Jesus of Nazareth

by Joseph Ratzinger

  Cyprian, the martyr bishop who personally had to endure the situation described in the Book of Revelation, once again finds a marvelous way of putting all of this: "When we say 'deliver us from evil,' then there is nothing further left for us to ask for. Once we have asked for and obtained protection against evil, we are safely sheltered against everything the devil and the world can contrive. What could the world make you fear if you are protected in the world by God himself?" (De dominica oratione 19; CSEL III, 27, p. 287). This certainty sustained the martyrs, it made them joyful and confident in a world full of affliction, and it "delivered" them at the core of their being, freeing them for true freedom.

  This same confidence was wonderfully put into words by Saint Paul: "If God is for us, who is against us?...Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?...No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom 8:31-39).

  In this sense, the last petition brings us back to the first three: In asking to be liberated from the power of evil, we are ultimately asking for God's Kingdom, for union with his will, and for the sanctification of his name. Throughout the ages, though, men and women of prayer have interpreted this petition in a broader sense. In the midst of the world's tribulations, they have also begged God to set a limit to the evils that ravage the world and our lives.

  This very human way of interpreting the petition has entered into the liturgy: In every liturgy, with the sole exception of the Byzantine, the final petition of the Our Father is extended into a separate prayer. In the old Roman liturgy it ran thus: "Free us, Lord, from all evils, past, present, and future. By the intercession...of all the saints, give peace in our day. Come to our aid with your mercy that we may be ever free from sins and protected from confusion." We sense the hardships of times of war, we hear the cry for total redemption. This "embolism," with which the liturgy enhances the last petition of the Our Father, shows the humanity of the Church. Yes, we may and we should ask the Lord also to free the world, ourselves, and the many individuals and peoples who suffer from the tribulations that make life almost unbearable.

  We may and we should understand this extension of the final petition of the Our Father also as an examination of conscience directed at ourselves--as an appeal to collaborate in breaking the predominance of "evils." But for all that, we must not lose sight of the proper order of goods and of the connection of evils with "evil." Our petition must not sink into superficiality; even on this interpretation of the Our Father petition, the central point is still "that we be freed from sins," that we recognize "evil" as the quintessence of "evils," and that our gaze may never be diverted from the living God.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Disciples

  In all the stages of Jesus' activity that we have considered so far, it has become evident that Jesus is closely connected with the "we" of the new family that he gathers by his proclamation and his action. It has become evident that this "we" is in principle intended to be universal: It no longer rests on birth, but on communion with Jesus, who is himself God's living Torah. This "we" of the new family is not amorphous. Jesus calls an inner core of people specially chosen by him, who are to carry on his mission and give this family order and shape. That was why Jesus formed the group of the Twelve. The title "apostle" originally extended beyond this group, but was later restricted more and more to the Twelve. In Luke, for example, who always speaks of the twelve Apostles, this word is practically synonymous with the Twelve. There is no need here to inquire into the widely discussed issues concerning the development of the use of the word apostle; let us simply listen to the most important texts that show the formation of the community of Jesus' closest disciples.

  The central text for this is Mark 3:13-19. It begins by saying that Jesus "went up on the mountain, and called to him those whom he desired; and they came to him" (Mk 3:13). The events leading up to this had taken place by the lake, and now Jesus ascends "the mountain," which signifies the place of his communion with God--the place on the heights, above the works and deeds of everyday life. Luke underscores this point even more vigorously in his parallel account: "In these days he went out to the mountain to pray; and all night he continued in prayer to God. And when it was day, he called his disciples, and chose from them twelve, whom he named apostles"(Lk 6:12f.).

  The calling of the disciples is a prayer event; it is as if they were begotten in prayer, in intimacy with the Father. The calling of the Twelve, far from being purely functional, takes on a deeply theological meaning: Their calling emerges from the Son's dialogue with the Father and is anchored there. This is also the necessary starting point for understanding Jesus' words, "Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest" (Mt 9:38): We cannot simply pick the laborers in God's harvest in the same way that an employer seeks his employees. God must always be asked for them and he himself must choose them for this service. This theological character is reinforced in Mark's phrase: "Jesus called to him those whom he desired." You cannot make yourself a disciple--it is an event of election, a free decision of the Lord's will, which in its turn is anchored in his communion of will with the Father.

  The text then continues: "And he appointed [literally: "made"] twelve, whom he also called apostles, to be with him, and to be sent out to preach" (Mk 3:14). The first thing to ponder is the expression "he made twelve," which sounds strange to us. In reality, these words of the Evangelist take up the Old Testament terminology for appointment to the priesthood (cf. 1 Kings 12:31; 13:33) and thus characterize the apostolic office as a priestly ministry. Moreover, the fact that the ones chosen are then individually named links them with the Prophets of Israel, whom God calls by name. Mark thus presents the apostolic ministry as a fusion of the priestly and prophetic missions (Feuillet, Etudes, p. 178). "He made twelve": Twelve was the symbolic number of Israel--the number of the sons of Jacob. From them the twelve tribes of Israel were descended, though of these practically only the tribe of Judah remained after the Exile. In this sense, the number twelve is a return to the origins of Israel, and yet at the same time it is a symbol of hope: The whole of Israel is restored and the twelve tribes are newly assembled.

