The Life of Christ by Fulton Sheen

(New York: Word on Fire Classics, 1958/2019), 612

The Life of Christ has been many yers in writing. But the deeper understanding of the unity of Christ and His Cross came when Christ kept the author very close to His Cross in dark and painful hours. Learning comes from books; penetration of a mystery from suffering (xx).

The human family has its trials; so He sanctified them by living in a family (252).

This was my Lenten reading for 2023 after a suggestion to read a life of Christ during Lent from an episode of the Burrowshire podcast I listened to last year. Life of Christ can be thought of as an extended commentary on the Gospels, and it draws continually from Scripture. His language is poetic and powerful. His focus is entirely on Christ and his Cross.

Notes


Contents


Foreword

by Bishop Barron

  • "The organizing principle of Life of Christ is the death of Jesus on the cross" (vii)
  • Yeshuah: Yahweh saves

Introduction

by Father Andrew Apostol, C.F.R.

  • "The Missionary of Charity Sisters told me that Mother Theresa of Calcutta always had a copy of Archbishop Sheen's Life of Christ with her!" (xi)
  • Pope John Paul II to Sheen: "You have written and spoken well of the Lord Jesus! You have been a loyal son of the Church!" (xiii)

Preface

  • Time preference: "There are only two philosophies of life: one is first the feast, then the headache; the other is first the fast and then the feast. Deferred joys purchased by sacrifice are always sweetest and most enduring" (xvii)
  • "Jesus reserved His most scathing outbursts for those who were sinners and denied sin" (xviii)
  • See other lives of Christ by Guiseppe Ricciotti, Grandmaison, and Lagrange (xix bib)
  • "Of the many translations of Scripture we have chosen the Knox translations the best, using the Rheims Douay version only in a very few texts" (xx)
  • "The Life of Christ has been many yers in writing. But the deeper understanding of the unity of Christ and His Cross came when Christ kept the author very close to His Cross in dark and painful hours. Learning comes from books; penetration of a mystery from suffering" (xx).

Chapter 1: The Only Person Ever Pre-announced

  • "What separates Christ rom all men is that first He was expected...A second distinguishing fact is that once He appeared, He struck history with such impact that He split it in two...Even those who deny God must date their attacks upon Him...Third He came into the world to die" (5)

Chapter 2: Early Life of Christ

  • "If He was not what He said He was, the Christ, the Son of God, He was the anti-Christ! If he was only a man, then He was not even a 'good' man" (7, cf. 2013-04-03-Mere Christianity)
  • "He will not allow us to pick and choose among His words" (8)
  • "By pronouncing Fiat Mary achieved the full role of womanhood, namely, to be the bearer of God's gifts to man." (8)
  • John 1: "One single Word which reaches the abyss of all things that are known and can be known" (13)
  • "God writes his name on the soul of every man." (13)
  • "When finally the scrolls of history are completed down to the last words in time, the saddest line of all will be: 'There was no room in the inn.'" (15)
  • "Divinity is alwasy where one least expects to find it. Because he was born in a cave, all who wish to see Him must stoop." (16-17)
  • "The Cross was there from the beginning, and it cast its shadow backward to His birth." (18)
  • Jesus is from Israel and yet distinct from it (27, cf. 2022-12-25-Jesus of Nazareth The Infancy Narratives)
  • "In the Circumcision of the Divine Child there was a dim suggestion and hint of Calvary, in the precocious surrendering of blood." (29)
  • The Presentation:
    • "The mother who brought the Lamb of God into the world had no lamb to offer—except the Lamb of God." (30)
    • "In a poor Child brought by poor people making a poor offering, Simeon discovered the riches of the world." (31)
  • "Head knowledge is worthless, unless accompanied by submission of the will and right action." (37)
  • "The only acts of Christ's childhood which are recorded are acts of obedience—obedience to His Heavenly Father and to His earthly parents." (50)
  • Baptism:
    • "The object of His baptism was the same as the object of His birth, namely, to identify Himself with sinful humanity." (54)
    • "In the waters of the Jordan He was identified with sinners; in the baptism of His Death, He would bear the full burden of their guilt." (56)

