Sermon 8: “Risen from the Dead”

“…there are two essentially different types of tradition concerning the Resurrection” (2nd edition: p. 103 [1st edition: p. 93])

That which follows is a presentation—in a more reflective mode—what Ratzinger later published in the second volume of his Jesus of Nazareth trilogy. For a more expanded treatment of the “confessional tradition” and the “narrative tradition”, see 248–71 of that volume.[1]

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“…the distinguishing mark that allows the believers to recognize each other” (p. 103–104 [p. 93–94])

The words confessing the resurrection of Jesus are the new shibboleth of the Christian community. In the Book of Judges, the Gileadites would be able to tell their friends from their foes—the Ephraimites—based on whether those wishing to cross the fords of the Jordan could say shibboleth with the “sh” sound. The Ephraimites were not accustomed to making that sound and would say sibboleth instead (see Judges 12:5–6). Shibboleth allowed the Gileadites to recognize each other in a mix of people, and now the confession of Jesus’ resurrection—that he has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!—reveals to one another those who live in the light of Christ. This is the genesis of the Christian profession of faith.

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“…as Paul emphasizes, their real purpose is to hold fast the Christian kernel” (p. 104 [p. 94])

It is a remarkable thing that Paul hands on as of first importance what I also received when he communicates this “confessional tradition” (1 Cor 15:3). To Paul himself, the Risen Christ appeared (Acts 9:1–9), and Paul himself was raised up into the third heaven (2 Cor 12:2–4), yet he does not hand on either of these two things “as of first importance”. What he hands on is what he received because what he received is that to which all the apostles and therefore the entire Church is bound: the common proclamation of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who appeared to his chosen witnesses (1 Cor 15:3–8). This is the common treasure of the Church, a treasure that is never a private possession. This leads Ratzinger to conclude that, “The confessional tradition is really ‘the faith’ that provides the criteria for every interpretation” (94). No testimony that fails to conform to this “kernel” may be called Christian: it is “as of first importance”.

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“Jesus’ death is of a different kind. … inner dimension of the event itself” (p. 105–106 [p. 95–96])

Jesus’ suffering and death are vicarious: he suffers what is not properly his to suffer as the consequences of sin in order to bring the mercy of God to those who have lost themselves underneath the weight of sin and all its consequences, even unto death. When he dies, his death is because of sin, but not in the same way that the death of sinners is because of sin as they fall out of communication with God, who is life. The because of Jesus is hidden in the absolute power of the Father’s will to redeem and save his fallen creatures: out of obedience, Jesus heeds this will to the very end. Because sinners are in sin, the Word of God descends even to the solitary silence of the “noncommunication zone”, as Ratzinger describes the place of the dead in Eschatology. Jesus—the Suffering Servant—suffers what those he serves suffer in order to free them from what they suffer. In the isolation of their sin, he brings communion. Or, in Paul’s eloquent terseness in keeping with the confessional tradition, Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures (1 Cor 15:3).

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“’He was buried’” (p. 106 [p. 96])

This paragraph—as elsewhere in Ratzinger’s writings—reads like a form of Hans Urs von Balthasar’s theology of Holy Saturday that one may share confidently in polite company, without concern for offending those with sensitive ears. There is a sharpness to the speculative character of Balthasar’s thought that Ratzinger smooths out, allowing some of the aspects that lead to controversy in Balthasar’s articulations to pass away.

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“…he shows himself to the senses, yet he can only make use of senses that see beyond what can be perceived by the senses” (p. 108 [p. 98])

