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April 21 - June 14, 2019
theological content, is realized in Jesus’ prayer—“realized” in the literal sense: the rite is translated into the reality that it signifies. What had been represented in ritual acts now takes place in reality, and it takes place definitively.
According to rabbinic theology, the idea of the covenant—
is prior to the idea of the creation of the world and supplies its inner motive.
that there might be a space for the “covenant”, for the loving “yes” between God and his human respondent.
Jesus’ prayer manifests him as the high priest of the Day of Atonement. His Cross and his exaltation
is the Day of Atonement for the world, in which the whole of world history—in the face of all human sin and its destructive consequences—finds its meaning and is aligned with its true purpose and destiny.
And is it not the case that our need to be reconciled with God—the silent, mysterious, seemingly absent, and yet omnipresent God—is the real problem of the whole of world history?
“This is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”
“Eternal life” is not—as the modern reader might immediately assume—life after death, in contrast to this present life, which is transient and not eternal.
“Eternal life” is life itself, real life, which can also be lived in the present age and is no longer challenged by physical death. This is the point: to seize “life” here and now, real life that can no longer be destroyed by anything or anyone.
“He who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die” (Jn 11:25-26).
“Sanctify them in the truth. . .”
If the first “sanctification” is related to the Incarnation, here the focus is on the Passion as sacrifice.
Jesus himself is the priest sent into the world by the Father; he himself is the sacrifice that is made present in the Eucharist of all times.
The meaning of the Day of Atonement is completely fulfilled in the “Word” that was made flesh “for the life of the world” (Jn 6:51).
“God’s name” means: God present among men.
The revelation of the name is a new mode of God’s presence among men, a radically new way in which God makes his home with them.
immanence has now become ontological: in Jesus, God has truly become man.
As the Risen One, he comes once more, in order to make all people into his body, the new Temple.
The self-gift of God in Christ is not a thing of the past: “I will make it known”. In Christ, God continually approaches men, so that they in turn can approach him.
“That they may all be one. . . .”
Uniquely in the Gospels, Jesus’ gaze now moves beyond the current community of disciples and is directed toward all those who “believe in me through their word” (Jn 17:20).
the Church of the future is included in Jesus’ prayer. He pleads for unity for his future disciples. The Lord repeats this plea four times.
that the world may...
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that Jesus has been sent by ...
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may all be one;
may become perfectly one,
The direction here is more, not less. Perfectly one...not Almost one or close to one or one in majors and divided in minors.
the power of God
It must be of such a kind that the world can “recognize” it and thereby come to faith.
Unity must be visible; it must be recognizable as something that does not exist elsewhere in the world; as something that is inexplicable on the basis of mankind’s own efforts and that therefore makes visible the workings of a higher power.
That is why the struggle for the visible unity of the disciples of Jesus Christ remains an urgent task for Christians of all times and places. The invisible unity of the “community” is not sufficient.
The Incarnation of the Logos is perpetuated until the measure of Christ’s “full stature” is attained (cf. Eph 4:13).
Together with “apostolic succession”, the early Church discovered (she did not invent) two further elements fundamental for her unity: the canon of Scripture and the so-called regula fidei, or “rule of faith”.
This was a short summary—not definitively tied down in every detail to specific linguistic formulations—of the essential content of the faith, which in the early Church’s different baptismal confessions took on a liturgical form. This rule of faith, or creed, constitutes the real “hermeneutic” of Scripture, the key derived from Scripture itself by which the sacred text can be interpreted according to its spirit.
The unity of these three constitutive elements of the Church—the sacrament of succession, Scripture, the rule of faith (creed)—is the true guarantee that “the word can resound authentically”...
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“God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son” (3:16),
“The bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh” (6:51).
If Jesus did not give his disciples bread and wine as his body and blood, then the Church’s eucharistic celebration is empty—a pious fiction and not a reality at the foundation of communion with God and among men.
Many details may remain open. Yet the “factum est” of John’s Prologue (1:14) is a basic Christian category, and it applies not only to the Incarnation: it must also be invoked for the Last Supper, the Cross, and the Resurrection.
We have to ask, though, what Jesus’ Last Supper actually was. And how did it acquire its undoubtedly early attribution of Passover character? The answer given by Meier is astonishingly simple and in many respects convincing: Jesus knew that he was about to die. He knew that he would not be able to eat the Passover again. Fully aware of this, he invited his disciples to a Last Supper of a very special kind, one that followed no specific Jewish ritual but, rather, constituted his farewell; during the meal he gave them something new: he gave them himself as the true Lamb and thereby instituted
...more
Solving the seeming Synoptic and Johannine discrepancies
this farewell meal was not the old Passover, but the new one,
The old was not abolished; it was simply brought to its full meaning.
earliest evidence for this unified view
is found in Saint Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians: “Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be new dough, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Paschal Lamb, has been sacrificed”
Unleavened bread must now refer to Christians themselves, who are freed from sin by the addition of yeast. But the sacrificial lamb is Christ. Here Paul is in complete harmony with John’s presentation of events. For him the death and Resurrection of Christ have become the Passover that endures.
The so-called institution narrative, namely, the words and actions by which Jesus gave himself to the disciples in the form of bread and wine, lies at the heart of the Last Supper tradition.
Saint Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians provides a further institution narrative (11:23-26).
The Pauline account is the oldest in literary terms: the First Letter to the Corinthians was written around the year 56.
which of the two models—Mark’s or Paul’s—is the older.
In 1 Corinthians 15, he insists explicitly on the exact wording, as it is necessary for salvation that this be preserved.