Chapter 3: The Three Short Cuts from the Cross

  • "The only way one can ever prove love is by making an act of choice." (60)
  • "The entire history of the world revolves around two persons, Adam and Christ." (61)
  • Seven deadly sins: "The temptations of man are easy enough to analyze, because they always fall into one of three categories: they either pertain to the flesh (lust and gluttony), or to the mind (pride and envy), or to the idolatrous love of things (greed)." (62)
  • Faith and Reason: "Faith in God must never contradict reason." (67, and Scientism on 68)

Chapter 4: The Lamb of God

  • "God has at last provided a lamb." (74)

Chapter 5: The Beginning of "The Hour"

  • "Evil can tolerate mediocrity, but not supreme goodness." (83)
  • Wedding at Cana: "The unconscious waters saw their God and blushed" (85, cf. Richard Crashaw)

Chapter 6: The Temple of His Body

  • "Temples can be constructed of flesh and bone as well as of stone and wood. Christ's Body was a Temple, because the fullness of God was dwelling in Him corporally." (91)
  • "The true Holy of Holies is the Sacred Heart of the Son of God." (92)

Chapter 7: Nicodemus, the Serpent and the Cross

  • The official "we" is "a trick intellectuals sometimes use to escape personal responsibility; it is meant to imply that if a change is needed it must be for society at large, rather than for their own hearts." (96)
  • "No man in the natural order can call God 'Father'; to do this man would have to become something he is not. He must by a Divine gift share in the nature of God, as he presently shares in the nature of his parents." (98)
  • "The Spirit of God is free and always acts freely. His movements cannot be anticipated by any human calculations." (99)

Chapter 8: Savior of the World

  • "There must always be an emptying of the human heart before there can be a filling with the Divine." (107)
  • "She then did what millions of people have done every since when religion demands a reformation in their conduct: she changed the subject. She was willing to make religion a matter of discussion, but she did not want to make it a matter of decision." (110)
  • "Grace acts as soon as the soul cooperates." (113)
  • "The woman did not say, 'You must believe what I say,' rather she told them, 'Come and see for yourselves.'" (114)
  • "Two classes of people make up the world: those who have found God, and those who are looking for Him...The man who thinks that he knows will rarely find truth; the man who knows he is a miserable, unhappy sinner, like the woman at the well, is closer to peace, joy, and salvation than he knows." (115)

Chapter 9: The First Public Announcement of His Death

  • "The shadow of the Cross was never off Him, even when He rejoiced as a Bridegroom." (121)

Chapter 10: The Choosing of the Twelve

  • G.K. Chesterton: "When it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing around." (123, cf. 2023-06-02-The Twelve Men|The Twelve Men bib)
  • "Peter" and "rock" are the same in Aramaic, as they are in the French "Pierre" (125)

Chapter 11: Beatitudes

  • "The Sermon on the Mount cannot be separated from His Crucifixion." (135)
  • "Our Lord did not belong to His day, any more than He belonged to ours...Because He suited no age, He was the model for all ages." (136)
  • "Repent! Evil that can be put into statistics, or that can be locked in jails, is too late to remedy." (138)
  • "The Sermon on the Mount is so much at variance with all that our world holds dear that the world will crucify anyone who tries to live up to its values. Because Christ preached them, He had to die. Calvary was the price He paid for the Sermon on the Mount. Only mediocrity survives. Those who call black black, and white white, are sentenced for intolerance. Only the grays live." (140)
  • "What he taught was self-crucifixion" (142)
    • → We will suffer one way or another: we can either choose it freely for ourselves, or have it forced upon us (cf. 209 also)

Chapter 12: The Intruder Who Was a Woman

  • "Nothing so much brings one person in contact with another as the confession of sin." (150)

Chapter 13: The Man Who Lost his Head

  • "The wicked fear the good, because the good are a constant reproach on their consciences." (153)

