Since the center of the person of Jesus is prayer, it is essential to participate in his prayer if we are to know and understand him.
. . . Therefore a participation in the mind of Jesus, i.e. in his prayer, which … is an act of love, of self-giving and self-expropriation to men, in not some kind of pious supplement to reading the Gospels, adding nothing to knowledge of him or even being an obstacle to the rigorous purity of critical knowing. On the contrary, it is the basic precondition if real understanding … is to take place.
. . . The person who prays begins to see; praying and seeing go together because—as Richard of St. Victor says—“Love is the faculty of seeing”. Real advances in Christology, therefore, can never come merely as a result of the theology of the schools, and that includes the modern theology as we find it in critical exegesis, in the history of doctrine and in an anthropology oriented toward the human sciences, etc. All this is important, as important as schools are, But it is insufficient. It must be complemented by the theology of the saints, which is theology from experience. All real progress in theological understanding has its origin in the eye of love and in its faculty of beholding.
Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) Behold the Pierced One
I enjoyed reading this post. It took me right back to my days with two small boys. Each stage is precious for it’s own reasons.
“THE” qustion in our houehold these days: “Mamma, x comes from…”, and a little face with big eyes looks up at me full of expectation, waiting for me to complete the sentence. I think it all started when Daddy broke the amazing news to them that their beloved milk “comes from” cows (our son’s favorite stuffed animal is a cow). Since then, it’s been “comes from” galore, although never in the direct question form, funny… Sometimes it’s easy, and it’s fun to see them laugh when I connect for them things they had never thought had anything in common (paper comes from trees! Wine comes from grapes!). Sometimes it’s tricky (Mamma, windows come from… ???) Sometimes it gives me the occasion for a sweet answer, as when my son asked me where he came from, and looked very very pleased when I said he was God’s gift to Mamma and Daddy