Witnesses of a Person
I have not posted on B16’s new catechetical series since the first back in mid March; however he did continue the new theme as you might expect. I don’t suppose it would have been much of a series if he had devoted only one lesson to it. The second in the series focused on the Apostles as envoys of Christ.
In the first installment B16 shows where he is going it seems. I believe that he is taking aim at what he sees as a major problem for Church unity. That is, a deficient individualism. The first installment contextualized the discussion. B16 showed the Church as the fulfillment of God’s covenant promise to Israel. Old Testament Israel was God’s family, this family becomes a universal family in the Universal, the Catholic, Church. However, it is His family in a radically new way. We become “sons in the Son” as the Fathers put it. This family union is established and maintained through Christ’s Mystical Body–the Church. The Church is ontologically, the extension and prolongation of the Incarnation. Christ is still present among His people. Thus, Benedict concludes one cannot live the fantasy of a solely personal relationship with Christ.
The second installment maintains this classical ecclesiology infused with insights from more recent covenant theology, but he begins to add a personalistic perspective. He begins the Audience citing a passage from the Epistle to the Ephesians, a pericope with which the new Catholic apologists are quite familiar. It tells us that the Church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus as the Cornerstone (cf. 2:20). B16 is starting to bring out the fact that we as a Church have always had Christ mediated to us by witnesses, beginning with the Apostles.
Here is a key point, we has been witnessed to us is not simply intellectual content, not simply the writings of Apostles and Apostolic men, but we have people witnessing to us, a Person–the Person of Jesus Christ. The deformation of Christian faith that suggests that faith is solely private and personal–that authentic Christian faith is just “me and Jesus”, must reckon with this historical fact. We can and ought to have a personal relationship with Christ but we cannot have it without the Church. And this Church is one that is in union with the Apostolic faith.
B16 also continues his covenant theological focus of the New Testament as fulfillment of the Old. He shows Jesus to be the fulfillment of Israel’s hopes for a “Chosen One” who is to gather all of the sheep together into one flock. Jesus begins with proclaiming the Good News that God’s promises have been fulfilled, first to the Covenant People and subsequently to the rest of the nations.
Human persons, the Apostles, join in Jesus’ mission to preach the Good News. They will soon be the only witnesses when Jesus fulfills His mission. Communion with Christ will be possible for those who have not had a direct experience, through the witness of a Person by persons. His next audience will look more closely at this idea of communion.
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