AUDIENCE OF 10/22/08
Catechesis #9, Pauline Year Cycle
Here is a translation of the Holy Father's catechesis today, on the Christology in St. Paul's teachings.
Dear brothers and sisters,
In the catecheses of the past weeks we have meditated on the 'conversion' of St. Paul, fruit of his personal encounter with the Crucified and Risen Christ, and we also looked into what relations the Apostle of the Gentiles had with the earthly Jesus.
Today, I would like to talk about the teaching St. Paul has left us on the centrality of the Risen Christ in the mystery of salvation, and in his Christology.
In fact, Jesus Christ resurrected, "exalted over every name', is at the center of each of his reflections. For the apostle, Christ is the criterion against which to judge events and things, the end of every effort he exerted to announce the Gospel, the great passion that sustained his steps through the roads of the world.
And for him, it was a living and concrete Christ: The Christ, he says, "who loved me and gave himself for me" (gal 2,20). This person who loves me, with whom I can talk, who listens to me and who responds, this is truly the principle to understand the world and to find our way in history.
Whoever has read the writings of St. Paul knows well that he was not concerned with narrating the individual facts of Jesus's life, even if we can think that in his catecheses, he would have recounted much more of the pre-Easter Jesus than what he writes in the Letters, which are admonitions on specific situations.
His pastoral and theological intention was so projected towards building the nascent communities that he spontaneously concentrated everything on the announcement of Jesus as 'Lord', living and present amidst his followers.
From this comes the characteristic essentiality of the Pauline Christology, which develops the profundity of mystery with a constant and precise concern: to announce the living Christ, certainly, and his teaching, but to announce above all the central reality of his death and resurrection, as the culmination of his earthly life and the root of the successive development of the entire Christian faith, of the whole reality of the Church.
For the Apostle, the resurrection is not an event by itself, detached from death: the Risen Lord is always he who was first crucified. Even resurrected, he bears his wounds: the passion is present in him, and we can say with Pascal that he suffers to the end of the world, even as he is the Risen one who lives with us and for us.
Paul understood it - this identity of the Risen Lord and the crucified Christ - in that encounter on the road to Damascus. At that moment, it was revealed to him that the Crucified Jesus is the Resurrected Lord, and vice versa, the same who asked him, "Why do you persecute me?" (acts 9,4).
Paul was persecuting Christ in the Church, and he understood now that the cross is a 'curse of God' (Deut 21,23) but a sacrifice for our redemption.
The Apostle contemplated with fascination the secret of the Crucified-and-Resurrected Christ - that through the suffering experienced by Christ in his humanity (his earthly dimension), he has gone back to that eternal existence in which he is one with the Father (pre-temporal dimension).
"But when the fullness of time had come," he writes, "God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to ransom those under the law, so that we might receive adoption" (Gal 4,4-5).
These two dimensions - the eternal pre-existence with the Father and the descent of the Son through the Incarnation - are already announced in the Old Testament, in the figure of Wisdom.
We find in the Wisdom books of the Old Testament some texts which exalt the role of Wisdom that was pre-existent to the creation of the world. It is in this sense that we must read passages like this from Psalm 90: "Before the mountains were born, the earth and the world brought forth, from eternity to eternity you are God" (v. 2).
Or passages like that which speaks of creative Wisdom: "The LORD begot me, the first-born of his ways, the forerunner of his prodigies of long ago; From of old I was poured forth, at the first, before the earth" (Prov 8, 22-23).
Also suggestive is the eulogy of Wisdom, contained in the book of Wisdom: "Indeed, she reaches from end to end mightily and governs all things well" (Wisdom 8,1).
The same Wisdom texts that speak of the eternal pre-existence of Wisdom, also speak of the descent, the coming down of this Wisdom, which has created a tent over men. So we already hear an echo of the Gospel of John that speaks of the tent of the Lord's flesh.
A tent was created in the Old Testament: it indicated the temple - worship according to the Torah. But from the perspective of the New Testament, we understand that this was only a pre-figuration of the tent that is much more real and significant - the tent of Christ's flesh.
We already see in the books of the Old Testament that this coming down of Wisdom, its descent into flesh, also implies the possibility that it can be rejected.
St. Paul, developing his Christology, refers back precisely to this sapiential perspective: he recognized in Jesus the eternal wisdom that has always existed, the wisdom that came down and creates a tent among us. Thus, he could describe Christ as "the power and wisdom of God". He could say that Christ became for us 'wisdom for the work of God, justice, sanctification and redemption (1 Cor 1,24-30).
Likewise, Paul clarifies that Christ, like Wisdom, may be rejected, especially by the dominators of this world (cfr 1 Cor 2,6-9), so that in God's plans, a paradoxical situation could be created, the Cross, which would be turned into the way of salvation for the entire human species.
A further development if this sapiential cycle, which sees Wisdom abased to be exalted later despite rejection, we can find in the famous hymn contained in the Letter to the Philippians (cfr 2, 6-11). This is one of the most exalted texts in the New Testament.
NB: For convenience, here are those verses:
6 Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.
7 Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance,
8 he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.
