The Sermon on the MountThe heart of Pope Benedict's book is the chapter on the Sermon on the Mount. Interestingly, the recently deceased US novelist Kurt Vonnegut, a determined non-religious humanist, maintained that the Sermon on the Mount ought to be hung on the walls of American court rooms. In the Sermon, the Pope show Jesus as the new Moses, giving the new law of God, the new Torah, addressed not just to the people of Israel but to the whole world of every age. He shows how it demands a discipleship that can be lived only by following Jesus. From this, the message and person of Jesus stands out in new relief.
Benedict takes up the challenge, given by his good friend of many years, Rabbi Jacob Neusner, in his book A Rabbi Talks with Jesus. It is a respectful dispute between this believing Jew and the teachings of Jesus, especially in the Sermon on the Mount and the Pope acknowledges that it gave him a "better understanding of the authentic Jewishness and the mystery of Jesus".
Neusner, after struggling with the words of the Sermon and greatly troubled by the greatness and purity of what Jesus says, finally turns away. He cannot follow Jesus because he is identifying himself with God; he claims to speak with the authority of God; his words are the words of the living God spoken by the Son of God. This distinguished Jewish scholar of Christian origins finds Jesus' claim to be God clearly at the heart of the Gospel.
The Beatitudes as biography
The Pope traces the connections between the several Beatitudes which are central to the Sermon on the Mount, shedding new light on their application to human life in the contemporary situation. These Beatitudes do not at all replace the Ten Commandments, but rather show the spirit in which they are to be understood and observed. They relate directly to the situation of believers in the world; they "express the meaning of discipleship" in the light of the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus yet to come.
In fact, says the Pope, they give "a sort of veiled interior biography of Jesus, a kind of portrait of his figure. He is the one who is meek, pure of heart, the peacemaker, the one who suffers for God's sake. In him we see "the zone of response to God's love, the zone of obedience and freedom". This gives him the right to present God's will for the human family; not to set up a theocracy but to show how the Torah, the commandments of God, are to be used to bring about justice and peace. Jesus enables fulfilment of the Law "by assigning reason its sphere of responsibility for acting in history". The perspective established by Jesus means that "the social commandments are theological commandments and the theological commandments have a social character -- love of God and love of neighbour are inseparable."
The Sermon on the Mount shows that "being human is essentially about relationship with God". Integral to this relationship is the speaking and listening to God which is prayer. Jesus gave the Lord's Prayer, the prayer of the community and of the believer. Jesus of Nazareth is worthwhile if only for the light it throws on the meaning of the Our Father and the nature of prayer. It is the prayer of Jesus, the prayer to be said with him as he leads us from the primacy of God to the right way of being human. It shows us from heaven what we human begins can and should be like.
The chapter on the message of the parables leads us deeper into the heart of Jesus' preaching as the Pope expounds the three parables of the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son and the Rich Man and Lazarus. Again the genius of Benedict is to elicit fresh theological understanding and the connection to the human situation with its spiritual trials and the need of the world for truth, love and freedom. In the end it is the need for God and Jesus shows himself as God's great sign and means of salvation. In the parables Jesus is showing us the God who acts, who intervenes in our lives and who lays claim to the whole of our humanity. Through the Cross he shows us the ultimate meaning of the parables.
Joseph Ratzinger (How does one refer to the Holy Father when he speaks or writes as a private individual or theologian?) returns to the central text of a very traditional presentation of Catholic moral teaching, the Sermon on the Mount, in his examination of Jesus Christ. As Fr. Pinckaers points out, the Beatitudes are the summit of Christian ethics, and commentaries on the Beatitudes, such as those written by St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, were used to highlight the perfection to which all are called. The Ten Commandments may be a necessary beginning for the Christian life, but they are not the be-all and end-all.
The Pursuit of Happiness - God's Way by Servais Pinckaers, OPFrancis Phillips reviews Morality, The Catholic View, By Servais ...
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