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The Southern Cross, Page 8 Faith Alive I Thursday, October 5, 2000 FOODFORTHOUGHT All contents copyright©2000 by CNS One psalmist said that “the Lord sets captives free” (146). Remember that whenever you're feeling like a captive — the captive, perhaps, of difficult circumstances beyond your control. A psalmist also said the Lord “neither slumbers nor sleeps” (121). Remember that if you ever suspect God is overlooking you. And should you ever wonder if God has abandoned you, remember these words of Psalm 145: “The Lord is near to all who call upon him.” The Lord “bears our burdens,” we hear in Psalm 68, while Psalm 108 reminds us the Lord has been known to change a “desert into pools of water.” Has the world around you ever felt like a desert? Read quickly, the Psalms can sound like prayers by long-ago people quite unlike us. Read reflectively, the psalmists’ needs begin to sound much like our own. And the Psalms remind us what God is like — that God “refreshes” our souls (23), rescues us from “distress” (54), promises that though we “sow in tears” we’ll “reap rejoicing” (126). In fact, we’re told, God “does wonders” for his faithful followers (4). David Gibson 33 Editor, Faith Alive! By Father Lawrence Boadt, CSP Catholic News Service hen Jesus proclaims in his Sermon on the Mount that “not the smallest letter of the law, not the smallest CNS photo by BillWittman part of a letter, shall be done away with until it all comes true” (Matthew 5:18), he is helping his disciples under stand that every thing he teaches is rooted in the revela tion God gave to Is rael beforehand and which can be found recorded in the Old Testament Scrip tures. This is not a small point in the Gospel message, but is criti cal to understanding why we would believe in Jesus as Savior and Lord. St. Jerome, the great fourth-century translator of the Bible into Latin, once said that “ignorance of the Old Testament is ignorance of Christ.” Indeed, all four Gospel writers, as well as St. Paul, were convinced that everything they wrote concerning Jesus’ words and deeds for our salva tion either was fore told by the Scrip tures, explained by them or fulfilled their hopes. This can be shown by a number of fac tors. —First, the New Testament quotes or alludes to Old Testament passages more than 350 times. —Second, not only do New Testa ment writers refer almost every as pect of Jesus’ ministry to the Old Testament, they almost universally see all the passages they cite as pro phetic. In Acts 2, for example, St. Luke records the first sermon of Peter on the day of Pentecost. Astoundingly, Peter says that when King David composed Psalm 16, “he was a prophet” (Acts 2:30). Scholars generally agree that Luke wrote his Gospel for pagan con verts who would not have known much about the Jewish Scriptures, esus ... is helping his disciples understand that everything he teaches is rooted in the revelation God gave to Israel beforehand ... in the Old Testament Scriptures. This is... critical to understanding why we would believe in Jesus as Savior and Lord.” his prophets, as the holy Scriptures record — the Gospel concerning his Son” (1:1-3). A third aspect of the Old Testa ment message also was critical to the early church: Jesus was the Messiah according to God’s plan. The center point of the Gospel of Mark comes when Jesus asks the disciples who they think he is, and Peter blurts out that Jesus is the Messiah (8:29). This same moment of recognition is reflected also in Matthew 16:16; Luke 9:20; and John 10:24-25. It —1. Jesus says to the disciples going to Emmaus, “How slow you are to understand all the prophets have an nounced” (24:25), and so, “beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted for them ev ery passage of Scripture which referred to him” (24:27). —2. Then, a short time later when the dis ciples were in the Upper Room, Jesus stood in their midst and an nounced, “Everything written about me in the law of Moses, the proph ets and psalms had to be fulfilled; then he opened their minds to under standing the Scriptures” (24:44-45). Beyond the Gospels, we find the same sense of Jesus completing and giving sense to prophecy in Paul’s writ ings. He opens his Letter to the Ro mans by saying that he had been set apart to proclaim “the Gospel of God which he promised long ago through sums up God’s promise to David: “I will raise up a son after you, sprung from your loins, and I will make his kingdom firm” (2 Samuel 7:12). A fourth significant reason why the New Testament valued the Old concerns Jesus as “the Son of God.” As the Letter to the Hebrews begins, “In times past, God spoke in many and varied ways to our ancestors through the prophets, but now in this final age, he has spoken to us through his Son.... This Son is the reflection of the Father’s glory” (1:1-2). To support this claim, the most radical and exalted of all Jesus’ titles in the Scriptures, Hebrews cites 2 Samuel 7:14; Psalms 2:7, 45:7-8, 8:5-6 and 110:1. Mark begins, “The Gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God” (1:1). And Mark ends by having the centurion at the cross declare, “Truly this man was the Son of God” (15:39). Moreover, all three Synoptic Gos pels record that at his baptism Jesus heard the voice declare that he was “God’s beloved Son” (Matthew 3:17; Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22). But even more than these, John’s Gospel proclaims Jesus’ divine sonship throughout. Readers quickly will recognize that John’s claim for Jesus as the Son of God always is based on the Old Testament, citing Proverbs 8:22-25 and Exodus 33:20 in Chapter 1; Wisdom 16:5-7 in Chapter 3, etc. We can conclude by saying that the basic themes of salvation in the New Testament are the same as those of the Old, and the reason is simple: The same God who revealed divine mercy and taught Israel its lessons of faith now is revealing that same mercy and teaching in Jesus, shown by Scripture to be the Savior, the Messiah and the only Son of God. (Paulist Father Boadt is president of Paulist Press.) yet he regularly emphasizes for them that Jesus fulfilled what the prophets had written. Thus, when Jesus first returns to his hometown of Nazareth, Luke notes that he announces to his family and friends that the prophecy of Isaiah is be ing fulfilled in his minis try (4:14-21). Later, in Jesus’ final appearances after the resurrection, Luke un derscores this twice again: The Old Testament roots of Jesus’ teaching