 THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS ON THE MYSTERY OF THE REDEMPTION Taken from Our Savior
and His Love for Us IN THE preceding pages we have dealt with the mystery of the Incarnation, with the personality of Jesus, His sanctity, the contemplation of His human intelligence, His human will that is at once free and impeccable. We are now about to consider the mystery of the Redemption according to the testimony of the Gospel and of the Epistles, in order to determine the relation to this mystery of our Savior's interior life as priest and victim. In our Lord's teaching, the mystery of the Incarnation is intimately bound up with the mystery of the Redemption. For the name "Jesus" means Savior or Redeemer, and, as the Creed proclaims, it was to redeem us that the Word was made flesh. "I believe in one God, the Father almighty . . . and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God . . . Who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from Heaven, and was incarnate . . . and was made man" [Nicene Creed]. We know, of course, that the Modernists have claimed that the doctrine concerning the expiatory character of Christ's death is not evangelical, but merely Pauline, that is, the fruit of St. Paul's personal reflections on the death of Jesus. [Among the Modernist errors condemned by Pope Pius XI in the decree Lamentabili, the thirty-eighth is this the one just listed (Denzinger, no. 2038).] How were the Modernists led to entertain such a notion? Because, following in the footsteps of the liberal Protestants who had almost become rationalists, they sought to suppress all supernatural elements in the mystery of the Redemption and to reduce it to the level of a truth of the natural order. Following this trend of thought, they have claimed that the Redemption as the Catholic Church has always understood it, is contrary to God's mercy and justice. The Catholic concept of the Redemption is contrary to God's mercy, they have held, because an infinitely merciful God cannot demand as reparation for sin such rigorous satisfaction as is far superior to anything man can offer Him. The answer to the objection is that this view leaves out of consideration the fact that, while God had demanded such a reparation, He has in His infinite mercy given us His own Son to redeem us. He has loved the world so much as to deign to give to it not only grace and pardon but the Author of grace Himself. The Modernists further hold that the Redemption as conceived by the Catholic Church, is contrary to Divine justice, for it is unjust and cruel to strike an innocent person in place of those who are guilty. Is this not to forget that our Savior is a voluntary victim, Who generously offered Himself up for us? By thus deviating from the fundamental truths of Christianity the Modernists and the liberal Protestants have entirely removed from the Death of Jesus on the Cross its supernatural character. In their eyes Jesus is only a wise man, a Saint who was not understood by His contemporaries, and who courageously died rather than renounce His ideas. He did not die to make reparation in our place, to redeem us, to give us supernatural grace, to merit eternal life for us. His death, as they see it, has value only as an example, such as had the death of Socrates or Leonidas. His death is the greatest example of strength and greatness of soul amid the most terrible trials. This is what becomes of a supernatural mystery when viewed with the eyes of human wisdom, which in seeking to explain everything naturally finds only darkness in the faith of the Church, the faith of all the martyrs, and of all the Saints. We shall see that contrary to these naturalistic views this doctrine of the Church has been clearly expressed in the words of our Lord preserved in the four Gospels. We shall then see that this doctrine is also to be found in the Acts of the Apostles and in St. Paul's writings. The Mystery of the Redemption in the First Three Gospels First of all, let us bear in mind that Jesus manifested the mystery of the Incarnation only by slow degrees, because men's souls would not have been able to bear all at once such a lofty revelation. The same is true of His announcement of His painful Passion, for it was even more difficult to bear the revelation of this mystery, especially for the Jews who, because of their national prejudices, were awaiting a temporal and conquering Messiah who would have made them dominant over other peoples. Let us bear in mind also that Jesus began to announce His painful Passion to His disciples only after He had brought them to believe in His Divine sonship, in His Divinity. Only after Peter's confession at Caesarea, in which he professed his belief that Jesus was "the Son of the living God," did our Lord begin ,'to show to His disciples, that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things . . . and be put to death." [Matt. 16:21.] This mystery which had been announced repeatedly by the prophets, especially in certain Messianic Psalms [Ps. 39, 21, 68.] and by Isaias, [Chaps. 