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PAGE 5—December 9,1976
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What Is In His Name “Christ”?
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BY FATHER ALFRED MCBRIDE, O.PRACEM.
Every age looks for a messiah, for a savior.
The reason is that no period of history is
without profound needs that call for a cure.
Chaotic times demand someone to put life back
in order. Wars trumpet for savior leaders.
Diseased people cry out for saving healers.
Tormented neurotics and psychotics plead for
psychological messiahs. Conscience-smitten
sinners search out redeemers. Hence messiahs
come in many shapes: Kings, generals, doctors,
counselors, saints. Different strokes for
different folks.
People with deeply felt needs perceive an
aura around the savior who comes to help
them. It is an aura so palpable that it seems to
be an invisible anointing with oil. An anointing
with charisma — or chrism, an old word for oil.
So their many and varied messiahs are anointed
ones, endowed from some mysterious origin
with the power to rescue them. This is why the
Bible calls messiahs “christs” or anointed ones.
No different from ourselves, biblical people
saw different kinds of Christs for varied needs.
Great kings, like David, were “christs” in the
sense that they seemed anointed by God to
respond to heartfelt yearnings. No less was this
true of prophets, like Isaiah, who came to
assume spiritual leadership.
When all is said and done, people either look
for a king or a prophet, for a political messiah
or a spiritual one. On balance, people seem to
prefer political messiahs to spiritual ones. All
the Gospels love to tell the story of the loaves
miracle. Several Gospels tell the story twice.
The story is usually followed by noting the
people’s enthusiasm for making Jesus a political
savior. They want a bread king.
One can hardly blame them. Why shouldn’t
they have personal control of their political
affairs and destinies? Why should they be
content to finance the Roman troops of
occupation and the debaucheries of the Roman
emperor? Who can fail to sympathize with their
native pride and their desire for self
determination?
Contemporary society has seen the end of
colonialism by the powers of Western Europe.
The sun does set now on the British empire as
well as many of the other ones. The decline of
that colonialism has yielded place to the rise
of Communist colonialism. People behind the
iron curtain quite justifiably could yearn for a
political messiah who would free them from
Russian imperialism.
On the other hand, social critics point out
that the North Atlantic nations exert a new
kind of colonialism, an economic one against
the nations of the third world. Who can blame
the oppressed, whether behind the iron curtain
or below the 39th parallel for wanting a
political messiah?
The Gospels show Jesus as repudiating the
role of political messiah. In fact He seems to
reject any mesianic title at all, though He
clearly acts like a spiritual messiah. Like any
Jew He must have been personally offended by
the humiliation of living in an occupied
country. Yet the closest He comes to a political
statement is in His render to Caesar’s statement
and His reminder to Pilate that God’s power is
far more important than that of earthly princes.
Herein is the key to the messiahship of Jesus.
Politicians — even messianic ones — seek, seize
and exercise power over others. Christ Jesus
faces up to that power with a non-violent cross.
Jesus says and acts out the position that
vulnerability is the answer to coercive power.
The five wounds of the cross are His answer to
the five-point plans of the coercively powerful.
Politicians will not allow betrayal. They hang
trators. Jesus opens Himself to the possibility
of betrayal and denial and then turns a hopeful
and forgiving glance on the very ones who let
Him down.
Do we want to see the saving power of God?
Look at the cross. Are we anxious to
experience the coercive might of God? Meditate
on the wounds of Jesus. The striking lengths to
which God will go to show us His power is
found in what Guardini calls the “humility” of
God. Love is the only power that wins and
changes hearts. And the One who did that best
of all is the One who deserves the title Christ
more than anyone who ever lived — Jesus THE
Christ!
Jesus’ ‘Messianic Identity’
S. . J
And Paul, in a synagogue sermon in
Thessalonica, “explained many things, showing
that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the
dead: ‘This Jesus I am telling you about is the
Messiah!’ ” (Acts 17,3). Luke also gives us this
prayer of the very first community: “Sovereign
Lord, . . . you have said by the Holy Spirit
through the lips of our father David your
servant: ‘Why did the Gentiles rage, the peoples
conspire in folly? The kings of the earth were
aligned, the princes gathered together against
the Lord and against his anointed.’ Indeed, they
rt gathered in this very city against your holy
Servant, Jesus, whom you anointed —” (Acts
4,24-27). By citing Ps. 2,1-2, a royal psalm,
they link Jesus, the anointed Servant, with the
king, Yahweh’s anointed in the Old Testament.
But now, of course, in the light of the
Resurrection, Jesus as Messiah and King is seen
in a comparatively transcendent light.
