[378] - The world of the visible, of the demonstrable, of 'scientific objectivity' cannot claim to monopolise and explain everything. The idea of God, the immortal soul, the resurrection or the divinity of Jesus Christ cannot be expected to become the 'object of science'. One can reach that dimension beyond the experienceable, through a well-founded "rational faith", the whole field of reality, but to know that it defers beyond its experienceable boundaries.

[379] - Cf. 1 Cor 4,1-16.

Conclusion

It seems to me a duty, at this point, to state that the enterprise of writing a biography of Jesus today with the rigour of the modern ones entails many difficulties. While fixing dates, specifying places, ordering events is a difficult task, even with gaps and at least in broad brushstrokes, it still is legitimately possible to reconstruct Jesus' earthly existence [380].

By comparing ourselves with the Gospels of Mark, Luke, Matthew and John, with the Acts and the canonical letters, using all the means we have at our disposal, preferring of course the contemplation of those texts and reading them on our knees, we can find in those pages the orientation of our life, the will of God and what the Holy Spirit wants to suggest to us in the present day of our history. The Church then, which gathers the intellectual efforts produced by all the scholars of the world after meditating and praying on them, asking for the light of the Holy Spirit and meeting in councils, updates us on the latest insights that can nourish our faith.

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[380] - Cfr. X. Léon-Dufour, Les Evangiles et l'histoire de Jesus, Seuil ed. 1964; D. Gutierrez Martin, op. cit.

ANNEX  III

THE GOSPELS, NARRATIVE WORKS

The Gospels are not treatises on morality or theology, but narrative works. They are not, however, a novel, which is generally written to entertain the reader with the most unpredictable adventures. Instead, their style could be closer to the biographical genre, which aims to offer a reliable portrait of the protagonist. However, if we wanted to speak of biography, we would have to recognise a great disproportion between the various periods of life. We see, for example, that in one evangelist, Jesus' entire childhood is not even hinted at and, in all of them, the gap from adolescence until about the age of thirty is summarised with three words: 'he grew in wisdom and grace', while ample space is given to the last years and especially to the last hours of his life.

The Gospels do not belong to a learned literature, or to what we call 'auteur' literature, but rather to a popular genre, in that they report stories to be told to the people. Some authors prefer to liken the Gospels to ancient Greek-type biography, such as the lives of philosophers, some prefer instead to compare them to biographies of a character written by different hands, such as the life of Alexander the Great written by four historians his contemporaries: Callisthenes, Onesicritus, Ptolemy and Aristobulus.

By reading these four historians, we can form an image of the leader that is quite close to reality. Thus, to interpret the historical image of Jesus, we are confronted with Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. How did they come to write books, albeit short, to express the complex personality of Jesus?

To put us in the most correct way in front of their texts, we must rule out the possibility that the evangelists – especially the editors of Matthew, Mark and Luke – thought of some form of pocket book for knowledge and meditation on Jesus of Nazareth, as we generally think of him today. If someone asks us to get to know Jesus we could put a Gospel in his pocket and say: 'Read the Gospels and you will basically meet Jesus in those lines'. If in the days of the early community someone had asked this question, he would most likely have received a different answer instead: 'Go and listen when Christians gather, attend them, listen well to everything they say about Jesus and you too will meet him'. That is why the Gospels at especially the synoptic ones, and another proper, which has been lost - the one that, under the name of Source Q (in German Quelle) - is perhaps the inspirational text of the four we know and which can be considered as notes for catechists, for giving homilies in synagogues or in homes or under a Temple porch. Regarding the parable of the precious pearl, for example, it was sufficient to note that a merchant of pearl finds a precious one, sells all he has and buys it. Now, the catechist who knows the parable well will explain what the pearl is, what its preciousness consists of, what he sells to buy it, what he will do with it when he gets hold of it, what it represents, and all those details that Jesus himself may have included in the story himself, otherwise such an essential text would make no sense. Those who delve into the Gospels are in fact looking, even today, for all the possible information about the history of Jesus' time, the geography, the politics of that period, the mentality and culture in which Jesus himself moved, and everything that helps to know the infinite details omitted in the New Testament texts.

Before delving into reading the Gospels, it seems right to me to briefly mention a few details that introduce us precisely into the notes of these four characters or four traditions of teachings that, put down in writing, have come down to us under the names of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Matthew

He organises his Gospel around five major themes: the first is the evangelical discourse of the beatitudes, the rich Sermon on the Mount and the precious moral teachings with the guiding indications of the Christian's behaviour, going so far as to demand even love for one's enemies, a fundamental act, to be considered the statute of the disciple. In the text we read the demanding mission statement whereby disciples are sent out to preach. This mandate can also require heroism in persecution and, consequently, in facing martyrdom.

Then there is the body of parables, which particularly embrace the theme of the Kingdom of God and reveal its nature, and, in addition, the discourse on community life, which deals with the theme of mutual acceptance, with the central parable of the lost sheep, the importance of the flock united around a single shepherd and in which special attention is paid to each one, especially to those in danger of getting lost. And, finally, there is the discourse of the end of time, in which are intermingled memories of the destruction of Jerusalem that must hint at a much more global destruction - that of the end of time, in fact - from which, however, emerges trust in God's mercy and love, which will conclude history with the celebration of an infinitely just mercy and infinitely merciful justice. Again, in his Gospel, Matthew presents Jesus as a second Moses, who, however, surpasses him, placing himself as the ultimate fulfilment of the Law itself, represented precisely by Moses. 

Mark

If all the Gospels are the notes for catechists' homilies, this is particularly true of Mark, who highlights two major statements: on the one hand, Peter – the model of the catechumen who has completed his journey professes with solemnity to Jesus asking him what he thinks of him: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God"; on the other hand, at the end of the Gospel, again as the conclusion of the catechumenal journey, in front of all that evidence even the pagan can exclaim: "Truly this man was the son of God".

In his Gospel, Mark strongly emphasises the power of Jesus overcoming evil in the figure of the devil, using the language of the time, presenting him as an almost physical character. Mark also emphasises Jesus' permanent wandering between Galilee and Jerusalem. In Galilee he announces his catecheses, performs healings and miracles – which constitute thirty percent of his Gospel – while in Jerusalem he encounters hostility and plots against his own life, which he would conclude on the cross. The miracles, that could present a Jesus sent by a powerful and glorious God, are paralleled by the prospect of the cross, with all the humiliation it entails, and insistent are the demands for the disciple to follow Jesus in the path of the cross and not of success.

Luke

With a poetic and symbolic language, he traces the guidelines of a solid theology of Jesus' childhood. It suggests that he himself gathered evidence of that period of history from the living voice of Jesus' mother or from some direct witness.

In Luke, too, we find the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, during which Jesus teaches and performs miracles, but his entire mission revolves around that city. In Jerusalem, Jesus dies, resurrects, sends the apostles on mission before his ascension and, not to leave his own alone, sends the Holy Spirit to continue his teaching. In his catechesis, Luke likes to present on the one hand the image of a merciful Jesus who forgives and loves to the point of the impossible, and on the other a Jesus who is demanding and radical when proposing to follow him with total detachment from possessions, and to choose the Good that is himself. Even though He is presented as well incarnated among his people, He appears at the same time separated and isolated, in the long times of prayer before his baptism, before pronouncing the Sermon on the Mount and choosing the Twelve, before asking the apostles to pronounce on his identity, on Tabor, before teaching the Our Father, and in the terrible night of agony.

John

Although "the fourth gospel is a book about God rather than about Jesus", John not only knows the story of Jesus with whom he lived all the years of his public life, but also became a great friend of his, as well as being his pupil. He knows the story in detail, to the point that, when narrating his first encounter with Jesus, he can say that it was around four o'clock in the afternoon, but he does not dwell on it: he goes further with his theological reflections, which show us how, precisely throughout the course of his life with Jesus, he had already grasped in each event what the other evangelists had struggled to see, so they limited themselves to outlining the geography, the chronology and the actions, albeit pregnant with teachings.

John is a theologian, so he also does theology when he recounts the events of Cana, the healing of the paralytic, the multiplication of the loaves, the healing of the man born blind, the resurrection of Lazarus, the encounter with Nicodemus, with the Samaritan woman and with the disciples at the Last Supper, the washing of the feet. He knows that Jesus is the only one who knows the Father and therefore, as the Son, has the authority and power to reveal Him to us.

According to Wikenhauser and Schmid, "the evangelist makes Jesus speak in his own language, with his own mentality. He makes him take a stand on issues that were current in his time', so history and faith interpretation are closely intertwined in John. But it can still be argued with Dreyfus that "Jesus would have recognised in these statements words that, if he did not utter, he could at least have uttered, because they correspond to what he thought about himself, his person and his mystery". So, ultimately, John ends up being more connected to history than others, or, as Martyn puts it, he is 'the non-historical who makes sense of history'. We could speculate that John is the first theologian in the same sense in which we understand him today. After him, in his wake will come the Councils themselves, the Church Fathers and the theological reflection that still introduces us into the mystery of Jesus Christ.

ANNEX  IV

FOOD IN THE TIME OF JESUS

This is not as minor an issue as it may appear, if we consider that of the 613 commands, prohibitions and laws in the Jewish Code, most belonged to provisions concerning food. And again, let it be said that a population that eats fish is very different from one that eats hunting meat or even a vegetarian population. So, diet is not secondary to knowing a person. Having said that, it is enough to say a few words on this subject, basically taking them from the biblical texts. Bearing in mind that Jesus' country was poor, one must conclude that food was essentially for nourishment, but there was no lack of festive foods such as meat, wine or some sweets made from flour, milk and honey.

