Prof. Dr. Karl Adam
I initially included this text in this year's spiritual exercises that I led. I will mention again what seems stimulating to me. I found Professor Adam's book in the estate of Father Prior Prokop Valeny, whose hundredth birthday we commemorated this year. Thus, we draw from a source that Father Prokop also drew from. But above all: it is never easy to see Jesus in a "panoramic" view, to condense all the narratives of the gospels into a summary of a few sentences or paragraphs and express what Jesus was like. What He is. And the lecture by Professor Adam helps us with its freshness to catch ourselves flattening the image of Jesus and how easily it holds true: "I judge you by myself."
And when I could not adequately point out the cited biblical passages during the exercises, publishing the text here on the magazine's pages opens up the opportunity for everyone to look up the references and meditate again, slowly... And so I did not adjust the biblical citations too closely to the Czech translations; you will have the exact biblical text right before your eyes.
(P. Gorazd, O.Carm.)
Jesus is focused on glorifying the Father in His ministry, on fulfilling the Father's will, the coming of the Kingdom of God. This is "the one thing necessary"; He pursues no purely earthly goal. "Whoever does not hate his father, mother, wife, children, brothers, and sisters, yes, even his own life, cannot be my disciple" (Matt 10:37; Luke 14:26).
When Jesus is so passionate about glorifying His Father in heaven – doesn't it seem to you that He has little recognition for the earthly values and for the life that derives from them and is related to them, or even that He scorns them? Or at least as if the earthly world with its contrasts and tensions were something indifferent to Him, to which He attributes only one meaning: that of a training ground and battlefield for warriors of the Kingdom of God?
What are Jesus' attitudes towards ordinary human life? Did He belong among the mystics who, on the steep ascent to God, cast aside all earthly joys and felt on earth like a stranger and in prison? When we imagine the life that surrounded Him in the quiet mountain valleys of Galilee or in the noisy streets of Jerusalem filled with laughter, tears, exuberance, pride, and importunity – did He flee from all of this, or "did He know how to live with it"?
No trait in the portrait of Jesus portrayed by the gospels is so unambiguous and powerful as His passionate relationship with the heavenly Father, the unconditional dedication of Jesus' being to God's will. "My food is to do the will of him who sent me" (John 4:34).
This Father, however, is not for Jesus a bloodless, distant God of contemporary Hellenistic philosophy and the theology of late Judaism influenced by it, a God who sits on the opposite side of the heavenly clouds in the silence of solitude and only through the ranks of heavenly spirits enters into contact with people; rather, He is the living God of the Old Testament revelation. Jesus’ message connects to the purest prophetic tradition that proclaimed the Lord solely as a present and powerful God. For Jesus, the Father is continually active (cf. John 5:19), always at work (John 9:4). It is the Father who sends the sun to shine and gives rain (Matt 5:45). He clothes the wildflowers (Matt 6:30), provides food for the ravens (Luke 12:24). Without His consent, no sparrow falls to the ground (Matt 10:29), and He even counts the hairs on our heads (Matt 10:30). Each person's qualities and abilities are "talents," belong to the Father, and He will require what is His back (Matt 25:15). The bread we eat daily is the Father's gift. The whole existence of man, all that he is and does, belongs to God as a sheep to its shepherd and Lord (Luke 15:6). Therefore, the fate of man and the fate of the whole world are guided by the hand of God. God determines the course of world history, its upheavals and wars (Mark 13:32) up to the last day. All leading figures, prophets (Matt 23:29,37), and John the Baptist (Matt 11:10; John 1:6) come by His mission. But above all, the Son.
Thus, for Jesus, the ultimate force that determines the course of happenings cannot be any chain of causes and effects on the level of created things and beings, nor the iron necessity of natural laws, nor human initiative. In everything that exists, happens, and what anyone does, Jesus sees essentially the finger of God. Nothing on earth is ultimately subject to anything other than the will of God. Every reality is an embodiment of God's will.
From this, it follows that Jesus' attitude towards what surrounds Him and the values of life is purely positive, affirmative, indeed essentially religious. He encounters in what He meets not a foreign, cold necessity, nor a soulless relentless fate, but supreme freedom and goodness – the will of the Father. For Jesus, there is no "dead" nature. In the mountains, in water, in flowers and birds, and especially in God's beloved, in man, Jesus' soul, intoxicated by God, encounters something most beloved, profound, and precious. Thus, touching the reality of the world is for Him a touch with the will of the Father, a direct experience of His wisdom, goodness, and beauty – therefore piety, prayer, religion.
