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

by Pope Benedict XVI

  Not surprisingly, there is a great deal of debate among exegetes over what Jesus’ actual words were. Rudolf Pesch has shown that there are forty-six prima facie possibilities, and this figure can be doubled by exchanging the introductory formulae (cf. Das Evangelium in Jerusalem, pp. 134ff.). These efforts are not without importance, but they cannot detain us here.

  We take it as a given that the tradition of Jesus’ words would not exist without reception by the early Church, which was conscious of a strict obligation to faithfulness in essentials, but also recognized that the enormous resonance of these words, with their subtle references to Scripture, permitted a degree of nuanced redaction. The New Testament writers heard echoes of both Exodus 24 and Jeremiah 31 in Jesus’ words and could choose to place the accent more on the one or on the other, without thereby being unfaithful to the Lord’s words, which in barely audible yet unmistakable ways gathered within themselves the Law and the Prophets. With these considerations we have already crossed over into the realm of interpretation.

  In all four versions, the institution narratives begin by recounting two actions of Jesus that have taken on an essential meaning for the Church’s reception of this whole tradition. We are told that Jesus took the bread, saying over it the prayer of blessing and thanksgiving, and that then he broke and distributed the bread. For the first action we find the word eucharistia (Paul / Luke) or eulogia (Mark / Matthew): each of these words indicates the berakah, the Jewish tradition’s great prayer of thanksgiving and blessing, which belongs both to the Passover ritual and to other meals. No one ever eats without first thanking God for his gifts: for the bread that he brings forth from the earth and for the fruit of the vine.

  The two different Greek words used by Mark / Matthew, on the one hand, and Paul / Luke, on the other, point to the two strands contained within this prayer: it is thanks and praise for God’s gift. Yet this praise returns as blessing over the gift, as we read in I Timothy 4:4-5: “Everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving (eucharistia); for then it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.” At the Last Supper (and earlier at the multiplication of loaves, Jn 6:11), Jesus takes up this tradition. The words of institution belong within this context of prayer; the thanksgiving leads to blessing and to transformation.

  From her earliest days, the Church has understood the words of consecration not simply as a kind of quasi-magical command, but as part of her praying in and with Jesus; as a central part of the praise and thanksgiving through which God’s earthly gift is given to us anew in the form of Jesus’ body and blood, as God’s gift of himself in his Son’s self-emptying love. Louis Bouyer has attempted to trace the development of the Christian eucharistía—the Eucharistic Prayer—from the Jewish berakah. Thus we can understand how the name “Eucharist” came to be applied to the whole of the new act of worship given to us by Jesus. We will return to this theme later, in the fourth section of this chapter.

  The second action to note is that Jesus “broke the bread”. The breaking of bread for all is in the first instance a function of the head of the family, who by this action in some sense represents God the Father, who gives us everything, through the earth’s bounty, that we need for life. It is also a gesture of hospitality, through which the stranger is given a share in what is one’s own; he is welcomed into table fellowship. Breaking and distributing: it is the act of distributing that creates community. This archetypally human gesture of giving, sharing, and uniting acquires an entirely new depth in Jesus’ Last Supper through his gift of himself. God’s bountiful distribution of gifts takes on a radical quality when the Son communicates and distributes himself in the form of bread.

  This gesture of Jesus has thus come to symbolize the whole mystery of the Eucharist: in the Acts of the Apostles and in early Christianity generally, the “breaking of bread” designates the Eucharist. In this sacrament we enjoy the hospitality of God, who gives himself to us in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. Thus breaking bread and distributing it—the act of attending lovingly to those in need—is an intrinsic dimension of the Eucharist.

  “Caritas”, care for the other, is not an additional sector of Christianity alongside worship; rather, it is rooted in it and forms part of it. The horizontal and the vertical are inseparably linked in the Eucharist, in the “breaking of bread”. In this dual action of praise / thanksgiving and breaking / distributing that is recounted at the beginning of the institution narrative, the essence of the new worship established by Christ through the Last Supper, Cross, and Resurrection is made manifest: here the old Temple worship is abolished and at the same time brought to its fulfillment.