In Jesus' time, bread was certainly the main food: everyday bread was prepared from wheat or barley flour (for the poor), with yeast or unleavened, baked in the oven or in the form of thin cakes on metal or stone plates. The importance of this food is confirmed by Jesus' own prayer to his disciples: 'Give us this day our bread', in which he does not mean food in general, but bread specifically, the everyday bread, the one that continues to be the main food in many cultures: it was said, in fact, that when bread ran out, famine began. And, at the beginning of each meal, the head of the family would break the bread with the prayer: 'Blessed art Thou, Lord, King of the Universe, who bringest up bread from the earth'. As essayist Joseph Campbell points out, mealtime was sacred, so much so that God's presence was expected and welcomed in each one. While earning their daily bread, the common people recognised that it was God who provided everything they needed to live.

Lentils, chickpeas and broad beans were also common in the main meals. For those who lived by the river or lake, fish was a common food, and wine was also often present at least on the workers' table. Meat was reserved for feasts. We must also remember that many animals were considered impure and therefore never appeared on the tables of the Jewish people. Pork, camel, hare, mice, reptiles, turtles or moles were strictly forbidden. Even fish without fins and scales, such as eels, were thrown away after fishing, as reported in one of the kingdom parable. Insects were also generally forbidden, with the only exception of grasshoppers, crickets and locusts. Perhaps the most common food (though not in all territories) could be considered bread and fish. Without venturing into a typical recipe book, one can however agree that there was a breakfast (at least for the middle class) of bread, milk (yoghurt, cheese or cottage cheese), wild honey, dried figs and sultanas or fresh seasonal fruit as figs, grapes or pomegranates.

In addition to leavened or unleavened bread, main meals included vegetable soups with onions, lentils, chickpeas, broad beans, pumpkins, leeks, or fish, usually roasted, or veal, sheep or goat meat. Then there were bitter herbs with cooked chicory, capers, olives or pistachios. Sometimes wheat was toasted, which could be mixed into salads with olives, capers and toasted almonds. And, in the evening, some vegetable soups were especially popular: lentil soup was very common. The foods listed here were those accessible to the middle class, who had few resources, while the rich had many more. The poor, on the other hand, did not have access to all these foods, although could be found one or the other on their table.

ANNEX  V

PRAYER

Jesus received from the Jewish tradition the taste and appreciation of prayer. In his time, there was also the flip side of the coin: the religious leaders, the Pharisees and others, in their hypocrisy went around praying in the public square to be seen and, for the same reason, gave alms and dressed with signs that qualified them as religious people, who deserved all the respect of the people.

This cannot but annoy Jesus, who feels authorised to expose the behaviour of the false teachers: "When you pray, do not imitate the hypocrites, who like to pray standing in their synagogues and in the corners of the squares to be seen by all. Verily, I say to you, they have received their reward. But you, if you wish to pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father in secret; and your Father, who sees in secret, will hear you. And when you pray, do not make long speeches like the pagans, who think they will be heard by dint of words. God, your Father, knows what you need even before you ask him" [381].

The spirit of this verse is also breathed in Leviticus [382] and even in Plato, but how differently it sounds on the lips of Jesus, who does not claim any asceticism! Jesus prays and meditates in isolated places, on mountains or hills [383]. In the morning before dawn he has already left for a deserted place to pray, [384] but we find him up there on the mountain, even after he has finished the day's work: after dismissing the crowd, he goes up there to be with his Father in prayer [385]. Morning and evening prayer was common practice among the Jewish people, but Jesus performs this rite with a new heart and also spreads the prayer to other various moments of the day. Like every Jew, Jesus generally prays standing - we see him raise his eyes to heaven [386] - but also prostrate on the ground [387].

Apart from the official prayers of the pious Israelite, for Jesus there were other moments of prayer, which in some way gave a soul to all his actions: when he experiences the difficulty of being understood by the wise or encounters the genuine faith of the simple, of the little ones, of those who have no need to appear, to show themselves important, Jesus takes the opportunity to turn in prayer to the Father, Lord of heaven and earth, and thanks him because he has hidden 'the mysteries of the Kingdom from the wise and intelligent and revealed them to the little ones' [388]. And, again, he prays when he heals the sick – for example the young epileptic [389] – or when, before the resurrection of Lazarus, he thanks God for having been heard [390].

Then there are still various important moments of prayer, such as when he has to choose the apostles and does not just go to the mountain to pray, but stays the whole night in prayer; or in Gethsemani, before the Passion, where prayer becomes so intense that it turns into drops of blood. Jesus prays again, with infinite confidence, before the last cry, knowing to whom he delivers his last breath, now that all is accomplished: "Into your hands I commend my spirit".

Jesus seeks to purify prayer, raising it to the heart, and not just settling for liturgies, sacrifices, lights, incense, etc. Some prophets such as Hosea, Malachi and especially Isaiah had already cried out with their freedom: "Your incense even disturbs me, when your hands are stained with blood; purify your thoughts, stop doing evil, learn to do good, seek righteousness, and then you will be able to come and make your offering and your prayer [391]." With Jesus, however, an entirely new cult was born, founded on purity of heart and human brotherhood.

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[381] - Mt 6:5-8.

[382] - Lv. 11:44; 19:2.

[383] - Mt. 14, 23; Lc. 4, 42.

[384] - Mc. 1, 35.

[385] - Mc. 6, 46.

[386] - Mc. 7, 34; Gal. 17, 1.

[387] - Mc. 14, 35.

[388] - Mt 11:25.

[389] - Mk 9:29.

[390] - Jn. 11, 41.

[391] - Is. 1, 11 ff; cf. the whole of ch. 58; Hos. 6, 4-6; Ml. 1, 10 ff.

Jesus' prayer to the Father

He, the uncreated Word from all eternity, becoming man, became son, Son of a Father who is God, a God who loves all, the just and the unjust. What he has he gives to all, the good and the bad, to all he gives the sun, the rain and everything that can make a human creature live.

From his very first steps as an adult man, Jesus establishes with God a relationship from son to father. The Old Testament prophets had seen in God the judge who punishes and condemns, but the God of Jesus is father, he is our Father [392]. For Jesus his Father is not only the God of Israel, but the God of all.

With an image that is not strictly biblical, we can imagine the Father of Jesus celebrating on the shores of the Red Sea and clapping hands with Mary, Moses and all those people singing: 'Horse and rider threw them into the sea', but he does not stop there. We can also imagine him diving into those waves that are overwhelming the Egyptians and, underwater, he searches for and picks up those boys, one by one, because they too are his children, and he hides them under his arm and runs to take them home, to dry them off and heal the wounded, in secret from the Israelites who think to be the only children of God.

In the Gospel, in fact, with a different image Jesus says the same thing when he tells of the shepherd who leaves the 'good' sheep and goes to find the lost one and embraces it with an affection that perhaps he has never shown so strongly towards the other ninety-nine.

The God of Jesus is the God of humanity. He believes deeply that he is in direct relationship with God, he believes deeply that he is the Son of God. The highest God-consciousness that has existed within humanity has been that of Jesus. Jesus does not feel that God speaks to him as one does to a separate person, but that God is in him and what he says about his Father comes from his heart. He lives immersed in God. Jesus does not see God, but experiences him, without needing neither thunder, nor a burning bush, nor a cloud of fire as with Moses, nor a earthquake or a gentle wind as with Elijah: Jesus feels himself to be one with the Father. The God of Jesus loves honest, hard-working sons, who administer their father's goods with responsibility, but also those who do not work and squander the goods of others. And when a son barely gives a sign that he wants to recover, the God of Jesus immediately rejoices, without thinking that the next day, that son might go back to herding swine.

This God has a son called Israel, a people he has loved for centuries. But how many disappointments has this son given him! How many abandonments, how many betrayals! For a moment, this God had even declared that he regretted having brought him into the world, but then it was enough for one to ask him for mercy [393], and he again forgave and took Israel, his son, back into his arms. Jesus understood that there is no one like this Father, indeed he understood it because he had already breathed a very similar fatherly love at home, in his father Joseph, in everyday life, in the workshop, in the building sites, in the synagogue, in the square, at home. Neither the Jews nor the Muslims – who had also met with this God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob – were never able to grasp in Him the soul of a Father.

On a few occasions, when Jesus returns from prayer manifesting on his face the same beauty that sprouts from the eyes of lovers when they meet, the disciples ask him to teach them too a way of praying that is proper to the group, just as John the Baptist, for example, had taught his own people to pray in a particular way. They are in fact seized by an irrepressible desire to experience what Jesus himself is feeling at that moment, and so he teaches them the Lord's Prayer, the prayer of utmost confidence which, never again forgotten by any Christian, is a synthesis of other biblical expressions.

The disciples already prayed every day, as did every Israelite, with scrupulous fidelity, but they glimpsed that Jesus perhaps had some secret to his prayer, so they insisted they wanted to learn the newness they saw in him, and he said to them: "When you pray, say: Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses, as we also forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen" [394].

In its original form, or in parallel with that reported by Luke, this version was used in Jewish circles: "Let His great name be magnified and hallowed, in the world which He has created according to His will; let Him consolidate His Kingdom, in your life and in your days, in the days

of the whole House of Israel, now and in the time to come. Amen! May His great name be blessed for ever and ever. Amen".

Saying "ours" is not just any form of prayer for any man. This prayer presupposes a we, in fact we say: "Our Father!". When Jesus said that prayer, he enabled us to pray with him and become one voice, one heart praying before the Father. With this prayer Jesus enables us to unite with him, he invites us and indeed commands us to unite with him in a very special way in his intercession before God his Father. Jesus with this prayer allows us, invites us and commands us to pray with him this prayer of his, therefore to adore God, to praise him with one mouth, that of Jesus and ours, with one soul, one, him and us, before the Father who will never say no to the Son and therefore not even to us. In this case the ‘we’ also has a name: Church. So united to the Church with the heart of Jesus Christ we can dare to turn to the Father and say "Our Father".

In the first part of this prayer, we are invited to take up the cause of God, namely, that his name be respected, honoured, praised, glorified and loved, and never again blasphemed on earth except by madmen. May everyone know the goodness and power of his holy name. Let no one ignore or despise him. Let no one profane it by doing violence to any of his little ones. That name deserves all our trust as the Psalm suggests "I surrender myself to God's faithfulness, now and forever" [395].

