Jesus of Nazareth: From His Transfiguration Through His Death and Resurrection

by Pope Benedict XVI

  In this double outpouring of blood and water, the Fathers saw an image of the two fundamental sacraments—Eucharist and Baptism—which spring forth from the Lord’s pierced side, from his heart. This is the new outpouring that creates the Church and renews mankind. Moreover, the opened side of the Lord asleep on the Cross prompted the Fathers to point to the creation of Eve from the side of the sleeping Adam, and so in this outpouring of the sacraments they also recognized the birth of the Church: the creation of the new woman from the side of the new Adam.

  Jesus’ burial

  All four evangelists recount that a wealthy member of the Sanhedrin, Joseph of Arimathea, asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Mark (15:43) and Luke (23:51) add that Joseph was one “who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God”, whereas John (19:38) speaks of him as a secret disciple of Jesus, who had hitherto kept quiet about this for fear of the ruling Jewish circles. John also mentions the involvement of Nicodemus (19:39), whose night conversation with Jesus about being born and reborn John had reported in 3:1-8. After the drama of the trial, in which everything seemed to conspire against Jesus and there seemed to be no one left to speak up for him, we now encounter the other Israel: people who are waiting, people who trust God’s promises and await their fulfillment, people who recognize in the words and deeds of Jesus the in-breaking of God’s kingdom, the incipient fulfillment of the promises.

  Up to this point in the Gospels, we have encountered such people mainly among simple folk: Mary and Joseph, Elizabeth and Zechariah, Simeon and Anna, and also the disciples, none of whom, while they came from a variety of cultural backgrounds and movements in Israel, actually belonged to the leading circles. Now—after Jesus’ death—we meet two highly regarded representatives of the educated class of Israel who had not yet dared to profess their discipleship, but who nevertheless were blessed with the kind of simple heart that makes man capable of the truth (cf. Mt 10: 25-26).

  Whereas the Romans would leave the corpses of crucifixion victims to the vultures, the Jews were anxious that they should be buried, and suitable places were assigned for this purpose by the authorities. Joseph’s request was therefore in keeping with normal Jewish practice. Mark says that Pilate was surprised to learn that Jesus was already dead and that he immediately inquired of the centurion whether it was true. Once Jesus’ death had been confirmed, he handed over Jesus’ body to Joseph.

  Regarding the burial itself, the evangelists supply a number of important pieces of information. First, they emphasize that Joseph arranged for the Lord’s body to be laid in a new tomb that belonged to him, a tomb in which no one had yet been buried (Mt 27:60; Lk 23:53; Jn 19:41). Here we see a mark of respect for this dead person. Just as on “Palm Sunday” Jesus availed himself of a donkey on which no one had yet ridden (Mk 11:2), so now he is laid to rest in a new tomb.

  Equally important is the indication that Joseph bought a linen cloth in which he wrapped the corpse. Whereas the Synoptics speak simply of a linen sheet in the singular, John uses the plural “linen cloths” (cf. 19:40) in keeping with Jewish burial customs—the Resurrection account will return to this matter in greater detail. The question of matching this description to the Turin Shroud need not detain us here; in any case, the shape of that relic can in principle be harmonized with both accounts.

  Finally, John tells us that Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, “about a hundred pounds’ weight”. He continues: “They took the body of Jesus, and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews” (Jn 19:39-40). The quantity of balm is extraordinary and exceeds all normal proportions: this is a royal burial. If Jesus was manifested to us as high priest by the casting of lots for his robe, so now he is revealed to us as king by the manner of his burial: just when it seems that everything is finished, his glory mysteriously shines through.

  The Synoptic Gospels tell us that some women observed the burial (Mt 27:61; Mk 15:47), and Luke reports that they were the ones “who had come with him from Galilee” (23:55). He adds: “then they returned, and prepared spices and ointments” (23:56). After the Sabbath rest, on the morning of the first day of the week, they would come to anoint the body of Jesus and thus to carry out the definitive burial. Anointing is an attempt to hold death at bay, to preserve the corpse from decomposition. And yet it is a vain effort: anointing can only maintain the dead person in death; it cannot restore him to life.

  On the morning of the first day, the women will see that their concern for the dead body and its preservation was all too human a concern. They will see that Jesus is not to be held captive by death, but lives anew—now he is truly alive for the first time. They will see that God has preserved him from decomposition in a definitive way, possible only to God, and has thereby preserved him from the power of death. Nevertheless, in the loving care of these women, Easter morning—the Resurrection—is already proclaimed.

  3. Jesus’ Death as Reconciliation (Atonement) and Salvation

  In this concluding section I shall attempt to show, in broad terms, how the early Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, slowly penetrated more deeply into the truth of the Cross, in order to grasp at least remotely why and for what purpose it happened. One thing was astonishingly clear from the outset: with the Cross of Christ, the old Temple sacrifices were definitively surpassed. Something new had happened.

