Third Sunday of Easter

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Father Stephen Bankemper

Guest

Most Catholics know that there are two creeds we use at Mass, the Apostles’ Creed (the shorter of the two, the one most people pray at the beginning of the Rosary) and the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, which title we, thankfully, usually shorten to Nicene Creed. In the Nicene Creed, which we use most of the time, we pray these words: “For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,/ he suffered death and was buried,/ and rose again on the third day/ in accordance with the Scriptures.” Many Catholics seem to understand the phrase — “in accordance with the Scriptures” — to refer to the Passion narratives in the Gospels. While that thought is not completely incorrect, the more fully correct understanding of it is that it refers to the types and prophecies in what we call the Old Testament. For instance, in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians he wrote, “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, . . .” (1 Cor 15:3-4) Since Paul wrote this around the year 55, and the first Gospel was written somewhere around 65-70, Paul could not have been referring to the Gospel accounts, but was clearly referring to the Hebrew scriptures (what we call the Old Testament) he knew so well.

The fact that Paul uses the phrase and the Church incorporated it into her creed shows the importance of it, but one scholar, John Bergsma, goes even further: “The inclusion of this line, the most widely-used and recognized statement of the Christian faith, should cause us to realize this fact: that Jesus’s Passion and Resurrection fulfilled the oracles of the prophets is central to the Gospel message. (Emphasis in original.) Moreover, in the early Church, it was of considerable apologetic and evangelistic power because no other religious or political leader could claim to have fulfilled ancient prophecies in the way that Jesus had.” (THE WORD OF THE LORD: Reflections on the SUNDAY MASS READINGS for YEAR A, p.131)

We have two examples this weekend of the early Christians coming to understand Jesus’ Passion, Death and Resurrection in terms of the Old Testament narratives, types (events and people in the Old Testament that prefigure New Testament events and people, particularly Jesus), and prophecies. In the first reading, Peter helps the Jews to understand Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection through Psalm 16, and Jesus himself, in the Gospel account of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, apparently goes through all the Old Testament references to him to help the two understand the events of the previous week.

In the first reading this weekend, from the Acts of the Apostles, the Church presents Peter’s sermon after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. It is important to understand that the general belief of the Jews of Peter’s time was that the psalms were written by David. Psalm 16 must have been a puzzle to them, especially the line, “nor will you suffer your faithful one to undergo corruption.” But to Peter, reading the psalm through the perspective of Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection, the psalm makes complete sense, and he uses his new understanding to begin to evangelize his listeners. The psalm, Peter contends, could not be about David, because David’s tomb is yet in their midst. Rather, it is a prophecy about the Messiah and has been fulfilled in Jesus the Nazorean. You killed him, Peter says, but God raised him up. Now, “. . . because you will not abandon my soul to the netherworld,/ nor will you suffer your faithful one to undergo corruption,” makes perfect sense.

Jesus makes a similar move with the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, for even they, who knew and followed Jesus and heard him teach, had no understanding of the events they themselves witnessed. Jesus, “beginning with Moses and all the prophets, . . . interpreted to them what referred to him in all the Scriptures,” explaining why it was “necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory.” What a monologue that must have been!

All this stands as a reminder to us of the importance of the Old Testament. So many Catholics, if they read scripture at all, tend to stay with the Gospels. While it is good to read and re-read the Gospels, we can come to know Jesus through the Old Testament as well. Some passages from the Catechism of the Catholic Church may serve to encourage us:

  1. The Church, as early as apostolic times, and then constantly in her Tradition, has illuminated the unity of the divine plan in the two Testaments through typology, which discerns in God’s works of the Old Covenant prefigurations of what he accomplished in the fullness of time in the person of his incarnate Son.
  2. Christians therefore read the Old Testament in the light of Christ crucified and risen. [And] the New Testament has to be read in the light of the Old. Early Christian catechesis made constant use of the Old Testament. As an old saying put it, the New Testament lies hidden in the Old and the Old Testament is unveiled in the New. [St. Augustine]
  3. The Church “forcefully and specifically exhorts all the Christian faithful . . . to learn ‘the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ,’ by frequent reading of the divine Scriptures. ‘Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.’” [Phil 3:8 and St. Jerome]

If you are new to the Old Testament, try this: read a passage that the Church uses in the liturgy (the first reading or the psalm) and ask the Holy Spirit to show Jesus to you in that passage. Then ask yourself, how does this apply to Jesus, or how does Jesus fulfill this passage. You might be surprised at how easily you can come to know Him in this manner of reading.

Father Stephen Bankemper is pastor, St. Catherine of Siena Parish, Ft. Thomas, Ky.