Jesus then, prays to the Father, that his kingdom will be realised as soon as possible: as Pagola argues, he preaches it as the presence of a 'good Father who wants to humanise the world' and make this humanity happier. Jesus preaches his kingdom as a kingdom of justice. God wants the poor to have a dignified life in his kingdom, he wants those who weep to find a smile, he wants the hungry and thirsty to have good, fragrant bread in their families, that is why he taught to share one's possessions with one's neighbour, he no longer wants to see people shivering in the cold along the streets and that is why he asked those who have two tunics or cloaks to share with those who do not.

He no longer wants to see wars in his kingdom for this he has taught to love enemies and not to fight them, he no longer wants to see any kind of violence or revenge for this he has commanded to love one's neighbour and not to repay his evil with vengeance, but to overcome all animosity with forgiveness and compassion. And where the powerful do not want to stop oppressing the poor, they will be overthrown from their thrones and the oppressed will be set free and the humble will be lifted up. Jesus wants to see already here on this earth the fulfilment of God's policy and he wants to see already now the reign of justice and peace for the consolation of the poor, the downtrodden and the destitute. In fact, for the Samaritan to come to the rescue of the unfortunate victim of the robbers is not a matter of goodness, mercy or compassion, but an act of justice, in that the unfortunate slaughtered person has a right to be rescued, it is a matter of justice for the new kingdom.

Jesus, praying with us, invites us to say: 'Thy will be done on earth and in heaven'. The Lord has been dreaming of and writing on his hand a project for our lives since all eternity. It is not an imposition, but a proposal, a desire for that project to be realised. Each of us has desires and plans for the future, but we recognise that that project dreamed up by him is the best, the most precious of all, it is in fact God's project.

You who are reading and I can say: 'I know him in part, that project, what I have lived until now with all my infidelities, but I do not know the part that remains for me to live, now I would like with Jesus Christ to sign that part of the plan that I do not yet know to tell you, O Father, that I agree with you. Whatever is written there on your hand, I want to put it to good use and live it, and indeed if sometimes I do not understand your suggestions or if I rebel, please force me to fulfil that desire that you keep for me. I cannot risk disappointing your dream of me". Jesus asks us to join him in asking for this. God does not want to do and undo in his own way, on his own, but he wants us as co-workers. God "does not want to act, exist, live, work, fight, win, reign, triumph without man. He does not want his cause to be his alone; he wants it also to be the cause of man, hence of each one of us. With the 'Our Father' Jesus invites us to participate in God's work, which is also ours, and he invites us to participate in his government of the Church and the world' [396].

In the other questions of the Lord's Prayer, the 'we' is that of a community (wounded and definitively healed) that wants to be in solidarity with all that portion of the people who experiences all the miseries of the human condition, who needs bread, who needs forgiveness asked for and given, and who needs to overcome temptations and be delivered from all evil, and turns to the Father hand in hand with Jesus Christ for this gesture of solidarity.

"Give us this day our daily bread". We do not ask the Lord for wealth, riches, power, but humbly ask for food to live today and indeed to have the strength to serve Him and our brothers and sisters. With the word "ours", we ask that it does not cross our minds to ask for bread for me or even for my family, but rather we ask it for everyone, no one excluded. And, like every Jew of his time, when he sat at the table to take food, Jesus broke the bread saying the prayer of blessing (he did not bless the bread, but God who provides it), saying: "Blessed are you, Lord, King of the universe, for you bring up food from the earth [for us]", Still in his prayer to the Father, Jesus not only asks for bread, but for daily bread, the bread of this day, which, as Sandro Galazzi warns, is bread similar to the manna that God sent every day: if anyone had gathered more than was needed, it would have rotted.

If we also gather more to capitalise or just to have more than others, our manna rots. If someone takes more to sell and market it, the manna rots. If someone then gathers more of it to have more power and enslave others, the manna rots. This is why Jesus teaches us to ask for the Bread for today, not a hundred loaves to possibly sell and enrich ourselves and thus rise above others, no, bread for today. And again, in prayer to the Father we ask for the gift of forgiveness, received and given: forgiveness does not mean forgetting the past, but recovering all wounded affection and friendship.

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[392] - We sense it by listening to the soft breath that says within us: "Father" (Gal. 4, 6).

[393] - Dt. 10, 10.

[394] - Lc. 11, 2 b-4.

[395] - Sal. 52, 10

[396] - Cf. K. Barth, La preghiera. Commento al Padre nostro, Turin, Claudiana, 2013.

Why pray on the mountain?

Often Jesus went up the mountain, alone, to pray. The act of going up the mountain certainly recalls the dimension of isolation, or rather of a face-to-face dialogue between Him and the Father, alone. Jesus needed silence: as some texts testify, in his time in the most genuine faith circles, it was cultivated in order to enter into dialogue with God himself.

The Mishna reports: 'In other times, the early Hassidim [the pious] would wait in silence for an hour before they began to pray, in order to direct their hearts towards God' [397], and similar texts are found in other targumin [translations]. Since Jesus devoted long times to prayer, it is possible that this practice of valuing silence was very much ingrained in Him. The habit of isolating himself on the mountain to pray certainly came to him from his years in Nazareth where, either late in the evening after work, or early in the morning before starting the day, after doing the prayers that every Jew does daily, he could dedicate long times for prayer.

It seems that in all religions there is a privileged tendency to pray on high. If one thinks, indeed, that God is in heaven, the higher one ascends, the closer one gets to Him, but in the case of Jesus there was probably another reason. He ascends the mountain because His prayer is steeped in the Holy Scriptures, and up there He is immersed in the pages of the Bible open on the hills and mountains before Him. He does not need to take with Him the scrolls of the Holy Scriptures that are read in the synagogue because up there on the mountain everything is already there.

As it seems probable, Jesus may have gone several times to work in Sefori, a city that was a ferment of construction in those years: in the morning he could climb the hill in which his beloved Nazareth was enshrined, and then descend the valley northwards to reach the building sites of the city which, by the way, had the advantage of being no more than an hour away from his home on the outward journey and an hour and a half on the return, if he retraced the same uphill route until he reached the top of the hill of Nazareth where, a few dozen metres down the valley, his mother was waiting for him.

Therefore, in the morning at the top of that hill before going down to work and in the evening on his return to that same place, Jesus found a place There, on that 'mountain', as I mentioned above, he stood before a Bible, open in the four directions: this could be a reason why he liked to go up there. If he stood in the direction of the holy city and pushed his gaze southward – which spilled over his hamlet of Nazareth and stopped at the horizon – in front of him, on the hill of Jerusalem, he glimpsed the city where, for all his people, God himself dwelt, in the Temple and even more so in the Holy of Holies. Then he glanced again towards Mount Garizim and rejoiced with his Father because soon the Jews too would understand that God dwells neither in Jerusalem nor on Garizim, but much closer, in our hearts, in spirit and truth. Then,

shifting his gaze further east, his thoughts found the Red Sea, with all the biblical memories of that epic of his people, who with Moses had crossed all that distance and had come in the direction of the promised land, where Jesus himself now dwelt. A cloud of fire from heaven had accompanied them and now, with that same fire, Jesus wanted to set the world on fire.

In the same direction he saw that portion of heaven above Mount Sinai, the Horeb of God. And he still saw in his spirit that sky covered with thunderbolts and thunder, and that holy terror emanating all around, at the sound of God's words. Now, Jesus himself felt invested with the task of pronouncing those same words, but in another language, which could not only engrave itself on the stones of Moses [398], but penetrate to the depths of the heart. To his right, he then saw Gelboe standing out, with the sad memories of the Philistines who had slain the great heroes. Saul and Jonathan had died there. Then, Jesus could look back to Jerusalem and there he thought again of the whole story of David, who could have been a prototype of the Messiah himself, thus a liberator, a king who had guaranteed peace, at least after him with his son, a king who was an ancestor of the Messiah. When he thought of him, his heart would beat fast, then he would leave these thoughts, which were to be taken up again in due time. And if he turned his back to his left, he would find the direction from which Abraham, Isaac and, last of all, Jacob had come, who had then crossed all those valleys to the extreme south-east, towards Egypt.

If he then shifted his eye just a few kilometres ahead, he saw Carmel with the cave of Elijah to the west and, on the other side, the hollow where Elijah himself would do justice to the false prophets. But he could not leave without looking towards the hills where the sun sets. There, beyond the edge of the horizon, the region of Thebes reminded him of Isaiah, the great prophet. On the Jerusalem sky was the memory of David and on the sunset side that of Isaiah. From them had been foretold the two images of the Messiah: the first of the king who would place the world under the seal of justice, and the other of a suffering Messiah who would walk a road worthy only of a criminal slave, and who knows with how much emotion Jesus glimpsed that this might be his path [399].

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[397] - Mishna Berfakot, 5, 1.

[398] - Ex. 34, 28.

[399] - All the mountains and hills of Israel are an open Bible.

The Church continues to pray

After the resurrection, the early community was able to embrace the precious inheritance that Jesus had left them: prayer. He had shown how his life had been filled with prayer, day and night and in every action. So, the disciples and the community persevered in prayer like their master. We find them praying during the ritual hours of the day. The community continues prayer in the synagogue, in the temple and in homes. Peter is in prayer at noon on the terrace [400].

We find the Jerusalem community praying for an entire night to ask for the release of Peter who is in prison [401]. Among the witnesses is Paul and Silas, singing the praises of God in prison [402] at midnight. During the great events, we find the assembled apostles, some women with the mother of Jesus, and all the brothers and sisters praying [403].

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[400] - Acts 10:9.

[401] - Acts 12, 5-12.

[402]-  Acts 16:25.

[403] - Acts 1, 14.

