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Hearts of Prayer - Lenten Season |
"Jesus Began to Preach:
The Word of God in the Life of Christ"
1st Lenten Sermon
Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, OFMCap, Pontifical Household Preacher
February 22, 2008
www.zenit.org
This is the first in a series of Lenten meditations titled "The
Word of God Is Living and Effective."
In view of the Synod of Bishops next October I thought that I would
dedicate my Lenten preaching this year to the theme of the word of
God. We will meditate, in succession, on the proclamation of the
Gospel in the life of Christ, that is, on Jesus as the one “who
preaches,” on proclamation in the mission of the Church, that is, on
the preaching of Jesus, on the word of God as a means of personal
sanctification, the “lectio divina,” and on the relationship between
the Spirit and the word, concretely speaking, the spiritual reading
of the Bible.
We begin this preaching on the day in which the Church celebrates
the feast of the Chair of St. Peter, and this in not without
significance for our theme. First of all it offers us an occasion to
pay the homage of our affection and devotion to him who today sits
in the Chair of Peter, the Holy Father Benedict XVI. We then recall
what the Apostle Peter himself wrote in his Second Letter, namely,
that “no prophetic scripture may be subjected to private
explanation” (2 Peter 1:20) and that for this reason every
interpretation of the word of God must be measured against the
living tradition of the Church, whose authentic interpretation is
entrusted to the apostolic teaching office and, in a singular way,
to the Petrine teaching office.
It is beautiful, in such a circumstance as this, and in the
contemporary context of ecumenical dialogue, to recall the famous
text of St. Irenaeus: “Since, however, it would take too long to
enumerate the successions of all the Churches in this volume, we
take the very great, the very ancient, and universally known Church
founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles,
Peter and Paul. [...] With this Church, by reason of its more
excellent origin (‘propter potentiorem principalitatem’), every
Church must be in agreement, that is, the faithful from everywhere,
since in her the Tradition that comes from the apostles has always
been preserved for all men.”[1]
In this spirit, not without fear and trembling, I ready myself to
present my reflections on the vital theme of the word of God, in the
presence of the successor of Peter, the Bishop of the Church of
Rome.
1. Preaching in the Life of Jesus
After the account of Jesus’ baptism, the Evangelist Mark continues
his narrative saying: “Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the Gospel
of God and saying ‘The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is
at hand; repent and believe in the Gospel” (Mark 1:14). Matthew puts
it more briefly: “From that time Jesus began to preach, saying,
‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand’” (Matthew 4:17). With
these words the “Gospel” begins understood as the good news “of”
Jesus -- that is, proclaimed by Jesus and of which Jesus is the
subject, which is different from the good news “about” Jesus of the
subsequent apostolic preaching, in which Jesus is the object.
We have here an event that occupies a very precise place in time and
in space: It happened “in Galilee,” “after John was arrested.” The
verb used by the evangelists, “he began to preach,” strongly
emphasizes that it is a “beginning,” something new not only in the
life of Jesus, but in salvation history itself. The Letter to the
Hebrews expresses this novelty thus: “In many and sundry ways God
spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days
he has spoken to us by the Son” (Hebrews 1:1-2).
A special time begins in salvation, a new “kairos,” which lasts for
about 2 and a half years (from the autumn of 27 A.D., to the spring
of 30 A.D.). Jesus attributed to this activity of his such an
importance as to say that he had been sent by the Father and
consecrated with an anointing of the Spirit for this, that is, “to
announce the glad tidings” (Luke 4:18). On one occasion, while there
were some who wanted to keep him, he tells the apostles that they
must leave, saying to them: “Let us go on to the next towns, that I
may preach there also; for this in fact I have come” (Mark 1:38).