  Let us now turn to the words spoken over the bread. The accounts of Mark and Matthew simply say: “This is my body”, whereas Paul and Luke add: “which is given for you”. This addition makes explicit what is contained in the act of distributing. When Jesus speaks of his body, he is obviously not referring to the body as opposed to the soul or the spirit, but to the whole, flesh-and-blood person. In this sense, as Rudolf Pesch rightly observes: “Jesus’ interpretation of the bread presupposes the particular meaning of his person. The disciples could understand that he was saying: this is I myself, the Messiah” (Markusevangelium II, p. 357).

  But how can this be? Jesus, after all, is standing there in the midst of his disciples—what is he doing? He is bringing to fulfillment what he had said in the Good Shepherd discourse: “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (Jn 10:18). His life will be taken from him on the Cross, but here he is already laying it down. He transforms his violent death into a free act of self-giving for others and to others.

  And he also says: “I have power to lay [my life] down, and I have power to take it again” (ibid.). He gives his life, knowing that in so doing he is taking it up again. The act of giving his life includes the Resurrection. Therefore, by way of anticipation, he can already distribute himself, because he is already offering his life—himself—and in the process receiving it again. So it is that he can already institute the sacrament in which he becomes the grain of wheat that dies, the sacrament in which he distributes himself to men through the ages in the real multiplication of loaves.

  The words spoken over the chalice, which we must now consider, are of extraordinary theological depth. As indicated earlier, three Old Testament texts are woven together in these few words, so that the whole of earlier salvation history is summarized in them and once more made present.

  First there is Exodus 24:8—the sealing of the Covenant on Sinai; then there is Jeremiah 31:31—the promise of the New Covenant amid the crisis of the Covenant’s history, a crisis whose clearest manifestations were the destruction of the Temple and the Babylonian exile; finally there is Isaiah 53:12—the mysterious promise of the Suffering Servant, who bears the sins of many and so brings about their salvation.

  Let us now try to understand these three texts in their individual meanings and in terms of their new interrelationship. According to the account of Exodus 24, the Sinai Covenant rested on two elements: first, on the “blood of the covenant”, the blood of sacrificed animals with which the altar—as the symbol of God—and the people were sprinkled, and second, on God’s word and Israel’s promise of obedience: “Behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words”, as Moses said solemnly after the ritual sprinkling. Immediately before this, the people had responded to the reading of the book of the covenant: “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient” (Ex 24:7-8).

  This promise of obedience, which is an indispensable element of the Covenant, was broken immediately afterward while Moses was on the mountain, through the worship of the golden calf. The entire history that follows is a tale of repeated violations of the promise of obedience, as can be seen both in the historical books of the Old Testament and in the books of the Prophets. The rupture seems beyond repair when God hands his people over
to exile and the Temple to destruction.

  At this moment, the hope of a “new covenant” arises, one that is no longer built upon the perennially fragile fidelity of the human will but that is written indestructibly on men’s hearts (cf. Jer 31:33). In other words, the New Covenant must be founded on an obedience that is irrevocable and inviolable. This obedience, now located at the very root of human nature, is the obedience of the Son, who made himself a servant and took all human disobedience upon himself in his obedience even unto death, suffered it right to the end, and conquered it.

  God cannot simply ignore man’s disobedience and all the evil of history; he cannot treat it as if it were inconsequential or meaningless. Such “mercy”, such “unconditional forgiveness” would be that “cheap grace” to which Dietrich Bonhoeffer rightly objected in the face of the appalling evil encountered in his day. That which is wrong, the reality of evil, cannot simply be ignored; it cannot just be left to stand. It must be dealt with; it must be overcome. Only this counts as true mercy. And the fact that God now confronts evil himself, because men are incapable of doing so—therein lies the “unconditional” goodness of God, which can never be opposed to truth or the justice that goes with it. “If we are faithless, he remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself”, writes Paul to Timothy (2 Tim 2:13).