Hence, Jesus' realistic, devoted, inner way of viewing nature captivates as wholly modern. His parables, so masterfully illuminating the unassuming and overlooked realities, belong to the pearls of world literature. Here He enjoys the birds in the sky that do not sow or reap. There He observes children on the street, playing, dancing, singing, and pouting. Here He thinks of the joy of a young mother whose newborn makes her forget all past anxiety. There He notices a housewife searching anxiously for a lost penny... He elevates the small and the smallest that He encounters with love as God's forget-me-not1 and gives it a voice in a thousand languages. Love for nature and for natural things is not for Him a sentimental whims of emotion as for the romantics. For Jesus, there is no cult of pure nature or the wilderness. Nature is for Him rather a sculpted and living will of God. His love for nature is merely a differently directed love for God and His will. But precisely for this reason, it is so true and heartfelt.
However, even more warmly, with a restrained heartiness, Jesus opens up to man. The human being is so imbued with the will of the Father and connected with Him that it is impossible to want God without also wanting man. While the Old Testament placed the two commandments "love God, love your neighbor" directly alongside each other, Jesus summarizes them into one: "So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets" (Matt 7:12). Love for people is love for God, merely viewed from another angle. Just as Jesus is not merely a worshiper of pure nature, He is not a proponent of humanity who overlooks God. Jesus loves man because God loves him. "From this higher affection," His love for people "acquires its measure, freedom, grain of salt, and flavor of amber" (Nietzsche). But this is precisely what makes His love something utterly true, personal, tender, as true and deep as His love for the Father. "Then He took a child, placed him among them, and embraced him..." (Mark 9:36).
How deeply Jesus is able to empathize with the emotions of others, with the fear of a father's heart (cf. Mark 5:36), with the crushing pain of a lonely mother (cf. Luke 7:13), with the mental anguish of a sick person (cf. Matt 9:2)! His behavior towards the caught adulteress, towards repentant Peter, and towards the prostitute – what He says, and what He does not say – belongs to the most beautiful and tender in the entire gospel. And how His soul is moved when He sees human suffering. The evangelist repeatedly states: "He had compassion for the crowd" (Matt 9:36; 14:14; 15:32; cf. Mark 1:41; Luke 7:13). This was a fundamental aspect of Jesus that deeply impressed the Gospel writers. Jesus frequently refuses someone's request (Luke 12:14; Mark 5:19), but never a request for help in distress. "And He healed them all" (cf. Mark 6:56; Matt 4:24; 8:16; 9:35; 10:1; Luke 4:40, etc.). He hardly ever waits for someone to ask Him (Mark 1:25; 3:3; 5:8; etc.). He would rather risk scandalizing the Pharisees by openly breaking the Sabbath commandment than refuse assistance (Mark 1:23; 3:2; Luke 13:14; 14:3; John 5:9; 9:14). He cannot bear to see any misery near Him; He cannot eat before first healing someone in the room (Luke 14:2). And indeed, He chooses the most tender words to address the sick. "Son,"2 He says to the paralyzed man (Mark 2:5), "Daughter,"3 to the sick woman (Mark 5:34).
And when the abyss of human sorrow unfolds before Him, as it did at Lazarus's grave and before Jerusalem, whose destruction is approaching, then "He was deeply moved in spirit and troubled" (John 11:33); there "He wept" (Luke 19:41). Jesus' life, His deeds and miracles are "love that triumphs over the greatest difficulties" (Ninck). And the other person is to Jesus so much of His own self that "to him personally" was done what was done "to the least of his brothers."
How far Jesus distances Himself from John the Baptist! In this preacher in the wilderness, love is in the background. Ascetic natures too easily lose the sense of the suffering of others. Jesus does not remain in the desert. He goes to the people. And here He sees not only malice and sin but also deep, great suffering. And all His rich, vast heart belongs to people and their suffering.
But Jesus' heart also belongs to their joy. And this is perhaps the point where Jesus' way of seeing life and how He embraces it comes forth in the clearest light. "Suffer and refrain," commands Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Neo-Platonists call the body "the prison of the soul." Ancient Egyptian monasticism knows nothing better than the command: "Flee, be silent, weep!" In Jesus' time, the "righteous," the "separated ones" – namely the Pharisees – thought similarly. In line with the "tradition of the elders" (Matt 15:2; Mark 7:4 ff.), they expanded five Jewish national fast days to a fast every Monday and Thursday and restricted all joy with tight, strict fasting rules. And John and his disciples also "fasted strictly."
