we read these passages concerning Jesus’ baptism and his temptations, we remember that the Catechism wants us to read these as mysteries of Jesus to which he joins us so that we live them and he also lives them in us (521).
Jesus’ baptism and his temptations belong together, for the Holy Spirit who descended upon Jesus during his baptism immediately drove him into the desert to be tempted by the devil (Mk 1:12-13; CCC 538). His baptism is his voluntary identification with us in the misery of our sins so that through his faithful obedience to the Father as one of us “in all things but sin” we might be adopted as beloved children of God. The Father delights in the Son and in this ministry of mercy and redemption (536). The Holy Spirit immediately drives him into the desert to endure the temptations facing humanity, so that Jesus might recapitulate the temptations that Adam faced (539).
The meaning of the two events together can be summed up in the verse from the Letter to the Hebrews, “For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sinning” (Heb 4:15; CCC 540). The baptism concerns his entering into our weakness; the temptations, his rebuffing of all attacks testing his “filial attitude toward God” (538).
The Letter to the Hebrews goes on to invite us to have utter confidence that we will receive all the grace we need to have this same “filial attitude” in the face of temptations that assault us in our daily lives (see 4:16). We can know that it will be Jesus, who has already “vanquished the Tempter for us” (540) who will be living in us. He has united us to himself so that we never need face difficulties on our own or through our own strength.
Day 76
CCC 541-553
The Kingdom
Today we continue reading of the way in which Jesus draws each of us to share in the mystery of his life. As the Catechism will explain, the single Greek word for “mystery” has two dimensions to it and so came to be translated into Latin by two terms, mysterium (mystery) and sacramentum (sacrament): “sacramentum emphasizes the visible sign of the hidden reality of salvation which was indicated by the term mysterium” (see 774). Jesus’ whole life is the mystery in both these senses, for all that he said and did, all that is visible in him, is the sacramentum that draws us into the hidden mysterium of his divine sonship and saving work.
This mystery is expressed in “the Kingdom of God,” a phrase which depicts the Father’s will to save all people by gathering them around God the Son into the family of God. Jesus’ preaching and miracles, his acts of love and healing, his eating with sinners, and his casting out of demons are the sacramentum that reveal the kingdom, the hidden reality, or mysterium, of salvation.
From the very beginning of his ministry Jesus proclaimed this kingdom (541), for he was sent from the Father to “draw all men to myself” (Jn 12:32), and the proclamation of the kingdom was the entire focus of all that he said and did during his earthly life. The hidden work of salvation was achieved and revealed above all in the “Easter mystery,” the “Paschal mystery,” in which the sacramentum of the Cross and Resurrection express the mysterium of God’s redeeming love, and Jesus’ kingdom overthrows the kingdom of the devil (550).
Today we enter into that kingdom, and are joined to the work of salvation, through the Church — the gathering of people around Jesus that the Son established through his appointment of Simon Peter and the Twelve. Jesus associated these men forever with his kingdom, and it is through them that he “directs the Church” (551).
Day 77
CCC 554-560
The Transfiguration and Entry into Jerusalem
The more we understand, the more God can show us. As soon as Saint Peter understood that Jesus was the Christ, Jesus could begin showing him what this really meant, the King of unconquerable love who would suffer and die but rise triumphant and undefeated.
But every act of understanding is hard won, for the fallen mind is dull, the heart obtuse (see 37): “Peter scorns this prediction, nor do the others understand it any better than he” (554). As we saw, God’s pedagogy is gradual and in stages (53), and the Blessed Trinity works always to open the eyes of our mind to understand the true nature of reality. And now “for a moment Jesus discloses his divine glory” (555). Jesus reveals more of his divinity in order to help the disciples receive more fully the depths of love in God’s saving plan (see the quotation from the Byzantine Liturgy in 555). In the end it is only children, the angels, and “God’s poor” who will have the simplicity and insight to see Christ’s glory, revealed in his humility, and welcome him into Jerusalem as the true King, bringing salvation (559).
All that the Father reveals to us, through Christ and the Holy Spirit, is for the sake of our own entering into the new life of grace made possible by the Son’s Incarnation. Jesus has united his life to ours so we might unite ours to his (521). In the Transfiguration we are shown a glimpse of our blessed future in Christ — the glorious resurrected body — and by this glimpse we are given the added strength we need now to follow the way that Christ has shown us. Again we notice the double way in which this whole section invites us to share in the life of Christ — through the events of everyday life in which the perfect will of the Father may be received and through the grace of the sacraments and the liturgical year (556, 559-560).
Day 78
CCC 571-573
The Passion, Death and Burial of Jesus
These short introductory paragraphs lead us to the center of the Good News. That center is the “Paschal mystery”: the events concerning Jesus that took place around the Jewish Feast of Pasch, or Passover — his passion, death and burial, and then his resurrection. We are at the very center here because, the Catechism tells us, these events mark the accomplishment of God’s saving plan. The final and definitive nature of this accomplishment is underlined by the phrase taken from the Letter to the Hebrews: “once for all” (9:26). With the death and resurrection of Jesus, God’s plan is complete. As Jesus said, “It is finished” (Jn 19:30). Jesus, having loved his own, has loved them to the end. Having been obedient to his Father, he has been obedient to the end. In the words of Saint Irenaeus, quoted in CCC 518, Jesus has now “experienced all the stages of life” and by this has made possible the gift of “communion with God to all men.”
These paragraphs impress upon us that this accomplishment was achieved in a “historical, concrete form” (572). God’s plan is not accomplished in the realm of ideas or ideals; its accomplishment was achieved at a particular time and place. It took place in the flesh. There are historical records that record the events (573). In the pages to come, the Catechism will refer time and again to the factual nature of this completion of God’s plan.
A final point worth noting is the reference to the Church’s faithfulness to the interpretation Jesus gave “of ‘all the Scriptures’” (572). We know that “all divine Scripture” speaks of Christ (134). We see here that he is also its interpreter. It is Jesus himself who taught the disciples, and it is the Church’s faithfulness to this interpretation that underlies her God-given teaching.
Day 79
CCC 574-576
Jesus and Israel
The paragraphs we read today