50, 53.] was difficult to accept. It required a great spirit of faith. Let us see how our Lord manifested this mystery progressively; according to the first three Gospels and also according to St. John. It is like a leitmotif, at first soft but powerful, which gradually grows louder and finally bursts forth and is dominant. [Thus, in the overture to Tannhauser the leitmotif of the Pilgrims' Chorus is at first almost imperceptible, but it gradually rises above the leitmotif of sensuality and evil, until it dominates all.] At the start of His ministry, in the synagogue at Nazareth Jesus read in the book of the prophet Isaias: [Isa. 61:1.] "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, wherefore He hath anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor, He hath sent Me to heal the contrite of heart: to preach deliverance to the captives, and sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of reward." [Luke 4:18 ff.] This is more than an example of high virtue. The announcement is general, but it is certainly clear, and it was to become progressively clearer. A little later, as we read in St. Matthew, [Matt. 9:10-3.] after Matthew the publican is called to the Apostleship, as Jesus was at table in Matthew's house together with many publicans and sinners who had joined Him and His disciples for the feast, the Pharisees said to the disciples: "Why doth your master eat with publicans and sinners? But Jesus hearing it, said: They that are in health need not a physician, but they that are ill. Go then and learn what this meaneth, I will have mercy and not sacrifice. For I am not come to call the just, but sinners." [Cf. Mark 11:17.] But mention was not made of the cruel Passion He was to suffer. It was too early for that. It was only after Peter had confessed at Caesarea that Jesus was "Christ the Son of the living God," [Matt. 16:16.] that Jesus began to show to His disciples, that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the ancients and scribes and chief priests, and be put to death, and the third day rise again." Peter, drawing Him aside, began to rebuke Him, saying: "Lord, be it far from Thee, this shall not be unto Thee." But Jesus, turning to Peter, said: "Go behind Me, Satan, thou art a scandal unto Me: because thou savorest not the things that are of God, but the things that are of men." [Matt. 16:21-23; Cf. Mark 8:31-33.] Peter indeed had so little understanding of the things of God when he said these words that he was speaking without knowing it against all of God's plans for the salvation of mankind, against the motive of the Incarnation or of the coming of the Word made flesh into the world. And he spoke thus because his natural affection for Jesus was so great that he could not bear the announcement of His cruel Passion. By contrast, the words of the Stabat Mater are: "Grant that I may bear the death of Christ, following Mary's example who remained standing at the foot of the Cross." We should note that it was after the first prediction of His Passion that Jesus said: [Matt. 16:24; Mark 8:34-39; Luke 9:23-27.] "If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me." [It is in this sense that someone has said: "Any destiny that does not have its calvary is a punishment from God." "Life disappoints only those Who do not expect enough from it."] This expression, "take up one's cross," was then still obscure to His hearers, but it would become increasingly clear. Again alluding to His sacrifice and to its fruits, Jesus said: "I am come to cast fire on the earth: and what will I, but that it be kindled! And I have a baptism wherewith I am to be baptized: and how am I straitened until it be accomplished?" [Luke 12:49 ff.] He announced His Passion again even more precisely as He was going up to Jerusalem, before His triumphal entry. It is recorded in St. Matthew: "And Jesus . . . took the twelve disciples apart, and said to them: Behold we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of man shall be betrayed to the chief priests and the scribes, and they shall condemn Him to death, and shall deliver Him to the Gentiles to be mocked and scourged and crucified, and the third day He shall rise again." [Matt. 20:17-28; cf. Mark 10:34; Luke 18:31 ff.] The Apostles must have been struck by these words, and yet they forgot them during the Passion. It was then that the mother of the sons of Zebedee approached Jesus with her sons and asked that they might sit, the one on His right and the other on His left in His kingdom. Jesus, alluding to His passion which He had just