9 Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Exegetes in the overwhelming majority have agreed to consider this excerpt as a composition that preceded the actual text of the Letter to the Philippians. This is of great importance, because it means that Judeo-Christianity, before St. Paul, already believed in the divinity of Jesus.
In other words, faith in the divinity of Jesus was not a Hellenistic invention that emerged long after the earthly life of Jesus, an invention that, forgetting his humanity, made him divine. We see that the initial Christianity, Judeo-Christianity, believed in the divinity of Jesus.
Indeed, we can say that the Apostles themselves, in the great moments of the life of their Master, understood that he was the Son of God, as Peter said in Caesarea Philippi: "You are Christ, the Son of the living God" (Mt 16,16).
But let us return to the hymn in the Letter to the Philippians. The structure of the text can be articulated into three parts, which illustrate the principal moments of the trajectory completed by Christ.
His pre-existence is expressed in the words: "Though he was in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God something to be grasped" (v. 6); then follows the voluntary abasement of the Son in the second verse: "he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave" (v. 7), to the point of humiliating himself "becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross" (v. 8).
The third verse of the hymn announces the response of the Father to the humiliation of the Son: "Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name" (v. 9).
What is striking is the contrast between the radical abasement and the consequent glorification in the glory of God. It is obvious that the second verse is in contrast to Adam's presumption in wanting to make himself God, and in contrast also to the act of those who built the Tower of Babel, who wanted to construct by themselves a bridge to heaven and make themselves their own divinities.
But this initiative of arrogance ended in self-destruction. That is not the way to get to heaven, to true happiness, to God.
The actions of the Son of God are the exact opposite: not pride but humility, which is the realization of love - and love is divine. The initiative of abasement, the radical humility of Jesus, in contrast to human pride, is a true expression of divine love. It is followed by that elevation to heaven, to which God draws us with his love.
Beyond the Letter to the Philippians, there are other places in the Pauline literature where the themes of pre-existence and the descent of the Son of God to earth are linked.
A reaffirmation of the assimilation between Wisdom and Christ, with all the connected cosmic and anthropological implications, comes in the first Letter to Timothy: "He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated in the spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed to the Gentiles, believed in throughout the world, taken up in glory" (3,16).
It is above all on this premise that one can best define the function of Christ as the unique Mediator, with the background of the one God in the Old Testament (cfr 1 Tm 2,5, in relation to Is 43,10-11; 44,6). It is Christ who is the true bridge that leads to heaven, to communion with God.
Finally, just a reference to the last developments in the Christology of St. Paul, seen in the Letters to the Colossians and to the Ephesians. In the first, Christ is described as " the firstborn among all creatures" (1,15-20).
The word 'firstborn' implies that the first among so many sons, the first among so many brothers and sisters, had come down to draw us to him and make us his brothers and sisters.
In the Letter to the Ephesians, we find a beautiful exposition of the divine plan of salvation, when Paul says that in Christ, God wanted to recapitulate everything (cfr Eph 1,23). Thus he implicates us in this movement of descent and ascent, inviting us to take part in his humility - that means, his love for neighbor - so that we may participate in his glorification, becoming with him Children in the Son.
Let us pray that the Lord help us to conform ourselves to his humility. to his love, so that we too, may be made to take part in his divinization.
This is how he synthesized the catechesis in English:
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
In our continuing catechesis on Saint Paul, we now consider the centrality of Jesus Christ in his teaching. Paul preaches Christ as the crucified and glorified Lord, alive and present within the Church.
He proclaims Christ’s incarnation and exaltation, but also his pre-existence with the Father before all time. His affirmation of Christ’s pre-existence evokes those Old Testament texts which portray God’s Wisdom as being with him before creation and coming down to dwell among men (e.g., Pr 8:22-23).
Paul thus presents Christ as "the wisdom of God" (1 Cor 1:24), the centre and fulfilment of the Father’s eternal plan of salvation. The hymn found in his Letter to the Philippians (Phil 2:6-11) contrasts Christ’s pre-existence "in the form of God" and his subsequent "kenosis" or self-emptying, "even to death, death on a Cross".
Paul also appeals to Christ’s pre-existence and incarnation in proclaiming Jesus as "the one mediator between God and man" (1 Tim 3:16), the firstborn of all creation and the head of the Church (cf. Col 1:15-20).
Paul’s "sapiential" Christology invites us to welcome the salvation offered by the crucified and risen Lord, the Eternal Son, who is the very wisdom and power of God.
I offer a warm welcome to all the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors present at today’s Audience, especially those from England, Scotland, Ireland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Ghana, Guam, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada and the United States. Upon you and your families I cordially invoke God’s blessings of joy and peace.
In his greetings in other languages, he mentioned World Missionary Day, In Croatian, he said:
Yesterday we celebrated World Missionary Day. It is an invitation for us to renew our active cooperation in the missionary works of the Church.
Be missionaries yourselves of the Good News of Christ, especially through your prayers and works.
And in Italian:
The month of October invites us to renew our active cooperation in the mission of the Church.
With the fresh energies of youth, with the spiritual support of prayer and sacrifice and the potential of conjugal life, be missionaries of the Gospel everywhere, offering your concrete assistance to all who labor to bring it to those who do not know it yet.