The Son of Man VIII. Wise and Strong

Irish Jesuit Province

The Son of Man VIII. Wise and StrongAuthor(s): Hugh KellySource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 79, No. 938 (Aug., 1951), pp. 349-354Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20516405 .

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THE SON OF MAN?VIII

WISE AND STRONG By HUGH KELLY, S.J.

IN this paper and the following an attempt win be made to draw a sketch of the character of Christ as He is shown to us in the

gospels. He called Himself the Son of Man. This was one of

the less-known messianic titles and by assuming it He advanced His

claim to be He "

that was to come ", but without committing Himself

to associations which were implied in more popular titles. The title

also served to emphasize the truth of His humanity?that He

possessed a complete human nature. He had a human soul and

body, wj#i the full complement of faculties and powers, intellect,

will, niemory, imagination, sensibility, emotions. He lived a truly human life. He learned, He loved, He felt, and remembered; He

was observant of all that passed around Him; He noted and stored

up in His memory the aspects of the world, social and physical, in

which He lived, and thus He gathered a rich human experience which

He manifested and used in His teaching.

He lived a full, and for a period at least, a crowded life. "He

dwelt amongst us." For thirty years He was a member of a village

community in which His life was under the constant scrutiny of His

fellow-villagers. His entry into public life at about the age of thirty introduced Him to an immensely wider world. He came at once into

contact with great numbers of people and with a wide variety of

classes. He met learned and simple people, fishermen, tax-gatherers, merchants, Roman officials of different importance, from centurions to governors, Priests, Scribes, Pharisees, the religious and racial

leaders of His people, and also strangers from the neighbouring countries and Greeks. Wherever He went He was the object of the

most keen-eyed interest and curiosity. His every word and action were noted and discussed.

He could not have lived so full, so busy, a life, one so varied and

exacting in its contacts and demands without revealing IBs character

to its depth. Life with its action, duties and sufferings calls ont what

is best and what is weakest in a man; they reveal deep-seated flaws or virtues which would have lain concealed in a less varied and

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IRISH MONTHLY

stressful life. What kind of a man was Christ, then??we may ask. What were the chief, the distinctive, features of His character?

What was the impression He made on those who came in contact

with Him, who lived with Him? We may ask these questions and

attempt to answer them without any feeling of irreverence. His acts

and words are preserved for us in the gospels, those four records of

His life written by men who knew Him at first hand, and in these records He reveals Himself. It is true that the evangelists did not

aim at writing a biography as we understand the thing in our modern

sense; they wrote to reveal the "

word of salvation ", to show to the world the Redeemer and His teaching. But when they preserved for us His acts and words they give us the means of answering the

questions we have asked.

His human character is singularly balanced; the qualities and traits are so perfect and yet so well blended that at first sight they do not give the impression of their true greatness. It is commonly said that a visitor to St. Peter's on his first entry to the vast basifica

is disappointed and gets no true idea of the size of the building, just because all the parts and decorations are in perfect proportion and

balance each other. It is only when he begins to isolate some of

the features, to observe, for instance, that a holy water font is as

large as the basin of a fountain in a public square, that a statue in a niche is several times life size, that the pen in the hand of an

evangelist is eight or ten feet long, that he comes to a just estimation

of the whole. If we wish to get an idea of the character of Christ

we must try to isolate, to consider apart, certain qualities or groups of qualities. But on the other hand, this involves the risk of destroy

ing the rounded symmetry of the whole, which is, after all, the most

distinctive mark of His character. In Him, as in no one else,

opposite and contrasting qualities will balance each other; strength will be matched by gentleness, wisdom by simplicity, earnestness

by affability, holiness by mercy. A fuller study of His character

would consider His intellectual gifts revealed in His work as Teacher

as well as His moral gifts which were revealed in His dealings with

people. He had in an unique degree the gifts of head and heart:

no less evident were the gifts of character which made Him a

dominating figure in every company, and also the gifts of simplicity and gentleness which made Him approachable by the poor, by sinners

and children. Let us consider for a moment certain qualities of

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WISE AND STRONG

intellect and of character, those by which He was wise and strong.

Intellectually He was great in every way. His message was the

most profound that was ever spoken in the world; it was of itself

above the capacity of human understanding. His task was to convey it, in as far as it could be grasped, to minds quite unprepared for so spiritual and sublime a religion. That doctrine was inexhaustible

in depth and content; yet He made it accepted by men through whom

it was to be perpetuated and handed on to future ages. His tone was authoritative and in this He was a complete contrast to the

official teachers; but it was also sweet and winning. The admiration

which the people felt for His doctrine was not called out so much

by its depth and sublimity?depth and sublimity of thought would

rather have overawed such an audience?but rather by the sweet

lucidity by which it was presented and which brought it within the

range of the simplest. Such utterences as "

Seek ye first the king dom of God and His justice and all these things will be added on

to you "

or "

that you may be the children of your Father Who is

in heaven "

seemed to bring religion home to His hearers and yet did not rob it of its sublimity, seemed to reconcile in a way hitherto

unheard of the greatness of God and His love. When He taught them to pray by saying the "Our Father" He gave them simple access to One Who was the Lord of Heaven and at the same time

their Father; He taught them how to add love and confidence to

adoration and respect. Only the highest genius could reveal God

in His transcendence and in His immanence.