How Jesus prayed

I consider it important to quote some prayers that Jesus prayed daily, more than once a day. The religious Jew is a man who knows how to place himself before God and pray: he cries out, he asks for help, he cries and his tribulation as much as his joy becomes prayer; in his prayer the Jew insists, prostrate or standing, he supplicates, intercedes, begs and asks for graces. Some written texts accompanied the moment of prayer, which was normally done standing, and facing towards Jerusalem, where the Temple kept the Holy of Holies.

After the various purifications, morning prayer would begin with thanksgiving to God for the gift of the day and again for the deliverance of the Jewish people. Then, prayers were said for the poor and again the obligation of Torah study and its practice and the great commandment 

to honour one's father and mother and one's neighbour were recalled. They then recalled certain passages from Exodus, which were written on clean, unblemished vellum in square characters: aššurît [404].

The verses were: Ex 13:1-10; 11:6; Dt 6:4-9; 11:13-21.

These scrolls were placed on the forehead or arm. A few more psalms were added and the Quaddiš would follow, very similar to the Our Father [405]. "Magnified be his great Name, in the world which he has created according to his will; his Kingdom come, in your life and in your days, in the days of all the house of Israel, now and in the time to come. Amen! May His great Name be blessed for ever and ever. Amen!" The Sanctus was still recited. When there was a synagogue service, it consisted of the reading of biblical texts.

The Quaddiš was followed by the great Šhema Israel proclamation of faith: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God. The Lord is one. Blessed be his glorious name, forever and ever. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And thou shalt put these words, which I command thee this day, into thy heart, and shalt teach them unto thy children, saying them when thou restest at home, when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest asleep, and when thou risest up" [406]. And it concluded with a prayer very typical for the Jewish world, called Šemonèh eśreh, which today consists of eighteen blessings, while in Jesus' time there were only six (the first three and the last three): "Lord open my lips and let my mouth proclaim your praise".

First blessing: "Blessed art thou, Lord our God and God of our fathers, God of Abraham, God of Isaac and God of Jacob, great and strong and venerable God, exalted, who bestow the reward and create all things; remember the piety of the fathers and bring the Redeemer for their children's children, in the grace of thy Name, with love. Deliverer King who helps, saves and defends. Blessed art Thou Lord, our shield...".

Second blessing: "Thou art mighty for ever, O Lord, who raisest the dead, who art great in granting salvation, who causest the wind to blow and sendest down the dew. He nourishes the living by grace, He raises the dead with great mercy, He upholds the fallen, He heals the sick, He frees the captives and keeps His faithful promise to those who sleep in the dust. Who like you, O Mighty One? Who like you, O King, who causes to die and rise again, who makes salvation blossom for us? Thou art faithful in raising the dead. Blessed are you, O Lord, who raises the dead".

Third blessing: "From generation to generation we shall proclaim the kingship of God, for He alone is exalted and holy. May thy praise, O our God, not fail from our lips for ever, for Thou art a great and holy God the King. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, Holy God".

Sixteenth blessing: "May Thou be pleased, O Lord, our God in Thy people Israel, and accept their prayer; restore Thy worship in the sanctuary of Thy house, and readily receive with love and kindness the sacrifices of Israel and their prayer. May the worship of Thy people Israel always be pleasing to Thee. May our eyes see Thy return to Zion and to Jerusalem, Thy city, with mercy as in ancient times. Blessed art Thou, Lord, who mercifully made us return to Thy Presence, to Zion".

Seventeenth Blessing: "We thank Thee because Thou art the Lord our God and the God of our fathers; for our lives entrusted to Thy hands, and for our souls entrusted to Thee, and for the wonders which Thou workest with us from day to day, and for the marvellous things and works of goodness which Thou doest at all times, in the evening, in the morning, and at noon. Thou art good, for Thy mercy faileth not; Thou art merciful, for Thy charity is not exhausted: we have always hoped in Thee; Thou hast not failed us. Lord our God, You have not forsaken us nor turned Your face from us. Blessed art Thou, Lord. Thy Name is most high and to Thee we give praise".

Eighteenth blessing: "Give peace, goodness, blessing, grace, charity, mercy, to us and to all Israel your people. Bless us all, our Father, with the light of your countenance, for with the light of your countenance you have given us, Lord, our God, the law of life, love, grace, charity, blessing, salvation and mercy, life and peace. Mau You bless us and bless all your people Israel always, at all times and in all hours, in your peace. Blessed art Thou, Lord, who bless Thy people Israel, in peace. Amen'.

Also common was the short, but beautiful prayer that the head of the family generally made before meals. The Jew does not bless the food, but God who gives it. Jesus certainly heard this blessing from Joseph throughout Nazareth and then He Himself pronounced it at every meal with His disciples.

The text is as follows: 'Blessed are You, Lord, King of the Universe, You who bring up food [for us] from the earth ' and the prayer after the meal: 'Blessed are You, Lord, our God, King of the Universe, who nourishes the world with Your goodness, love and mercy, and gives food to every living creature. Your love for us is eternal and your great goodness has never failed. We shall not lack any good, for your name is great, and you have always provided nourishment for all. Blessed are you, Lord, who nourishes every living person". The Psalms and Bible texts are then added at various times of the day, weeks, and year.

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[404] - Mt 23:5.

[405] - Probably this prayer, in this form, already existed at the time of Jesus and He may have supplemented it with the text from the Gospel.

[406] - Deut. 6:4-9; 11:13-21; Num. 15:37-41.

ANNEX  VI

MIRACLES

Can one speak today of miracles?

For some, miracles are to be relegated to the museum of antiquities, venerable though they may be, but in our times devoid of real importance. Rationalism says that one can cross a lake by swimming or by boat, but not by walking on water, and again that illness is cured by medicine and not by the instantaneous will of a saint.

When I stand in front of a miracle, the non-believer in me tries to eliminate God from that context, while the believer in me (according to my faith) recognises it: the God who with his Providence continually acts in the world is the same one who, through some extraordinary signs, wants to enter into dialogue with me and show me in deed how much he loves me, that is, to manifest to me the superabundance of a love that breaks down all the barriers within which I would like to force him [407].

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[407] - Cf. X. Léon-Dufour, (ed.), I miracoli di Gesù secondo il Nuovo Testamento, Brescia, Queriniana, 1980, p. 15.

Is it certain that Jesus performed miracles?

Insofar as there is a tradition about Jesus' life, his miraculous activity is a full part of it: it is a certainty that stands out, recognised by almost all contemporary studies in the Catholic sphere and also widespread beyond that boundarytoo. Reading the accounts of the evangelists, historian Légasse reports that it is not difficult to realise that they show no reticence about the truth of the stories they narrate. For the authors of the New Testament, both the reality of the miracles and their supernatural origin were taken for granted, as it is evident from certain allusions [408].

The authors of the Gospels were animated by a conviction equal, if not superior, to that they had for the miracles of the past. Jesus, greater than Moses, Elijah and Elisha, repository in fullness of divine powers, could never have been questioned by the evangelists as a thaumaturge [409]. We may, however, come across a scholar like Hume, who laments: 'It is strange [...] that such prodigious events never happen today". According to the Gospel (Jn 9:32), some Pharisees in Jerusalem also reasoned in this way: 'It has never been heard of anyone opening the eyes of a born blind man'. But Légasse responds to this objection as follows: 'On the other hand, it is possible to record, at least through scrupulously established reports, some healings that medical science confesses it cannot explain [410].

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[408] - Cf. Lk. 4, 25-27; 17, 27-29; Jn. 3, 14; 6, 30-32.49; 1 Cor. 10, 1-5; 2 Cor. 3, 7-13.

[409] - Cf. S. Légasse, Lo storico alla ricerca dell’evento, in Léon-Dufour X., op. cit., 1980.

[410] - Cf. S. Légasse, in X. Léon-Dufour, op. cit., 1980, p. 119. Think of the current 'Bureau des Consultations de Lourdes'.

Miracles: poetic embellishments?

Rahner argues that historical criticism cannot eliminate the miracles of Jesus' life as a whole and simply qualify them as poetic embellishments later created by the primitive community. He also emphasises that Jesus was certainly a thaumaturge, in the sense of showing signs by his actions to indicate that through him the Kingdom of God was approaching in a new way [411].

Today we can say that this new way of revealing the Kingdom is precisely the passion, the compassion that Jesus showed for the destitute, the sick and the poor in general. It is not a problem if, in some cases, these signs may have been expanded or interpreted. They do not cease to show Jesus' behaviour towards the suffering.

To Him came mothers and fathers turned for help for their children, but also sick men, women, young people and children who, having heard and seen other healings of Jesus, approached Him with such great confidence that miracles were possible revealing what His heart was like. However, we must see the miracles not as signs of his or God's power, but as acts of compassion and mercy.

Jesus was in love with his people. That is why he gave them all the good he possessed: instruction because he was a teacher, healing because he was a thaumaturge, forgiveness because he was good, and finally, he explained how God is Father so that no one would feel orphaned. However, the aforementioned Rahner does not hide the fact that today's man, embedded in a technological and rational world, finds it very hard to understand that miracles can exist.

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[411] - Cf. K. Rahner, Corso fondamentale sulla fede. Introduzione al concetto di cristianesimo. Cinisello Balsamo, San Paolo Edizioni, 2005, p. 331.

Indeed, rationalism...

The critical positions of modern rationalism, which willingly erase miracles, resurrection and the divinity of Jesus Christ, argue that those small actions called miracles serve little purpose, they only reinforce our childish dreams and lead us to evade reality. They argue that what matters is to engage courageously, whether in politics, trade unionism or economics, and to proclaim through one's conduct a new way of life, one that changes unjust social structures.

It is true that for a long time the Christian religion was relegated to the sacristies and often deserved to be regarded as an anaesthetic of the people, we can however say with our heads held high that the 'Christians of the race' such as Martin Luter King, Helder Camara or Mother Teresa of Calcutta, fed on anything but the opium of the people: with the programme of the Kingdom of God preached by Jesus, they faced the most terrible situations of misery with total dedication. The miracle, which we can see as an extension of creation, testifies to the absolute gratuitousness of God and must lead to a more radical commitment to service.

