Yesterday was Saint Luke's Day, which set me thinking about the theological significance of "the long middle", between, in credal terms, the Incarnation and the Passion.
The usual view, I suppose, is that it is read in the light of the great events of salvific significance. But that has never struck me as sufficient.
It is also necessary to view it as included in the clause, "and was made man."
The things that Jesus said and did are fundamental and integral to the Incarnation itself. Human beings say, and human beings do.
Moreover, by eliciting the Passion in reaction to them, those sayings and doings are, again, fundamental and integral to the Passion itself.
And the decision to write them down in and as the Gospels was the response integral to the Resurrection and the Ascension, making that decision fundamental to ecclesiology and to eschatological hope.
That is why we teach these stories to children, in order to make them culturally definitive. That is why we work our way through it liturgically day by day, week by week, year by year.
The usual view, I suppose, is that it is read in the light of the great events of salvific significance. But that has never struck me as sufficient.
It is also necessary to view it as included in the clause, "and was made man."
The things that Jesus said and did are fundamental and integral to the Incarnation itself. Human beings say, and human beings do.
Moreover, by eliciting the Passion in reaction to them, those sayings and doings are, again, fundamental and integral to the Passion itself.
And the decision to write them down in and as the Gospels was the response integral to the Resurrection and the Ascension, making that decision fundamental to ecclesiology and to eschatological hope.
That is why we teach these stories to children, in order to make them culturally definitive. That is why we work our way through it liturgically day by day, week by week, year by year.
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