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Italian version
 The
first book of Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, will be out
in April. From Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, centred
on the person of Jesus, the volume, as the Pontiff writes in the
preface, offers us some method indications to read the Bible and
understand who Christ really is. The Rizzoli Printing Press of the
volume has recently released some passages on which we have asked Don
Fabio Corazzina to give us an explanation. Born at Castenedolo in the
province of Brescia in 1960, a diocesan Priest since 1984, committed to
an oratory as well as to the youth pastoral work, Don Fabio has followed
the objectors of conscience and several experiences of international
voluntary services in zones of conflicts. For the past two years he has
been the national co-ordinator of Italian Pax Christi.
In the Preface of the book, dated September 30, feast of St. Jerome, the
Pope writes, “This book is not an absolutely magisterial act, but only
an expression of my personal seeking the face of the Lord”. Is it a
passionate narration, fruit of an interior journey, which we can
approach in order to understand the complex personality of the
theologian Ratzinger?
I
think that the book rather than a way of understanding the complex
personality of the theologian Ratzinger, according to the intention of
its author, wants to escape this worry. In Ratzinger, I catch the will
of penetrating the very mystery of the Life of Jesus of Nazareth. In
order to do it, he actually detaches himself from the systematic and
rational worry of some kinds of theology, to follow the theology
emerging from the life of Jesus of Nazareth and from humanity. The way
Jesus has spoken of God and of his relation with the Father is
wonderful; the way we shall narrate this encounter will be equally
wonderful only if our encounter has taken place through a real
experience of faith, through a vital and daily syntony with his Gospel.
If there is a magisterial act, we can find it only in life, in the
testimony, in the coherence with the Gospel of love on behalf of the
individual faithful and the people of God, namely the Church. No
theologian can presume to say and to explain the truth in this sense. It
is a truth not disposable in dogmatic theology, but open to the
conscience, to wisdom and History. It is a choral and coloured truth, a
donated truth demanding the gift of one’s own life.
In some ample passages of the Preface spread during the latest month, we
read, “Each person is free to contradict me”. This attitude reveals a
great humility on behalf of the Pope. Do you think that this book may
arouse debates and polemics on behalf of those dedicated to this work?
No
one can impose Faith under dogmatic beatings and theological dictates.
More than humility, I find an intelligent openness in his words. In a
Church where they denounce that the debate is does not exist any longer
and that the voices “outside the choir” cannot stay under the same roof,
I find interesting the choice of re-proposing the debate and
confrontation on the figure and experience of Jesus. It is a reminder
for the Christians to accept a return to the journey of
re-evangelisation, which may make them less improvised, presuming and
violent before others. I hope also that it may be a way of saying that
we look with immense sympathy at the whole world, at all men and women
in spiritual, serious and concrete research. After all, Jesus is not
“ours”: He is a gift for all men and women. Now the only way of
acknowledging this is to accept that others also may encounter and
narrate him, sometimes independently from us and in spite of us.
Ratzinger says that his book is the expression of his personal research
of the “Face of the Lord”. I like to think that the humble research of
the face of Jesus and our returning to the Gospel may help us first to
overcome the barriers that divide the Christians and that the ecumenical
journey may find again a further proposing launching.
Which teaching can we draw from this book, as far as we can understand
from these anticipations? Above all, how can we taste it to enrich our
own consecration to God?
As
far as I can understand from the short available passages, I can see
that Ratzinger starts from a passionate confession: “I trust the
Gospels”. I think that giving afresh a home to the Gospel and the
Gospels in our daily life is a beautiful perspective. It is good to give
again a home to hope and to the perspective that the Kingdom of God is
not simply a fruit of calculation, of rationality, institutions,
projects and evaluations. The kingdom finds its fullness only if, near
what I have said above, there is still some space for the Father who
does not forsake the Son and his children. He rather fills them with his
love. To consecrate our life to God means to offer ourselves
passionately to this world as a sign of hope. It is to offer, with our
life, a spring-like announcement of freshness to humanity under fears,
depression and guilt-feelings. This humanity is our monastery, our
church, hour home, just as humanity was the home of Jesus in his time.
The Pope, who began to write this book before his election to the See of
Peter, explains that since the year Fifty the tearing off between the
“Jesus of history” and the “Jesus of faith” went on becoming “ever
ampler”. He goes on saying that the progress of the critical-historic
research “led to ever subtler distinctions” and the figure of Christ
behind them “became more and more uncertain with always less defined
contours”. What is today’s situation seen from this viewpoint? Whom
should we attribute the fault to?
I
feel to catch a glimpse of what is happening when we approach man,
woman, humanity. Several sciences, like psychology, sociology, genetic ,
cybernetic, informatics, historiography, geography, philosophy and
anthropology try to go deep into the remotest elements “to understand”,
to justify every movement of freedom and explain it, namely to imprison
and to make it calculable, determined and consequently controllable.