Chapter 14: The Bread of Life

  • "God was pleased to use trivial and insignificant things to fulfill His purposes." (164)
  • "Nature was to go as far as it could, then God supplied the rest. He ordered that the fragments be gathered up; they filled twelve baskets. In the reckoning of men there is always a deficit; in the arithmetic of God, there is always a surplus." (165)

Chapter 15: The Refusal to Be a Bread King

  • John 6: "But this lofty spiritual doctrine was too much for them. The announcement of the Eucharist cracked His followers wide open. No wonder there has been such a division of sects in Christianity when each man decides for himself whether he will accept a segment of the circle of Christ's truth or the whole circle. Our Lord Himself was responsible for this; He asked a faith too much for most men; His doctrine was too sublime. If He had been only a little more worldly-minded, if He had only allowed His words to be treated as figures of speech, and if He had only been less imperative He might have been more popular." (175)

Chapter 16: Purity and Property

  • "The Savior among other subjects dilated particularly on purity and poverty. Unregulated sex could become lust; unregulated desire for property could become avarice." (179)
  • "Charity is to be measured, not by what one has given away, but by what one has left." (185)

Chapter 17: Our Lord's Testimony Concerning Himself

  • "As dust in the room cannot be seen until the light is let in, so no man can know himself until this Light shows him his true condition." (190)
  • "We must either lament His madness or adore His Person." (196, cf. 2013-04-03-Mere Christianity)

Chapter 18: Transfiguration

  • Coming persecution: "As the Cross came nearer, His glory became greater. So it may be that the coming of the anti-Christ or the final crucifixion of the good will be preceded by an extraordinary glory of Christ in His members." (198)

Chapter 19: The Three Quarrelings

  • "No disciple is called to the task that is untried. He had taken the Cross first. Only those who were willing to be crucified with Him could be saved by the merits of His death and only those who bore a Cross could every really understand Him. There was no question of whether or not men would have sacrifice in their lives; it was only a question of which they would sacrifice, the higher or the lower life." (209)
    • → We will suffer one way or another: we can either choose it freely for ourselves, or have it forced upon us (cf. 142 also)
  • "Sacrifice does not mean 'giving-up' something, as if there were a loss; rather it is an exchange: an exchange of lower values for higher joys." (209)
  • "The bestowal of honors in His Kingdom was not a matter of favoritism, but of incorporation to the Cross...James became the patron of all the Red martyrs, who shed their blood because they drink of His cup. John became the symbol of what might be called the White martyrs, who endure physical sufferings and yet die a natural death." (216)
  • "The greater the sinlessness, the greater the sense of the responsibility and awareness of corporate guilt. The truly good man feels the world is the way it is because in some way he has not been better." (219)

Chapter 20: The Attempted Arrest at the Feast of Tabernacles

  • "Jesus could not be taken until he voluntarily surrendered." (222)
  • "Christ was the Tabernacle of God among men." (225)

Chapter 21: Only the Innocent May Condemn

  • "The more base and corrupt a man, the more ready is he to charge crimes to others." (233)
  • Jesus "reconciled justice and mercy in his Incarnation." (235)
  • "Some are exempt from certain vices simply because of the presence of other vices...The respectable sins are the most odious." (237)
  • "He did condemn those who sinned and who denied that they were sinners...Christ proved Himself a friend of sinners, but only of those who admitted that they were sinners...The admission of sin is the condition of coming to Him." (237-238)
  • "He did not make light of sin, for He assumed its burden. Forgiveness cost something and the full price would be paid on the hill of the three Crosses." (240)

Chapter 22: The Good Shepherd

  • "He did not say that there are many doors, nor that it made little difference through which other door one sought the higher life; He did not say that He was a door, but The door." (244)
  • "His teaching had value only because of the Cross." (247)

Chapter 23: The Son of Man

  • "The Son of Man referred to His human nature, which was in Personal union with His Divine nature." (249)
  • "The Son of Man stood for the shame, abasement, and grief which is the human lot...He never used the term after He had redeemed humanity and risen from the dead." (250)
  • "Nothing that was human was foreign to Him. The human family has its trials; so He sanctified them by living in a family." (252)
  • "He could not be a High Priest for man and intercede for man, and pay his debts to the Father, unless He was taken from among men...He had to be God as well as man, otherwise the reparation and Redemption of sinful man would not have value in the sight of God." (254-255)
  • "To die is a humiliation; but to die for others is glorification." (256)

