from google translator:
CHILDHOOD OF JESUS
OF Ratzinger-Benedict XVI
The Pope’s book
Text of the speech with which the Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi has submitted the most recent Pope’s book
Are 180 verses divided into four chapters, two places in openness to the Gospel of Matthew and two on the threshold of Luke. Pages that have generated an unbroken golden thread artistic, literary, musical and were besieged by a veritable forest exegetical literature. Stories that move on the track of the narrative, with an extraordinary assembly almost filmic, and in terms of theology, so much so that underlie them meet two nuclei capital of the profession of the Christian faith: on the one hand, the historical lineage of David and Therefore, messianic Jesus of Nazareth and, on the other hand, his virginal conception by the power of the Holy Spirit and, therefore, the deity of Christ himself branch. This is what St. Paul puts on the front of his theological masterpiece, the Letter to the Romans: “the gospel of God, promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, born of the seed of David according to the flesh, Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness “(1:2-4).
We are talking about the so-called “Gospels” to which Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI dedicated his third and final panel of his triptych of Jesus of Nazareth (Joseph Ratzinger - Benedict XVI, Jesus’ childhood, Rizzoli - Vatican Publishing House, Milan - Vatican City, p. 176, € 17.00). In the foreword he proposes a descriptive metaphor to define his analysis of the infancy of Jesus, as we are in the “lobby” of that solemn architecture already patrolled in the two previous volumes that staged the public life of Christ and his death with the approach to the glory of the resurrection. In this initial space, however, already are projected shadows and highlights later: Herod’s persecution by the massacre of innocents is reverberated by the blood of the cross, the whole of Jerusalem is shocked by the news of the birth of the child, as it will in the supreme act of the final rejection, the three days spent by Jesus in the temple seem to indicate the three days of the tomb, and the art of icons of Novgorod (XV sec.) created the then popular form of representing the manger in which placed the infant Jesus as the tomb or the altar where “eating” the body of Christ in the Eucharist, to use a curious allegory of the “manger” evoked by Saint Augustine.
It is with the technique almost cinematic anticipation that Benedict XVI opens his book: the “entrance hall” echoes a question that will echo later in the vaults of the Roman Praetorium in Jerusalem, when the governor Pilate interpellerà the accused Jesus póthen and sy, ‘where are you? “(John 19:9). This question taste is merely master has for the fourth Gospel a wink transcendent further. That is why the question serpeggerà elsewhere in the Gospels, and it has its own answer in these 180 verses which now scour the Pope in a route on time, but almost transparent and narrative. The plot is simple: the story of Luke, when scanning the scene focuses on Mary, the annunciations and the birth of the forerunner John the Baptist and Jesus appear, with all the differences that characterize, the Annunciation, however, is aimed at Joseph, the legal father of the child, according to the narrative of Matthew, which has as its end the estuary impressive picture of the Magi with the subsequent exodus-flight into Egypt and their exodus-return.
We now would like, however, to identify the wires interpretative Benedict XVI unfolds within his reading of those texts. If we keep the original construction metaphor, we could talk about, rather than a lounge, a real architectural layout to multiple rooms that require different access keys. It is the metaphor adopted Origen, the Christian writer of the third century, to define his exegesis of Scripture: how many classrooms are in front of which there is a key, but not the right one because they were mistaken and confused is, therefore, necessary to test them on several occasions. There is a clear reference to the conflict of interpretations which even then was in force and has branched in later centuries. Here, then, the main hermeneutical keys (in fact it is said “the key to a text” for its decipherment) proposed by Ratzinger to the Gospels.
The first and primary is the one that turns in interaction history and faith, also on the basis dell’asserto center of Christianity: the Logos who is Christ the eternal and infinite God becomes even sarx, “flesh”, contingency, temporality, finitude, mortality, humanity. Here, then, in the face of these stories from the original cut than that of the other pages of the Gospel, the question: “This is truly history took place, or is it just a theological meditation expressed in the form of story? ‘. Every picture of Jesus’ childhood is submitted, therefore, by the Pope to an essential test of historicity, as many commentators have opted instead for a key “midrashic” for which it is submitting a sort of narrative dish (the ‘Jewish midrash) on different themes, theses, and Christian biblical texts, a kind of narrative drama of theological truths.
The key contested by Benedict XVI is different: it is “historical events whose meaning has been interpreted theologically by the Christian community and the Gospels.” And again: “Jesus was not born and appeared in public nell’imprecisato” once “the myth. He belongs to a time exactly dated and a geographic environment precisely stated: the universal and the concrete are touching each other. “ Not for nothing in the texts abound references to the geopolitical coordinates, aimed at making the scrupulous exercise of historical-critical, from Bethlehem to Nazareth, from Augustus to Herod, the Temple of Jerusalem with his devotion to the imperial census of Quirinius. And for the support of this historical he proposes the classification of evocative stories under the genre of “family traditions” true “from the foundation of Judeo-Christian tradition of Jesus’ family.”
In the ancient Near East these memorials historical clan-family had important enough to be regarded as similar to the shareholders, kept faithfully, but also flexibility in the pages of the fertile lives choral memory. But there is more: in these historic events structural crosses the transcendent, and this contact triggers sparks in terms of interpretation. In a page very powerful, the Pope refers to the great Protestant theologian Karl Barth which clearly defined the two points where God intervenes in the material world: the birth of Jesus by the Virgin and his resurrection from the tomb. It says: “These two points are a scandal to the modern mind. A God is allowed to work on ideas and thoughts, in the spiritual sphere, but not in the field ... But if God did not even power on the matter, then he is not God. “ As is clear, divine and historic come together in a unique crossroads and therefore need an interpretation of the joint between theology and history.