  The expectations expressed in the Prophets’ critique of Temple worship, and particularly in the Psalms, were now fulfilled: God did not want to be glorified through the sacrifices of bulls and goats, whose blood is powerless to purify and make atonement for men. The long-awaited but as yet undefined new worship had become a reality. In the Cross of Jesus, what the animal sacrifices had sought in vain to achieve actually occurred: atonement was made for the world. The “Lamb of God” took upon himself the sins of the world and wiped them away. God’s relationship to the world, formerly distorted by sin, was now renewed. Reconciliation had been accomplished.

  Paul provides a synthesis of the Christ-event, the new message of Jesus Christ, in these words: “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Cor 5:19-20). It is principally in Saint Paul’s letters that we read of the sharp disagreements in the early Church over the question of the continuing validity of the Mosaic Law for Christians. This makes it all the more remarkable, then, that on one matter—as we have seen—there was agreement from the outset: the Temple sacrifices, the cultic heart of the Torah, were a thing of the past. Christ had taken their place. The Temple remained a venerable place of prayer and proclamation. Its sacrifices, though, were no longer relevant for Christians.

  But how exactly is this to be understood? In the New Testament literature there are various attempts to explain Christ’s Cross as the new worship, the true atonement and the true purification of this corrupted world.

  We have spoken a number of times already of the fundamental text in Romans 3:25, where Paul, evidently drawing upon a tradition of the earliest Jewish Christian community in Jerusalem, refers to the crucified Jesus as “hilastērion”. This, as we have seen, was the name given to the covering of the Ark of the Covenant, on which the expiatory blood was sprinkled on the great Day of Atonement during the expiatory sacrifice. Let us explain straightaway how the Christians now interpreted this archaic ritual: it is not through the blood of animals touching a holy object that God and man are reconciled. In Jesus’ Passion, all the filth of the world touches the infinitely pure one, the soul of Jesus Christ and, hence, the Son of God himself. While it is usually the case that anything unclean touching something clean renders it unclean, here it is the other way around: when the world, with all the injustice and cruelty that make it unclean, comes into contact with the infinitely pure one—then he, the pure one, is the stronger. Through this contact, the
filth of the world is truly absorbed, wiped out, and transformed in the pain of infinite love. Because infinite good is now at hand in the man Jesus, the counterweight to all wickedness is present and active within world history, and the good is always infinitely greater than the vast mass of evil, however terrible it may be.

  If we reflect more deeply on this insight, we find the answer to an objection that is often raised against the idea of atonement. Again and again people say: It must be a cruel God who demands infinite atonement. Is this not a notion unworthy of God? Must we not give up the idea of atonement in order to maintain the purity of our image of God? In the use of the term “hilastērion” with reference to Jesus, it becomes evident that the real forgiveness accomplished on the Cross functions in exactly the opposite direction. The reality of evil and injustice that disfigures the world and at the same time distorts the image of God—this reality exists, through our sin. It cannot simply be ignored; it must be addressed. But here it is not a case of a cruel God demanding the infinite. It is exactly the opposite: God himself becomes the locus of reconciliation, and in the person of his Son takes the suffering upon himself. God himself grants his infinite purity to the world. God himself “drinks the cup” of every horror to the dregs and thereby restores justice through the greatness of his love, which, through suffering, transforms the darkness.

  As it happens, these very ideas are explored in Saint John’s Gospel (especially through the theology of the high-priestly prayer) and in the Letter to the Hebrews (through its interpretation of the Torah cult in terms of the theology of the Cross). At the same time, these texts explain how the inner meaning of the Old Testament is fulfilled on the Cross—not just the Prophets’ critique of the cult, but also the positive content that had always been signified and intended in that cult.

  From the great riches contained in the Letter to the Hebrews I would like to propose just one fundamental text for our reflection. The author describes Old Testament worship as a “shadow” (10:1) and gives this as his reason: “It is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins” (10:4). He then quotes Psalm 40:6-8 and interprets these psalm verses as a dialogue between the Son and the Father in which the Incarnation is accomplished and at the same time the new worship of God is established: “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God,’ as it is written of me in the roll of the book” (Heb 10:5-7; cf. Ps 40:6-8).

  In this brief psalm quotation, there is an important modification of the original text, which represents the conclusion of a threefold development in the theology of worship. Whereas in the Letter to the Hebrews we read; “a body have you prepared for me”, the psalmist had said: “but you have given me an open ear.” Obedience had already replaced the Temple sacrifices here: living within and on the basis of God’s word had been recognized as the right way to worship God. In this respect, the psalm was reflecting a strand of Greek thought from the period immediately prior to the birth of Christ: the Greek world also sensed more and more acutely the inadequacy of animal sacrifices, which God does not require and in which man does not give God what he might expect from man. So here the idea of spiritual sacrifice, or “sacrifice in the manner of the word”, was formulated: prayer, the self-opening of the human spirit to God, is true worship. The more man becomes “word”—or rather: the more his whole existence is directed toward God—the more he accomplishes true worship.

  In the Old Testament, from the early Books of Samuel to the late prophecy of Daniel, we find constantly new ways of wrestling with this idea, which becomes linked more and more closely with love for God’s guiding word, the Torah. God is rightly venerated when we live in obedience to his word and are hence thoroughly shaped by his will, thoroughly godly.

