Catechism of the Catholic Church
THE PROFESSION OF FAITH
SECTION TWO
571 The Paschal mystery of Christ's cross and Resurrection stands at the
centre of the Good News that the apostles, and the Church following them,
are to proclaim to the world. God's saving plan was accomplished "once for
all"[313] by the redemptive death of his Son Jesus Christ.
572 The Church remains faithful to the interpretation of "all the
Scriptures" that Jesus gave both before and after his Passover: "Was it
not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into
his glory?"[314] Jesus' sufferings took their historical, concrete form from
the fact that he was "rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the
scribes", who handed "him to the Gentiles to be mocked and scourged and
crucified".[315]
573 Faith can therefore try to examine the circumstances of Jesus' death,
faithfully handed on by the Gospels[316] and illuminated by other historical
sources, the better to understand the meaning of the Redemption.
574 From the beginning of Jesus' public ministry, certain Pharisees and
partisans of Herod together with priests and scribes agreed together to
destroy him.[317] Because of certain acts of his expelling demons, forgiving
sins, healing on the sabbath day, his novel interpretation of the precepts
of the Law regarding purity, and his familiarity with tax collectors and
public sinners[318]--some ill- intentioned persons suspected Jesus of
demonic possession.[319] He is accused of blasphemy and false prophecy,
religious crimes which the Law punished with death by stoning.[320]
575 Many of Jesus' deeds and words constituted a "sign of
contradiction",[321] but more so for the religious authorities in
Jerusalem, whom the Gospel according to John often calls simply "the
Jews",[322] than for the ordinary People of God.[323] To be sure, Christ's
relations with the Pharisees were not exclusively polemical. Some
Pharisees warn him of the danger he was courting;[324] Jesus praises some of
them, like the scribe of Mark 12:34, and dines several times at their
homes.[325] Jesus endorses some of the teachings imparted by this religious
elite of God's people: the resurrection of the dead,[326] certain forms of
piety (almsgiving, fasting and prayer),[327] the custom of addressing God as
Father, and the centrality of the commandment to love God and
neighbour.[328]
576 In the eyes of many in Israel, Jesus seems to be acting against
essential institutions of the Chosen People: - submission to the whole of
the Law in its written commandments and, for the Pharisees, in the
interpretation of oral tradition; - the centrality of the Temple at
Jerusalem as the holy place where God's presence dwells in a special way;
- faith in the one God whose glory no man can share.
577 At the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus issued a solemn
warning in which he presented God's law, given on Sinai during the first
covenant, in light of the grace of the New Covenant:
Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets: I have
come not to abolish but to fulfil. For truly I tell you, until heaven and
earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass
from the law, until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of
the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will
be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and
teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.[329]
578 Jesus, Israel's Messiah and therefore the greatest in the kingdom of
heaven, was to fulfil the Law by keeping it in its all embracing detail -
according to his own words, down to "the least of these commandments".[330]
He is in fact the only one who could keep it perfectly.[331] On their own
admission the Jews were never able to observe the Law in its entirety
without violating the least of its precepts.[332] This is why every year on
the Day of Atonement the children of Israel ask God's forgiveness for
their transgressions of the Law. The Law indeed makes up one inseparable
whole, and St. James recalls, "Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one
point has become guilty of all of it."[333]
579 This principle of integral observance of the Law not only in letter
but in spirit was dear to the Pharisees. By giving Israel this principle
they had led many Jews of Jesus' time to an extreme religious zeal.[334]
This zeal, were it not to lapse into "hypocritical" casuistry,[335] could
only prepare the People for the unprecedented intervention of God through
the perfect fulfilment of the Law by the only Righteous One in place of
all sinners.[336]
580 The perfect fulfilment of the Law could be the work of none but the
divine legislator, born subject to the Law in the person of the Son.[337] In
Jesus, the Law no longer appears engraved on tables of stone but "upon the
heart" of the Servant who becomes "a covenant to the people", because he
will "faithfully bring forth justice".[338] Jesus fulfils the Law to the
point of taking upon himself "the curse of the Law" incurred by those who
do not "abide by the things written in the book of the Law, and do them",
for his death took place to redeem them "from the transgressions under the
first covenant".[339]
581 The Jewish people and their spiritual leaders viewed Jesus as a
rabbi.[340] He often argued within the framework of rabbinical
interpretation of the Law.[341] Yet Jesus could not help but offend the
teachers of the Law, for he was not content to propose his interpretation
alongside theirs but taught the people "as one who had authority, and not
as their scribes".[342] In Jesus, the same Word of God that had resounded on
Mount Sinai to give the written Law to Moses, made itself heard anew on
the Mount of the Beatitudes.[343] Jesus did not abolish the Law but
fulfilled it by giving its ultimate interpretation in a divine way: "You
have heard that it was said to the men of old. . . But I say to you. .
."[344] With this same divine authority, he disavowed certain human
traditions of the Pharisees that were "making void the word of God".[345]
582 Going even further, Jesus perfects the dietary law, so important in
Jewish daily life, by revealing its pedagogical meaning through a divine
interpretation: "Whatever goes into a man from outside cannot defile him.