Léon-Dufour quotes Légasse, who, in a wide-ranging study, with surprising loyalty, hunts down all sophistry, wherever it may lurk, whether it comes from rationalism or apologetics. The historian acknowledges that Jesus still performed miracles, even if it is impossible for him to grasp all the details of the reported event [412].

Légasse himself concludes his study on the historicity of miracles by arguing that the cultural-historical context as well as the literary genre of the Gospels demand a critical examination of the miracle accounts if one is to pronounce on their historicity. Consequently, a great humility must accompany and inspire any pronouncement on the details of the miracles recounted, but on the whole, one thing stands out: "Jesus presented himself to his contemporaries as a thaumaturge endowed with extraordinary powers" [413].

As for the various episodes and details, the historian will have to scrutinise each Gospel pericope [414], using as many criteria as he has at his disposal. In any case, he will only arrive at a relative degree of probability: one cannot hope for more from historical science. If the Christian then asks himself whether the mission and nature of Christ can still be said to have been proven by his miracles, one can answer in the affirmative, considering, however, that Jesus' prodigious acts could also just be his way of reaching out to others, of telling them that he loved them, of saying it quickly and to the greatest number of people. It could have been his way of loving the poor, the small, the sick, the suffering, all those who flocked to him to ask for his compassion and undivided love.

Jesus personally offers, one by one, the gift of the miracle. He did not heal all the sick in Palestine, nor did He resurrect all the young men who had died prematurely, but He healed the 'neighbour', the sick person He met, with whom He established a relationship that healed and converted: in this way He brought closer the Kingdom of God, in which even the poor would be blessed.

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[412] - X. Léon-Dufour, op. cit.

[413] - S. Légasse, op. cit.

[414] - “Pericope”: A short passage extracted, almost cut out, from a text; the term is used especially in New Testament criticism of passages of the Gospels isolated from the text to proceed to exegesis or even to indicate individual Gospel passages to be read in the liturgy of the Hours or Mass. [From Treccani Vocabulary]

Can an atheist believe in miracles?

If an atheist happens to witness a phenomenon that we call a 'miracle', he cannot but confess that he is incapable of fitting it into his scientific synthesis. A non-believer cannot accept a  miracle and will have to struggle to find all possible rational explanations. I was personally involved in an extraordinary event: a gentleman from the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro was struck down by an illness that was paralysing him. Wheelchair-bound, he had already lost the sensitivity of his lower limbs and part of his arms. The doctor, who was familiar with the course of the disease, with human sensitivity had helped him to accept his now irreversible situation.

But this man, with great faith, found the courage to ask God for a miracle through the intercession of a witness, whom he recognised as a great saint. Suddenly he recovered his health, left his wheelchair and resumed his normal life, with the certainty of having received a miracle. When he presented himself to his atheist doctor, who had followed him through all stages, including the last one, he asked him if he could testify to that miracle that had taken place before his eyes.

The answer was: 'Medicine has many grey areas that we do not know about. There is also the fact that if this healing happened, it means that it could have happened and if it could have happened, I cannot consider it a miracle'.

As an atheist, the doctor could go no further, but the honest person who demands objective answers may be puzzled by such a conclusion.

Talking less about miracles?

When reading about the miracles of Jesus, we should not worry about presenting them to us and to others with rational, demonstrable characteristics, for they are not counted among the data of this world: to speak of miracles is to speak of God, who is not one of the elements of this world. Some say that since it is a phenomenon that is difficult for modern man to accept, it is better to speak as little as possible about miracles, precisely so as not to irritate contemporary sensibilities.

In this regard, Duquesne replies: 'If there is a truth there before you, it will continue to be a truth, even if it is unacceptable to modern man, and if there is a doubt, it will continue to remain a doubt, if there is an error, it will continue to be an error [...] the important, the essential thing is not to know what is 'acceptable', but what is true' [415].

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[415] - J. Dusquesne, Jesus a verdadeira historia, Geraçao Editorial, 2019, p. 99.

Can we talk about the history of Jesus' miracles?

Catholic scholars have unanimously acknowledged that Jesus still performed miracles, even if it is not always possible to determine all the details of the story as having happened that way [416].  All the work done by historians to ascertain the validity and credibility of the miracle is intended to tell us that the miracles of the Gospels are not 'fables', but facts that require the existence of a referent in order to have any meaning. However, the fact itself, while indispensable, would not be sufficient without someone having grasped, interpreted and used it for his own conversion or human and spiritual growth.

The fact that one day Jesus, passing by, cured a sick person would not be so extraordinary, as every day thousands of people heal the sick with this or that medicine. But when reading the acts of miracles in the Gospels we must focus our attention on the context in which the event took place, on who performed that prodigious action, on which person received the gift and on which testimony was born of it; all this tells us that that miracle went far beyond the administration of an antibiotic.

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[416] - For some, it is not important where the miracle story comes from, whether from Jesus himself or whether reported by the community, but the Catholic believer is supremely interested in whether the fact recounted really happened and whether the facts happened as the stories say. Without the facts, the interpretations of the miracles themselves could not exist and we could not receive the messages that Jesus himself wanted to offer us with those acts of goodness.

The recipients of miracles

Miracles are always addressed to a precise recipient: with the miracle Jesus always speaks to someone, inviting him to conversion, to confidence, to overcoming fear, to the desire to be part of the community of men, to no longer consider oneself cut off from the world and more. When Jesus calms the storm, he does not primarily act on the wind or the clouds, but on the apostles,  on their fear and mistrust, and integrates them back into the faith they were losing.

When he heals the lepers, Jesus does not primarily act on viruses or decaying human tissues: by touching and welcoming the sick, he inserts them back into their family, sends them back to the Temple from which they felt rejected, and welcomes them back into the human society from which they had excluded themselves. And the faith of those who received the miracle in the first place, together with the faith of those who hear or read it, reported by a witness, is what gives value to that event. 

Why did Jesus perform miracles?

Ferretti argues that Jesus' 'compassion and care for mankind took such a hold of him as to characterise his whole life as: "service to man"' [417],  so much so that at the Last Supper, in front of the signs of his body and blood he says: 'This is my body, which is given for you [...] this is my blood [...] poured out for you' [418].  And again: 'I am among you as the one who serves' [419].  Ferretti himself then quotes Bonhoeffer who, with great effectiveness, qualifies the figure of Christ as 'being there for others'.

Faced with all those ailing people, Jesus in fact allowed himself to be involved in human suffering, even performing miracles that he would not have wanted to perform, such as the one at Cana of Galilee or the one towards the Syro-Phoenician woman [420]. It can be concluded that this merciful Jesus, totally for others, full of compassion in front of his tired and weary people to whom he gives relief by encouraging them, caring for them and liberating them with pity, even to the point of tears, is the most divine image we have of Jesus. Just as, from the first day of creation, the Father has been and will be until the end totally 'for us', so Jesus is totally for us.

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[417] - G. Ferretti, Essere cristiani. Il "nostro” cristianesimo nel moderno mondo secolare, Turin, Elledici, 2016, p. 90. Cf. Mt 20, 28: "The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many".

[418] - Lk. 22, 9-20.

[419] - Lk. 22, 27.

[420] - Bonhoeffer presents Jesus as "God in human form!" and argues that he is not the monstrous, the chaotic, the distant, the hideous in animal form, as in Eastern religions, but neither is he the god of philosophers, of those who investigate metaphysics and the infinite, but "the man for others" and therefore the crucified. (Cf. D. Bonhoeffer, Resistenza e resa. Lettere scritte dal carcere. Cinisello Balsamo, San Paolo Edizioni, 1999, p. 462).

With miracles Jesus makes catechesis

Jesus performs miracles within a discourse or on the side of a message: for example, the story of the miraculous fishing is the cue to express himself in relation to the 'fishers of men'. In the multiplication of the loaves, the remembrance of the manna in the desert shows that Jesus (not Moses) is the bearer of definitive salvation; the wine at the wedding in Cana evokes the banquet of the end of time; the withered fig tree illustrates the divine abandonment into which the sinner falls and, again, the withered fig tree and the 'dry' temple merit the rebuke and prophetic gesture of Jesus as he overturns the merchandise of the Temple sellers.

 According to Légasse, "these texts as they have come down to us have little to do with the pure 'miracle narrative' that has first and foremost the purpose of exalting the person of the thaumaturge and his divine powers. The prodigy as such takes second place, while what prevails is catechesis' [421]. The historian then adds that the primitive community had no need to present a Jesus who performs miracles, in fact none of the titles that apostolic Christianity bestowed on its founder such as Messiah, Prophet, Son of Man, Son of God, Master, implied that he was considered a thaumaturge capable of exercising his power over the possessed and the sick, nor was it ever thought that a Messiah should perform miracles.

To further emphasise the historicity of Jesus' miracles, one may recall the 'Palestinian' details: geographical details are given such as Genezareth, Capernaum, Bethsaida, Dalmanutha, the region of Tyre and Sidon. It is also specified that Jesus heals in the synagogue, that a sick person touches the 'fringe' of his dress, that the terrace of a house is uncovered to bring down a paralytic before Him, and even Aramaic words such as Thalità kum, or Effata are used.

Jesus differs from the thaumaturges of the time by intervening with a single word such as: 'Rise up; be cleansed, Lazarus come out', etc. Then, in some accounts, limitations emerge that testify to a legitimacy that is difficult to dispute: for example, he does not personally heal the man born blind, but commands him to immerse himself in the Pool of Siloe [422].

The blind man of Bethsaida is also healed in two stages: first he begins to see men like trees. In other cases, he uses therapeutic means that were part of contemporary medicine: fingers in the ears, saliva on the tongue, smeared mud with saliva. Légasse points out that these passages invite us to see the remnants of an authentic tradition, more credible than the one according to which Jesus behaves as a person confident in his divine powers. One cannot then forget the fact that, in some cases, the absence of faith in the sick person made the miracle more difficult.

