Editor’s Note: This series on the Bible is from the book Catholicism & Scripture. Please feel free to use the series for high schoolers or adults. We will continue to welcome your questions for the column as well. See the postal and email addresses at the bottom of this column.
Special Course On Catholicism And Scripture (Chapter 19)
For hundreds of years, Catholics prayed the Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious Mysteries of the rosary, but these mysteries covered only the early and final years of Jesus’ life on Earth. They said nothing about the three years that Jesus spent preaching and teaching. In 2002, Pope St. John Paul II filled this gap with the Luminous Mysteries, also known as the “Mysteries of Light” because they shed light on important events in the life of Christ from His Baptism in the River Jordan to His institution of the Holy Eucharist.
At the age of thirty, He presented Himself at the Jordan River to His cousin John the Baptist and asked to be baptized. Jesus had no need of Baptism since He was sinless, but He asked John anyway. John at first protested, saying that “I need to be baptized by you,” but Jesus told him to “allow it now” (Matt. 3:13-15). As Christ came up from the water, the heavens opened and John saw “the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming upon Him. And a voice came from the heavens, saying, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased’” (Matt. 3:16-17). This was the first public manifestation of the Blessed Trinity.
Not long after this, Jesus went to a wedding in Cana of Galilee. When His Mother told him that the wine had run out, which was a social disaster, Jesus replied, “Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come” (John 2:3-4). Calling Mary “woman” was not disrespectful; it was the Lord’s way of connecting His mother with the woman of Genesis 3:15, the woman at the foot of the Cross on Good Friday who would become the mother of all humanity (John 19:26), and with the “woman clothed with the sun” (Rev. 12:1).
Even though the hour of His death had not yet come, and Jesus knew that a miracle here would start the chain of events that would lead to Good Friday, He changed six large stone jars of water into wine. His Mother had not specifically asked Him for a miracle; she simply told the waiters, “Do whatever he tells you” (John 2:5). This is the last time that the Virgin Mary speaks in the Gospels, but what great advice for all of us, to do whatever Jesus tells us.
In His very first words in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus said that “the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the Gospel” (1:15). He spent much of the next three years teaching the people through stories known as parables what His Kingdom was all about. He compared the growth of His Kingdom to a mustard seed that starts out small but grows into a large bush, to a treasure buried in a field that one buys so as not to lose the treasure, and to a net that catches all kinds of fish, good and bad.
He said that at the end of the world His angels will separate good people from bad people, sending the good to Heaven and the wicked to “the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth” (Matt. 13:50).
While we pray in the Our Father that God’s Kingdom will come, we know that it will not reach its full glory until we get to Heaven. To give His followers an idea of the glory of Heaven, Jesus took Peter, James, and John up a mountain and was glorified (transfigured) in front of them. His faced glowed and His clothes became dazzling white. This was a foretaste of what our bodies will be like in Heaven. Appearing along with Jesus were Moses and Elijah, representing the Old Testament law and the prophets. Once again, the voice of the Father came from Heaven, saying, “This is my chosen Son; listen to Him” (Luke 9:35).
As we have seen in earlier chapters, the Holy Eucharist was foreshadowed in the manna from Heaven at the time of Moses and in Jesus’ multiplication of five loaves of bread to feed five thousand people. Now at the Last Supper the night before His death, Jesus gave us the Holy Eucharist when He changed bread and wine into His Body and Blood and told the Apostles, his first priests, to “do this in memory of me” (Luke 22:19). Notice that Jesus said, “This is my Body” and “This is my Blood.” He did not say that the elements were symbols, but rather that they truly were His Body and Blood. A year or so earlier, after the miracle of the loaves and fishes, Christ had said that “I am the bread of life” (John 6:48).
When some of the people walked away because they found His words too hard to take, Jesus did not say, “Wait a minute, friends, I didn’t mean that literally.” No, He stated His message even more clearly when He declared that “my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him” (John 6:53-56).
List of Answers:
BLOOD
BODY
BREAD
CANA
ELIJAH
EUCHARIST
FIVE
GLORIFIED
HEAVEN
JOHN
KINGDOM
LUMINOUS
MOSES
MOTHER
MUSTARD
NET
WATER
WINE
Quiz:
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