Guardini on Christ in Our Century
by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
Romano Guardini's book The Lord has helped more than one
generation of Christians enter into a deeper relationship with
Jesus Christ. When the book first appeared, it offered a new
approach to the spiritual interpretation of Scripture for which
young people in particular longed; a longing, I might add, which
is being felt again in our own day.
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The First World War was everywhere experienced as the collapse of
the liberal dream of ever-advancing progress engendered by reason
alone. This crisis of liberalism had great consequences for the
Church and theology. Every "rational Christianity" which the
liberal theologians had managed to develop was affected by it.
Liberal biblical interpretation, or exegesis, had actually
prepared the ground for this crisis by its attempt to discover
behind the "veneer of dogma" the true "historical" Jesus.
Naturally, by the liberals' way of thinking, the historical Jesus
could be only a mere man. The liberals thought that everything
supernatural, everything pertaining to the mystery of God that
surrounded Jesus, was merely the embellishment and exaggeration of
believers. Only with everything supernatural removed could the
true figure of Jesus finally come to view! Already by the turn of
the century, however, Albert Schweitzer had established that such
an attempt would result only in contradictions: such a "sanitized"
Jesus would not be an actual person, but the product of a
historian.
As a student, Romano Guardini had himself experienced the drama of
liberalism and its collapse, and with a few friends he set out to
find a new path for theology. What came to impress him in the
course of this search was the experience of the liturgy as the
place of encounter with Jesus. It is above all in the liturgy that
Jesus is among us, here it is that he speaks to us, here he lives.
Guardini recognized that the liturgy is the true, living
environment for the Bible and that the Bible can be properly
understood only in this living context within which it first
emerged. The texts of the Bible, this great book of Christ, are
not to be seen as the literary products of some scribes at their
desks, but rather as the words of Christ himself delivered in the
celebration of holy Mass. The scriptural texts are thoroughly
imbued with the awe of divine worship resulting from the
believer's interior attentiveness to the living voice of the
present Lord. In the preface to his book, Guardini himself tells
us of the way in which these texts have arisen: "We can only
reverently pause before this or that word or act, ready to learn,
adore, obey."
Guardini did not view his book as theology in the strict sense of
the word, but more as a kind of proclamation or preaching.
Nonetheless, he did not fail to take into account the theological
significance of what he had to say. Throughout The Lord Guardini
struggled to come to the correct understanding of Jesus: All
attempts to "cleanse" the figure of Jesus of the supernatural
result in contradictions and meaningless constructions. One simply
cannot strip "the Wholly Other," the mysterious, the divine from
this Individual. Without this element, the very Person of Jesus
himself dissolves. There simply is no psychological portrait of
Jesus which can render his different features comprehensible
solely from a human perspective. Repeatedly the analysis of this
man takes us into that realm which is incomprehensible, "an
incomprehensibility, however, full of measureless promise." The
figure and mission of Jesus are "forever beyond the reach of
history's most powerful ray," because "their ultimate explanations
are to be found only in that impenetrable territory which he calls
�my Father's will.'"
Guardini spoke in a similar way in 1936 in a small but invaluable
book entitled The Picture of Jesus the Christ in the New
Testament, the result of his characteristically methodical
reflections:
Perhaps we will not even succeed in arriving at a �person,' but
rather only at a series of sketches which stretch out beyond our
range of vision. Perhaps we will experience that the Ascension was
not simply a unique occurrence in the life of Jesus, but rather
above all, the manner in which He is given to us: as one vanishing
into heaven, into the Unconditional which is God. However, if that
is the case, then these bare sketches are most precious: They are
sign-posts pointing us to the �stepping beyond' of faith; and
insofar as they go beyond our vision, in fact, precisely because
they go beyond our vision, they teach us to worship.
It is from such a way of thinking that the meditations arose which
together make up this book. For Guardini the first step is always
attentive listening to the message of the scriptural text. In this
way the real contribution of exegesis to an understanding of Jesus
is fully acknowledged. But in this attentiveness to the text, the
listener, according to Guardini's understanding, does not make
himself to be master of the Word. Rather, the listener makes
himself the believing disciple who allows himself to be led and
enlightened by the Word. It is precisely by repudiating a closed,
merely human logic that the greatness and uniqueness of this
Person becomes apparent to us. It is precisely in this way that
the prison of our prejudice is broken open; it is in this way that
our eyes are slowly opened, and that we come to recognize what is
truly human, since we have been touched by the very humanity of
God himself.
One of Guardini's favorite expressions was, "that which is truly
real will arise from the rich, varied expansiveness of our
existence, of our being fully Christian, and will lead us to the
One who is truly real." As we are taught by Guardini, the essence
of Christianity is not an idea, not a system of thought, not a
plan of action. The essence of Christianity is a Person: Jesus
Christ himself. That which is essential is the One who is
essential. To become truly real means to come to know Jesus Christ
and to learn from him what it means to be human.
Our time is in many respects far different from that in which
Romano Guardini lived and worked. But it is as true now as in his
day that the peril of the Church, indeed of humanity, consists in
bleaching out the image of Jesus Christ in an attempt to shape a
Jesus according to our own standards, so that we do not follow him
in obedient discipleship but rather recreate him in our own image!
Yet still in our own day, salvation consists only in our becoming
"truly real." And we can do that only when we discover anew the
true reality of Jesus Christ and through him discover the way of
an upright and just life. Guardini's book The Lord has not grown
old, precisely because it still leads us to that which is
essential, to that which is truly real, Jesus Christ himself. That
is why this book still has a great mission today.
John Cardinal Ratzinger is prefect of the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith. This article was translated by John. M.
Haas.
� 1995-1996 Crisis Magazine
This article was taken from the June 1996 issue of "Crisis"
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