They have tried to do the same thing with Jesus but, we cannot deny it,
what fascinates us is his entire life, his journey, the time He spent
among us, a time full of love, of desiring the truth and transparency,
freedom, welcome and forgiveness.
Before worrying about defending ourselves and attributing faults to
others, as Church we should defend ourselves from the tentative of
changing Jesus into a little idol at the service of our projects and of
justifying our behaviours and language. Perhaps it is the time of
freeing Jesus from the interpretative theories, which flow uniquely from
the Western world, in order to open our heart to the encounter others
have experienced with him, allowing their narration to fascinate us. How
do Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East narrate Jesus?
Before the “dramatic situation of faith, which renders uncertain its
authentic point of reference: the intimate friendship with Jesus, from
which everything depends”, the theological reflection of the Pope wants
to be a tentative of presenting the Jesus of the Gospel as the true
Jesus, as the historical
Jesus in the true sense of the expression”. Will his intention succeed?
These
years, the interest for Jesus goes on increasing both in believers and
unbelievers, in romance authors and inveterate agnostics who would like
to prove the historical inconsistency, on behalf of scholars and
pilgrims. The motives of this interest are several: an increased
availability of documentation at everybody’s disposal; a decided
re-evaluation of spiritual life after the wave of secularisation, a
natural growth of ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue, a commitment
to live a mature and conscientious faith, less based on infantile
axioms.
To
approach the life of Jesus demands simultaneously to acknowledge the
jump of quality, which He provokes in the life of humanity and to look
at the life of today’s man with an increased desire of sharing and
courage of listening. In his prolusion during the Verona Congress, Don
Giulio Brambilla offered us a good method: “A Christian
anthropological thought, namely a philosophy/pedagogy of man together
with a theology of history, will find its strength of cultural radiation
only if it starts and constantly goes back to the practical forms of
life. If it goes back to the daily experience of persons, to the
existence of men and women who will ask us whether in Verona we have
only discussed on them or whether we have experienced the passion of
their real life.
This
we must truly learn! If the text of Ratzinger aims at provoking a
discussion on Jesus, it will be a further lost occasion. However, I
believe that Ratzinger wants to avoid this risk.
Besides the preface, part of the introduction is out, entitled, “A first
glance at the secret of Jesus”. The Pope says that the teaching of Jesus
does not derive from a human learning. In fact, It comes “from his
immediate contact with the Father, from a vis-à-vis dialogue, from
seeing what is in the womb of the Father”. This underlining is also the
beginning of the extra-ordinary act of love fulfilled by the Pope. What
do you think of it?
It is
beautiful to catch the wonder of Ratzinger who declares “inexplicable”
the message and proposal of Jesus to the schools of his time. There
exists no historical, educative, cultural and generational determinism;
what exists is the freedom of growing and of choosing, thus improving
our time and our territory. We cannot dispose of Jesus for any scheme
and every limited tentative. Jesus saves because he announces to
humanity the possibility of overcoming the limit. Jesus is a saviour who
opens, with his presence, journeys of liberation long waited for, long
desired journeys, which are not available in humanity.
In
the introduction, Ratzinger specifies, “In order to know Jesus, it is
fundamental the recurring hint to the fact that He withdrew on to the
“mountain” where he prayed for the whole night “all alone” with
the Father. These hints dispel somehow the veil of mystery, allowing us
to catch a glimpse of the filial existence of Jesus, to discover the
strong source of his actions, of his teaching and suffering. The prayer
of Jesus is a speaking of the Son with the Father, in which the human
conscience, the human will and soul of Jesus are involved, so that men’s
“prayer” may become a participation in the communion of the Son with the
Father”. The spirituality of our daily life does not consist only in
seeing the fatigues and defeats, the violence
and
injustice tragically practised by humanity, but also in seeing that the
human will and conscience get involved in love and in doing good,
With what spirit will you take in hand this text? What do you expect
from reading it?
I
catch the spirit with which to read this text from my dear friend and
master, Don Tonino Bello. In a pastoral project he suggested, “Let us
dissipate every equivoque. We cannot announce the Word only with
“words”. We must announce it also with our life, with gestures and
praxis. Indeed, when life, gestures and praxis have a soul and do not
depart from Jesus, they become privileged vehicles of the Word.
Therefore, the Church evangelises not only when she preaches, but also
when she contemplates, prays and loves. She evangelises when she serves
silently, when she takes off his dress to give it to the poor and
suffers for them. She evangelises not only with what she says, but
mainly with what she is and she does. It is a pity that in the Church
often words are not followed by facts and many facts are not crossed by
the Word”.
I
would like to read this text confessing my love for humanity, for the
Church, for the least ones, for Jesus, his words, gestures and life, so
that “my deeds” and gestures may be crossed by the Word, that is by
Jesus.
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