BY FATHER JOHN J. CASTELOT
How natural it is to refer to our Lord as
Jesus Christ, almost as if we were using name
and surname. Actually he had just one personal
name, Jesus. Christ — more exactly, the Christ
— is a title indicating His mission and dignity. It
is the English form of the Greek Christos and
this, in turn, is the equivalent of the Hebrew
mashiah, ‘anointed.’ The title was used so
frequently in the apostolic Church that soon it
became part of His name. The earliest extant
Christian writing is addressed to “the church of
the Thessalonians who K belong to God the
Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thes.
1,1).
In the Old • Testament the king was “the
Lord’s anointed,” His mashiah, and as time
went on the people came to look to an ideal
future king who would liberate them from all
their ills and establish God’s reign. This reign
was envisioned in different ways but with some
common denominators. It would be a realm of
justice, peace, prosperity, national autonomy
and pre-eminence. In time, the picture got
clouded by wishful thinking and the clouds
were dark with narrow nationalism, militarism,
hatred of Gentiles, domination.
Because the title “Messiah” suggested all of
this to many contemporaries of Jesus, He was
reluctant to accept it. He never denied having a
messianic mission, but it was a mission to be
carried out in a way far different from that
implied in the title as currently understood.
The climatic turning-point of His public life
in the Synoptic tradition (Matthew, Mark,
Luke) was Peter’s acknowledgement: “You are
the Messiah” (Mk. 8, 29). Jesus did not deny it,
but “gave them strict orders not to tell anyone
about him” (Mk. 8,30), and followed up this
injunction immediately with a prediction of the
sufferings which He, as “Son of Man,” would
have to endure. Peter, who shared His
contemporaries’ views, found the idea of a
suffering, dying Messiah incredible,
unendurable, and Jesus harshly reprimanded
him: “Get out of my sight, you satan! You are
not judging by God’s standards but by man’s!”
(Mk. 8,33)
This studied silence about His being the
Messiah is so pronounced in Mark that it has
given rise to a famous question, that of the
“Messianic Secret.” Mark also underscores the
obtuseness of the disciples, their slowness to
comprehend what kind of Messiah Jesus was to
be. Matthew tones down somewhat Mark’s
unflattering portrayal, but he still retains it. It
seems they never quite understood, and when
Jesus was arrested, they were panic-stricken,
broke and ran — except for Peter, who stayed
around long enough to disown Him, and John,
who braved the crucifixion.
Just before the Passion Jesus staged a
messianic scene: the triumphal entry into
Jerusalem. But He did so in such a way as to
intimate to the crowds the real nature of His
royal messianic dignity: This came about to
fulfill what was said through the prophet: “Tell
the daughter of Zion, your king comes to
you/without display astride as ass, astride a
colt, the/foal of a beast of burden” (Mt. 21,4-5;
Zech. 9,9).
Then with the resurrestion experience, faith
dawned for the disciples and they began to
comprehend His true identity. And now, in the
light of the passion-death-resurrection event,
there was no risk of misunderstanding, and the
first Christian felt no hesitation about
proclaiming Him as Messiah and Lord.
In Peter’s Pentecost speech as reconstructed
by Luke, Peter says: “Therefore let the whole
house of Israel know beyond any doubt that
God has made both Lord and Messiah this Jesus
whom you crucified (Acts 2,36).
Still, it was not easy for the early Church to
conceptualize and formulate this uniquely new
BY FATHER DONALD MCCARTHY
The Christmas cards flooding the mail this
week vary greatly in content. A novelty shop in
one southwestern city reached a new extreme
in non-Christian cards last year with a selection
featuring suggestive and double-meaning verses
about Santa Claus.
In recent years, on the other hand, a
significant five-word verse has appeared on
numerous cards: “Wise men still seek Him.”
These five words capsulize Christian faith.
When Jesus, the Messiah, the Anointed One,
was born, world history began over again.
Instead of dating years by AD, “anno domini,”
the year of the Lord, the designation could well
be, “the year of the Messiah.” In this 1976th
year of the Messiah, “wise men still seek Him.”
First generation Christians began a process
still going on — a process of identifying with
the Messiah and His kingdom. What does it
mean to proclaim, “Jesus is Lord”?
Christians who look up to heaven where
Christ has ascended to mount His throne in
glory spontaneously assume at first that He
reigns as a kind of “absentee landlord.” But this
assumption postpones the Messianic era until
after this life and leaves this world almost as
bewildered as if the Messiah had not yet come.