Jesus places Himself in conscious opposition to these demands (cf. Matt 11:18; Luke 7:33-34). He does not reject fasting itself – for He Himself fasted for forty days – but the mentality with which the Jews practiced their fasting. They fasted in memory of the heavy blows that struck their nation in the past; it was a fasting of mourning, of internal humiliation. Such a gloomy fast Jesus rejects. "When you fast, anoint your head" (Matt 6:17)! Jesus measures the worth and value of fasting (just like all other "pious exercises") in the inner joyfulness of the heart, a pure, fervent "yes" to God and His fatherly will. Where fasting diminishes and paralyzes people, it brings no more good. Therefore, Jesus' disciples, "guests at the wedding," do not fast "while the bridegroom is with them" (Matt 9:14). Jesus' rejection of the Pharisees' asceticism is thus a conscious renunciation of any gloomy, forced, violent asceticism and a decisive affirmation of a life attitude that is inwardly free and sparkling. When David ate the showbread in the temple, should the children in the father's house be denied what the Father provides for them (cf. Matt 12:4)? Thus, Jesus participates unreservedly in the small joys that life brings. He allows Himself to be invited to the table, even though His cunning enemies slander Him as a "glutton and drunkard" (Matt 11:19). Once Levi (Luke 5:29) or some Pharisee (Luke 7:36; Mark 14:3; Luke 11:37; 14:1) hosts a great feast in His honor. At other times, Jesus eats in the intimate circle at Simon's and his mother-in-law's (Mark 1:31) or at the caring Martha's (Luke 10:38; John 12:2), or He is invited as a guest to Zacchaeus' (Luke 19:6). His first miracle is performed for merry wedding guests (John 2:10). It is significant that joyful, festive banquets (Luke 15:22; 12:16; 13:26; Matt 8:11) and splendid weddings (Matt 22:11; 9:5; 25:1; Luke 12:36) frequently provide the framework and material for His parables. The celebration at the end of times appears to Him as a seating at the table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Matt 8:11). And the last, the best He has given His disciples on earth is a feast of love, a feast of eternal communion in His body and blood.
And so Nietzsche's conviction that Jesus never laughed cannot stand. How could He Himelf not recognize deep, pure joy who proclaimed the joyful good news from the Father and who testified that in everything cheerful and bitter the Father's will takes place, always turning towards the good? In the Father's will, Jesus loved man and his life. Not only the suffering of people but also their laughter.
From the same angle of the Father's will, Jesus also takes an internal attitude towards what settles as disorder and dirty sludge at the bottom of humanity – towards pettiness and wretchedness of people. No other eye has seen as sharply as Jesus' eye the sorrow of human weakness. "You are evil" (Matt 7:11), "you are bad" (Matt 12:34), "you are a wicked and adulterous generation" (Matt 12:39 ff.). As if some internal, secret resistance speaks against this hidden, distorted humanity. Yet even concerning this weakness of all people, Jesus approaches not without internal connection with the will of His Father. Therefore, He was even capable of further "bearing" it. And to this His soul echoes a noble, gentle song of patience with human wretchedness, a patience that knows no weariness. He will not uproot the weeds but will let them grow until the day of God's harvest. He will not call down fire from heaven upon unfaithful cities. After all, the Father sends the light of the sun and rain also to the unjust. And because everything is recorded with the Father, therefore, "do not judge"! It is no longer possible in this world to separate "sinners" from the "righteous." The son of Abraham, not even the priest or the Levite, is always better than the Samaritan. In the Father's will lies Jesus' royal superiority over all the distorting features of human life, over all moral, social, and national conflicts and contradictions. Thus, Jesus also stands aside from all economic and political struggles. He wants nothing to do with questions of inheritance (Luke 12:14). And let what is Caesar's be given to Caesar. Peter, put your sword back in its place!
How does Jesus approach life? We do not find on Him any weariness of life, no powerless world-weariness, and no frightened flight from the world. He views reality with both eyes, grasps it with both hands, and with all His heart affirms it. There is no reality that He would want to distort by force or overlook. Jesus is no dreamer. Jesus is a realist, and He wholeheartedly inclines toward the givens, to complete and whole reality, whether this reality casts a shadow or light. And His devotion to things and people is not any "love on command," no act of mere obedience to God, an act that would leave Jesus' heart indifferent.
For the will of God and things are not to Jesus something separate that relates to each other only externally. The will of God is rather alive in things and through them. By loving the will of God, Jesus thus also loves things – from their essence. He feels a unity with everything around Him, being bonded together and connected by the life-giving power of God's will, which reveals itself in all of reality.
On the other hand: precisely because for Jesus reality is nothing other than an expression of the Father's will, His love for reality is embraced by His love for the Father. Jesus does not belong to reality differently than He belongs to His Father. And therefore, He never lets it completely engulf Him. Where earthly attraction intersects with the Father's will, it does not touch Jesus' soul. Jesus' joy of life is refined and illuminated by an extraordinary inner restraint, self-assured prudence of feelings and moods. His long fast in the desert, His sleepless nights, His poor life as a pilgrim, His demanding sermons, His devotion to the poor and wretched, His mature, rare method of dealing with cunning adversaries, but above all the heroism of His life and death can be explained only by what kind of heart He had, which has itself in control, which is not led by things but lives autonomously in them.
Jesus did not flee from life, nor did He let Himself be subjugated by it. Jesus "knew how to live with it".
Adapted from the book: Dr. Karl Adam, Christus unser Bruder, 6th edition,
Verlag Josef Habbel, Regensburg 1940.
Translated from German by P. Gorazd, O.Carm.