  Twelve--the number of the tribes--is at the same time a cosmic number that expresses the comprehensiveness of the newly reborn People of God. The Twelve stand as the patriarchs of this universal people founded on the Apostles. In the vision of the New Jerusalem found in the Apocalypse, the symbolism of the Twelve is elaborated into an image of splendor (cf. Rev 21:9-14) that helps the pilgrim People of God understand its present in the light of its future and illumines it with the spirit of hope: Past, present, and future intermingle when viewed in terms of the Twelve.

  This is also the right context for the prophecy in which Jesus gives Nathanael a glimpse of his true nature: "You will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man" (Jn 1:51). Jesus reveals himself here as the new Jacob. The patriarch dreamed that he saw a ladder set up beside his head, which reached up to heaven and on which God's angels were ascending and descending. This dream has become a reality with Jesus. He himself is the "gate of heaven" (Gen 28:10-22); he is the true Jacob, the "Son of Man," the patriarch of the definitive Israel.

  Let us return to our text from Mark. Jesus appoints the Twelve with a double assignment: "to be with him, and to be sent out to preach." They must be with him in order to get to know him; in order to attain that intimate acquaintance with him that could not be given to the "people"--who saw him only from the outside and took him for a prophet, a great figure in the history of religions, but were unable to perceive his uniqueness (cf. Mt 16:13ff.). The Twelve must be with him so
as to be able to recognize his oneness with the Father and thus become witnesses to his mystery. As Peter will say before the election of Matthias, they had to be present during the time that "the Lord Jesus went in and out among us" (cf. Acts 1:8, 21). One might say that they have to pass from outward to inward communion with Jesus. At the same time, however, they are there in order to become Jesus' envoys--"apostles," no less--who bring his message to the world, first to the lost sheep of the House of Israel, but then "to the ends of the earth." Being with Jesus and being sent by him seem at first sight mutually exclusive, but they clearly belong together. The Apostles have to learn to be with him in a way that enables them, even when they go to the ends of the earth, to be with him still. Being with him includes the missionary dynamic by its very nature, since Jesus' whole being is mission.

  What does the text say they are sent to do? "To preach and have authority to cast out demons" (Mk 3:14f.). Matthew gives a somewhat more detailed description of the content of this mission: "And he gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every infirmity" (Mt 10:1). The first task is preaching: to give people the light of the word, the message of Jesus. The Apostles are first and foremost Evangelists--like Jesus, they preach the Kingdom of God and thereby gather people into God's new family. But the preaching of God's Kingdom is never just words, never just instruction. It is an event, just as Jesus himself is an event, God's Word in person. By announcing him, the Apostles lead their listeners to encounter him.

  Because the world is ruled by the powers of evil, this preaching is at the same time a struggle with those powers. "In following Jesus, his herald has to exorcise the world, to establish a new form of life in the Holy Spirit that brings release to those who are possessed" (Pesch, Markusevangelium, I, p. 205). And, as Henri de Lubac in particular has shown, the ancient world did in fact experience the birth of Christianity as a liberation from the fear of demons that, in spite of skepticism and enlightenment, was all-pervasive at the time. The same thing also happens today wherever Christianity replaces old tribal religions, transforming and integrating their positive elements into itself. We feel the full impact of this leap forward when Paul says: "'There is no God but one.' For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth--as indeed there are many 'gods' and many 'lords'--yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist" (1 Cor 8:4f.). These words imply a great liberating power--the great exorcism that purifies the world. No matter how many gods may have been at large in the world, God is only one, and only one is Lord. If we belong to him, everything else loses its power; it loses the allure of divinity.

  The world is now seen as something rational: It emerges from eternal reason, and this creative reason is the only true power over the world and in the world. Faith in the one God is the only thing that truly liberates the world and makes it "rational." When faith is absent, the world only appears to be more rational. In reality the indeterminable powers of chance now claim their due; "chaos theory" takes its place alongside insight into the rational structure of the universe, confronting man with obscurities that he cannot resolve and that set limits to the world's rationality. To "exorcise" the world--to establish it in the light of the ratio (reason) that comes from eternal creative reason and its saving goodness and refers back to it--that is a permanent, central task of the messengers of Jesus Christ.

  In the Letter to the Ephesians, Saint Paul once described this "exorcistic" character of Christianity from another perspective: "Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places" (Eph 6:10-12). This portrayal of the Christian struggle, which we today find surprising, or even disturbing, Heinrich Schlier has explained as follows: "The enemies are not this or that person, not even myself. They are not flesh and blood.... The conflict goes deeper. It is a fight against a host of opponents that never stop coming; they cannot really be pinned down and have no proper name, only collective denominations. They also start out with superior advantage over man, and that is because of their superior position, their position 'in the heavens' of existence. They are also superior because their position is impenetrable and unassailable--their position, after all, is the 'atmosphere' of existence, which they themselves tilt in their favor and propagate around themselves. These enemies are, finally, all full of essential, deadly malice" (Brief an die Epheser, p. 291).

