The Son of Man IV. He Went about Preaching

Irish Jesuit Province

The Son of Man IV. He Went about PreachingAuthor(s): Hugh KellySource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 79, No. 934 (Apr., 1951), pp. 173-177Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20516353 .

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THE SON OF MAN?IV

HE WENT ABOUT PREACHING

By HUGH KELLY, SJ.

THE Sermon on the Mount was an introduction to Christ's work of teaching; it was a broad outline, a general programme that

He would fill in by later instructions. The chief work of His

public life was teaching and preaching: "And Jesus went about all Galilee teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the

kingdom "

(Mark IV, 23). He seized every opportunity of addressing the people. The Temple at Jerusalem, the religious centre of the

nation, and the synagogues in the different towns would be the places of His more official preaching. But wherever He got an audience

He spoke. His listeners might be individuals whom He happened to

encounter as He travelled or whom He met in a private house; they might be groups of people He met in a village through which He

passed or a great crowd returning home from attending at one of

the major feasts at Jerusalem; or a room full of people in a private house where He was a guest; or the small select group of Apostles and disciples. At times He would address a great audience seated

before Him on the grass; or again they would crowd the seashore

close to the water's edge while He spoke from a boat. The work then of these years was teaching; He gave Himself to it unremittingly. " My Father has never ceased working and I too must be at work

"

(John V, 17). Let us consider some of the occasions of His preaching as recorded

in the gospels. At the opening of His public life He attended the festival of the Pasch at Jerusalem, when He drove out the traffickers from the Temple and foretold, in a veiled way, His death and

resurrection. In the evening He returned to His lodging in the city, where after dark He was visited secretly by one of the chief Pharisees, Nicodemus, with whom He conversed a great part of the night. In the course of that interview, He expounded one of His most funda

mental doctrines, the new spiritual birth, the regeneration, which would be achieved by the Holy Ghost in baptism. He laid down the

necessity of a new birth as the entry to a new state of spiritual life :

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IRISH MONTHLY "

Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost he cannot

enter into the kingdom of God" (John III, 15). To this timid? un

imaginative, master in Israel He revealed the motive and purpose of the Incarnation?that it came only from God's infinite love for

man. "

For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him may not perish but may have

life everlasting "

(John HI, 16). And again, the second time on the same day, He foretold His death by crucifixion, which was to be the

fulfilment of one of the great types and signs of the Old Testament:

"And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son

of man be lifted up "

(John m, 14).

Shortly afterwards He was passing through Samaria on His way northwards to Galilee, and, weary and hungry from His journey, He

sat on the wall which surrounded the ancient well of Jacob, near the

town of Sichern, while His disciples went to procure food. As He

sat there alone, a Samaritan woman came from the town with a

pitcher on her head to draw water. From the conversation which

followed we know that she was a woman of bad life, which may well

be the reason why she came alone at that time to draw water. She

seemed to be a most unlikely and unresponsive hearer of the word of

God; and yet to this woman whom He met thus alone for a few

minutes, apparently by accident, He expounded the doctrine of "

the

gift of God", sanctifying grace, and of the supernatural reach and

power it confers on the soul. The scene shows also with what tact

Christ introduces His subject and with what gracious imagery He

illustrates it. The woman had come to draw water from the well.

Making use of the occasion, He speaks of another kind of water

which He alone can give. "Whosoever drinketh of this water," He said, pointing to the dark depths of the well,

" shall thirst again;

but .he that shall drink of the water that I will give him shall not

thirst for ever. But the water which I will give shall become in him a fountain of water springing up into life everlasting" (John IV,

13-14). How much of this instruction did the Samaritan understand?

But how precious a lesson it contains of the glory of divine grace. Then the people of the town came out to Him, summoned by the

woman, and besought Him to stay with them. He remained for two

days and spoke to such an effect that they said on His departure: "We ourselves have heard Him and know that this is indeed the

Saviour of the world "

(John IV, 42). For the most part He preached in the local synagogues. St. Luke

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THE SON OF MAN

has preserved a vivid account of one of these occasions?one

especially memorable inasmuch as it was His first visit to His own

town since He had entered on His public life. He was very well

known to this congregation who filled the synagogue on this Sabbath

morning, because the news that the famous Rabbi, their fellow

townsman, was to speak had gone around. They were eager to hear one who had grown up with them, a village workman like themselves, and who had suddenly appeared in public as a great teacher. They came in a mood that was at once sympathetic yet critical and un

certain. Would He impress them as He had undoubtedly impressed all the others who had heard Him? Would He display for His

fellow-townsmen the powers of word and deed which He had

abundantly displayed elsewhere? His relatives were there and in

all probability His Mother; and it may well be from her that St. Luke

got his account which is evidently that of an eye-witness. As a

distinguished visiting Rabbi, Christ was invited by the chief of the

synagogue to read the lesson and address the congregation. He read

the lesson which was from Isaias and handed the scroll back to the

clerk. "And when He had folded the book He restored it to the

minister and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were

fixed on Him." We can easily imagine with what tenseness they awaited His opening words.

