Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - This month Kos magazine, published by San Raffaele, Milan, and edited by don Luigi Maria Verzè, dedicated a whole issue to the figure of Jesus the Jew, with authoritative contributions. The aim was to investigate the complex but simple personality of the most important 'man' in the history of humanity, Jesus of Nazareth. The authors of the articles included Gianfranco Ravasi, Magdi Cristiano Allam, Ornella Melogli, Simonetta Della Seta and Ermanno Olmi. The contribution of the latter, a well known film director of many films on Jesus and Christianity, was seen commented in a widely read Italian national newspaper under the title “I love Jesus more than God because he taught me to be free ”.
Before commenting on the article I take the opportunity to explain what struck me about this review. I think it is now clear, that historical, cultural and theological investigation on the person of Jesus of Nazareth two thousand years after his birth is far from completion. Indeed year after year bibliography produced all over the world on this fascinating subject continues to grow. A growth which intensfied particularly following Vatican II, but especially with Pope Benedict XVI, who devoted two lengthy volumes to the Jesus of the Gospels (the first, Jesus of Nazareth 2007), is assuming exceptional dimensions. In fact after almost 50 years of positions taken by Jewish essayists and historians on the person of Jesus of Nazareth, from beginning of the last century onwards, only in recent years have we seen an organic “Catholic” answer to the happy, but in my opinion partial, Jewish claim on the fathomless Mystery surrounding the Teacher from Galilee.
Returning to Olmi, I was pleased to note that he too contributed to the massive mosaic documenting the historicity of the person of Jesus of Nazareth, of which Christianity of the 3rd millennium has such great need. I say during centuries, at least since the Enlightenment, the historic person of the founder of Christianity became blurred and faded, causing a series of misunderstandings and mistake and not only among Protestant Christians– most affected by this evanescence -, but even among Catholics. A crisis from which the whole of Christianity is striving to recover, thanks to authoritative studies of Jewish researchers and though the teachings of the recent Pontiffs– principally Benedict XVI who has this theme deeply at heart–, and thanks to numerous studies by Catholic and secular authors. A chorus on the historic data amply confirms the earthly life of Jesus of Nazareth, a Jewish Rabbi and the founder of the world's most widespread religion.
Of course, like all “fashions” this can have its risks. The first and perhaps the most serious is that the Jewish identity of Jesus may not be understood as a characteristic which connects Him with Judaism in the strict sense. Jesus was undoubtedly a Jew and always will be, but this was precisely why he criticised, as the Rabbi he was, the Judaism of his day, bringing to completion and to perfection what had been announced by the prophets of Israel; He restored the originality of the message which God entrusted to the Patriarchs with numerous different Revelations recorded in the Old Testament. What Jesus did essentially was to connect the ancient revelation to Abraham, with his own person, human and divine which recapitulated in itself that salvation which God inaugurated with Abraham. A soldering achieved after encountering, teaching and in some cases, converting, some followers of the composite Jewish thought of the times, which we know was remodelled to meet legalistic and nationalist criteria which had emerged after the Mosaic experience and above all after the exile in Babylon.
The second risk, is only apparently less dangerous. The fact that many intellectuals, religious and non, Jews and Catholics, atheists and indifferent are rediscovering the historic dimension of Jesus of Nazareth, is a double edged sword. Although on everyone's lips, it is also true that the terms used are often approximate, exaggeratedly personal, relativist and sentimental. You cannot make Jesus say something He never ever said, or worse, precisely because he is an historical personage, the clear and simple message which he addressed first of all to the Jews and through them to all humanity. He said several times that He was the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity: true man but also true God and therefore God in person. Things being thus, the Jews cannot reduce his historical message to that of a prophet or a Rabbi, however authoritative, and others cannot say “I love Jesus more than God”. Jesus is God and to affirm the contrary means to misunderstand his message or distort it.
In the valid article by Olmi interesting parts reveal a rediscovered and more profound friendship with Jesus; a most deserving fact, but in no few parts - as we see in many other testimonies which ride the fortunate mode of the historic dimension of Jesus of Nazareth, sad to say often the work of distinguished experts in History of world religions– what is distorted, emptied and relativised is precisely Jesus' way of thinking and acting. How can one believe in Jesus, the Son of God, and question the virginity of his mother Mary? Or say I love men more than God and that this is what God wants? Or say that Jesus, the Verb made flesh par excellence, came not to teach us the Word of God, understood as words pronounced, instead he came as the Word of God to live human life? How can they compare the teachings of Jesus with those of Tolstoj or Gandhi, all figures, models, proposals for life? And ultimately, that you can be there His disciple without “getting up on the cross"?
Remarks which on the one hand communicate an essence more than a form of religiosity of which men and women today have such dire need, on the other deny the unicity and specificity Jesus' incarnation, mission, death and resurrection. So study and rediscovery of the Jesus of history and his Jewish identity, root and foundation of Christianity, an historical event not an ideology, is to be encouraged, but it is intellectually essential to avoid the mistake of relativising or bending Jesus of Nazareth, hypostasis of the Trinity, with all the weight of this statement, to one's own personal needs, even if this were to be done in good faith. (Agenzia Fides 27/6/2008)
