Hermeneutic

If this is the case, it is only possible really to understand this person by entering into this act of prayer, by participating in it. This is suggested by Jesus’ saying that no one can come to him unless the Father draws him (Jn 6:44). Where there is no Father, there is no Son. Where there is no relationship with God, there can be no understanding of him who, in his innermost self, is nothing but relationship with God, the Father — although one can doubtless establish plenty of details about him. Therefore a participation in the mind of Jesus, i.e., in his prayer, which (as we have seen) is an act of love, of self-giving and self-expropriation to men, is not some kind of pious supplement to 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 — i.e., the entering-in to the same time and the same meaning — is to take place. . . . The person who prays begins to see. . . . All real progress in theological understanding has its origin in the eye of love and in its faculty of beholding.

From then-Archbishop Ratzinger’s Behold The Pierced One, 1984.

 

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