Chapter 24: Caesar or God

  • Jesus' view on freedom (258):
    • Political freedom is not primary
    • True Freedom was spiritual and meant liberation from sin
    • To acquire this Freedom for everyone, Jew and Gentile alike, He would submit Himself voluntarily as a ransom from sin
  • Jn-08: "every one who commits sin is a slave to sin."
  • "The doors of the prison of evil can be unlocked only from the outside and by One Who Himself is not a prisoner." (264)
  • "Truth can be hated when it reveals falsity within." (264)
  • "It is not a mark of greatness always to affirm one's right, but often to suffer an indignity...He would submit Himself to the tax to sanctify the human bonds He wore." (267)

Chapter 25: His Hour Had Not Yet Come

  • Jesus is "the Carpenter who made heaven and earth." (274)
  • "Whenever a man attempt to do what he knows to be the Master's will, a power will be given to him equal to the duty." (276)
  • Rest: "Though God had rested from His creative work, He did not rest from His Providential work of supplying the needs of His creatures." (277)

Chapter 26: The Mightiest Arrow in the Divine Quiver

  • "Miracles are no cure for unbelief...for the will can refuse assent to what the intellect knows to be true." (286)
  • "God's foreknowledge of what will happen does not in any way deprive sinners of their responsibility." (287)
  • "The Cross would show what sin really is: the Crucifixion of Divine Goodness in the flesh." (289)

Chapter 27: More than a Teacher

  • "Mediocrity never arouses such hatred..." (294)
  • "The possession of a soul means the undisturbed mastery of oneself, which is the secret of inner peace...Only when the soul is possessed can anything else be enjoyed." (297)
  • "The only thing to be feared is losing, not human life, but the Divine life which is God." (298)

Chapter 28: The Pagans and the Cross

  • St. Augustine on Lk-07: "Counting himself unworthy that Christ should enter into his doors, he was counted worthy that Christ should enter into his heart." (303)

Chapter 29: The Growing Opposition

  • "He came only to be a sin-bearer, and hence only the sinners and not the self-righteous would profit by His coming." (314)
  • "The sinners who deny there is sin deny thereby the remedy of sin, and thus cut themselves off forever from Him Who came to redeem." (315)
  • "He affirmed the importance of moral conduct as an essential for seeing truth." (318-319)

Chapter 30: The Fox and the Hen

  • "...as a hen gathers her brood under her wings" (cf Lk-13)

Chapter 31: The Resurrection That Prepared His Death

  • "His death was formally decided upon when He showed His powr over death by the resurrection of Lazarus." (329)
  • "God's delays are mysterious; sorrow is sometimes prolonged for the same reason for which it was sent." (331)
  • "As the sun shines on mud and hardens it, and shines on wax and softens it, so too this great miracle of Our Blessed Lord hardened some unto unbelief, and softened others unto belief." (337; Fr. Mike Schmitz used this analogy in Bible in a Year—I wonder if he got it from Sheen)

Chapter 32: The Woman Who Dimly Foresaw His Death

  • Jn-12 ("Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?") is a refutation of the "primacy of the economic" in Marxism / Capitalism (342)

Chapter 33: Entrance into Jerusalem

  • "He who was rich became poor for our sakes, that we might be rich." (345)
  • "Sometimes God pre-empts and requisitions the things of man, as if to remind him that everything is a gift from Him. It is sufficient for those who know Him to hear: 'The Lord hath need of it.'" (346, cf. Lk-19)

Chapter 34: The Visit of the Greeks

  • "By laying bare His own soul, He told the Greeks self-sacrifice was not easy." (355)

Chapter 35: The King's Son Marked for Death

  • "Violence could not be triggered against Him until He would say, 'This is your Hour.'" (365)