  Yet, on the other hand, a feeling of insufficiency still remains. Again and again our obedience proves patchy. Our own will imposes itself repeatedly. The deep sense of the inadequacy of all human obedience to God’s word causes the urgent desire for atonement to break out again and again, yet it is not something we can accomplish by ourselves or on the basis of our “rendering of obedience”. Repeatedly, therefore, alongside talk of the insufficiency of sacrifices and offerings, the longing for them to come back in a more perfect form breaks out anew (cf., for example, Ps 51:18-19).

  The version given in the Letter to the Hebrews of these verses from Psalm 40 contains the answer to this longing: the longing that God will one day be given what we cannot give him, and yet that it should still be our gift, is now fulfilled. The psalmist had prayed: “Sacrifice and offering you do not desire; but you have given me an open ear.” The true Logos, the Son, says to the Father: “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me.” The Logos himself, the Son, becomes flesh; he takes on a human body. In this way a new obedience becomes possible, an obedience that surpasses all human fulfillment of the commandments. The Son becomes man and in his body bears the whole of humanity back to God. Only the incarnate Word, whose love is fulfilled on the Cross, is perfect obedience. In him not only does the critique of the Temple sacrifices become definitive, but whatever longing still remains is also fulfilled: his incarnate obedience is the new sacrifice, and in this obedience he draws us all with him and at the same time wipes away all our disobedience through his love.

  To put it yet another way: our own morality is insufficient for the proper worship of God. This Saint Paul stated quite emphatically in the dispute over justification. Yet the Son, the Incarnate One, bears us all within himself, and in this way he gives what we ourselves would not be able to give. Central to the Christian life, then, are both the sacrament of Baptism, by which we are taken up into Christ’s obedience, and also the Eucharist, in which the Lord’s obedience on the Cross embraces us all, purifies us, and draws us into the perfect worship offered by Jesus Christ.

  What the early Church is saying here about the Incarnation and the Cross as she reflects prayerfully upon the Old Testament and the path of Jesus must be seen against the background of the dramatic struggles of that period for a proper understanding of man’s relationship with God. It answers not only the question “why the Cross?” but also the urgent questions, arising in both the Jewish and the Gentile world, about how man can become just before God and, conversely, how he can understand God aright, the mysterious and hidden one, insofar as this is possible for man at all.

  In all that we have said so far, it is clear that not only has a theological interpretation of the Cross been given, together with an interpretation, based on the Cross, of the fundamental Christian sacraments and Christian worship, but also that the existential dimension is involved: What does this mean for me? What does it mean for my path as a human being? The incarnate obedience of Christ is presented as an open space into which we are admitted and through which our own lives find a new context. The mystery of the Cross does not simply confront us; rather, it draws us in and gives a new value to our life.

  This existential aspect of the new concept of worship and sacrifice appears with particular clarity in the twelfth chapter of the Letter to the Romans: “I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual [word-like] worship” (v. 1). The idea of worshipping God in the manner of the word (logikē latreía) is taken up here, and it means the offering of one’s whole existence to God, in which, so to speak, the whole person becomes “word-like”, “god-like”. In the process, the physical dimension is emphasized: it is our physical existence that must be penetrated by the word and must become a gift to God. Paul, who places so much emphasis on the impossibility of justification on the basis of one’s own morality, is doubtless presupposing that this new form of Christian worship, in which Christians themselves are the “living and holy sacrifice”, is possible only through sharing in the in
carnate love of Jesus Christ, a love that conquers all our insufficiency through the power of his holiness.

  If, on the one hand, we should acknowledge that Paul in no way yields to moralism in this exhortation or in any sense belies his doctrine of justification through faith and not through works, it is equally clear that this doctrine of justification does not condemn man to passivity—he does not become a purely passive recipient of a divine righteousness that always remains external to him. No, the greatness of Christ’s love is revealed precisely in the fact that he takes us up into himself in all our wretchedness, into his living and holy sacrifice, so that we truly become “his body”.

  In the fifteenth chapter of the Letter to the Romans, Paul takes up the same idea quite emphatically once more when he interprets his apostolate in terms of priesthood and describes the Gentiles who have become believers as the living sacrifice that is pleasing to God: I have written to you “because of the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit” (vv. 15-16).

  In more recent times, this way of speaking about priesthood and sacrifice has been dismissed as pure allegory. It has been claimed that the language of priesthood and sacrifice is meant only in a figurative, purely spiritual, not in a real, cultic sense. Paul himself and the whole early Church viewed this matter exactly the other way around. For them, the truth was that the material sacrifices were only figuratively sacrifices and worship—they were an attempt to reach out toward something that they themselves could not bring about. True worship is the living human being, who has become a total answer to God, shaped by God’s healing and transforming word. And true priesthood is therefore the ministry of word and sacrament that transforms people into an offering to God and makes the cosmos into praise and thanksgiving to the Creator and Redeemer. Therefore Christ, who makes an offering of himself on the Cross, is the true high priest, anticipated symbolically by the Aaronic priesthood. Hence his self-giving—his obedience, which takes us all up and brings us back to God—is the true worship, the true sacrifice.