Preaching is part of the so-called “mysteries of the life of Christ”
and it is as such that we will approach it. In this context the word
“mystery” means an event of the life of Jesus that bears salvific
significance, which is celebrated by the Church as such in her
liturgy.[2] If there is not a special feast for the Jesus’ preaching
it is because it is recalled in every liturgy of the Church. The
“liturgy of the word” in the Mass is nothing other than the
liturgical actualization of Jesus who preaches. A Second Vatican
Council text says that Christ “is present in His word, since it is
he himself who speaks when the holy Scriptures are read in the
Church.”[3]
As, in history, after having preached the kingdom of God, Jesus went
to Jerusalem to offer himself in sacrifice to the Father, so too, in
the liturgy, after having again proclaimed his word, Jesus renews
the offering of himself to the Father through the Eucharistic
action. When, at the end of the preface, we say: “Blessed is he who
comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest,” we
spiritually return to that moment when Jesus enters Jerusalem to
celebrate the Passover there; there the time of preaching ends and
the time of the passion begins.
Jesus’ preaching is therefore a “mystery” because it does not only
contain the revelation of a doctrine, but it explains the mystery
itself of the person of Christ; it is essential for understanding
both that which comes before -- the mystery of the incarnation --
and that which comes after, the paschal mystery. Without the word of
Jesus they would be mute events. Pope John Paul II’s idea was a
happy one when he inserted the preaching of the kingdom among the
“mysteries of light,” which he added to the joyful, sorrowful and
glorious mysteries of the rosary, along with the baptism of Christ,
the marriage feast at Cana, the transfiguration and the institution
of the Eucharist.
2. Christ’s Preaching Continues in the Church
The author of the letter to the Hebrews wrote long after the death
of Jesus, thus, a long time after Jesus had ceased to speak; and yet
he says that God spoke through the Son “in these last days.” He
considers the days in which he is living, therefore, as part of
“Jesus’ days.” For this reason, a little further on in the letter,
citing the words of the Psalm, “Today if you hear his voice, harden
not your hearts,” he applies them to Christians, saying: “Take care,
brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart without faith
leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another
every day, as long as it is called ‘today’” (Hebrews 3:12-13). God
speaks, then, today as well in the Church and he speaks “in the
Son.”
But how and where can we hear this “voice” of his? Divine revelation
is over; in a certain sense there are no longer any words of God.
And here we find another affinity between word and Eucharist. The
Eucharist is present in the whole of salvation history: in the Old
Testament, as figure (the passover lamb, the sacrifice of
Melchizedek, the manna in the desert), in the New Testament, as
event (the death and resurrection of Christ), in the Church, as
sacrament (in the Mass).
Christ’s sacrifice is finished and concluded on the cross; in a
certain sense, therefore, there are no more sacrifices of Christ;
and yet we know that there is still a sacrifice and it is the one
sacrifice of the cross that is made present and effective in the
Eucharistic sacrifice; the event continues in the sacrament, history
in the liturgy. Something analogous happens with Christ’s word: It
has ceased to exist as event, but it continues to exist as
sacrament.
In the Bible, the word of God (“dabar”), especially in the
particular form it assumes in the prophets, always constitutes an
event; it is a word-event, that is a word that creates a situation,
that always realizes something new in history. The recurrent
expression, “the word of Yaweh came to,” could be translated as:
“the word of Yaweh assumed a concrete form in” (in Ezekiel, in
Haggai, in Zechariah, etc.).
This kind of word-event continues right up to John the Baptist; in
Luke, in fact, we read: “In the fifteenth year of the reign of
Tiberius Caesar [...] the word of God came to (“factum est verbum
Domini super”) John, son of Zechariah in the wilderness” (Luke
3:1ff.). After this moment, this formula disappears completely from
the Bible and in its place there appears another -- it is no longer
“Factum est verbum Domini” but “Verbum caro factum est,” the word
became flesh (John 1:14). The event is now a person! One never
encounters the phrase, “the word of God came to Jesus,” because he
is the Word. After the provisional realizations of the word of God
in the prophets, there comes the full and definitive realization.
Giving us the Son, St. John of the Cross famously writes, God has
said everything and had nothing left to reveal. God has become mute
in a certain sense, not having anything else to say.[4] But this
must be rightly understood: God has become silent in the sense that
he does not say anything new in regard to what he has said in Jesus,
but not in the sense that he no longer speaks; he is always saying
again what he said in Jesus!