  This faithfulness of his means that he acts not only as God toward men, but also as man toward God, in this way establishing the Covenant irrevocably. So the figure of the Suffering Servant who bears the sins of many (Is 53:12) goes hand in hand with the promise of the new and indestructible covenant. This planting of the covenant in men’s hearts, in mankind itself, in such a way that it can no longer be destroyed, takes place through the vicarious suffering of the Son who has become a servant. Ever since, standing against the whole flood of filth and evil is the obedience of the Son, in whom God himself suffered, and hence this obedience always infinitely surpasses the growing mass of evil (cf. Rom 5:16-20).

  The blood of animals could neither “atone” for sin nor bring God and men together. It could only be a sign of hope, anticipating a greater obedience that would be truly redemptive. In Jesus’ words over the chalice, all this is summed up and fulfilled: he gives us the “new covenant in his blood”. “His blood”—that is, the total gift of himself, in which he suffers to the end all human sinfulness and repairs every breach of fidelity by his unconditional fidelity. This is the new worship, which he establishes at the Last Supper, drawing mankind into his vicarious obedience. Our participation in Christ’s body and blood indicates that his action is “for many”, for us, and that we are drawn into the “many” through the sacrament.

  Now there is one further expression in Jesus’ words of institution that needs to be explained, one that has been extensively debated in recent times. According to Mark and Matthew, Jesus said that his blood would be shed “for many”, echoing Isaiah 53, whereas in Paul and Luke we read of the blood being given or poured out “for you”.

  Recent theology has rightly underlined the use of the word “for” in all four accounts, a word that may be considered the key not only to the Last Supper accounts, but to the figure of Jesus overall. His entire being is expressed by the word “pro-existence”—he is there, not for himself, but for others. This is not merely a dimension of his existence, but its innermost essence and its entirety. His very being is a “being-for”. If we are able to grasp this, then we have truly come close to the mystery of Jesus, and we have understood what discipleship is.

  But what does “poured out for many” mean? In his seminal work The Eucharistic Words of Jesus (1935), Joachim Jeremias set out to demonstrate that the word “many” in the institution narratives is a Semitism and must therefore be read, not in terms of Greek usage, but in terms of the corresponding Old Testament texts. He tried to prove that the word “many” in the Old Testament means “the totality” and is therefore most accurately translated as “all”. This thesis quickly gained ground at the time and became part of received theological thinking. On this basis, during the words of consecration, the word “many” has been translated in a number of languages as “all”. “Shed for you and for all” is how the faithful in many countries today hear the words of Jesus during the Mass.

  Meanwhile, though, this consensus among exegetes has broken down once more. The prevailing opinion today is that “many” in Isaiah 53 and similar passages does indeed indicate a totality, but it cannot simply be equated with “all”. On the basis of Qumranic usage, it is now generally held that “many” in Isaiah and on the lips of Jesus means the “totality” of Israel (cf. Pesch, Abendmahl, pp. 99-100; Wilckens, Theologie des Neuen Testaments 1/2, p. 84). It was only when the Gospel was brought to the Gentiles that the universal horizon of Jesus’ death and atonement came to the fore, embracing Jews and Gentiles equally.

  Recently the Viennese Jesuit Norbert Baumert together with Maria-Irma Seewann has put forward an interpretation of “for many” that in its principal outline had already been developed by Joseph Pascher in his book Eucharistia (1947). The essence of the thesis is this: according to the linguistic structure of the text, “being poured out” refers, not to the blood, but to the cup; on this interpretation, “the passage refers to an active outpouring of the blood from the chalice, by which divine life itself is liberally bestowed, without any reference to the action of executioners” (Baumert and Seewann, “Eucharistie”, Gregorianum 89/3:507). The words spoken over the chalice would relate, not to the event of Jesus’ death on the Cross and its consequences, but to the sacramental action, and this would also shed light on the word “many”: whereas Jesus’ death applies “for all”, the range of the sacrament is more limited. It comes to many, but not to all (cf. ibid., especially p. 511).

