The following is reposted from my blog on the Seminary of the Southwest website.
For Holy Week, Iām reading the second volume of Pope Benedictās Jesus of Nazareth. There is so much for discussion here: the hermeneutical methodology, the appreciate critique and qualified usage of historical critical tools, even the very idea of a Pope writing a scholarly book that engages in the academic fray with all the vulnerabilities that involves.
There are a few places where the book needs some push backāhere and there it seems to me that he short cuts the hermeneutical arguments in order to wind up in dogmatically safe territory. But so far those are the exceptions, and Iām finding it to be a pretty rich dish. Hereās a passage that sent my brain a-whirring:
Let us turn to the third sanctification that is spoken of in Jesusā prayer [in John 17]; āSanctify them in the truthā (17:17). āI consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in truthā (17:19). The disciples are to be drawn into Jesusā sanctification; they too are included in this reappropriation into Godās sphere and the ensuing mission for the world. āI consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in truth:ā their being given over to God, their āconsecrationā, is tied to the consecration of Jesus Christ; it is a participation in his state of sanctification. (89)
I find that to be a lovely spot for my mind to sit in this week. Sanctification bears connotations (or perhaps even denotations) for modern Christians of an advanced level of morality, the sort of thing that only epically good people ever manage to approach. John Wesley was partly responsible for this, with his obsessive attention to the particular holiness of individuals, and even individual moments of the day. (Still, heās the one who said āwe need forgiveness even for our holy things,ā a line which is among the most insightful bits of theology Iāve ever read.) Most of us cringe, shrug, or even laugh when we hear about these upper echelons of goodness.
The Popeās words here are especially suitable antidote to this disease. Sanctification is essential to the Christian life, but itās not primarily about paying attention to ourselves. Holy Week is the perfect time to dwell on this deeper kind of sanctification, because the events of the week are all about Jesusā consecration, his holy and humble pilgrimage from his Fatherās house to the hill where he offered his life. Itās about remembering, rehearsing, and retelling that story, and itās not (so not) about us.
And yet we are ādrawn intoā this act of holy-making pilgrimage. This week we tell ourselves into Christās sanctification, and find that at the end point of his pilgrimage, there on the cross, just where his trip āfrom the Fatherā is on the verge of becoming āto the Father,ā his sanctification becomes ours. We are made holy not by our intense moral effort; holiness may and indeed will involve some of that, but itās not our effort that sanctifies. Christās act of self-consecration becomes the place where we live our lives, and that alone provides us with the gift of sanctification.