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[421] S. Légasse, op. cit., p. 91.

[422] - Jn. 9:7

The confrontation with demons

When dealing with healing from illness, one cannot avoid the confrontation with Satan, demonic possessions and exorcisms. The details of these accounts can be attributed to the evangelists themselves or to the popular traditions of the environment in which Jesus lived. In Jesus' time, illness and demonic possession were often synonymous. To make himself understood in his speeches and actions, he took on the mentality and culture of his contemporaries so deeply that he even shared their beliefs in this area. Indeed, the spontaneous animism of primitive peoples had become increasingly complex in all the paganisms of antiquity, giving rise to very elaborate mythologies that presented the struggles between Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, Order and Chaos, hence good spirits and bad spirits.

How had the religion of Israel first and Judaism later reacted to all this? One did not obstruct the spirit world, but adopted it, disciplining it according to one's own doctrinal needs. "Since the one God now absorbed into Himself all that the ancients attributed to the deities, there was no place left beside Him except for Powers subordinate to Him, auxiliaries to His design of benevolence towards men or, on the contrary, hostile to that design, emissaries charged with carrying out his orders or, on the contrary, with making them fail, so in Israel a doctrine of angels and demons gradually took shape in which one could detect elements taken from all the surrounding civilisations: Canaan, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran, together with Greek syncretism' [423].

In Judaism – a orientation far removed from paganism –-, the power of the one God absolutely dominates over the others. The personified forces outside of Him are always thought of as creatures to whom God grants limited power to the extent that man must be providentially 'tested' or 'tempted' (the concept of temptation and that of trial are designated by the same term), so that man can overcome trials and become stronger in faith. It can be said that Jesus did not teach anything new about demonology, but simply used the symbolic language of his time to make himself understood by his people.

To conclude this reflection, I quote an illuminating answer given in the hall of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. Pierre Benoit was asked what one could think about the obscure character of Satan: Father replied that we cannot erase that name without tearing out several pages of the Bible, but we must recognise with humility that we do not know what he is, whether he is a personal or symbolic being, the personification of evil, the totality of sins or something else. This humble and wise answer helps us to humbly read all the texts in the Gospels that relate anything about demonology.

Everyone today admits that the Gospel accounts of miracles were not invented by the evangelists, who drew them from written or oral sources. According to many exegetes, Matthew and Luke would have used the Gospel of Mark, and both Luke and John would then have added some accounts from other independent sources. Mark could have drawn on 'collections of miracles' later distributed in his account and John on another 'source of signs'.

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[423] - P. Grelot, I miracoli di Gesù e la demonologia giudaica, in X. Léon-Dufour, op. cit., 1980, p. 49.

Analogies with the Old Testament

There are also some miracle accounts that bear some similarities to the miracle accounts of the Old Testament, such as that between Elijah and the widow of Sarepta and between Jesus and the widow of Naim [424], or between the Elisha's multiplication of the loaves and Jesus' multiplication of the loaves [425], or between the story of Jonah sleeping in the boat and the storm calmed and Jesus sleeping in the boat while the storm rages, which then is quelled [426].

Maurice Carrez nevertheless warns us by saying that Jesus' miracles are nevertheless located in a very specific place and space and are not to be considered 'repetitions'. The analogies are sufficiently veiled and the tales are sufficiently autonomous to allow a reading of the text without reference to other accounts in the Old Testament. These very discreet analogies simply evoke in the person of Jesus a fulfilment that surpasses the ancient reality [427].

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[424] - Cf. 1 Kings 17: 10, 21-23; Lk. 7: 11-15.

[425] - Cf. 2 Kings 4:42-44; Mt. 14:16-20.

[426] - Cf. Gen 1:3-15; Mt 8:23-25; Mt 4:37-41; Lk 8:22-25.

[427] - Cf. M. Carrez, L’eredità dell’Antico Testamento, in X. Léon-Dufour, op. cit., 1980.

Explain the miracles?

Throughout the centuries, however, there has been no shortage of those who, eager to investigate the authenticity of the Gospels or driven by rationalist currents, have asked endless questions about the fidelity of these accounts, studying the sources from which they might have come. They wanted to understand whether they had come from the Judaic and Greek environment, whether they could have been formed from the oriental taste for the marvellous or folkloric of those regions, or whether they had developed from the 'fairy tale tellers and winter vigil narrators', who could then have embroidered on the activity of Jesus the healer and made him a miracle hero.

With regard to the latter thesis, however, it must be emphasised that miracle narratives, so essential and meagre, are hardly suitable for storytellers who need to attract audiences and make their tales appreciated. In turn, however, the scholars sounded out all the hypotheses, asking every possible question and analysing the sources, the method used, the possible origins, the most probable words in the tales and those that may have been inserted during the drafting stage. Luke tries to explain the miracles by describing a force at work in Jesus [428] and his envoys [429].

Barret shows that Luke attributes the miracles to the action of the Spirit [430]. Properly speaking, at least in the Gospels we do not have never an explanation of the miracle, but rather an effort to communicate how those phenomena occurred. On the other hand, we know that no miracle can be demonstrated as a mathematical formula, because it is an act of God himself, of supreme freedom.

A miracle can only be received and never claimed, and must always be accepted in faith, even when the evidence imposes itself with particularly convincing language. And finally, we carry in our hearts the words of Jesus, delivered to John's messengers: "Go and tell what you have heard and felt: the blind recover their sight, the lame walk, lepers are healed, the deaf regain their hearing, the dead are raised, and the good news comes to the ears of the poor" [431].

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[428] - Lk. 4:36; 5:17; 6:19.

[429] - Lk. 9:1; Acts 3:12; 4:7; 6:8.

[430] - C. K. Barret, The Holy Spirit and the Gospel Tradition, Wipf and Stock, 2011.

[431] - Mt 11:5.

More perplexity

At the end of these notes, I would like to address the believer who, after having delved into the miracles of Jesus, still finds himself confused or perplexed in accepting them, or even those who have lost their faith, even if some reflection of a past belief has remained in them.

Let these believers or unbelievers know that every time they find themselves in a storm, in a ship that has twice submerged under the waves and then re-emerged, or in pain that medicine has failed to alleviate, or in front of a child in intensive care with very little hope of life, and if in those moments, without even realising it, they have turned their eyes to heaven, almost as if to ask for some help, let them know that at that precise moment they too have asked for a miracle.

ANNEX VII

THE KINGDOM OF GOD  

When Jesus called the first disciples, immediately Nathanael followed Him, saying: "You are the King of Israel!". During the public ministry, He had to flee, because people wanted to make Him king. He specified, he explained, he evangelised, but on his entry into Jerusalem the people still greeted him with: "Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!". And it was not only the people that had the fixed idea. The list of the Twelve includes a certain Simon, designated by the appellation 'zealot', and perhaps a few other apostles who pursued the same idea as the zealots of quickly liberating Israel and establishing a new political kingdom of peace, which they too willingly called: 'Kingdom of God'. And the same happened during his passion, with Pilate: "Are you the king of the Jews?". And so on the cross: it was even written on a sign. And even after his death, on the road to Emmaus, what could the disciples discuss if not the usual topic? "We hoped it was he who would deliver Israel and become our king". One minute before his ascension, that question again. To remind us that they have not changed.

A new kingdom to liberate Israel

The Twelve had clearly understood that Jesus was the Messiah and, if he was such, he was to be the liberator from the Roman invaders. He had demonstrated a superior strength that no one had ever shown, so it was to be expected that he would be the one to complete the mission of deliverance. Everyone had dreamed of the time of the Messiah. The time had come. Jesus had become this hope. It was now a time that would bring a life without war, abundant food, good fragrant bread, wine, milk and honey, as had always been dreamed for the time when the Messiah would come. The apostles had heard Jesus speak words that carried great content such as love, justice, forgiveness, mercy, suffering, death-resurrection, but all this had to be conditional on a liberation from enemies, on the implantation of a new political structure, which would make it possible to live in a new kingdom, a different politics that had been promised for centuries.

And everything Jesus said about the Kingdom, his disciples had to translate into their historical context. When they heard about the Beatitudes they heard: 'Blessed are the poor'. Of course, because in the new Kingdom they will no longer be poor, but all will have enough to live on. "Blessed are those who hunger". Of course, because in the New Kingdom everyone will have food and a dignified life, for the loaves and fishes would multiply, as the disciples had already experienced, and even the wine for the feast would no longer be lacking, and because in the New Kingdom there will be justice and peace, there will be no more crime, no more prisoners. In the New Kingdom there will be no more destruction of houses, towns or cities, nor of crops, for there will be no more wars. They remembered that someone had prophesied a New Kingdom in which they would melt down weapons to make ploughs.

The disciples understood that in the New Kingdom there would be no more sick people, for they had seen with their own eyes that where Jesus came, the sick were healed. Not even natural calamities such as gales, wind and storms, which had caused so many shipwrecks on the sea or lake would no longer have power to destroy, for where Jesus came, even the storms calmed down. No longer would have been the blind, the deaf, the paralytic or the leper, all these would encounter healing.

When Jesus then began to speak of a new commandment, the disciples understood that enemies would no longer exist, for in the new legislation enemies would be loved. And when Jesus spoke of children being the sign of the kingdom of God, the disciples understood that in the new kingdom even adults would be given a child's heart, so there would be no more pride, no more violence, no more oppression, no more humiliation of the poor.

And when Jesus, addressing those who had gone to arrest him in Getzemane, asked who they were looking for and they answered that they were precisely looking for Him, He pointed to Himself as the man they were looking for; at that moment they all fell to the ground stunned by so much authority. The apostles were certain that by now one by one they would all fall, down to the last prince of this world: Pilate, Herod, Caesar, the kings of Babylon with their armies, all would surrender their weapons and convert to the new Kingdom of justice, mercy, forgiveness and peace.