  From a strictly philological point of view, this solution can be successfully applied to Mark’s text in 14:24. If Matthew’s version is deemed simply to reproduce Mark’s, then it would appear that the words spoken at the Last Supper have been convincingly explained. The allusion to the difference between the range of the Eucharist and the universal range of Jesus’ death on the Cross is helpful in any case and can take us a step farther. But the problem of the word “many” is still only partly explained.

  For we have yet to consider Jesus’ fundamental interpretation of his mission in Mark 10:45, which likewise features the word “many”: “For the Son of man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Here he is clearly speaking of the sacrifice of his life, and so it is obvious that Jesus is taking up the Suffering Servant prophecy from Isaiah 53 and linking it to the mission of the Son of Man, giving it a new interpretation.

  What are we to make of this? It strikes me as both presumptuous and naive to seek to shed light on Jesus’ consciousness and to try to explain it in terms of what he could or could not have thought, given our knowledge of the period and its theological outlook. The most we can say is that he knew that the mission of the Suffering Servant and the mission of the Son of Man were being fulfilled in himself. This linking together of the two elements also represented an expansion of the mission of the Suffering Servant in terms of universalization, giving it greater breadth and depth.

  We can see, then, that the infant Church was slowly arriving at a deeper understanding of Jesus’ mission and that the disciples‘ “remembering”, under the guidance of God’s Spirit (cf. Jn 14:26), was gradually beginning to grasp the whole of the mystery behind Jesus’ words. First Timothy 2:6 speaks of Jesus Christ as the one mediator between God and men “who gave himself as a ransom for all”. The universal salvific meaning of Jesus’ death is here made crystal clear.

  In the writings of Paul and John we can find answers to the question about the scope of Jesus’ saving work, answers that are historically differentiated yet fully in harmony with one another and that indirectly answer the many / all problem. Paul tells the Romans that the Gentiles “in full number” (plērōma) must attain salvation and that all Israel
will be saved (cf. 11:25-26). John says that Jesus will die “for the people” (the Jews), but not only for the people: also in order to gather together into unity the scattered children of God (cf. 11:50-52). Jesus died for Jews and Gentiles, for the whole of mankind.

  If Isaiah used the word “many” to refer essentially to the totality of Israel, then as the Church responds in faith to Jesus’ new use of the word, it becomes increasingly clear that he did indeed die for all.

  In 1921, the Protestant theologian Ferdinand Kattenbusch tried to show that Jesus’ words of institution at the Last Supper constituted the act of founding the Church. With these words, he argued, Jesus gave his disciples something new that bound them together and made them into a community. Kattenbusch was right: with the Eucharist, the Church herself was established. Through Christ’s body, the Church became one, she became herself, and at the same time, through his death, she was opened up to the breadth of the world and its history.

  The Eucharist is also a visible process of gathering. In each locality, as well as beyond all localities, it involves entering into communion with the living God, who inwardly draws people together. The Church comes into being from the Eucharist. She receives her unity and her mission from the Eucharist. She is derived from the Last Supper, that is to say, from Christ’s death and Resurrection, which he anticipated in the gift of his body and blood.

  4. From the Last Supper to the Sunday Morning Eucharist

  In Paul and Luke, the words “This is my body which is given for you” are followed by the instruction to repeat the action: “Do this in remembrance of me!” Paul repeats the instruction in a more detailed form after the words over the chalice. Mark and Matthew make no reference to this instruction, but since the concrete form of their accounts is shaped by liturgical usage, it is clear that they too understood these words to be instituting something: they understood that what happened here for the first time was to be continued in the community of disciples.