Much of the sweetness and attractiveness of His method of preach ing was due to the humanity which was everywhere evident in His

words. We might have expected that His sublime mission would so have absorbed Him that He would have little interest in the trivial

things of life. We should not have been surprised to find Him go

through life with His eyes lifted to distant spiritual heights and with no thought of the earth on which He trod. Actually, we find thai

there was no aspect of the world in which He moved that He did not note. How much of His surroundings, of the life of the cities

and of the country, is mirrored in His words. The customs of the

marriage feast, the play of children in the market place, the work

in the fields in spring and autumn, the business of fishing, the family life at evening when the lamp is lit, when the master comes home

from the fields for his evening meal, the changing aspects of the sky

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IRISH MONTHLY

at night and morning, the short-lived lilies of the fields, the sparrows found dead on the ground, the sudden storms which undermine a

house?these are random examples, which could be multiplied

indefinitely, of His gift of keen observation, of His power of

experiencing, which gave such attractiveness, such a winning human

note to His preaching. He was not what we commonly eau a

visionary, that is to say, a man so possessed by His vision of ufe

that He had eyes for nothing else. He was practical; He was

observant; He was considerate. The great mission which was the

purpose of His life did not shut out everything else; but rather

found a place for everything, gave everything its true place and

value in life. He belonged to His own country and time, but He

was not confined to them.

In the preaching of His message He displays at once boldness and tact A message so new and sublime needed the greatest tact

for its preaching. For the profounder parts of His teaching the

people were not ready; and even in instructing the Apostles He had to await His time, to practise "economy" in His revelation. In

fact it was only at the last supper that He could speak with freedom

of the interior, spiritual r?le He Himself was to play in the life of

Christians as the True Vine. His claims, too, to be the Messias had

to be put forward cautiously and had to be guarded from sensational

and nationalistic misunderstanding. Still more care was needed in

the work of revealing His true dignity, the mystery of the Incarnation, the truth that He was

" the Christ the Son of the living God come

into this world ". To a people whose worship of the true God was

a strong protest against the universal polytheism such a claim was

likely to arouse the most fanatical hostility. His work, then, of

teaching, of expounding the mysteries of the Kingdom, and especially the mystery of His own Person, required the greatest tact He would

have to decide how far He would go; He would have to select

parable, and illustration, to reveal now one aspect, now another.

He must temper the light to eyes too weak to bear it When we

study the gospels from this point of view, to observe how He con

veyed to His hearers, to a people so unprepared, so unsympathetic, the mysteries of the Incarnation and Redemption, we are struck

by the divine tact and wisdom He displayed.

But we must not forget the strength of character, the manliness, the courage by which these gifts of intellect were balanced. No

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WISE AND STRONG

page of the gospel will allow us to forget the courage of Christ. He

possessed in the highest degree all kinds of courage, physical and

moral Scenes in which He displayed that quality come to our

mind in profusion. At the beginning of His public life He came

to Jerusalem to celebrate the feast of the Pasch. He found the

outer courts of the Temple filled with traffickers who offered animals

for sale to the pilgrims who wished to sacrifice; the shouts and

bellowings pervaded the whole place; the house of prayer had been converted into a den of thieves. At the sight of the desecration of

His Father's house He was suddenly filled with zeal and righteous anger. He made a whip of cords and with flashing eye He advanced on the noisy profaners of the Temple. They fled before the anger and power that emanated from Him.

In the presence of danger, whether it come from men, as when?

He was seized by the mob or was close to the raging demoniacs, or

when it comes from nature as in the storm on the lake, He is always calm and fully master of Himself. But He has a courage which

is still rarer?the courage to oppose evil in high places. In the

Temple before a great crowd gathered from all parts of the Jewish

world, He uttered a withering denunciation of the religious leaders

of the people for having betrayed their trust and corrupted the

service of God. "Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites because you shut the Kingdom of Heaven against men for you

yourselves do not enter it and those that are going in you suffer not to enter" (Matt, xxiii, 13). He is not afraid to oppose the

passions, the aspirations of the crowd; He chides and corrects the

Apostles. And in His Passion He displays every kind of courage,

every heroic manly virtue in the highest degree. Sufferings of mind, of body, of heart, injustice, insult, derision, He endures at their

intensest, because of His great sensibility, but with unshakable forti

tude and without a trace of rancour or bitterness.

The Son of Man was wise and strong pre-eminently. These are

two qualities not often found together in equal measure. Perhaps we may express this truth in another way by saying that Christ is

always at the level, or rather is in command, of any situation in

which He finds Himself, whether the situation calls for gifts of

mind or gifts of character. He is always the effortless master of

the situation. He is never surprised or disconcerted; never in doubt or hesitation. He has always inexhaustible resources on which to

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draw. He lives always, speaks, and acts at the full level of His

vision of life and of His teaching. Opposition coming from malice, sin or ignorance, or an opposition which shows itself in rejection or

hatred or indifference, these things He meets, and they cause Him an anguish proportionate to His sense of justice. But such treatment

does not surprise or embitter or discourage Him. His courage is

proof against all kinds of weapons and all assaults. His soul is

always securely in His hands. His serenity and self-possession are

not born of ignorance, inexperience, hardness or cynicism. They are the expression of His mind and soul.

As He left the supper room to enter freely on His Passion, He

foretold to His Apostles how they would, within a few hours, abandon Him: "Behold the hour cometh and it is now come that

you shall be scattered every man to his own and shall leave Me

alone, And yet I am not alone because the Father is with Me "

(John xvi, 32). In these words there is no sense of bitterness or

disillusionment; they breathe a spirit of calm acceptance of the truth.

But they manifest clearly what was the ultimate source of His abiding

greatness and serenity of soul. From the ever-present vision and

company of His Father He drew the wisdom and strength which are

so clearly seen in His life.

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The Son of Man VIII. Wise and Strong