When Jesus then commanded to love as he had loved, they understood even better the beauty of the Kingdom: they knew that they had to trust in God as he trusted; believe in love as he believed in it; approach the suffering as he approached them; defend life as he defended it; look at people as he looked at them; face life and death with the hope with which he faced them; proclaim that Good News as he proclaimed it.

All this was the new Kingdom that was now dreamt of around Jesus. How could one not be willing to lay down one's life for such a Kingdom!? So, the kingdom dreamt by Jesus' disciples was not a trivial reality, has often been proposed by certain preaching, as if it were a kingdom like that of David, Herod or Caesar Augustus: no! It was a very serious dream and one could understand how the disciples, who were sincere, were even willing to lay down their lives for such a kingdom. Of course, Jesus knew that they understood the reality of the Kingdom of God in this way, but that was all they could understand. How could they have understood that the Kingdom of God went far beyond these thoughts of theirs?

However, the disciples were forced to glimpse that the proposal of the Kingdom of God was beyond their expectations, for in Getzemane, after seeing those who had gone to arrest Jesus fall to the ground they had seen them get up again, and when they stood before the cross they could only have hoped desperately to see Jesus come down at any moment from the scaffold to finally begin the revolution, but then against all their expectations He had not come down and Jesus had actually died.

So, instead of understanding, the longest night in the world arrived, full of questions with no more answers. On that night, all dreams were shattered with what had been hoped for with absolute certainty. They, the poor disciples, had nurtured many dreams, but at least one, that of the Kingdom of God had been granted to them by the most authoritative person they had encountered in their history. But that same dream had been crucified with the one who had proclaimed and promised it. No one on this earth would ever again be able to promise or re-produce that project, let alone realise it.

Now one had to rethink what this Kingdom preached by Jesus was and what it meant to enter the Kingdom of God: it is certainly not the same as entering Paradise, Eternal Life. This last gift God can give it as a gift together with our desire to receive it, but entering into the Kingdom means entering into the mentality of Jesus, into his plan of salvation, into his policy, which pulls down the power of the mighty and raises up the humility of the small (the mighty and the small in each of us). Entering God's Kingdom therefore means entering into his heart. If someone is superficial in taking this step and thinks that selling possessions is just a matter of economics, it is good for him to be informed of all the consequences of wanting to enter the Kingdom of God and thus his mentality.

At the beginning of his preaching, Jesus started talking about the New Kingdom, trying to make it clear that that Kingdom is not run like the kingdoms and empires we commonly know. It is not run by force, by power, by violence: it is something completely different. Let us take a look at the two kingdoms: that of the world and that of God. The kingdom of men has palaces and fortresses that must deter enemies: in India, a fortress has 26 km of road inside it. The Great Wall of China is 7,500 km long [432]. The wall of sand and mines that divides Morocco and Algeria is 2,400 km long. There was also a wall in Berlin and still one cuts through Jerusalem itself. The armies of empires have soldiers who must be strong, violent, unscrupulous. During wars they put their enemies to the sword with everything that belongs to them, destroying everything without distinction between buildings, houses, bridges, men, women and children.

The kingdoms of this world must show that they are powerful and that no one can dare to measure themselves against them. By showing violence and cruelty, the worldly kingdoms want to inspire fear and terror in their subjects and enemies. One example among countless: in the 13th century, after his victory in Van, Tamerlane had all the inhabitants thrown off cliffs, while in Sivas (Sebaste) he did not let the last 4,000 soldiers be killed so that they could be buried alive. Finally, he gathered all the children in a square and had them trampled by the victors' horses, to strike terror into the surroundings and show how far his strength and power could go.

The first palace-fortress of the Kingdom of God was instead a cave-hut of the utmost fragility, in Bethlehem. And the palace in which he lived for 30 years was partly carved into the rock with a roof of mud pressed onto bundles of branches. The army of the Kingdom of God is made up of men and women, many young men and women who allowed themselves to be tortured, hanged, sawed off, burned like torches to light the gardens of the kingdoms of this world, others who allowed themselves to be ground by the teeth of ferocious animals, who ended up nailed or quartered to amuse those who wished to see the end of Christianity.

Their King, who invites battle in the front row, is a crucified man, Jesus Christ. The Kingdom of God is all of this. Jesus tries to make it clear – without always succeeding – that to enter his Kingdom, that is, to become a Christian, means to take his own path, and in a thousand ways he explains that he will pass from Calvary through a bloody passion, carrying a cross: those who want to follow him will have to carry their own cross and go after him. The mother of James and John asks him one day for a great favour: that her two sons may sit in his kingdom, one on the right and the other on the left (we could say one Prime Minister and the other Secretary of State). Jesus, without reproach, only replies: "But do you realise what you are asking?"

He reminds them again that to follow Him in everything means to be willing to give one's life as He did, and at that point, the two brothers, boldly – they were not called the sons of thunder for nothing – accept, but in all likelihood they are willing to fight at His side in a hoped-for war, which Jesus Himself would have to do to become the King of the world. The two brothers, therefore, assure that they will be willing to fight in the front line, at arms and even to die for such a kingdom. The other ten are furious with the two, because they too feel they are equally valiant soldiers, but Jesus wants to help them understand that his Kingdom is something else.

To explain the new Kingdom of God, Jesus speaks with many parables. Yes, he likens the Kingdom, not to a great cedar, but to a mustard seed - so small that it is almost not visible - although inside it has an extraordinary strength to become a tree, and to a little bit of yeast powder, which seems like nothing, but inside it has the strength to expand a large amount of dough.

A certain day Jesus puts a little boy in the middle, the one who in the house is the youngest, the servant of all, commanded by all, considered worthless because he is still small, even though he has within him a strength that will make him become a man: Jesus explains that the Kingdom of God is like that teenager, indeed Jesus himself identifies with him. And one parable in particular must have caught the attention of Jesus' disciples: that of the precious pearl, whereby whoever finds it is willing to sell everything to buy it, but the apostles kept thinking of preciousness like gold, silver, money, power, etc. And how could Jesus have made it clear that the 'precious pearl' for Him was also death on the cross? Yes, it is a death that also entails resurrection, but how to explain this before the apostles had had the chance to experience it? And how do we explain that when we pray or address prayers and invocations even during the liturgy we always ask for wellbeing, we ask for health for ourselves, for our relatives and friends, the solution to all the problems that cause us pain, serenity and all wellbeing? We ask for peace, which is, however, the peace of the world and not the Peace of God. How does this prayer fit into the preaching of the Kingdom of Jesus?

When Isaiah describes the "Suffering Servant", if he is not reading in a crystal bubble, he is describing the way of the righteous man, of every righteous man and every true servant of the Lord, who is a man abused, scourged, charged with spitting and insults. It is true that when we ask the Lord to be righteous, to follow the path of his will, and ask for his Kingdom to come, we do not realise that we ask all the consequences of a "Servant of the Lord", a "Suffering Servant".

Jesus Himself, reading these texts from Isaiah, applies them to Himself, when He foretells the passion and foretells it because it will be so for all those who want to follow the path of righteousness and truth. I think that is why he tells us to take up our cross and follow Him. The cross will be different for everyone, but the human cry will be the same [433].

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[432] - Fort Cittorgat.

[433] - Cf. R. Rosso, Il dialogo dei monaci.

ANNEX VIII

THE  FULFILMENT

EPILOGUE

ANNEX  IX

JESUS AND RELIGIONS

Jesus and the Jews

To speak of Judaism and Christianity, two indispensable figures must be placed at the centre of the two religions, in addition to the same God: Moses and Jesus Christ. Moses is the saviour of Israel, he frees it from slavery in Egypt and gives the people divine legislation: the Law, (the Torah, the Ten Commandments). Jesus is legislator with a new command.

The chapter on "Jesus the Jew" helps us to understand the deep connection between Judaism and Christianity. The new Law of Jesus consists of unconditionally forgiving and loving even those who cannot love and one's enemies. And the liberation that Jesus brings goes beyond the boundaries of Christianity. Jesus in fact also belongs to other religions. Dialogue with other religions cannot be done abstractly, but with concrete people, who represent their religion even if not in an exhaustive manner.

Towards the end of the second millennium, some Jews [435] reflected and entered into dialogue with the Jesus of Nazareth, showing how deeply he was embedded in the culture, customs and habits of his people. These scholars, rooted in the same culture that was also that of Jesus, uncovered the historical roots of Jesus himself. The Christian must therefore continue his in-depth study and also discover the uniqueness of the person of Jesus [436]. Having said that he is a Jew, one must also add that Jesus is not only a Jew, not only a prophet, healer or teacher, but for the Christian he is also the Icon of God himself.

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[435] - Lapides, Flusser, Vermes and Neusner.

[436] - The Christian in his reflection "must emphasise the fact that, while taking on Jewish culture and religion, Jesus also transformed it profoundly to the point that a new reality was born in Him" (J. Dupuis, op. cit.).

Jesus and Hinduism

For centuries, alongside their gods who are a representation of natural phenomena, Hindus have also worshipped Jesus. As early as the first century, many Hindus chose Christianity. In the 19th century, a new Hinduism was born, a fusion of Hinduism and Christianity that had been accepted, albeit with different views, by almost all of India’s representative thinkers. And this was possible because the Hindu mentality had an extraordinary capacity to distinguish the heart of Christianity, Jesus Christ, from the behaviour of the Churches of the West and of Christianity (e.g. of the colonisers), to such an extent that many were able to choose it as their religion.

Some, in this period, thought of Christianity as the crowning glory of Hinduism, and to say a word about Hinduism itself, I prefer to say it in the expressions of some thinkers who represent it and have also been able to dialogue with Christianity itself.

     Mahatma Gandhi: Jesus is for Gandhi a model to imitate and an inspiration to refer to. E. Stanley Jones wrote that 'The Mahatma was influenced and pervaded by Christian principles, especially the Sermon on the Mount' [437]. The Sermon on the Mount certainly had a special fascination in Gandhi's life in fact he himself says: "This Sermon is the origin of my connection with Christ" [438].

