Fourth Sunday of Easter - Dom Peter
Good Shepherd Sunday, Year B (2006)
From time to time you will hear the phrase, “Christian humanism.” Personally I don’t care for the term. As a Christian I find it tautological. As it is normally used, it verges on insult, since it is usually contrasted with an apparent Christian opposition to human development. This is inspite of the fact that ours is the only religion I know of that worships a human being and claims that humans can be divinized. What is there about Christianity that is not humanistic?
Unfortunately, the humanists who have been critical of the Church over the past five centuries or so have not been entirely without justification. There are some ways in which the Church might appear to keep the masses down and discourage human creativity and
flourishing. One such aspect of the Church that coincides historically with the humanist critique is the problem of clericalism. Officially, clericalism is the belief that the hierarchy should have power in the Church, this hierarchy being restricted, of course, to ordained men. Let us agree that this approach is sinful from the outset because it seems to suggest that the Church is primarily about power. This is an aberrant view that derives from an overemphasis on the model of the Church as the perfect society, the Kingdom of God on earth. This view flourishes when the Church is politically powerful and wealthy. It encourages the wrong sort of men to seek ordination to the priesthood and consecration as bishops. And it causes us to be suspicious, in some ways a healthy reaction, to today’s gospel. We don’t like thinking of ourselves as sheep because we don’t trust our shepherds. We don’t trust our shepherds because we suspect that they are in it for themselves and not for us: they are, in Jesus’ terms, actually hired men who will leave us in the lurch when the wolf comes.
This is an overly suspicious view, but one, as I said, that has its foundations in a certain reality of life in the Church in the modern world.
Jesus Christ is the Good Shepherd. In English, this sounds like He is simply contrasted with the bad shepherds, those who abandon the sheep when the wolf comes. This is true enough. In the Greek, Jesus says ego eimi ho poimen ho kalos. I am the kalos Shepherd. This adjective kalos has many meanings, including ‘beautiful’ ‘fitting’ ‘excellent’ ‘suitable’. Thayer’s New Testament lexicon has a nice phrase, “excellent in its nature and characteristics and therefore well-adapted to its ends.” In other words, Jesus is not merely one shepherd among many who happens to be good where others are not so good, He is preeminently the Shepherd by His nature. What is that nature? He is not only human but divine. It is because of His divinity that He is the Good and True Shepherd.
More than that, Jesus can’t be accused of running a power play on us sheep, being in it for Himself. He proves this by laying down His life, by emptying Himself, by becoming lower than all, a worm and no man.
But it is because He is the divine logos, the Word of God and Second Person of the Holy Trinity that He can make the astonishing claim, “I have power to lay [my life] down, and power to take it up again.” More literally, He lays down His psyche, His soul. More on that in a moment. But here we come to the crux: there has been a great effort in recent decades to emphasize Jesus’ humanity. There are scholars, even of a traditional bent, who will assert that Jesus was unaware of His divinity. Such studies are very interesting indeed, and I do not wish to downplay the wonder of Jesus’ humanity, nor the importance it plays in our own spirituality. But we need to say here that there is more to Jesus than this humanity. He is truly of a different origin than we are, and this is why the Church is not a democracy. We hear the voice of the one who has the authority to speak.
I say that Jesus is of a different origin; this is too simple a formulation, of course, for two reasons. First of all, Jesus possesses the whole of human nature. While as God He comes down from heaven to rescue His sheep, as a man, he is born of Mary. He has a mother as do we all. He even has a human soul, as this passage suggests. Saint Augustine pointed out that Jesus lays down His soul; English unfortunately lacks some of the nuances of the Greek or Latin versions of this reading. We can say confidently that Jesus is the Way the Truth and the Life. Life itself lays down not life in the abstract but the particular life of His human soul. This is because He participates in the divine life even as he participates in human death.
Let me return here for a moment to the question of Jesus’ origin and ours. I said that He is the True and Fitting Shepherd because He is God and we are not. This is too simple not only because Jesus is also a man, but because in our baptisms, we now have a divine origin analogous to the divine origin of the Word of God. It is for this reason that we do not or should not fear death. When the wolf comes to snatch us away at our deaths, we will find that the same Divine Logos, the life of the world, is indwelling not only in Jesus’ human soul but also in ours. As Jesus laid down His life to take it up again, we will find our lives given to us at death. This is what Saint John means when he urges us to reflect on the love the Father has bestowed on us in letting us be called children of God. Indeed, that it what we are! We shall be like Christ: freed from death, freed from sorrow, intimately united with our sole Good, Who is our God and Creator, the giver of every good gift to humanity. If this is Christian humanism, why settle for anything less?
From time to time you will hear the phrase, “Christian humanism.” Personally I don’t care for the term. As a Christian I find it tautological. As it is normally used, it verges on insult, since it is usually contrasted with an apparent Christian opposition to human development. This is inspite of the fact that ours is the only religion I know of that worships a human being and claims that humans can be divinized. What is there about Christianity that is not humanistic?