An example from the “narrative tradition” is helpful here to highlight Ratzinger’s point. In Luke 24:13–35, which recounts the journey of the two on their way to Emmaus, we read that even though Jesus walks with them and converses with them, their eyes were kept from recognizing him (Luke 24:16). Notice that it is not Jesus who is hiding from them but rather their eyes that render them incapable of seeing him for who he is. Why is that? It doesn’t seem to be for lack of information, for they seem to know quite a lot, actually: they confess to having known Jesus, they believed him to be a prophet, they know he was condemned and crucified, they know that the tomb was found empty, they know that some women received a vision of angels proclaiming him to be alive, and they know that others from their group went to confirm the women’s testimony. So why didn’t they see him? Perhaps it has something to do with their hope—or, more specifically, the tense in which their hope is conjugated: But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel (Luke 24:21). Their hope is in the past tense. It seems that their eyes cannot perceive him because they are locked in to their own ideas of who the Messiah is, and on that account Jesus failed to live up to what they had hoped for. They have constructed criteria for God rather than allowing God to establish his own criterion (see again 33). In this sense, they cannot see what they are unwilling to see: God who works in their midst well beyond the borders of their self-generated understanding. So what does Jesus do to heal them of their blindness: he silences them (v. 25), he corrects their understanding of power and shows them that the power and glory of God is disclosed in the willingness to suffer in love (v. 26), and he reteaches them Scripture according to who he is and not who they thought the Messiah would be (v. 25). In the end, he gives them their daily bread, which is now his sacrifice, his body (v. 30). They not only see (v. 31), but they also remember and understand (v. 32), and they preach (vv. 33–35). He rebuilds them through their eyes, their ears, their mouths, and, ultimately, their hearts in order to see him for who he is and to confess him on his terms.

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“…but not to corruption” (p. 109 [p. 99])

There is a delicate and perhaps we can even say “divine” balance here in these three days. On the first day, Jesus is placed in the tomb; for the entirety of the second day, his lifeless body remains in the tomb in the state of being dead; and on the third day he is raised. Without the second day, it would be difficult to attest that Jesus was really dead, that he really lay lifeless as did all those who had died before him beginning with Adam. But had he remained in death past the third day, corruption would have set in according to Jewish wisdom. And so the raising on the third day is fitting and revelatory at the same time, for the Son of God enters into the furthest limit of creaturely separation from God—the state of being dead—but death does not ultimately have power over him so as to begin to undo the one who was begotten of the Father and given flesh in the womb of Mary. He fulfills his own words: What God has joined together, let not man put asunder (Mark 10:9; cf. Gen 2:23–24). The marital union of man and wife is an image of this hypostatic union of the Word-made-flesh, which not only man but even death is rendered powerless to separate.

Sermon 9: “the Holy Spirit”

“…the arrogant claim to a higher holiness…” (2nd edition: p. 115 [1st edition: p. 105])

As we have already seen, it is the humility of God the Father and the obedience of Jesus Christ, the Father’s only Son, that establish the pattern for creation’s life. Any attempt at spiritual superiority or elitism, any claim to special rank or privilege, and any disposition of haughtiness is not only unfitting for but also contradictory to the way of life as given by God. The Holy Spirit will be presented as the personal bond and guarantee of this communion, where humility, mutual obedience, and charity hold all things together, over and against any form of domination, subjugation, and self-exaltation.

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“The Montanist message led him to despise the ‘sinful Church’…” (p. 115 [p. 105])

In the previous homily, Ratzinger led us into a more profound meditation on Jesus’ embrace of the suffering of sinners, even to the point of taking on their suffering as his own even though it was not properly suffering due to him. To claim the sinners in love means to enter into their condition, to bring communion into all forms of isolation caused by sin. The eventual excessiveness of the Montanists—in Ratzinger’s reading—leads to a disdain not only for sin but also for sinners, and therefore becomes an obstacle for members of the Church to love in the manner of Christ’s own love. Again, this is a form of division, which is not of the Spirit, for the Spirit is communion that proves itself in constancy and abiding, even and especially through suffering.

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“…the false element in Joachim, namely, the utopia of a Church that would depart from the Son and rise higher than him and the irrational expectation that protryas itself as a real and rational program” (p. 118 [p. 108])

The crises and scandals to which Joachim of Fiore responded are indeed the manifestations of division that the Holy Spirit seeks to heal (see 117–18). These also happen to be the kind of division that St. Francis of Assisi dedicates himself to healing through his simple but total reception and response to the Gospel. The difference between Joachim and Francis, as Ratzinger is pointing out, is that Francis offers himself—his own prayer, his own body, his own flesh—over the course of a lifetime to the healing of divisions, while Joachim seeks to apprehend a secret, deeper meaning to salvation history and then provide the rational and spiritual program for implementing that. Francis provides an efficacious witness while Joachim offers a spiritual technology. Francis consumes and is configured to the Word of God, while Joachim makes the Word a preface to a utopian schema. In welcoming and clinging to Jesus, Francis lives in the Spirit who fills Jesus (see Luke 4:1) and comes from Jesus (see Luke 24:46; John 19:30; 20:22), while Joachim leaves behind the incarnate for the idea of an untainted spiritual way. Francis clings to the world as it is with the love of God in imitation of Christ, while Joachim seeks to escape from the world for the sake of spiritual purity. Francis rebuilds the Church while Joachim imagines a Church that does not exist.