There are no longer word-events in the Church; the word of God will
no longer come to someone, as it once did with Samuel, Jeremiah or
John the Baptist; there are however word-sacraments. The
word-sacraments are the words of God that “came” once and for all
and are gathered in the Bible, that become “active reality” every
time the Church proclaims with authority and the Spirit who inspired
them returns to ignite them again in the heart of those who hear
them. “He will take what is mine and declare it to you,” Jesus says
of the Holy Spirit (John 16:14).
3. The Word-Sacrament That Is Heard
When one speaks of the word as “sacrament,” this term is not
understood in the technical and restricted sense of the “seven
sacraments,” but in the broader sense as when one speaks of Christ
as the “primordial sacrament of the Father” and of the Church as the
“universal sacrament of salvation.”[5] St. Augustine’s definition of
sacrament as “a word that is seen” (“verbum visibile”),[6] used to
be contrasted with the word as “a sacrament that is heard” (“sacramentum
audibile”).
In every sacrament there is distinguished the visible sign and the
invisible reality, which is grace. The word that we read in the
Bible, in itself, is only a material sign (like wine and bread in
the Eucharist), an ensemble of dead syllables, or, at most, one word
of human language among others; but faith intervening and the
illumination of the Holy Spirit, through such a sign we mysteriously
enter into contact with the living truth and will of God and we hear
the voice itself of Christ.
“The body of Christ," Bossuet wrote, "is no more truly present in
the adorable sacrament than the truth of Christ is in the
evangelical preaching. In the mystery of the Eucharist the species
that you see are signs, but what is contained in them is the body
itself of Christ; in Scripture, the words that you hear are signs,
but the thought that is drawn from them is the truth itself of the
Son of God.”
The sacramentality of the word of God is revealed in the fact that
sometimes it plainly works beyond the person’s understanding, which
can be limited and imperfect, it almost works by itself, “ex opere
operato,” as one says in theology.
When the prophet Elisha told Naaman the Syrian, who had come to him
to be cured of leprosy, to wash seven times in the Jordan, Naaman
replied indignantly, “Are not the rivers of Damascus, the Abana and
the Pharpar, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash
in them and be cleansed” (2 Kings 5:12)? Naaman was right: The
rivers of Syria were undoubtedly better, they had more water; and
yet, washing in the Jordan he was healed and his flesh became like
that of a little child, something that would not have happened if
had bathed in the great rivers of his country.
This is how it is with the word of God contained in Scripture. Among
the nations and also in the Church there have been and there will be
better books than some of the books of the Bible, more refined from
a literary standpoint and religiously more edifying (just think of
the "Imitation of Christ"), but none of them work as well as the
most modest of the inspired books. There is, in the words of
Scripture, something that acts beyond every human explanation; there
is an evident disproportion between the sign and the reality that it
produces, that makes one think, precisely, of the action of the
sacraments.
The “waters of Israel,” which are the divinely inspired Scriptures,
continue even today to heal the leprosy of sin; once he has finished
reading the Gospel passage at Mass, the Church invites the ordained
minister to kiss the book and say: “May the words of the Gospel wash
our sins away” (“Per evangelica dicta deleantur nostra delicta”).
The healing power of the word of God is attested to by Scripture
itself: “For indeed, neither herb nor application cured them, but
your all-healing word, O Lord" (Wisdom 16:12).
Experience confirms it. I heard a person give witness in a
television program that I took part in. He was an alcoholic in the
final stage; he could not go for more than two hours without a
drink; his family was on the brink of desperation. They invited him
with his wife to a meeting on the word of God. There someone read a
passage of Scripture. A verse went through him like a burning flame
and he felt healed. After that, every time he felt tempted to drink
he went to the Bible and opened it to that verse to reread it and he
felt the strength return to him until he was completely healed. When
he wanted to say what the verse was his voice broke with emotion. It
was the word of the Song of Songs: “Your love is more delightful
than wine” (Song of Songs 1:2). These simple words, apparently
unrelated to his life, accomplished the miracle.
