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Master·evangeli.net

Today's Gospel + short theological explanation

Thursday of the First Week of Advent
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Gospel text (Mt 7:21.24-27): Jesus said to his disciples, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven."

The "Christ of the faith" and the historical "Jesus"

EDITORIAL TEAM evangeli.net (based on texts by Benedict XVI) (Città del Vaticano, Vatican)

Today we reaffirm our faith in the historic event when 2000 years ago the Son of God incarnated, was made "visible" —with facts and words— in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. However, some researchers —since a few decades ago— began to open a gap between the "historical Jesus" and the "Christ of faith".

Abusing the "historical-critical method", they asserted that the image of Christ that has reached us by faith (through the Church) does not correspond with the actual Jesus that existed historically. But the reconstructions of this Jesus become more and more incompatible with one another: from the anti-Roman revolutionary working down to the meek moral teacher... These reconstructions, far from uncovering the image of the real Jesus Christ, they are much more like photographs of their authors and the ideals they hold.

—O Jesus, without dispensing with History, I confess Your divinity and communion with the Father. And from this belief —and only thus— Your deeds and Your Words contained in the Gospels, are also historically reasonable.