Chapter 36: The Last Supper

  • "Freedom must be repurchased in each generation." (367)
  • Jer-31: "I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people."
  • Jesus chose bread and wine because: (1) they symbolize unity; (2) they suffer in being made; (3) they nourish men (317)
  • "All love craves unity. As the highest peak of love in the human order is the unity of husband and wife in the flesh, so the highest unity in the Divine order is the unity of the soul and Christ in communion." (373)
  • "He wanted men not to be readers about His Redemption, but actors in it." (374)

Chapter 37: The Servant of the Servants

  • "When humility comes from the God-man as it does here, it is obvious that it will be through humility that men will go back to God." (380)
  • "A refusal to accept Divine cleansing is exclusion from intimacy with Him." (381)

Chapter 38: Judas

  • "Life's temptations come most often from that for which one has the greatest aptitude." (385)
  • Avoid being Judas by (386):
    • Believing in the bread of life
    • Avoiding the sin of avarice
  • "Though Our Lord held open the door, Judas would not enter...Judas rejected the last appeal, and from that time on there was only despair in his heart." (392-393)

Chapter 39: The Divine Lover's Farewell

  • "That joy of self-sacrifice He promised would be theirs, if they kept His commandments as the commandments of His Father." (399)
  • "To share His life was to share His fate." (403)
  • "Evil has no capital of its own, it is a parasite on goodness." (403)
  • "The enjoyment of peace was not inconsistent with the endurance of tribulation. Peace is in the soul, and comes from union wit hHim, though the body may feel pain. Trials, tribulation, anguish, anxiety are permitted by the very One Who gives peace." (405)
  • "To know the Father one must know the Son; to know the Son, one must have the Spirit." (412)
  • "The gravest sin of all is unbelief in Christ." (414)
  • "Evil could never do anything mightier than slay the Son of God in the flesh. Defeated in that, it could never be victorious again." (415)

Chapter 40: Our Lord's "My Father"

  • Jesus reveals God as Father: "He now emphasized that God is a Father, because of His intimate and paternal attitude toward men." (418)
  • "He asked only that they be kept from sin. Material assault from without must be met by spiritual resistance from within." (420)
  • "Holiness must have a philosophical and theological foundation, namely, Divine truth; otherwise it is sentimentality and emotionalism. Many would say later on, "We want religion, but no creeds." This is like saying we want healing, but no science of medicine; music, but no rules of music; history, but no documents. Religion is indeed a life, but it grows out of truth, not away from it. It has been said it makes no difference what you believe; it all depends on how you act. This is psychological nonsense, for a man acts out of his beliefs. Our Lord placed truth or belief in Him first; then came sanctification and good deeds. But here truth was not a vague ideal, but a Person. Truth was now lovable, because only a Person is lovable. Sanctity becomes the response the heart makes to Divine truth and its unlimited mercy to humanity." (421)
  • 2 Cor-05: "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." (422, cf. Friday Morning Prayer for Ps-51)

Chapter 41: The Agony in the Garden

  • "It is very likely that the Agony in the Garden cost Him far more suffering than even the physical pain of Crucifixion." (428)
  • "Anti-Christ is nothing else but the full unhindered growth of self-will." (431)
  • "He reached up and pulled the whole guilt of the world upon Himself as if He were guilty, paying for the debt in our name, so that we might once more have access to the Father." (432)
  • "Terrible though the agonies and tortures of a single soul be, they were only a drop in the ocean of humanity's guilt which the Savior felt as His own in the Garden." (434)

Chapter 42: The Kiss That Blistered

  • "Those who are bent on evil cannot recognize Divinity even when it stands before them." (436)

Chapter 43: The Religious Trial

  • "Those who have not the capacity to criticize Christ resort to violence." (447)

Chapter 44: The Denials of Peter

  • "The Son of God made Peter, who knew sin, and not John, the Rock upon which He built His Church that sinners and the weak might never despair." (456)

