Fr. John van den Hengel, a member of the General Council, was asked by the German Province to write a reflection on Pope Benedict’s recently published second volume on Jesus of Nazareth. The reflection will appear in one of the province’s periodicals. Fr. John’s text:
Pope Benedict XVI allowed us to reflect on this mystery of Jesus’ suffering and death though the publication of his second volume on Jesus of Nazareth
Between April 12 and 15, the leadership of the Priests of the Sacred Heart in Europe met in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse to reflect with each other about what binds us together as followers of Fr. Leo Dehon. In his life Fr. Dehon had been grasped more and more by a unique experience of Jesus Christ. This experience did not come from a personal mystical event. It grew gradually from his early childhood on. And throughout his life he meditated on the scriptures and wrote a lot to understand what was at the root of his existence. When the Priests of the Sacred Heart sought to express this experience of Jesus Christ in their Rule of Life, they could do no better than to do what Fr. Dehon had done, that is, to go to the Scriptures. The Rule of Life compares Fr. Dehon’s experience of Christ to that of St. Paul, when he wrote: “ And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). For the Priests of the Sacred Heart from around Europe, Dehon’s faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me finds its central image in the open side and pierced heart of Jesus.
When the Priests of the Sacred Heart turn to Jesus Christ as the one who binds them together, they turn first of all to this image of the dead Jesus on the cross, his side pierced, and blood and water flowing from his opened heart. It is an image of a love – a love completely spent – giving life even in the darkness and void of death. For the evangelist John, this is the image of God that he leaves us with: in the death of Jesus stands revealed the living God of love.
On March 10 Pope Benedict XVI allowed us to reflect on this mystery of Jesus’ suffering and death though the publication of his second volume on Jesus of Nazareth (Roma: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2011). In 2007 Pope Benedict XVI (as the theologian Joseph Ratzinger and not as pope) had already given his account of Jesus from his baptism by John to his declarations about himself as the Son of God. This time he tells the story of Jesus from his entry into Jerusalem to his resurrection. He does not enter into the difficult and contentious struggles about the identity of Jesus waged throughout the centuries. He wants, as much as he can, using the historical critical studies of the last fifty years, to give us the historical Jesus, the figure of the person of Jesus as can be found in the Gospels. He presents Jesus as one whom we can encounter once again through the Gospel witness of his disciples (p.9). In this second volume we meet Jesus in the last week of his life.
What does this book say about what is at the heart of the spirituality of the Priests of the Sacred Heart? How do the events and the words of Jesus during this holy week point to the heart of God and how does Jesus lead us to recognize that at the core of existence is a God who in Jesus’ wounded heart shows us the struggle and deep desire of the Father for our hearts. In his book the Pope touches on this specific theme in four places.
- For Benedict the final week is the culminating point of the story of Jesus as a story of “a love until the end.” (John 13.1) Jerusalem, the end-point of Jesus’ journey, is the city of God’s presence, the city whose children God “desires to gather together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings” (Mt 23.37). Jerusalem may not be willing, but that does not deter God. In the events of this week it becomes clear how far the love of God reaches. It is the hour of the passing of Jesus, the hour of God’s agape to the end. (p.66) Difficult to grasp as it is, it is the hour of the glorification of the Father of Jesus. (p.89)
- In the discourse during the last supper, Jesus talks about the new commandment: love one another as I have loved you. Benedict XVI carefully points out that this is not a new moral law that Jesus imposes. One can hardly command someone to love another, not even in marriage. Jesus, according to Benedict is clearly speaking here about a gift. (p.75) What is this gift? It is Christ doing in us what he did for us. In this context, Benedict recalls a saying of Paul, dear to Fr. Dehon and central to the spirituality of the SCJ: “I live now not I but Christ lives in me.” (Gal 2.20, p.77) As Christians we are given a new heart and live out of a new heart, a new way of existing. It is not us who act but the Holy Spirit of love in us. The Spirit makes possible what Augustine said: “Give what you command and then command what you wish.” (p.78)Think about it!
- “This is my body that is for you. “ (1 Co 11.24)) “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for the many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Mt. 26.28) This gesture of breaking and pouring out, repeated daily in the Eucharist, expresses best the heart of Christ and the heart of God. His heart is a total self gift on behalf of the other. Benedict XVI says, the gift of God’s forgiveness is without any conditions. (p.137) Jesus’ gift of himself for the other is the gift of accepting responsibility for everyone, even to the point of taking upon himself their guilt. For Benedict this expiation for all is the gift of the Eucharist. (p.143-163) Christ is all “for you.” (p.152) In giving himself, Jesus was indeed the Son of God, glorifying the Name of the Father. (p.176) Here indeed is for us the image of God.
- All the events of this holiest of weeks are resumed by Benedict – but also in the spirituality of the Priests of the Sacred Heart – in what took place in the death of Jesus and the piercing of his side. The cross, says Benedict, was truly the throne of Jesus; from there he drew the world to himself. “From this place of the uttermost gift of himself, from this place of divine love, he rules as a true king.” (p. 237) But he rules in a way that even to us remains incomprehensible: as totally defenseless, as dead, with his heart pierced. A wounded heart that is open to other wounded hearts, open also to hearts that feel abandoned by God. “He brings into the heart of God himself the cry of anguish of a world tormented by the absence of God,” certain that God will hear him and remove the anguish. (p.239) In the wounded heart of Christ we have a visible image of the thirst of God for people.
We thank Pope Benedict for this lengthy meditation on the heart of God.
