By RAYMOND DE SOUZA, KM
Part 17
What was Jesus like, as a Man? We know about His divinity, we believe in it, but what was He like in His daily life with people in general? We call this topic investigating the Sacred Humanity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, or, more simply, Jesus the Man.
In an obscure province of the Roman Empire lived a man who changed the course of history. A carpenter by trade, He spent most of His life making furniture for clients, just like any tradesman of the village. His hands were strong and the skin rough due to the daily work with wood and tools. He never frequented any particular rabbinical school, but had an incredible eloquence. When He decided to leave His widowed Mother and start a movement, He simply called people to Him, and they just dropped whatever they were doing, and followed Him.
His language was simple, rich in stories, and yet powerful enough to move the hearts of His audiences.
Even His enemies — and He made many of them — respected and admired Him for His powers of persuasion, His language, and His attractive manners. He knew how to argue, how to outsmart His enemies’ attempts to trap Him and to condemn Him.
But He also knew when to remain silent. When lying witnesses testified against Him, He let them contradict one another and remained silent. When a puppet king tried to mock Him, He did not cast the pearls of His words before that swine.
He remained firm and steadfast in the defense of His principles and doctrine. His enemies, even His torturers, did not manage to force Him to deny His teaching for the sake of avoiding suffering or even saving His life.
He was affable, enjoying the company of men and women of all social classes. He accepted invitations to dinner at the houses of the upper-class Pharisees and the lowest classes of publicans. He wanted to convert them all. Although He was a Prince Himself, from the Royal House of David, He washed the feet of His disciples shortly before He elevated them to the highest dignity a man can achieve on earth.
He was merciful toward sinners, but never condoned their sins. His loving heart was open to receive those who repented, and also accused those who demonstrated bad will like the Scribes and Pharisees. He loved His country, and wept over the prospect of its capital city, Jerusalem, being destroyed by the foreign invaders.
He received children and blessed them, received sinners and forgave them, received strangers and welcomed them.
But He had no time for those who had turned the Temple into a den of thieves: He expelled them from the sacred precinct, beating them with an improvised whip, which evoked in the mind of His disciples the zeal for God’s House that “devoured” Him. Justice and mercy were blended in Him to a unique level of perfection.
In everything He was submissive to the Will of God. In an unprecedented way, He united the virtues of humility, courage, patience, meekness, and charity. He was a brave, strong man, who spoke His mind fearlessly, and died for the doctrine He advocated. He was gentle, courteous, affable, and unselfish. No contradiction, calumny, or persecution could wring from him a word or gesture inconsistent with His dignity as a Heaven-sent instructor of mankind. His goodness was without weakness; His zeal and earnestness, without impatience; His firmness, without obstinacy.
He was not only a thinker, but a man of action. His eyes seemed ever fixed on Heaven, but yet He was full of sympathy for the weakness of His disciples, full of tenderness for the sorrowful and afflicted, and He combined an intense hatred of sin with an intense love for the sinner.
He is the model for people of all conditions in all ages, the ideal which, while remaining unattained and unattainable, has been the inspiration of the noblest lives.
But one might say that such descriptions of Jesus’ personality are normal for those who believe in Him. Why don’t we let unbelievers describe Him? Rationalists, for instance.
Let us see a few examples. The French rationalist, Ernest Renan, who wrote a life of Christ denying everything supernatural in the Gospels, concluded it by saying, “All the centuries proclaim that among the children of men there is none greater than Jesus” (Vie de Jésus, last sentence).
William Lecky, a rationalist, said: “It was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an ideal character, which, through all the changes of eighteen centuries, has inspired the hearts of men with an impassioned love; has shown itself capable of acting on all ages, nations, temperaments, and conditions; has been not only the highest pattern of virtue but the strongest incentive to its practice; and has exercised so deep an influence that it may be truly said that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers, and all the exhortations of moralists” (History of European Morals, George Braziller, New York 1955, vol. II, pp. 8-9).
Immanuel Kant wrote: “We may readily admit that, had not the Gospels first taught the general moral principles [i.e., the precepts of natural religion] in their full purity, our intellect would not even now understand them so perfectly.”
Adolf von Harnack stated: “His sayings and parables are simplicity itself in their main purport, and yet they contain a depth of meaning which we can never fathom. . . . He speaks to men as a mother speaks to her child.”
Goethe wrote: “Let intellectual and spiritual culture progress, and the human mind expand, as much as it will; beyond the grandeur and the moral elevation of Christianity, as it sparkles and shines in the Gospels, the human mind will not advance.”
The Perfect Model
It is not necessary to quote the opinions of other rationalists. All are agreed that Christ in His character and His doctrine was immeasurably beyond the noblest teachers who ever lived.
To know Jesus Christ, even as a Man, is to admire the greatest personality that has ever lived in this world. Hence the Catholic Church encourages everyone to read the Gospels, to meditate on His words and deeds, to become familiar with the ways and words of Jesus Christ, the perfect model for all men to imitate in order to achieve happiness in this life, en route to the life in the hereafter.
Next article: To whom did Christ give the authority to preach His message?
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(Raymond de Souza is an EWTN program host; regional coordinator for Portuguese-speaking countries for Human Life International [HLI]; president of the Sacred Heart Institute, and a member of the Sovereign, Military, and Hospitaller Order of the Knights of Malta. His website is: www.RaymonddeSouza.com.)
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