. . (Thus he declared all foods clean.). . . What comes out of a man is
what defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil
thoughts. . ."[346] In presenting with divine authority the definitive
interpretation of the Law, Jesus found himself confronted by certain
teachers of the Law who did not accept his interpretation of the Law,
guaranteed though it was by the divine signs that accompanied it.[347]
This was the case especially with the sabbath laws, for he recalls, often
with rabbinical arguments, that the sabbath rest is not violated by
serving God and neighbour,[348] which his own healings did.
583 Like the prophets before him Jesus expressed the deepest respect for
the Temple in Jerusalem. It was in the Temple that Joseph and Mary
presented him forty days after his birth.[349] At the age of twelve he
decided to remain in the Temple to remind his parents that he must be
about his Father's business.[350] He went there each year during his hidden
life at least for Passover.[351] His public ministry itself was patterned by
his pilgrimages to Jerusalem for the great Jewish feasts.[352]
584 Jesus went up to the Temple as the privileged place of encounter with
God. For him, the Temple was the dwelling of his Father, a house of
prayer, and he was angered that its outer court had become a place of
commerce.[353] He drove merchants out of it because of jealous love for his
Father: "You shall not make my Father's house a house of trade. His
disciples remembered that it was written, 'Zeal for your house will
consume me.'"[354] After his Resurrection his apostles retained their
reverence for the Temple.[355]
585 On the threshold of his Passion Jesus announced the coming destruction
of this splendid building, of which there would not remain "one stone upon
another".[356] By doing so, he announced a sign of the last days, which were
to begin with his own Passover.[357] But this prophecy would be distorted in
its telling by false witnesses during his interrogation at the high
priest's house, and would be thrown back at him as an insult when he was
nailed to the cross.[358]
586 Far from having been hostile to the Temple, where he gave the
essential part of his teaching, Jesus was willing to pay the Temple-tax,
associating with him Peter, whom he had just made the foundation of his
future Church.[359] He even identified himself with the Temple by presenting
himself as God's definitive dwelling-place among men.[360] Therefore his
being put to bodily death[361] presaged the destruction of the Temple, which
would manifest the dawning of a new age in the history of salvation: "The
hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you
worship the Father."[362]
587 If the Law and the Jerusalem Temple could be occasions of opposition
to Jesus by Israel's religious authorities, his role in the redemption of
sins, the divine work par excellence, was the true stumbling-block for
them.[363]
588 Jesus scandalized the Pharisees by eating with tax collectors and
sinners as familiarly as with themselves.[364] Against those among them "who
trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others", Jesus
affirmed: "I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to
repentance."[365] He went further by proclaiming before the Pharisees that,
since sin is universal, those who pretend not to need salvation are blind
to themselves.[366]
589 Jesus gave scandal above all when he identified his merciful conduct
toward sinners with God's own attitude toward them.[367] He went so far as
to hint that by sharing the table of sinners he was admitting them to the
messianic banquet.[368] But it was most especially by forgiving sins that
Jesus placed the religious authorities of Israel on the horns of a
dilemma. Were they not entitled to demand in consternation, "Who can
forgive sins but God alone?"[369] By forgiving sins Jesus either is
blaspheming as a man who made himself God's equal, or is speaking the
truth and his person really does make present and reveal God's name.[370]
590 Only the divine identity of Jesus' person can justify so absolute a
claim as "He who is not with me is against me"; and his saying that there
was in him "something greater than Jonah,. . . greater than Solomon",
something "greater than the Temple"; his reminder that David had called
the Messiah his Lord,[371] and his affirmations, "Before Abraham was, I AM",
and even "I and the Father are one."[372]
591 Jesus asked the religious authorities of Jerusalem to believe in him
because of the Father's works which he accomplished.[373] But such an act of
faith must go through a mysterious death to self, for a new "birth from
above" under the influence of divine grace.[374] Such a demand for
conversion in the face of so surprising a fulfilment of the promises[375]
allows one to understand the Sanhedrin's tragic misunderstanding of Jesus:
they judged that he deserved the death sentence as a blasphemer.[376] The
members of the Sanhedrin were thus acting at the same time out of
"ignorance" and the "hardness" of their "unbelief".[377]
IN BRIEF
592 Jesus did not abolish the Law of Sinai, but rather fulfilled it (cf.
Mt 5:17-19) with such perfection (cf. Jn 8:46) that he revealed its
ultimate meaning (cf.: Mt 5:33) and redeemed the transgressions against it
(cf. Heb 9:15).
593 Jesus venerated the Temple by going up to it for the Jewish feasts of
pilgrimage, and with a jealous love he loved this dwelling of God among
men. The Temple prefigures his own mystery. When he announces its
destruction, it is as a manifestation of his own execution and of the
entry into a new age in the history of salvation, when his Body would be
the definitive Temple.
594 Jesus performed acts, such as pardoning sins, that manifested him to
be the Saviour God himself (cf. Jn 5:16-18). Certain Jews, who did not
recognize God made man (cf. Jn 1:14), saw in him only a man who made
himself God (Jn 10:33), and judged him as a blasphemer.
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