The
Ignatius Bible (and The Navarre Bible)
Luke
2:40 – “And the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the
favour of God was upon him.”
Luke
2:52 – “And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature; and in favour with God
and man.”
The
Douhay-Rheims
Luke
2:40 – “And the child grew, and waxed strong, full of wisdom; and the grace
of God was in Him.”
Luke
2:52 – “And Jesus advanced in wisdom, and age, and grace with God and men.”
St.
Bede (In Lucae Evangelium, ad loc.)
“Our Lord Jesus Christ as a child, that is, as one clothed in the
fragility of human nature, had to grow and become stronger, but as the eternal
Word of God he had no need to become stronger or to grow. Hence he is rightly described as full of
wisdom and grace.”
“Luke tells us that Jesus advanced in “age”. However, more
importantly, Jesus “advanced” in “wisdom.” Let’s first consider Jesus
“advancing”. If Jesus is the Son of God, didn’t he know it all already?
The Catechism teaches
that, while perfectly divine, Jesus was “endowed with a true human knowledge.
As such, this
knowledge could not in itself be unlimited: it was exercised
in the historical conditions of his existence in space and time. This is why
the Son of God could, when he became man, ‘increase in wisdom and in stature,
and in favor with God and man’, and would even have to inquire for himself
about what one in the human condition can learn only from experience.”
Book of Heaven, September 14, 1921
“My
daughter, each time the soul does her acts in my Will, she grows more and more
before Me in wisdom, in goodness, power and beauty. In fact, as she keeps
repeating her acts in my Will, she takes as many bites of wisdom, of goodness,
etc.; and the soul grows from that food with which she feeds herself. This is
why in the Holy Gospel it is written of Me that I grew in wisdom before God and
before men. As God, I could neither grow nor decrease; my growth was no
other than my Humanity which, growing in age, came to multiply my acts in the
Supreme Volition; and each additional act that I did was additional growth in
the wisdom of my Celestial Father. And this growth of mine was so true,
that even creatures noticed it. Each one of my acts ran in the immense sea of
the Divine Will; and as I operated, I nourished Myself with this celestial
food. It would take too long to tell you of the seas of wisdom, of goodness, of
beauty, of power, that my Humanity swallowed in each additional act It did.”
In the evangelist's terminology, this
"being upon" a person chosen by God for a mission is attributed to
the Holy Spirit, as in the case of Mary (cf. Lk 1:35) and Simeon (cf. Lk 2:26).
This evokes the transcendence, lordship and the intimate action of the one we
proclaim as Dominum et vivificantem (the Lord and giver of life). The grace
which, again according to Luke, was "upon" Jesus and in which he
"grew," seems to indicate the mysterious presence and action of the
Holy Spirit in which, according to the Baptist's proclamation reported by the
four
The patristic and theological tradition helps us to interpret
and explain Luke's text about Jesus' growth "in wisdom and favor" in
relation to the Holy Spirit. St. Thomas, speaking about grace, repeatedly calls
it gratia Spiritus Sancti (cf. Summa Theol., I-II, q. 106, a. 1), a free gift
which expresses and concretizes God's favor toward the creature eternally loved
by the Father (cf. I, q. 37, a. 2; q. 110, a. 1). Speaking of the cause of
grace, he expressly says that "the principal cause is the Holy
Spirit" (I-II, q. 112, a. 1, ad 1, 2).
It is a question of justifying and sanctifying
grace which reinstates the person in God's friendship, in the kingdom of heaven
(cf. I-II, q. 111, a. 1). "It is according to this grace that we
understand the Holy Spirit's mission and his indwelling in the human
person" (I, q. 43, a. 3). The Holy Spirit instilled the fullness of grace
in Christ, for the personal union of the human nature with the Word of God, for
the extreme nobility of his soul and for his sanctifying and salvific mission
for the whole human race. St. Thomas affirms this on the basis of Isaiah's
messianic text: "The Spirit of the Lord will rest upon him" (Is
11:2): "The Spirit which is in the person by means of habitual (or
sanctifying) grace" (III, q. 7, a. 1, sed contra); and on the basis of the
other text from John: "And we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father's
only Son, full of grace and truth" (Jn 1:14) (III, q. 7, aa. 9-10).
However, the fullness of grace in Jesus was in proportion to his age; there was
always fullness, but a fullness which increased as he grew in age.
The same can be said of the wisdom which Christ
had from the beginning in the fullness proper to the period of childhood. As he
advanced in age, this fullness grew in him to a proportionate degree. It was
not merely a matter of human knowledge and wisdom about divine things, which
God infused into Christ through the communication of the Word subsisting in his
humanity. Also, and most of all, we are dealing with wisdom as a gift of the
Holy Spirit: the greatest of gifts, which is "the perfection of the faculties
of the soul, in order to dispose them to the movement of the Holy Spirit. Now,
we know very well from the Gospel that Christ's soul was moved most perfectly
by the Holy Spirit. Luke tells us that 'Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit,
returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert' (Lk 4:1).
Therefore, the gifts were in Christ in a most exalted manner" (III, q. 7,
a. 5). Wisdom had primacy among these gifts.
Wisdom and
truth are one. God and truth are one. Therefore, wisdom and God are
one.
Lynne Bauer, JMJ
Oct 2020
No comments:
Post a Comment