Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus of Nazareth WRITTEN BY Pope Benedict XVI PUBLISHED BY Doubleday Publishing, Steubenville, OH, 2005, ISBN: 0385523416, Hardcover, pp. 374, $32.00 CND 

"It struck me as the most urgent priority to present the figure and the message of Jesus in his public ministry, and so to foster the growth of a living relationship with him." These words from the foreword of Jesus of Nazareth announce the urgency Pope Benedict XVI feels in writing this book.

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI has been anxious about the world for some time now, and has pondered the spiritual and theological results from the (post)modern fragmentation and gross materialism of Western civilization with insight in many of his writings.

The Pope's brilliance stems from the fact that he reads the Bible and all of the Christian tradition from a holistic point of view, some thing that demands great intelligence, humility, respect for true diversity, and spirituality. In doing so, he opposes our greed and spiritual wasteland.

However, rather than scolding us (as his opponents feared he would do upon becoming Pope), his Jesus of Nazareth is fast-paced-an intellectually and spiritually challenging must read. It centres on Jesus from the view that the Hebrew (Old Testament) and Greek (New Testament) Scriptures are united in their revelation about God and Jesus Christ.

Concerning the unity of the Bible, he writes that "Modern exegesis [biblical interpretation] has brought to light the process of constant rereading that forged the words transmitted in the Bible into Scripture: Older texts are reappropriated, reinterpreted, and read with new eyes in new contexts. They become Scripture by being read anew, evolving in continuity with their original sense, tacitly corrected and given added depth and breadth of meaning. This is a process in which the word gradually unfolds its inner potentialities, already somehow present like seeds, but needing the challenge of new situations, new experiences and new sufferings, in order to open up."

These words rise from the elegant spirituality of Catholicism, the kind that was slowly, painstakingly begun by the Church fathers (Origen, Augustine), and brought to fruition in medieval France (Bernard of Clairvaux, the University of Paris, the great monastic movements of Cluny and the Cistercians) and later in Spain (Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Ignatius of Loyola), and modern Europe (the Cure d'Ars, Padre Pio). This depth-oriented practice requires patience and self-discipline, something most of us, Protestant, Catholic, or indifferent, no longer possess.

Given how modern liberal and biblical scholarship has ripped open and deconstructed the Bible and the Christian tradition, this call to unity and reintegration of Scripture and of the entire tradition calls us towards a renewed and more mature, yet humble appreciation of Catholic spirituality. The Pontiff accepts modern biblical scholarship but also calls for lectio divina, the ancient art of prayerfully reciting Scripture, something that all Christians can do.

The Pope not only unites all of Scripture, but all of tradition. He turns to St. Francis of Assisi when examining the Beatitudes. He notes that "The saints are the true interpreters of Holy Scripture. The meaning of a given passage of the Bible becomes most intelligible in those human beings who have been totally transfixed by it and have lived it out. Interpretation of Scripture can never be a purely academic affair, and it cannot be relegated to the purely historical."

After writing this, Benedict XVI repeats an important theme of the book: "Scripture is full of potential for the future, a potential that can only be opened up when someone 'lives through' and 'suffers through' the sacred text. Francis of Assisi was gripped in an utterly radical way by the promise of the first Beatitude, to the point that he even gave away his garments and let himself be clothed anew by the bishop." Francis' action "was the deepest possible openness to Christ" and was therefore "a corrective to the Church of his day, which, through the feudal system, had lost the freedom and dynamism of missionary outreach."

Although Pope Benedict XVI is undoubtedly one of the greatest and most influential theologians of our day, and although he refers to a great deal of scholarship in this book, he has not written a purely academic work.

This highly intellectual though non-specialist book is pastorally and spiritually oriented. In fact, the Holy Father reflects on Jesus' admonition of the learned of his day: "It is not the Scripture experts, those who are professionally concerned with God, who recognize him; they are too caught up in the intricacies of their detailed knowledge. Their great learning distracts them from simply gazing upon the whole, upon the reality of God as he reveals himself--for people who know so much about the complexity of the issues, it seems that it just cannot be so simple."

Pope Benedict has faithfully obeyed Jesus' warning about scholarly arrogance, and has written a humble, deep book that repeatedly highlights the simplicity of Jesus and His message.

The Pope offers no theological surprises, but the moral message does pack an uncomfortable, insightful bite: "The aid offered by the West to developing countries has been purely technically and materially based, and not only has left God out of the picture, but has driven men away from God. And this aid, proudly claiming to 'know better,' is itself what first turned the 'third world' into what we mean today by that term. It has thrust aside indigenous religious, ethical, and social structures and filled the resulting vacuum with its technocratic mind-set."

This book challenges readers to a heart-felt response to Jesus of Nazareth, but it doesn't shortchange their intellects either. It was originally the first part of a planned longer work, but with modest words the Pontiff writes: "As I do not know how much more time or strength I am still to be given, I have decided to publish the first ten chapters, covering the period from the Baptism in the Jordan to Peter's confession on faith and the Transfiguration," as the first of two books.