Chapter 45: Trial Before Pilate

  • "The responsibility for His death cannot be put upon any one people, but upon all mankind." (459, cf. CCC 598)
    • "The guilt for the Crucifixion is not to be fixed upon any one nation, race, people, or individual. Sin was the cause of the Crucifixion." (488)
  • Pilate: "Broadmindedness, when it means indifference to right and wrong, eventually ends in a hatred of what is right. He who was so tolerant of error as to deny an Absolute Truth was the one who could crucify Truth." (464)
  • "It is often the fault of practical men, such as Pilate, to regard the search for objective rtuth as useless theorizing." (465)
  • "Religion is not to be given to everyone, but only those who are 'of the truth.'" (467)

Chapter 46: At the Bottom of the List

  • "Judas had cheated himself. The fruits of sin never compensate for the loss of grace." (473)
  • "Peter repented unto the Lord and Judas unto himself." (475)

Chapter 47: Second Trial Before Pilate

  • "When a democracy loses its moral sense, it can vote itself right out of democracy." (478)
  • "In the end, those who fear men rather than God lose that which they hoped men would preserve for them." (486-487)

Chapter 48: The Crucifixion

  • "To Simon belongs the privilege of first sharing the Cross of Christ." (494)
  • "Sin alone was worth tears...By rejecting their grief, He showed that he was not a good man sent to death, but a God-man saving sinners." (497)
  • "Mary, Magdalen, John; innocence, penitence, and priesthood; the three types of sould forever to be found beneath the Cross of Christ." (501)

Chapter 49: The Seven Words from the Cross

  • "In the Scriptures the dying words of only three others were recorded: Israel, Moses, and Stephen." (503)
  • "Suffering does not necessarily make men better; it can sear and burn the soul, unless men are purified by seeing its redemptive value. Unspirtitualized suffering may cause men to degenerate." (506)
  • Jesus giving Mary to John: Woman is the title of universal motherhood; in his anonymity, John stood for all mankind (508)
    • "Mary became our mother the moment she lost her Divine Son." (510)
  • "The greatest mental agony in the world, and the cause of many psychic disorders, is that minds and souls and hearts are without God." (514)
  • "He never worked a miracle on his own behalf...The real reason for the request [to drink] was the fulfillment of the prophecies." (515)
  • Jn-19: "It is finished" - "Three times God used that same word in history: first, in Genesis, to describe the achievement or completion of creation; second, in the Apocalypse, when all creation would be done away with and a new heaven and earth would be made." (518)
  • "The life of the Spirit could now begin the work of sanctification, for the work of Redemption was completed."
  • "Man thinks that it is his dying that decides his future state; it is rather his living that does that." (522)

Chapter 50: Seven Words to the Cross

  • "How could Love be Love if it costs not the Lover?...The Cross is contradiction; the Crucifixion is the solution of the contradiction of life and death by showing that death is the condition of a higher life." (523)
  • "Skeptics always want miracles such as stepping down from the Cross, but never the greater miracle of forgiveness." (524)
  • "Irreligious forces have their holiday in moments of great catastrophe. In wartime, they ask: 'Where is thy God now?'" (527)

Chapter 51: The Rending of the Veil of the Temple

  • "As the veil of the temple was torn, the priesthood of Melchisedech came into its own, and with it the true Holy of Holies, the true Ark of the new Covenant, the true Bread of Life." (536)

Chapter 52: The Piercing of the Side

  • "Blood and water came forth; Blood, the price of Redemption and the symbol of the Eucharist; water, the symbol of regeneration and baptism." (537)
  • "Sorrow for sins springs from a vision of the Cross. All excuses are cast aside when the vileness of sin is most poignantly revealed...The mea culpa is the beating of the breast that saves." (539)

Chapter 53: The Night Friends of Christ

  • Mary gave Jesus his body: "She alone gave Him that by which He redeemed." (541)
  • "To a mother no child ever grows up." (542)