announced, answered: "Can you drink the chalice that I shall drink?" [Matt. 20:22.] He then added that, whereas the princes of the Gentiles lord it over them, "the Son of man is not come to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a redemption for many." [Ibid. 20:28.] Here we have the mystery of the Redemption enunciated by Jesus Himself. It would therefore be difficult to claim, as the Modernists do, that this was the personal notion of St. Paul, born of his reflection on the life and death of Jesus. Our Lord has told us Himself that He came "to give His life a redemption for many." Likewise, in St. Mark we read: "The Son of man . . . is not come to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a redemption for many." [Mark 10:45.] This certainly bespeaks the expiatory character of Jesus' death. The Passion was also foretold in the parable of the wicked husbandmen: "And last of all he sent to them his son . . . But the husbandmen seeing the son, said among themselves: This is the heir: come, let us kill him, and we shall have his inheritance. And taking him, they cast him forth out of the vineyard, and killed him." [Matt. 21:37 ff.] Finally the Passion was foretold for the last time during the Last Supper, as recorded in St. Matthew, [Ibid. 26:2-28.] in St. Mark, [Mark 14:24.] and in St. Luke. [Luke 22:19 ff.] In St. Matthew we read: "And whilst they were at supper, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke: and gave to His disciples, and said: Take ye and eat: This is My body. And taking the chalice, He gave thanks, and gave to them, saying: Drink ye all of this. For this is My blood of the New Testament, which shall be shed for many unto remission of sins." This was very clear, especially after the preceding predictions of the Passion, and inasmuch as Jesus had already said during the Last Supper: "The Son of man indeed goeth, as it is written of Him: but woe to that man by whom the Son of man shall be betrayed." [Matt. 26:24.] In order to give further
warning to His Apostles, He added as they proceeded
to the Garden of Olives: "All of you shall be scandalized in Me this
night.
For it is written: I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the
flock
shall be dispersed. But after I shall be risen again, I will go before
you into Galilee." [[Ibid.
26:31 ff.] And St. Luke
adds that our Lord said to Peter: "Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath
desired
to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: [Just as he had
desired holy Job (cf. Job 1:11).] But I have prayed for thee, that
thy faith fail not: and thou, being once converted, confirm thy
brethren." This last announcement of the Passion was singularly clear, and by the words of the consecration at the Last Supper, especially those referring to "My blood of the New Testament, which shall be shed for many unto remission of sins," [Matt. 26:28.] it was manifest that during His passion and Crucifixion which He had foretold, Jesus would offer His blood as a sacrifice of reparation or of redemption. None the less, in spite of all these predictions which confirmed those of the Messianic Psalms and those of Isaias 28 about the suffering Messiah, the man of sorrows-----in spite of all this light, when the sacrifice began at Gethsemane the Apostles fell asleep, and as soon as the Passion started they fearfully forsook our Lord. At the moment when the mystery of the Redemption was accomplished on the Cross, at the moment of the Consummatum est, they did not understand that this was the realization of Christ's promises. Many of them even thought that all was lost. And if the Apostles behaved in this manner during the dark night of the Passion, how might we expect to react if we were placed in comparable circumstances? The mystery of the Redemption was clearly announced in the Synoptic Gospels, as we have seen. In one of these Gospels it is also reported that after His Resurrection Jesus said to His disciples of Emmaus: "O foolish, and slow of heart to believe in all things which the prophets have spoken. Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and so to enter into His glory?" [Chap. 53.] The Testimony of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel The mystery of the Redemption has been expressed even more perfectly in the Gospel of St. John. In this Gospel, Jesus repeats insistently that He is sent by the Father to do His will and to perfect His work. [John 4:34; 5:30; 6:38 ff.] But this work consists in bearing witness to the truth, [Ibid. 18:37; 17:8; 14, 26.] and in saving men's souls and giving them eternal life. According to this Gospel, Jesus said to Nicodemus: "So must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in Him may not perish, but may have life everlasting. For God so loved the world, as to give His only begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in Him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting." [Ibid. 3:14-16.] To this end, Jesus, the Good Shepherd, gave His life for His sheep. There is no simpler or greater expression of the mystery of the Redemption than the parable of the Good Shepherd: "I am come that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly. I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd giveth His life for His sheep . . . I am the Good Shepherd; and I know mine, and mine know Me . . . I lay down My life for My sheep. And other sheep I have, that are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice, and there shall be one fold and one Shepherd. There fore doth the Father love Me: because I lay down My life, that I may take it again. No man taketh it away from Me: but I lay it down of Myself, and I have power to lay it down: and I have power to take it up again. This commandment have I received of My Father." [Ibid. 10:10-18.] This is indeed the spontaneous oblation of the voluntary victim, and this victim is the Good Shepherd Himself, the Priest above all others, who was to pronounce the priestly prayer before He died. Jesus did not die as the result of unforeseen circumstances, as did Socrates, rather than renounce His ideas. Jesus was sent by God to offer Himself up for us. At the time of His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Jesus announced to His disciples that His death would be a triumph, but that before the triumph He would have to be immolated. He told them in fact: "The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified. Amen, amen I say to you, unless the grain of wheat falling into the ground die, itself remaineth alone. But if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit . . . Now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to Myself." St. John adds: "Now this He said, signifying what death He should die." [Ibid. 12:23-25; 31 ff.] A little later, Jesus said: "Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends." [Ibid. 15:13.] Then, during His priestly prayer, He added: "And for them do I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth." [Ibid. 17:19.] Through the fruits of our Savior's death, Satan was defeated, he lost the rights and the power he had over a sinful humanity, [Ibid. 12:31.] and grace was given back to men. Jesus is the vine, we are the branches: "He that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit." [Ibid. 15:5.] St. John speaks in the same vein in his First Epistle: "We have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanseth us from all sin . . . [1 John 1:7.] He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world . . . [Ibid. 2:2.] By this hath the charity of God appeared toward us, because God hath sent His only-begotten Son into the world, that we may live by Him." [Ibid. 4:9.] St. John develops this doctrine of the Precious Blood in an admirable manner in the Apocalypse, in the canticle sung to the Lamb: "Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God, in Thy blood, out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation. And hast made us to our God a kingdom and priests, and we shall reign on the earth." [Apoc. 5:9 ff.] This is the same teaching that we find in St. Peter's first discourses after Pentecost, as reported in the Acts of the Apostles: "This [Jesus] is the stone which was rejected by you the builders, which is become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other. For there is no other name under Heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved." [Acts 4:11 ff.] "Him hath God exalted with His right hand, to be Prince and Savior, to give repentance to Israel, and remission of sins." [Ibid. 5:45; cf. Ibid. 8:37; 10:43; 15.] Finally, St. Peter says in his
First Epistle: "You were not redeemed
with corruptible things as gold and silver . . . but with the Precious
Blood of Christ, as of a lamb unspotted and undefiled." Such is the testimony of the Gospels, of the Acts of the Apostles, and of St. Peter's Epistles on the mystery of the Redemption. Hence it cannot be held that the expiatory character of Christ's death is not evangelical, that it is merely the result of St. Paul's personal reflections on the death of Jesus, which he compared with the sacrifices of the Old Law. Our Savior's own words as recorded by St. Matthew and St. Mark tell us that He gave His life "redemption for many." And St. John the Baptist, before St. Paul, saluted Jesus as "the Lamb of God . . . Who taketh away the sin of the world." [John 1:29.] Even if we did not have St. Paul's epistles, this testimony would suffice to make us know in the obscurity of faith the very essence of the mystery of the Redemption. www.catholictradition.org/Easter/easter14.htm |