There is a second key that is placed in your hands and that is the link between history and prophecy: it is known, in fact, that Matthew constructs his narrative of Jesus’ building on a sequence of biblical quotations. Is in effect, creates a counterpoint between prophecy and event. Ratzinger uses a beautiful formula: call ads prophetic “words being prepared” to receive their full decoding, their “hero”. Those words germ itself, bloom in Christ, as in the famous case of the oracle of Isaiah (7:14) on the “young” / “virgin” that generates the Emmanuel. Therefore, “the story of Jesus, the ancient words come true ... and the story of Jesus comes from the Word of God, sustained and woven from it.”
You can also expand this retrospective glance over the biblical prophecies and - as Benedict XVI - apply by analogy to the famous IV Eclogue of Virgil, with its images generational often reinterpreted in Christian, and even - if only for overcoming - all you can delay ‘ Augustan inscription of Priene (9 BC.) where you will come across a lexicon reinterpreted by Christianity (”savior, peace, ecumenism, gospel”), perhaps “the secret dreams and confused humanity a fresh start is being made in the occurrence of Christ, a reality that only God could create. “ The figure of the Magi becomes, in this regard, emblematic: “they represent humanity set out towards Christ, inaugurated a procession through the whole story.”
And so to the third key from among those that the book has to offer. Since the introduction, Pope Ratzinger reminds one of the cornerstones of the current (but traditional) Narratology: two actors are in action, the author and the reader. Especially in front of performative texts and not merely informative as they are religious ones, the pure movement “centripetal” (”what they say to himself”) must be linked with a path “centrifugal” which comes to the edge of today (”that what they say to me “). It is on this basis that the pages are constantly Benedict XVI inlaid interpellations addressed to the reader, a little ‘as suggested by Flaubert for which read must not only entertain or educate, but it should also be a guide for living.
So, just as an example, the relationship between faith and politics is taken in his two respects: “Sometimes, in the course of history, the powerful of this world attracts to itself the kingdom of God, but just then it is in danger: they want to connect their power with the power of Jesus, and because of that deformed his kingdom, threaten him. Or it is subject to the persistent persecution by rulers who do not tolerate any kingdom and want to remove the king without power, whose mysterious power, however, they fear. “ Or, here is the application of the tragedy of the children killed by Herod on which rests the maternal lamentation of Rachel Bible: “In our current historical epoch is the cry of mothers towards God, but at the same time the resurrection of Jesus strengthens us in the hope of real comfort. “
There is a fourth and last criterion, a corollary of the previous seemingly formal. It, however, turns out to be a real hermeneutical key in the knowledge that the linguistic medium is an important interpretive tool. We refer to the style adopted by Ratzinger-Benedict XVI in his analysis of these Gospel texts. Unlike many theologians who wrap themselves in the mantle of self-linguistics, streaked with dark esoteric and oracular, impassable to “people who knoweth not the law” (John 7:49), he uses a language that is always clear, essential and incisive , even humble (”a fully convincing explanation of this so far I have not found ...”), as is typical also of his person. Before east eloquentiae virtus perspicuitas, taught that master of rhetoric Quintilian was convinced that the clarity of speech was the first virtue of eloquence. Ratzinger puts into practice the principle that Wittgenstein had coined (but slightly below) in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: “Everything that can be said, can be said clearly,” and already the great orator who was St. Bernardine of Siena warned that “ one who speaks clearly, has clear his mind. “ This virtue, incidentally, is required by the object of those 180 verses, which have at their center a Child is born from “a young woman unknown, unknown in a small town, in an unknown private home. The sign of the New Covenant is humility, his hidden life. “
To our simple and basic map-reading Ratzinger written with the four fundamental coordinates indicated we would like to pull all of the marginally appendix. Benedict XVI, as he had the opportunity to attest the homily at the close of the recent Synod of Bishops on the new evangelization, is dear to the initiative of the “Courtyard of the Gentiles.” Well, ideally we would like it to open one right around the Gospels of Jesus, calling a non-believer doc, writer and existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. It was Christmas 1940 and in Stalag XII D of Trier, where he was interned, he was urged by his fellow Christians in prison to compose a kind of sacred representation. Developed, as well, his first stage play, Bariona or the son of thunder.
Well, in that text, at some point, going onstage Mary who had just given birth to the baby Jesus, and as every mother had begun to contemplate it with tenderness, aware of the uniqueness of his experience. Here are some really amazing lines of this work consists of an author of net caliber “gentle”. “Christ is his son, flesh of his flesh and the fruit of her womb. She took him for nine months and will give him the breast and her milk will become the blood of God together ... She feels that Christ is his son, his child, and that He is God She looks at him and thinks, “This God is my son. This divine flesh is my flesh. He is made of me, my eyes and this form of his mouth is the shape of my. He looks like me. He is God and he looks like me. “ No woman has had in this way his God for her. A God that you can take small arms and cover with kisses, a God who smiles all warm and breathes, a God that you can touch and live. “
The Pontifical Council for Culture will have an official English translation available in a few days and I'll make a point of posting it.
Oh......and you will be pinged to it.
Those who post and defend garbage like this, will be held accountable.
The Catholic Church high official equated Israel’s operation in Gaza against terror groups with the New Testament story of Herod’s slaughter of Jewish babies in his effort to kill Jesus.
Perhaps he is talking of another time when words like this were said, but, I agree, it wasn't from the speech in the intro to the Pope's new book. The Cardinal was not the only subject of the OP, though, so we don't know if the author had these in mind when he made his accusations. Thanks again.