In For A Shock
What I did not anticipate about post-graduate life is the set of spiritual difficulties it has brought. A host of forces makes commitment to prayer challenging these days: the absence of the faith community I built in college; the perceived need to split all of my spare time doing various jobs; the desire to spend more time with loved ones with whom I once again share a zip code.
As a result of the pull of these desires (many of them good in themselves) and obligations, I tend to compartmentalize my prayer life. I make sure it remains a part of my day, but its space to breathe and grow is limited – hence, I stifle the growth of my capacity for awe, understanding and devotion.
Thanks to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI (whose presence usually saves the day, if you ask me), I see the alternative to the stifled kind of prayer life that I cultivate all too easily. I began the summer by picking up Volume I of Benedict XVI’s book Jesus of Nazareth, a series of reflections on Christ’s life in which Benedict fuses numerous approaches to reveal the fundamental meanings of some of Christ’s most important words in the Gospels.
One of the most impactful sections is Benedict’s explication of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew. He devotes much time to Jesus’s words in Matthew 5:17: “Think not that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”
Using this declaration as a springboard, Benedict turns to Jesus’s teachings that comprise the “Torah of the Messiah” – teachings about the Kingdom of God in which Jesus initially appears to contradict the words of Moses through his phrasing. For example: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you . . .”
Benedict illuminates the concerns that these teachings appear to present. Most prominently, Jesus’ listeners surely wondered who in the world this man thought he was to mess with the teachings of Moses, for Jesus “teaches not as the rabbis do, but as one who has ‘authority.’” Thus, Jesus does not offer just another interpretation of a Biblical text: “Either he is misappropriating God’s majesty – which would be terrible – or else, and this seems almost inconceivable, he really does stand on the same exalted level as God.”
Benedict elaborates: “If Jesus is God, then he is entitled and able to handle the Torah as he does. On that condition alone does he have the right to interpret the Mosaic order of divine commands in such a radically new way as only the Lawgiver – God himself – can claim to do.” He explains what this means for the Christian in two impactful statements: “Jesus understands himself as the Torah – as the word of God in person;” and “Jesus is the Kingdom of God in person.”
C. S. Lewis made a famous argument that speaks to this matter. He argues that it is impossible to say that Jesus was only a great moral teacher (and not God), for his “radically new ways” (as Benedict puts it) of interpreting God’s Word only make sense if he is God. If Jesus is not God, he can only be a liar or a lunatic.
How often I fail to consider the radical nature of Christ’s mission – the extent to which God in the person of Jesus was and remains shocking, and how drastically it reshaped the trajectory of human history. In the mystery of the Trinity and through the Blessed Virgin’s fiat, God became Man. We have learned this and we know it . . . but do we really reflect on its implications? Do we think about what a radical, unprecedented belief we profess by actively following Jesus? I certainly do not, and I pray to the Holy Spirit that we might increase in understanding together.
This summer, far from seeping into laziness or complacency, let us allow ourselves to be shocked and awed by the continual freshness of Jesus Christ’s message, the paradigm-shifting nature of his sacrifice, motivated by pure love. For, the larger the capacity of our hearts for love and awe, the greater store of love we have to share with others.