Chapter 54: The Earth's Most Serious Wound-The Empty Tomb

  • "The enemies of Christ expected the Resurrection, but His friends did not." (547)
  • "The angel's words were the first Gospel preached after the Resurrection." (548)
  • "Only purity and sinlessness could welcome the all holy Son of God into the world; hence, Mary Immaculate met Him at the door of earth in the city of Bethlehem. But only a repentant sinner, who had herself risen from the grave of sin to the newness of life in God, could fittingly understand the triumph over sin. To the honor of womanhood it must forever be said: A woman was closest to the Cross on Good Friday, and first at the tomb on Easter Morn." (552)
  • "She was to break the precious alabaster box of His Resurrection so that its perfume might fill the world." (553)
  • "Disappointment is often due to the triviality of human hopes." (559)
  • The Apostles had "no predisposition to accept the Resurrection. The evidence for it had to make its way against the doubt and the most obstinate refusals of human nature." (560, cf. The Resurrection of God Incarnate)
  • "This incident on the road to Emmaus revealed that the most powerful truths often appear in the commonplace and trivial incidents of life." (563)

Chapter 55: The Doors Being Closed

  • "Peace is the fruit of justice. Only when the injustice of sin against God had been requited could there be an affirmation of true peace." (566)
  • Christ bears the marks of his suffering: when the Devil appeared to a saint as Christ, the saint asked, "Where are the marks of nails?" (568)
  • Confession: "To be humble on one's knees confessing to one to whom Christ gave the power to forgive (rather than prostrate on a couch to hear guilt explained away)—that was one of the greatest joys given to the burdened soul of man." (572)

Chapter 56: Fingers, Hands, and Nails

  • "Thomas, who was the last to believe, was the first to make the full confession of the Divinity of the Risen Savior." (575-576, cf. Jn-20: "My Lord and my God!")

Chapter 57: Love as the Condition of Authority

  • "John had the greater spiritual discernment, Peter the quicker action." (581)
  • "As Peter went step by step down the ladder of humiliation, step by step the Lord followed him with the assurance of the work for which he was destined." (583, cf. Jn-21)

Chapter 58: The Divine Mandate

  • He deputed the triple office of Priest, Prophet (or Teacher), and King to the Apostles; for all time because he said to go to all nations (588)

Chapter 59: Last Appearance in Jerusalem

  • Against Marcionism: "No one before was ever pre-announced; but He was, and the more they would search the Old Testament the more they would understand." (591)
  • "In the Crucifixion, there was black on one side and white on the other. Evil would never be stronger than it was on that particular day. For the worst thing that evil can do is not to bomb cities and to kill children and to wage wars; the worst thing that evil can do is to kill Goodness. Having been defeated in that, it could never be victorious again." (592)
  • "The law He gave was clear: life is a struggle; unless there is a Cross in our lives, there will never be an empty tomb; unless there is the crown of thorns, there will never be the halo of light; unless there is a Good Friday, there will never be an Easter Sunday." (594)
  • "The Divine Savior never said to His Apostles: 'Be good and you will not suffer'; but He did say: 'In this world you shall have tribulation.'" (594)
  • "...the scar-spangled banner of Salvation." (594-595)
  • Poem: Jesus of the Scars (595, cf. Masterpieces of Religious Verse)

Chapter 60: Repentance

  • "The first [and last] sermon Christ preached was on the subject of repentance." (597, cf. Mt-04, Lk-24)

Chapter 61: The Ascension

  • "Had Christ remained on earth, sight would have taken the place of faith." (602)

Chapter 62: Christ Takes on a New Body

  • His new body has seven main features (605):
    1. To be a member of His new Body men would have to be born into it through baptism
    2. Unity comes through sharing his life
    3. His new Body would be small at first but grow
    4. It is formed from the inside out
    5. He has only one Body, and his Body has one shepherd
    6. His new Body would be manifested before them on Pentecost with the coming of the Spirit
    7. His Body would be hated by the world
  • "Christ still walks the earth, now in His Mystical Body." (610)

Topic: Jesus Christ

Source

Bibliography

file:(2023-04-06-Life of Christ)

New Words

  • aorist: A tense in the Greek language, which expresses an action as completed in past time, but leaves it, in other respects, wholly indeterminate. (56)
  • obloquy: Censorious speech; defamatory language; language that casts contempt on men or their actions; blame; reprehension. (93)

Created: 2022-03-21-Mon
Updated: 2023-06-06-Tue