As He looked round before speaking He must have recognized most of His hearers?relatives, friends, neighbours, with whom He

had lived in simple cordial relations all His life. He had Himself

attended service there and had often heard visiting Rabbis expound the law. Here was certainly a friendly and sympathetic audience, in

every way predisposed to hear Him with goodwill. To His Mother

it must have been a moment of great joy?the moment so long waited for, when He was at last to manifest Himself to the world;

but she may also have sensed something in the atmosphere which

troubled her. And yet this was one of the most tragic and

humiliating incidents in His life as Teacher. His opening remarks were well received; all gave testimony of Him and wondered at the

words of grace which proceeded from His lips. But soon another

mood began to make itself felt. They began to consider rather the

Speaker than His words. Where could He have learned this wisdom, the man they knew as the village carpenter, who had not frequented any school? Was He not one of themselves? Were not His Mother

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and relatives still among them? Murmurs of jealousy, resentment, were heard and grew. A comparison between Judea and Sidon, to

the disparagement of the former, stirred them to anger and they rose

up and rushed upon Him, dragged Him out and tried to hurl Him

off a cliff. "

But He, passing through the midst of them, went His

way."

At other times we find Him speaking in a private house to an

audience that filled the rooms. Once when He was thus discoursing in a house at Capharnaum a group of men arrived carrying a

paralytic on a litter. The Master usually accompanied His preaching with miracles of healing. The bearers found it impossible to force a way through the dense crowd. After some thought they hit upon a novel way of reaching the Master, Who was discoursing in an upper room. The house, like many other Jewish houses, had an outside

staircase or ladder which led up to the fiat roof. They carried the

paralytic up these steps, then stripped the tiles from the roof and

lowered the man on his pallet into the room and laid him at the feet

of Jesus. It was an act of faith which made an irresistible appeal to

Him, and He healed the man and forgave him his sins.

Sometimes He addressed great crowds, numbering many thousands, who sat round Him in the open fields. On two occasions when He

had finished speaking He fed the multitudes by multiplying a few

loaves and fishes. When a great crowd gathered round Him on the

shore of the lake He got into a boat and had it pulled out a short

distance, and then, sitting in it, addressed them. The fact that He

often preached sitting down helps us to understand something of the tone of His preaching; we feel that it was quiet, familiar, authorita

tive. He was essentially a Teacher.

As was to be expected, many of His most important revelations were given in the Temple, on the occasion of the great feasts. He would have before Him then a most influential and representative audience, not merely the religious leaders of the people, the Scribes, Doctors and Pharisees, but also a vast crowd of Jews from every corner of their own country and also from all the lands under heaven to which the Jewish race was dispersed. In some of these discourses,

which are recorded chiefly by St. John, He revealed the mysteries of His own Divine Nature and Person.

" Before Abraham was I am."

<c The Father and I are one." In the discourses He delivered in the

Temple on the early days of holy week He made clear to His enemies,

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THE SON OF MAN

the Scribes and Pharisees, that He was the only-begotten Son of God sent into the world to redeem it. His audience understood Him and

consequently saw the issues involved in their resolve to put Him to

death. "If you were blind you should not have sin; but now you say we see. Your sin remaineth

" (John IX, 41).

But for obvious reasons His Apostles and disciples would be His

most frequent and favoured audience. They were to be the authori

tative recipients and teachers of His message. Moreover, as time went on and as the malevolence of His enemies made it dangerous for

Him to teach in towns or even in public at all for some periods, the

disciples became His only audience. As they travelled with Him at

times in neighbouring and pagan countries, He spoke to them in

timately of the mysteries of the kingdom which they themselves would one day reveal to the world. They were certainly the only hearers of the great discourse He delivered in the upper room after the last

supper, in which He revealed the deepest truths and mysteries of His

religion?the Blessed Eucharist, the coming of the Holy Spirit, the

indwelling of the Blessed Trinity, the r?le of Christ as True Vine

in the spiritual life of all Christians, the supreme destiny which He

would ask from His Father for those who believed in Him, the eternal

union in the Divine Life. These truths were preserved by those who

heard Him that night on which He was betrayed and have been the

inexhaustible spiritual heritage of the Church through the ages. "

The sower went forth to sow his seed." These three years of

His public life were the spring time. He went up and down the

land scattering the seed with bountiful hand, but with a deliberate

and calculated plan. It fell on all kinds of soils, on the highway, on

rocky ground, among briars and thorns, on good ground, on the

minds of Scribes and Pharisees, publicans, sinners, worldlings, on

the wise and prudent of this world and on poor and little ones.

But the good ground prepared for it was the minds of the Apostles, and there it brought forth a hundredfold, a great harvest of truth and

holiness, on which the spiritual life of the world has been nourished.

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The Son of Man IV. He Went about Preaching