  Who could fail to see here a description of our world as well, in which the Christian is threatened by an anonymous atmosphere, by "something in the air" that wants to make the faith seem ludicrous and absurd to him? And who could fail to see the poisoning of the spiritual climate all over the world that threatens the dignity of man, indeed his very existence? The individual human being, and even communities of human beings, seem to be hopelessly at the mercy of such powers. The Christian knows that he cannot master this threat by his own resources alone. But in faith, in communion with the only true Lord of the world, he is given the "armor of God." It enables him--in the communion of the whole body of Christ--to oppose these powers, knowing that Lord's gift of faith restores the pure breath of life: the breath of the Creator, the breath of the Holy Spirit, which alone can give health to the world.

  Alongside the commission to exorcise, Matthew adds the mission to heal. The Twelve are sent "to heal every disease and every infirmity" (Mt 10:1). Healing is an essential dimension of the apostolic mission and of Christian faith in general. Eugen Biser even goes so far as to call Christianity a "therapeutic religion"--a religion of healing (Einweisung). When understood at a sufficiently deep level, this expresses the entire content of "redemption." The authority to cast out demons and to free the world from their dark threat, for the sake of the one true God, is the same authority that rules out any magical understanding of healing through attempts to manipulate these mysterious powers. Magical healing is always tied to the art of turning the evil onto someone else and setting the "demons" against him. God's dominion, God's Kingdom, means precisely the disempowerment of these forces by the intervention of the one God, who is good, who is the Good itself. The healing power of the messengers of Jesus Christ is opposed to the spirits of magic; it exorcises the world in medical terms as well. In the miracles of healing performed by the Lord and by the Twelve, God displays his gracious power over the world. They are essentially "signs" that point to God himself and serve to set man in motion toward God. Only becoming-one with God can be the true process of man's healing.

  For Jesus himself and for his followers, miracles of healing are thus a subordinate element within the overall range of his activity, which is concerned with something deeper, with nothing less than the "Kingdom of God": his becoming-Lord in us and in the world. Just as exorcism drives out the fear of demons and commits the world--which comes from God's reason--to our human reason, so, too, healing by God's power is both a summons to faith in God and a summons to use the powers of reason in the service of healing. The "reason" meant here, of course, is wide open--it is the kind of reason that perceives God and therefore also recognizes man as a unity of body and soul. Whoever truly wishes to heal man must see him in his wholeness and must know that his ultimate healing can only be God's love.

  Let us return to our text from Mark's Gospel. After specifying the mission of the Twelve, Mark lists them by name. We have already seen that this is an intimation of the prophetic dimension of their mission. God knows us by name and he calls us by name. This is not the place to portray the individual figures who form the group of the Twelve in light of the Bible and tradition. The important thing for us is the composition of the whole group, and it is quite heterogeneous.


  Two members of the group came from the Zealot party: Simon, who in Luke 6:15 is called "the Zealot" and in Matthew and Mark "the Cananaean"--which according to recent scholarship means the same thing--and Judas. The word Iscariot can simply mean "the man from Karioth," but it may also designate him as a Sicarian, a radical variant of the Zealots. The zeal (zelos) for the Law that gave this movement its name looked to the great "zealots" of Israel's history for its models: from Phinehas, who killed an idolatrous Israelite before the whole community (Num 25:6-13), and Elijah, who had the priests of Baal killed on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18), to Mattathias, the patriarch of the Maccabees, who initiated the uprising against the Hellenistic king Antiochus' attempt to extinguish Israel's faith by killing a conformist who was about to sacrifice publicly to the gods in accordance with the king's decree (1 Mac 2:17-28). The Zealots regarded this historical chain of great "zealots" as a heritage that committed them to fight against the Roman occupiers in their own day.

  At the other extreme within the group of the Twelve we find Levi-Matthew, who, as a tax collector, worked hand in glove with the reigning power and had to be classed as a public sinner on account of his social position. The main group within the Twelve is composed of the fishermen from Lake Genesareth. Simon, whom the Lord would name Cephas (Peter), "rock," was apparently the head of a fishing cooperative (cf. Lk 5:10), in which he worked alongside his older brother Andrew and the sons of Zebedee, John and James, whom the Lord nicknamed "Boanerges"--sons of thunder. Some scholars argue that this name, too, indicates an association with the Zealot movement, but this is probably incorrect. It is the Lord's way of referring to their stormy temperament, which also emerges very clearly in the Gospel of John. Finally, there are two men with Greek names, Philip and Andrew, to whom Greek-speaking Jews address themselves on Palm Sunday at the time of the Passover festival, in order to make contact with Jesus (cf. Jn 12:21ff.).