One reads of a similar episode in “The Way of a Pilgrim.” But the
most celebrated instance is that of Augustine. Reading Paul’s words
to the Romans, “Let us then throw off the works of darkness. […] Let
us conduct ourselves properly as in the day, not in orgies and
drunkenness, not in promiscuity and licentiousness” (Romans
13:12-13), he felt “a light of serenity” shining in his heart and he
understood that he was healed of the slavery of the flesh.[7]
4. The Liturgy of the Word
There is a place and a moment in the life of the Church in which
Jesus speaks today in the most solemn and certain way and that is
the liturgy of the word in the Mass. In the primitive Church the
liturgy of the word was separated from the liturgy of the Eucharist.
The disciples, the Acts of the Apostles reports, “went to the temple
together every day”; there they listened to the reading of the
Bible, they recited the psalms together with the other Jews; they
did what is done in the liturgy of the word; then they gathered in
their houses to “break bread,” that is, to celebrate the Eucharist
(cf. Acts 2:43).
Quite early on this practice became impossible for them because of
the hostility of the Jewish community toward them, on the one hand,
and, on the other hand, because by this point they had acquired a
new way of reading the Scriptures completely oriented to Christ. It
was in this way that that the hearing of Scripture was also
transferred from the temple and the synagogue to the Christian
places of worship, becoming the present liturgy of the word that
precedes the Eucharistic prayer.
St. Justin, in the second century, gives a description of the
Eucharistic celebration in which there are already present all of
the essential elements of the future Mass. Not only is the liturgy
of the word an integral part of it, but alongside the readings of
the Old Testament there are already those readings that the saint
calls the “memoirs of the apostles,” that is, the Gospels and the
letters, in concrete terms New Testament.
Heard in the liturgy, the biblical readings acquire a new and more
powerful sense than when they are read in other contexts. They do
not have so much the purpose of bringing about better knowledge of
the Bible, as when one reads at home or in a school for biblical
studies, as they have the purpose of recognizing him who makes
himself present in the breaking of the bread, of every time
illuminating a particular aspect of the mystery that is about to be
received. This appears in an almost programmatic way in the episode
with the two disciples traveling to Emmaus: It was in listening to
an explanation of the Scriptures that the heart of the disciples
began to open so that they were then able to recognize him in the
breaking of the bread.
One example among many: the readings for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary
Time of Cycle B. The first reading is the passage on the suffering
servant who takes upon himself the people’s iniquity (Isaiah
53:2-11); the second reading speaks of Christ the high priest tried
in every like us but sin; the Gospel passage speaks of the Son of
Man who has come to give his life in ransom for many. Together these
three passages bring to light a fundamental aspect of the mystery
that is about to be celebrated and received in the Eucharistic
liturgy.
In the Mass the words and episodes of the Bible are not only
narrated, they are relived; memory becomes reality and presence.
That which happened “in that time” happens “in this time,” “today”
(“hodie”) as the liturgy loves to express it. We are not only
hearers of the word, but also interlocutors and doers of it. It is
to us, there present, that the word is addressed; we are called to
take the place of the characters who are evoked.
Here too some examples will help one to understand. One reads, in
the first reading, of the episode in which God speaks to Moses from
the burning bush: We are, in the Mass, before the true burning bush.
One reads of Isaiah upon whose lips the hot coal is pressed, to
purify him for his mission: we are about to receive the true hot
coal upon our lips. Ezekiel is invited to eat at the scroll of the
prophetic oracles and we are about to eat him who is the word itself
made flesh and made bread.
This thing becomes clearer if we pass from the Old Testament to the
new, from the first reading to the Gospel passage. The woman who
suffers from hemorrhages is certain of being healed if she is able
to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment: What to say of us who are about
to touch much more than the hem of his garment? Once I was listening
to the Gospel episode about Zaccheus and was struck by its
“relevance.” I was Zaccheus; the words were addressed to me. “Today
I must come to your house.” It was about me that it could be said:
“He went to stay with a sinner!” And it was about me, after having
received him in communion, that Jesus said: “Today salvation has
entered into this house.”