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“…the Spirit is present at the beginning as an instruction and guidance of man that is as yet scarcely perceptible. He leads to the Son and, through the Son, to the Father…” (p. 119 [p. 109])

In the life of faith and on the path of salvation, no disciple or even the whole Church graduates from one person of the Trinity to the next, as if moving from the Father to the Son to the Holy Spirit. Roughly speaking, Joachim imagined something like this. It seems tempting to leave behind the Son because Jesus does not leave behind his flesh, and with that flesh he clings to the world, to the messiness of creaturely life, to all that was created good but has fallen into disrepair. For those with means, it is tempting to just buy a new house rather than put in the work to restore the one you already own. But the life of faith and the path of salvation that the Holy Spirit opens is one that never goes beyond the Son but rather leads more deeply into the mystery of his person, where, as we have seen all throughout these sermons, the unending gift of the Father’s love comes to dwell and the return-gift of the Son’s whole life is offered. To live in the Spirit is to live into the mystery of this exchange, where the constancy of love is the ever-new dialogue of Father and Son. To know the Son is to know him as the Father’s Son, and to know the Father is to know him as the Son’s Father. The Spirit is the space, the path, and the personal introduction to this life of love.

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“But his reveals the ‘proper character’ of the third Person: he is that which is common, the unity of the Father and the Son, the unity in Person” (p. 119 [p. 109])

In his essay “The Holy Spirit as Communio”, Ratzinger presents Augustine’s pneumatology and spirituality, specifically from De Trinitate, by reading along with Augustine from the First Letter of John, the Letter to the Romans, the Gospel of John, and other scriptural sources. In sum, Ratzinger names the Holy Spirit as communio (communion itself, eternally that of the Father and the Son), caritas (love itself, eternally the gift and response of charity [self-giving] of the Father and the Son), and donum (gift itself, eternally that which is given from the Father to the Son, and returned in thanksgiving to the Father from the Son). [Note: I consider that essay by Ratzinger to be among the best introductions to the theology of the Holy Spirit, especially for teaching purposes. I use it as a supplement to this volume when I teach the Trinity to undergraduate students, though I have also used it for graduate students.]

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“We can never know the Spirit otherwise than in what he accomplishes” (p. 119 [p. 109])

In the third part of the Apostles’ Creed, we receive descriptions of the Holy Spirit’s work. The Holy Spirit brings about: a holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sin, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. In order to enrich our own and potentially our students’ imaginations for what these works of the Spirit are, it is helpful to imagine what the opposite of each of these would be. For example, what is the opposite of the forgiveness of sins or of the resurrection of the body? In thinking of these things, we can then begin to imagine anew what the work of the Holy Spirit actually is.

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“The great leaders of gnosis became interesting precisely by speaking in their own name—they made a name for themselves” (p. 121 [p. 111])

Proof that one does not speak in the Holy Spirit is if that person or group exalts themselves at the expense of others. True knowledge is ordered to love, which means that, in the Holy Spirit, even the boldest speech will seek to heal others or build others up for their good, not puff up oneself for one’s own glorification. A parent who makes their child into an instrument of their own ego or a spouse who uses the other spouse for the private enjoyment of one’s own pleasure does not exercise love but rather greed. So too the leaders of gnosis. Those who claim to have secret knowledge of God, who purport to spiritual superiority over others, who disdain the limitations of others, do not speak or act in the life of the Holy Spirit. They are giving themselves over to another spirit: spiritual worldliness.

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“And love reveals itself in unity; it is the opposite of sectarianism” (p. 122 [p. 132])

Each form of sectarianism shares one thing in common: it is designed to favor those who belong to the sect over and against those who do not. But love is found in abiding, in constancy, in unity, so that the attempts to separate from one another are proof of love’s absence. Those who live in love will suffer for those who are weak, sinful, or confused rather than separate from them. This is how “the Trinitarian mystery is translated into the mystery of the cross” (121), for God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us (Rom 5:8, RSV).

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