Unfortunately, the humanists who have been critical of the Church over the past five centuries or so have not been entirely without justification. There are some ways in which the Church might appear to keep the masses down and discourage human creativity and
flourishing. One such aspect of the Church that coincides historically with the humanist critique is the problem of clericalism. Officially, clericalism is the belief that the hierarchy should have power in the Church, this hierarchy being restricted, of course, to ordained men. Let us agree that this approach is sinful from the outset because it seems to suggest that the Church is primarily about power. This is an aberrant view that derives from an overemphasis on the model of the Church as the perfect society, the Kingdom of God on earth. This view flourishes when the Church is politically powerful and wealthy. It encourages the wrong sort of men to seek ordination to the priesthood and consecration as bishops. And it causes us to be suspicious, in some ways a healthy reaction, to today’s gospel. We don’t like thinking of ourselves as sheep because we don’t trust our shepherds. We don’t trust our shepherds because we suspect that they are in it for themselves and not for us: they are, in Jesus’ terms, actually hired men who will leave us in the lurch when the wolf comes.
This is an overly suspicious view, but one, as I said, that has its foundations in a certain reality of life in the Church in the modern world.
Jesus Christ is the Good Shepherd. In English, this sounds like He is simply contrasted with the bad shepherds, those who abandon the sheep when the wolf comes. This is true enough. In the Greek, Jesus says ego eimi ho poimen ho kalos. I am the kalos Shepherd. This adjective kalos has many meanings, including ‘beautiful’ ‘fitting’ ‘excellent’ ‘suitable’. Thayer’s New Testament lexicon has a nice phrase, “excellent in its nature and characteristics and therefore well-adapted to its ends.” In other words, Jesus is not merely one shepherd among many who happens to be good where others are not so good, He is preeminently the Shepherd by His nature. What is that nature? He is not only human but divine. It is because of His divinity that He is the Good and True Shepherd.
More than that, Jesus can’t be accused of running a power play on us sheep, being in it for Himself. He proves this by laying down His life, by emptying Himself, by becoming lower than all, a worm and no man.
But it is because He is the divine logos, the Word of God and Second Person of the Holy Trinity that He can make the astonishing claim, “I have power to lay [my life] down, and power to take it up again.” More literally, He lays down His psyche, His soul. More on that in a moment. But here we come to the crux: there has been a great effort in recent decades to emphasize Jesus’ humanity. There are scholars, even of a traditional bent, who will assert that Jesus was unaware of His divinity. Such studies are very interesting indeed, and I do not wish to downplay the wonder of Jesus’ humanity, nor the importance it plays in our own spirituality. But we need to say here that there is more to Jesus than this humanity. He is truly of a different origin than we are, and this is why the Church is not a democracy. We hear the voice of the one who has the authority to speak.
I say that Jesus is of a different origin; this is too simple a formulation, of course, for two reasons. First of all, Jesus possesses the whole of human nature. While as God He comes down from heaven to rescue His sheep, as a man, he is born of Mary. He has a mother as do we all. He even has a human soul, as this passage suggests. Saint Augustine pointed out that Jesus lays down His soul; English unfortunately lacks some of the nuances of the Greek or Latin versions of this reading. We can say confidently that Jesus is the Way the Truth and the Life. Life itself lays down not life in the abstract but the particular life of His human soul. This is because He participates in the divine life even as he participates in human death.
Let me return here for a moment to the question of Jesus’ origin and ours. I said that He is the True and Fitting Shepherd because He is God and we are not. This is too simple not only because Jesus is also a man, but because in our baptisms, we now have a divine origin analogous to the divine origin of the Word of God. It is for this reason that we do not or should not fear death. When the wolf comes to snatch us away at our deaths, we will find that the same Divine Logos, the life of the world, is indwelling not only in Jesus’ human soul but also in ours. As Jesus laid down His life to take it up again, we will find our lives given to us at death. This is what Saint John means when he urges us to reflect on the love the Father has bestowed on us in letting us be called children of God. Indeed, that it what we are! We shall be like Christ: freed from death, freed from sorrow, intimately united with our sole Good, Who is our God and Creator, the giver of every good gift to humanity. If this is Christian humanism, why settle for anything less?
posted by Prior Peter, OSB | 7:52 PM
1 Comments:
Hi,
Thank you for a very frank statement on today's problem of church. I am reading Joan Chittister's book, In the Temple. In it she ia advocating a return to the monastic order of things that was true after the fall of the Roman Empire. I am getting more and more frustated with the concept that the church rule of life is the way of the future. Too many crusades and inquistions to be offset. Too many overruns by Huns, Goths and Sarasens to have no defense system. The Secular world requires a participatory government by and for the people, that fosters scientific advancement as well charity.
Keep on truckin'
Marty
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