Jesus and God: A Catholic Perspective
General Description:
In this book of meditations, based on a series of
homilies and meditations presented and compiled by the author shortly before he
became Archbishop of Munich-Freising, in 1977, theologian Joseph Ratzinger (now
Pope Benedict XVI) presents his profound thoughts on the nature and person of
God, building a bridge between theology and spirituality as he makes wide use
of the Sacred Scriptures to reveal the beauty and mystery of who God is. He
writes about each of the three persons in the Holy Trinity, showing the
different attributes of each person, and that “God is three and God is one.”
God is—and the Christian faith adds: God is as
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three and one. This is the very heart of
Christianity, but it is so often shrouded in a silence born of perplexity. Has
the Church perhaps gone one step too far here? Ought we not rather leave
something so great and inaccessible as God in his inaccessibility? Can
something like the Trinity have any real meaning for us? It is certainly true
that the proposition that "God is three and God is one" is and
remains the expression of his otherness, which is infinitely greater than us
and transcends all our thinking and our existence. But, as Joseph Ratzinger
shows, if this proposition meant nothing to us, it would not have been
revealed! And as a matter of fact, it could be clothed in human language only
because it had already penetrated human thinking and living to some extent.
"Without Jesus, we do not know what 'Father'
truly is. This becomes visible in his prayer, which is the foundation of his
being. A Jesus who was not continuously absorbed in the Father, and was not in
continuous intimate communication with him, would be a completely different
being from the Jesus of the Bible, the real Jesus of history… In Jesus' prayer,
the Father becomes visible and Jesus makes himself known as the Son. The unity
which this reveals is the Trinity. Accordingly, becoming a Christian means
sharing in Jesus' prayer, entering into the model provided by his life, i.e.
the model of prayer. Becomng a Christian means saying 'Father' with Jesus, and
thus becoming a child, God's son—God—in the unity of the Spirit, who allows us
to be ourselves and precisely in this way draws us into the unity of God. Being
a Christian means looking at the world from this central point, which gives us
freedom, hope, decisiveness, and consolation."
— Joseph Ratzinger (now
Pope Benedict XVI)