He said, "Without the study of Christ, my life would be incomplete" and therefore he added,

"I want to say to you Hindus that your life will be incomplete if you do not respectfully study the teachings of Jesus. "I believe that Jesus belongs not only to Christianity, but to the whole world, to all races and peoples. If this were not enough, in the last years of Gandhi's life, only one icon remained on the wall in his room, that of Jesus Christ.

     Keshub Chunder Sen, a great thinker of 19th century neo-Hinduism, considers Jesus, at the beginning and end of creation, the 'culmination of humanity', 'the ultimate expression of Divinity', i.e. 'Divine Humanity'. "God descends (into our midst) reaching to the depths of humanity" traversing it to its full extent, "he penetrates the world and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, brings degenerate humanity back to himself".

This Hindu thinker, as H. Staffner, united 'the Hindu mystical consciousness with the ideal that Christ represents'. Suffice it to say that Keshub is proud that Jesus is as Asian as he is.

     Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, one of the most significant Hindu philosophers (President of the independent Indian Republic 1962-1967), attempted a synthesis of Western philosophy and Eastern thought. He says about Jesus, who is best understood as 'a mystic who believes in the inner light [...] ignores what is ritualistic and remains indifferent to legalistic piety' (he is profoundly free) [439] and appreciates Christianity so much that he writes: 'Perhaps Christianity, which was originally born in an oriental setting, but in the course of its propagation soon married Greco-Roman culture, can be reborn today in the heritage of India'.

     Akhilananda, although considered a great Hindu theologian, accepts the main events of Christ's life, "attaching special importance to the Cross and Resurrection even though, as J. Samartha states, they are to be understood as symbolic and signifying universal principles".

     M. C. Parekh, a thinker of the Hindu religion, dedicates his book to the protagonist of our story: 'A Hindu Portrait of Jesus Christ', in which he passionately presents Jesus as an ascetic. He even accepted baptism into the Anglican communion in order to publicly profess how much he felt he was a disciple of Jesus, while remaining a Hindu. He was able to distinguish very well the heart of Christianity, Jesus, from the behaviour of Christians, not least colonialism.

     Bhawami Charan Banerji relies above all on a deep personal experience of the person of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who becomes for him both the guru and a true friend. It seems that the Jesus he meets does not ask him to renounce Hinduism, but through Jesus himself he rediscovers new dimensions in Hinduism itself. Like Parekh, also a great Hindu thinker, he arrived at baptism, but then took significant steps in giving new colour to his faith. He tries all his life to harmonise Hinduism and Christianity while trying to take each in its respective purity.

He becomes a monk while maintaining these two seemingly contradictory dimensions. He goes so far as to say: 'We are Hindus by birth and will remain Hindus until we die, but by virtue of our rebirth (sacrament of baptism), we are Catholics”. The Hinduism he espouses is particularly a culture rather than a faith. Indeed, he argues that Hinduism has no defined creed: one is therefore a Hindu not because of religious views. "In short, we are Hindus as far as our physical and mental constitution is concerned, but as far as our immortal souls are concerned, we are Catholics. We are Hindu-Catholics”. For him, the Vedas are the preparation for the Gospel and replace the A.T. [440]

In his synthesis, he wants to put Hindu philosophy at the service of the Christian message, so as to clothe Christian doctrine in Indian garb. The Indian philosophy enshrined in Vedanta claims that it will render to the Catholic faith in India what Greek philosophy rendered to Europe. If there are errors in Vedanta, there were no less in Plato and Aristotle, but errors can be corrected. This monk went so far as to plan an Indian Christian monastic order in his religious establishment, and this tells us how much the two religions are sisters, but one has to go a long way to penetrate the culture and faith of the other.

     Rabindranath Tagore, a name that is difficult to place in a tradition, but still a Hindu. He stated: 'Among those who have an answer for the most secret questions of our spirit is Jesus', and he also wrote a book about Him: 'I often forget His name, I do not keep Him in my heart and mind. He is absent from my prayers, yet His immense love for me still awaits my love. I hid behind the constant work of the day, I lost myself in the dreams of the night, yet his chasing hand opened before my eyes with every breath I took. Thus, I recognised that he knew my way, that he was master of every place and time. Now I have only one wish: to give him all I have, to pay him all my tribute of love, to be entitled to take my place in his kingdom'.

After this brief overview, I will not venture any summary of that religion because it is impossible, but I will quote what Brahmabandhab goes so far as to say: 'Whatever the theology of the Vedas may be, they are galvanised from beginning to end by the idea of a supreme Being who knows all things, a personal God who is Father, friend and also brother to his worshippers, a God who rewards the virtuous and punishes the wicked, who controls the destiny of man [441]. If the above few notes by some Indian thinkers are not exhaustive in describing Hinduism, they are, however, representative of the major philosophical thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries who could not make without confronting Christ and Neo-Hinduism, which also showed how the two religions can develop many points of convergence.

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[437] - E. Stanley Jones, Mahatma Gandhi: an interpretation, Abingdon-Cokesbury P., 1948.

[438] - M. K. Gandhi, The message of Jesus Christ, Greenleaf Books, 1980.

[439] - P.A. Shilpp, The philosophy of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, New York, Tudor Publishing Company, 1952.

[440]  - Although Hinduism is not only a culture but also a faith, the symbiosis between two religious faiths, Christianity and Hinduism, a concept that seems to be implied by Brahmabandhab himself, is not to be denied either.

[441] - Cf. J. Dupuis, Gesù Cristo incontro alle religioni, Assisi, Cittadella editrice, 1992.

Jesus and the Muslims

To put ourselves in the right position and reflect on Jesus and Islam, we must avoid the comparison between Jesus and Muhammad or between the Gospel and the Koran, but our comparative reflection must be between Jesus and the Koran. The latter, for Islam, is the Word of God that has wrapped itself up and become a book, readable by our humanity. It, reporting the whole will of Allah, for the Muslim deserves all respect, total faith and unconditional obedience. This is the faith of the believing Muslim. For the Christian, Jesus Christ is the Word of God, who is not just a book (even the Gospel), but a living man in our midst whom we could hear and see in all his glory: this is how the believing Christian thinks. For the Muslim, the Koran is dictated by God himself, or rather by an Archangel on behalf of Allah, in Arabic, the language of God himself.

We do not consider the Gospel to be dictated by God, but born in the first Christian community that saw and heard Jesus himself and tried to tell us about him, albeit with all the limitations of that community and of history in general.

For Islam, the Koran is the Word of God; for Christianity, the Word of God is a man: Jesus Christ. Judaism and Islam prefer to think of God as the totally other, inaccessible and invisible in the highest heaven and attainable only through prayer and obedience to the law of the Torah and the Koran. Christianity dares to think of a humanity that is the incarnation of God, who, by becoming man, allowed man himself to reach the divine dimension. From the very beginning of history, man had detached himself from the trees and learnt to live with his feet on the ground, in tents and then in houses. He learned to look up to the sky and came to see the same light of God on the faces of his fellow men. He learnt to live by slowly overcoming his instincts, which had enabled him to survive among unruly nature and dangerous animals, while his brain became more and more human. This man learned to give himself laws, learned mercy, forgiveness and love. Humanity evolved and became more and more divine, until the fullness of time, at the end of history, when it became God himself, and this happened in Jesus Christ, the last man in history.

But this Jesus Christ lived among us when human history had not yet ended and a great number of men and women were (and are) still walking in the direction of that goal, even though they are still very distant and very different from the One who has already come to the end. Thus, it was easier for all of us to have a Brother to follow, who became our Direction, Truth and Life.

The Presbyterian theologian W. A. Meeks has helped to reflect on a sincere interreligious dialogue to the extent that the Christian can accept as his faith that of Isa of the Koran and that the Muslim, reading the Gospel, can accept the Jesus of Christians: personally, I do not subscribe to this.

The Indian theologian Amalados, on the other hand, likening religion to a helicopter, with a plastic image, states that on the palace helipad another helicopter cannot land when there is 

already one. Actually, I think that our adult faith is sealed and all-encompassing (even if it is constantly evolving) and that there is no need to question it in order to establish a sincere interreligious dialogue; on the contrary, it seems that one can only dialogue sincerely if one is deeply rooted in one's faith and religion. Jews, Christians and Muslims are thus three brothers of the same family: Jews are the elder brother of Christians, while Muslims are the last brother: one heretic to the other, they nevertheless share a true brotherhood, in recognising themselves as children of the same Abraham, the father of their faith. The three brothers recognised Jesus Christ as the great prophet, while the Christians, before Him, knelt down.

Dear Muslim brother and Jewish brother, one of the reasons why we have grown apart from one another has been our inability to show you the true face of Jesus. We have let you think that, for us Christians, that body of Nazareth, walking in Galilee, Judea, the villages and the city of Jerusalem, his hair, his eyes, his hands, his brain and his heart was God, while all those elements listed belong to his human nature. The carbon, the oxygen, the silicon that was part of Jesus' body belonged to his humanity and not to his divinity. Even what the apostles saw of Jesus with the eyes of the flesh was not properly God, but was the human in Him. The divine in him they could only see by faith.

When you accuse us that we have recognised a human body as God, you may well be right if you mean that we have presented the humanity of Jesus as God. In reality, Jesus' humanity belongs to the human nature, while Jesus' divinity belongs to the divine nature. We do not worship atoms, molecules that were part of Jesus because they belonged to human nature, but we knelt before the God who had occupied all parts of his humanity. If this speech frightens you, think of yourself and me. God also lives and is present in us, but in the humanity of each of us, a large part is occupied by laziness to do good, selfishness, wickedness, violence and all vices, and a small space is occupied by God.

But it is enough to affirm that God is in me and in you, and I can kneel before you and worship the God present in you, alive and true, and let myself be enchanted by your face, O brother, for it is through that face of yours that I glimpse a part of the divine in you. And then even the carbon, the oxygen that were part of Jesus become precious relics because it is those elements and not others that allowed God to become flesh.