Gospel Commentary: The Father and I Are One

By Fr. John Riley
HERALD Columnist
(From the Issue of 5/3/01)

It has become trendy in our "age of anxiety" for some scholars, pop- psychologists, and budding theologians to portray Jesus Christ as a bit of a "neurotic" — a good man and a nice fellow caught up in events beyond His understanding or control. In towering "epics" of theological insight like "Jesus Christ, Superstar" and "The Last Temptation of Christ," Jesus doesn’t even know Who He is (and actually needs help from Judas and other enlightened persons to affirm Him in His Own consciousness, Divine dignity, and salvific mission.)

It is a sad commentary on our time that so many people — Catholics included — have spent more time watching and reading materials of this sort than they have praying or pondering the Gospels or The Catechism of the Catholic Church. No wonder people are confused.

This neurotic confusion and self-doubt are nowhere evident in the Gospels. Jesus Christ, God and Man … fully human and fully Divine, strides confidently through the unfolding symphony of His life among us. The Father’s plan, beautifully orchestrated and carefully conceived from all Eternity is His constant and abiding guide. Although Christ is tried and crushed in His Humanity (frustrated in His ministry, sweating blood in Gethsemane, gasping in agony while nailed to the Cross,) never for a moment does Jesus lose sight of His Father, or doubt His Own Divinity. Christ Himself constantly affirms this … "Everything has been given over to Me by My Father" (Mt 11:27); "Amen, amen, I say unto you, the Son cannot do anything by Himself — He can only do what He sees the Father doing" (Jn 5:20]; "Before Abraham came to be, I AM" (Jn 8:58); "the Father and I are One" (Jn 10:30).

Jesus Christ is not and has never been a human person. He is a Divine Person who "became man." The Divine Word, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity "assumes" a human nature to which it is "hypostatically united" in one Person — "without confusion, change, division, or separation." He is the God-Man.

Perhaps the most eloquent discourse on this mystery of Jesus’ consciousness is found in Pope Pius XII’s encyclical, "Mystici Corporis" (1943) —"But the loving knowledge with which the Divine Redeemer has pursued us from the first moment of His Incarnation is such as completely to surpass all the searchings of the human mind; for by means of the beatific vision, which He enjoyed from the time when He was received into the womb of the Mother of God, He has forever and continuously had present to Him all the members of His Mystical Body, and embraced them with His saving love …

In the crib, on the Cross, in the unending glory of the Father, Christ has all the members of the Church present before Him and united to Him in a much clearer and more loving manner than that of a mother who clasps her child to her breast, or than that with which a man knows and loves himself."

This encyclical letter of Pope Pius XII is a part of the Ordinary Universal Magisterium, and, as the Documents of Vatican II remind us, we the faithful are to give such teachings "religious submission of mind and will." It is a Truth of our faith — Jesus Christ, even while He walked among us as a Man, never ceased to know that He Is and always will be God.

What an awesome love Jesus has for all of us — not merely in His Eternal Divinity, but in and through His enlightened and perfect Humanity. Here we must stand in wonder before the Mystery of His Sacred Heart which knows (and knew us) completely and individually as His Beloved, even as he sailed the waters of the Galilee and died on the Cross for the love of us.

And so we know, and serve, and love Jesus, "Our Lord and our God." In this Holy Easter season, we’d do well to ponder the beautiful Truth of Christ’s affirmation … "the Father and I are One."

Fr. Riley is administrator of St. Louis Parish in Alexandria.

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