The Uniqueness of Jesus

The story of Jesus is what the eternal trinitarian life of God looks like when it is projected upon the screen of history, and this means not only on the screen of human history but of sinful human history. The obedience of Jesus to the Father, his obedience to his mission, is just what the eternal procession of the Son from the Father appears as in history. His obedience consists in nothing else but his being in history. Jesus did nothing but be the Son as man. His crucifixion was the dramatic manifestation of the sort of world we have made, the showing up of the world, the unmasking of what we traditionally call original sin. There is no need for theories about the Father putting his Son to death once we know that he was human in our world. Jesus died in obedience to his Father’s will simply in the sense that he was human in his obedience to his Father’s will. Read on »

Each of the four gospels proclaims in its particular way that the Holy Spirit of Love is the reciprocity of the Father and the Son in communion.

Mark - Gospel of the loving Father and of the beloved Son proclaims both   

           The Spirit of the Father’s love for the Son, and

           The Spirit of the Son’s love for the Father.

Matthew - Gospel of the Son’s Body the Church proclaims both

           The Spirit of the Father’s love for the Body of Christ and Temple of his

           Spirit, and

           The Spirit of the Body of Christ’s love for his Father. Read on »

In Christian speech a witness is not a reporter. Witnesses speak about what they know. The witnesses of Christ’s Resurrection not only told people what they had seen, but also spoke of what had happened to them because of what they had seen. They spoke about Christ in them, not only about the person they had known during his sojourn among them and who had appeared to them after his Resurrection. Read on »

When speaking of how God is known, Christian thinkers favored the metaphor of seeing, not hearing. Beauty is the corollary of seeing. In the Scriptures many of the key terms used of God’s self-disclosure, words such as glory, splendor, light, image, and face, have to do with the delight of the eye. When we speak of the pleasure the eye takes in what it sees the term that comes to mind is beauty. The psalmist wrote, “One thing have I asked of the Lord…that I will behold the beauty of the Lord” (Ps. 27:4). As early as the second century the apologist Athenagoras of Athens included the term beauty in a list of word depicting God. The God we set before you, he says, is “encompassed by light, beauty, spirit, and indescribably power.” In his commentary on the Song of Songs Origen wrote that the “soul is moved by heavenly love and longing when it beholds the beauty and comeliness of the Word of God.” God’s revelation can be seen from the perspective of its ineffable beauty as well as of its truth and goodness

Through the gift of the Triune God’s Son and Spirit we learn to think, love and rejoice as God. The Spirit of God is the cognitive and affective life of God that is the origin, ground and destiny of all creation.

The life story of Jesus expresses what God thinks, loves and enjoys. He has given us the gift of his Holy Spirit to remind us of what he thinks, loves and enjoys that we may participate in thought, love and joy of the Triune God. Read on »

There are three key moments of divine and human hospitality in  our salvation history The Abraham pattern of divine and human hospitality recurs through salvation history. From the time of the promise made to Abraham, to its fulfilment in Christ, and at the Last Judgment, the Host of the world is welcomed and shown hospitality in three key moments by persons unaware that they were hosting him. Abraham hosting his three visitors, the Samaritan woman hosting Jesus at the well, and the blessed of the Father hosting the hungry and thirsty Son of Man, had no idea whom they were hosting. 1. Abraham at the time of the promise (Genesis) 2. The Samaritan woman at the fulfillment of the promise in Christ (John 4) 3. The blessed of the Father at the end of time (Matthew 25) In these three moments of salvation history, Scripture tells us that we encounter the Other in our hospitality to others. We encounter the Host of the world in our hospitality to strangers. Hosting those whom the Host of the world is hosting, we encounter the Host himself, the Origin, Ground and Destiny of all humankind!  The hospitality operative in these three key events, like grace of God, is purely gratutious, devoid of any calculating thought of recompense or quid pro quo. Had the hopitable persons known the importance of their Guest, the sheer gratuity of their hospitality might be in question.

The Good News is that God loves us to the extent of giving form and flesh to this love in Jesus of Nazareth, born of Mary. It is not only to be contemplated and received. The love of God made visible in Jesus is to become visible in the lives of Christians.

Jesus’ emphasis falls heavily upon the love of neighbor in such a way that the neighbor becomes the visible focal point and even the test case for our love of God. We are to be judged finally by our attitude and response to the neighbor who is poor, naked, homeless, in prison (Mt 25). Read on »

The Christian community of faith turns to Jesus for the source and shape of our specifically Christian hope. Be reflecting on his attitude of hopeful trust in the Father and examining where that led him, we will gain some insight into our hope. If we take seriously that Jesus is the way to the Father, then his way, the way of hope, must also become our way. His hope becomes ours.

To speak of the hopes of Jesus might seem strange; for hope would seem to imply distance between the Father and his Son. How could Jesus be the Savior, if he had to hope and struggle like us? These are complex questions; however, the beginnings of the answer must lie in the evidence from the New Testament and the tradition, which has always maintained, if not sufficiently emphasized, that Jesus is fully and truly human. Jesus is like us in all but sin (Heb 4:15). Read on »