It is the same with every single episode in the Gospel. How can one
not in the Mass identify himself with the paralytic to whom Jesus
says: “Your sins are forgiven you” and “Get up and go to your
house,” with Simeon who holds the baby Jesus in his arms, with
Thomas who, trembling, touches his wounds? In today’s celebration,
Friday of the second week of Lent, the Gospel is about the murderous
tenants of the vineyard (Matthew 21:33-45): “Finally he sent his own
son, saying, ‘They will respect my son!’” I remember the effect that
these words had on me when I was listening to them once rather
distractedly. That same Son was about to be given to me in
communion: Was I prepared to receive him with the respect that the
heavenly Father expected?
It is not only the deeds but also the words of the Gospel heard at
Mass that acquire a new and more powerful sense. One summer day I
found myself celebrating Mass in a small cloistered monastery. The
Gospel passage was Matthew 12. I will never forget the impression
that those words of Jesus made on me: “Behold, now there is one here
greater than Jonah. [...] Behold, now there is one here greater than
Solomon.” In that moment it was as if I had heard them for the first
time. I understood that those to words “now” and “here” truly meant
now and here, that is, in that moment and in that place, not only in
the time that Jesus was on earth, many centuries ago. From that
summer day, those words became dear and familiar to me in a new way.
Often, at Mass, in the moment that I genuflect and stand up again
after the consecration, I repeat to myself: “Behold, now there is
one here greater than Jonah. [...] Behold, now there is one here
greater than Solomon!”
“You who often partake in the divine mysteries,” Origen said to the
Christians of his time, “when you receive the body of the Lord you
treat it with great care and veneration so that not even a crumb
will fall to the ground, so that nothing is lost of the consecrated
gift. You are rightly convinced that that it is wrong to let a piece
fall out of carelessness. If you are so careful in safeguarding his
body -- and it is right that you are -- know that neglecting God’s
word is not less wrong that neglecting his body.”[8]
Among the many words of God that we hear every day at Mass or in the
Divine Office, there is almost always one that is especially
destined for us. By itself it can fill our whole day and illumine
our prayer. It must not be allowed to fall into the void. Various
sculptures and bas-reliefs of the ancient East depict the scribe in
the act of listening to the voice of the sovereign who dictates or
speaks: He is all attention, his legs are crossed, he is upright,
his eyes are wide open, his ears are pealed. This is the attitude
that in Isaiah is attributed to the Servant of the Lord: “Morning
after morning he opens my ear that I may hear” (Isaiah 50:4). This
is how we must be when the word of God is proclaimed.
Let us understand the exhortation that one reads in the prologue to
the Rule of St. Benedict as being addressed to us: “Let us open our
eyes to the divine light, let us hear with ears that are attentive
and full of stupor the divine voice that cries out to us daily, ‘If
today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts’ (Psalm 95). And
again, ‘Whoever has ears to hear, hear what the Spirit says to the
churches’ (Revelation 2:7).”[9]
[1] St. Irenaeus, “Adversus Haereses,” III, 2.
[2] Cf. St. Augustine, Letters, 55, 1,2.
[3] “Sacrosanctum Concilium,” No. 7.
[4] Cf. St. John of the Cross, “The Ascent of Mount Carmel,” II, 22,
4-5.
[5] Cf. “Lumen Gentium,” 48.
[6] St. Augustine, “Tractates on the Gospel of John,” 80,3.
[7] St. Augustine, “Confessions,” VIII,12.
[8] Origen, “Homily on Exodus,” XIII, 3.
[9] “Rule of St. Benedict,” Prologue.
[Translation by Joseph G. Trabbic]
© Innovative Media, Inc.
Fr.
Raniero Cantalamessa is a Franciscan
Capuchin Catholic Priest. Born in Ascoli Piceno,
Italy, 22 July 1934, ordained priest in 1958.
Divinity Doctor and Doctor in classical literature.
In 1980 he was appointed by Pope John Paul II
Preacher to the Papal Household in which capacity he
still serves, preaching a weekly sermon in Advent
and Lent.
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