Jesus of Nazareth

In honor of the Advent season I read Joseph Ratzinger Pope Benedict XVI's Jesus of Nazareth. When it was published last year in 2012, I vaguely remember the attention focused on Benedict's re-dating of the historical Jesus' birth, but it wasn't until I read this book in its entirety that I realized the mysterious impact of Benedict's argument. Benedict cites Josephus' historical records that place the Quirinius census which would have caused Joseph and Mary to travel to Bethlehem--the site of Jesus' eventual prophetic birth--in the year 6 A.D., a date that places into doubt by six years the Gregorian dating system. Second, Benedict relies on astrological data to renegotiate the Gregorian calendar and scientifically explain the star of Bethlehem. That Benedict is interested in astronomy is no surprise given the Church's powerful telescopes at Castel Gandolfo in Italy and Mount Graham in Arizona. Between Kepler's Jupiter-Saturn-Mars supernova explanations (a phenomenon which occurred in the years 7-6 B.C.) and the alignment of Jupiter and Saturn in the constellation of Pisces (the symbol of ancient Christianity) which also occurred in 7-6 B.C., Benedict argues that Jesus' birth occurred somewhere within 7 B.C. and 6 A.D., most likely occurring earlier than later on the calendrical spectrum. About all of these astrological occurrences, Benedict writes most compellingly: "If these wise men, led by the star to search for the king of the Jews, represent the movement of the Gentiles toward Christ, this implies that the cosmos speaks of Christ, even though its language is not yet fully intelligible to man in his present state. The language of creation provides a great many pointers. It gives man an intuition of the Creator. Moreover, it arouses the expectation, indeed the hope, that this God will one day reveal himself. And at the same time it elicits an awareness that man can and should approach him" (100).

Theologically, I most appreciated Benedict's repeated emphasis on the paradox of the Christian life of the cross: it is a sign of hopefulness and yet also a sign of inevitable suffering. That one must suffer in the wounds of Christ to achieve Christian glory is a message that a secular world confuses, misunderstands, or rejects. Benedict writes, "We are not talking about the past here. We all know to what extent Christ remains a sign of contradiction today, a contradiction that in the final analysis is directed at God. God himself is constantly regarded as a limitation placed on our freedom, that must be set aside if man is ever to be completely himself. God, with his truth, stands in opposition to man's manifold lies, his self-seeking and his pride.

God is love. But love can also be hated when it challenges us to transcend ourselves. It is not a romantic 'good feeling.' Redemption is not 'wellness,' it is not about basking in self-indulgence; on the contrary it is a liberation from imprisonment in self-absorption. This liberation comes at a price: the anguish of the Cross. The prophecy of light and that of the Cross belong together" (86).

Pope Benedict XVI's emphasis on Jesus' infancy narrative would not be complete without a meditation on the role of Jesus' mother, Mary. As a child, I never really pondered in my heart the role of Mary despite the fact that she always points toward Christ ("Do whatever he tells you" [John 2:5-8]) and despite the fact that she always encourages us to "ponder all these things in [our] heart[s]" (Luke 2:19). She was someone we paraded around at Christmas pageants, stowed away in the costume closet for the rest of the liturgical year, and then retrieved when the Nativity scene again was reenacted. But reflecting on Mary especially since I myself became a mother made me keenly aware of her pivotal role in salvation history. When Simeon says to Mary in the Temple, "a sword will pierce through your own soul" (Luke 2:35), we see how the paradox of the Cross is also applied toward the mother. Jesus' death on the cross is described in Christian vernacular as "The Passion," and yet it is with Mary where we learn true "com-Passion"---a passion that is wedded to the suffering of others most perfectly enacted when Mary was pierced by the suffering of her son, the Christ. Benedict writes, "From Mary we can learn what true com-passion is: quite unsentimentally assuming the sufferings of others as one's own…The Mater Dolorosa, the mother whose heart is pierced by a sword, is an iconic image of this fundamental attitude of Christian faith" (87). [On an entirely personal note, my own mother often bemoaned her name, Delores, but as I witness her own Via Dolorosa in her life of self-sacrifice to her family---to my brother and to me all through our childhood; to my dad before, during, and after his cancer journey and death; to my children and to her other grandchildren; and to my grandparents---I cannot help but think that her name suits her more than any Seinfeld episode could diminished the grandeur of her name…]

Jesus of Nazareth is a quick read and a fine introduction to Benedict's genius theological mind. I've read much of his theology and am always amazed at his simplicity, articulateness, and philosophical persuasiveness in a world that so immediately discards Christian philosophical epistemology as anti-intellectual and superstitious. Benedict really is one of the most profound writers I've encountered in my many years of research, study, and scholarship. This book, Jesus of Nazareth, does not operate like Benedict's other systematic theological texts: it neither delves into minute details of systematic logic,  nor does it include expansive footnotes or citations that define Benedict's other works. This text is written for the lay reader, for the devoted or the fallen-away Catholic, for the Christian peering inside the Catholic tradition, or for the secular reader who might appreciate a spiritual insight into Jesus' infancy narrative vis-a-vis the rationalist inquiry that Benedict provides (see first paragraph above).

Benedict closes his book with the fact that Jesus paradoxically is both "true man" and "true God." Jesus' wisdom grows so that at twelve years old, he has acquired human wisdom far beyond his years but he is still a man who "does not live in some abstract omniscience" (127)---he is instead "rooted in concrete history, a place and a time, in the different phases of human life, and this is what gives concrete shape to his knowledge" (ibid.). Thy dynamic between Jesus' humanness and his divinity "remains a mystery" (ibid.) as Benedict recounts in this beautiful book on Jesus of Nazareth.