Thus Christian faith has always realized that
Christ the Lord, unlike an absentee landlord,
intended to ream in always present among His
people. The Church that Jesus founded lives in
the world and Jesus lives in the Church. The
Messiah provided the Messianic Church. Men
and women who seek the Messiah find Him
present in their own lives through the Church.
In fact, the people of God are the Church,
not the building in which they gather. Hence
the Church anoints her members at Baptism,
for the Messiah is the “Anointed One.” Seeking
the Messiah today means seeking Baptism —
uniting with the Messiah. But Baptism
represents only the beginning of a Christian’s
process of identification with the Messiah.
For the Messiah came to liberate His people,
to free them from the network of sin in a world
marked by oppression, fear, hatred, distrust,
and greed. Joining the Messiah demands
messianic reality. Theologizing is a slow, often
tentative process. Jesus obviously had not lived
up to their expectations of what a Messiah
should be. Quite the contrary. Would He be
really the Messiah only at His return in glory
(Acts 3,21)? That was one trial explanation.
Another was that it was precisely as the
glorified Lord that He was Messiah (see Acts
2,36). Neither proved satisfactory, and
gradually the notion of Messiah was
spiritualized and internalized to the point that
the New Testament could speak of Jesus as
Messiah throughout His career and, indeed,
from His birth (Mt. 1,23; 2,6; Lk. 1,31-33.)
Such an interpretation of Jesus’ messianic
identity would have been, and indeed was
impossible during His life on earth.
Resurrection-faith made it possible, even
necessary. This is the faith we share with the
apostolic Church, the faith which makes so
profoundly meaningful our central Christian
confession: “Jesus is Lord and Christ!”
commitment to this messianic mission. When
“the Word was made flesh and dwelled among
us,” He started something.
Christian faith teaches that, although Jesus
truly lives with His Father in heaven, He also
truly lives and continues His dynamic mission
in the world. He is not visibly present here, but
present nonetheless. Catholic Christians find
Him in the Mass where He renews the central
action of His earthly life: His passion, death,
and resurrection. In the Mass Jesus establishes
His real presence in the visible appearances of
the consecrated Bread and Wine.
Christians who eat this holy Bread and drink
this holy Cup nourish and intensify the
presence of Jesus in their own graceful lives.
Jesus dwells in His people by that mysterious
gift of grace. He knows them by name and they
speak to Him intimately in prayer. This
intimate relationship with the Anointed One,
symbolized in the anointing of Baptism, is
renewed in the anointings of Confirmation and
the sacrament of the Sick.
Jesus rightfully expects His people to carry
on His own Messianic mission in their daily
surroundings. His expectations far outrun
worldly standards, “Love your enemies, do
good to those who hate you; bless those who
curse you and pray for those who maltreat
you” (Lk 6, 27-28). He speaks urgently to His
anointed followers, “It was not you who chose
me, it was I who chose you to go forth and bear
fruit” (Jn 15,16). “You will suffer in the world.
But take courage! I have overcome the world”
(Jn. 16,33).
Hence the Messiah brought to this world a
vision to be realized, a goal to be pursued. No
matter that He died on the cross. His work has
only just begun. The reign of God is like the
mustard seed “which, when planted in the soil,
is the smallest of all the earth’s seeds, yet once
it is sown, springs up to become the largest of
shrubs with branches big enough for the birds
of the sky to build nests in its shade” (Mk.
4,31-32).
After the 1974 tornado in Xenia, Ohio,
bumper stickers appeared with the message,
“Xenia lives.” After the resurrection Christians
began proclaiming “Jesus lives.” And He does.
“Wise men still seek Him” — and He lives in
them.
Wise Men Still Seek Him
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POLITICIANS, Father Alfred
McBride writes, “seek, seize and
exercise power over others. Christ Jesus
faces up to that power with a
non-violent Cross. Politicians will not
allow betrayal. They hang traitors.
Jesus opens himself to the possibility of
betrayal and denial and then turns a
hopeful and forgiving glance at the very
ones who let him down.” (NC Sketch
by Edward Ostendorf)
WISE MEN STILL SEEK HIM ~
Father Donald McCarthy writes, “When
Jesus, the Messiah, the Anointed One,
was born, world history began over
again. Instead of dating years by AD,
anno domini, the year of the Lord, the
designation could well be, ‘the year of
the Messiah.” In this 1976th year of
the Messiah, ‘Wise Men still seek Him’.”
The journey of the Wise Men is
depicted in this 19th century woodcut
by Paul Gustave Dore. (NC Photo)
Know
Your Faith
(All Articles On This Page Copyrighted 1 976 by N.C. News Service)
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