| Jesus did not tell his disciples to "know him," but to "follow him". |
Obviously this either is a direct quote or a summing up of his words. Here is more from the link:*
Vatican City, Feb 20, 2014 / 05:39 am (CNA).- In his daily homily, Pope Francis spoke about the importance of Christian discipleship, emphasizing the need for Christians to follow Jesus with their entire lives, not just intellectually.
“Jesus didn’t say to Peter and to his Apostles, ‘Know me!’ he said, ‘Follow me!’ And this following of Jesus makes us know Jesus,” explained Pope Francis on Feb. 20 to those gathered in the chapel of the Casa Santa Marta residence...
Then the Pope asked the congregation to consider the gospel calling in their personal lives.
“Let us look at Jesus, Peter, the apostles, and let us hear in our hearts this question: ‘Who am I for you?’”
“Like the disciples, let us ask the Father to give us the knowledge of Christ in the Holy Spirit,” he concluded.
A little commenting might not be a bad idea, here is what I wrote under the link:
The followers of Jesus came to know Him. But we can know Him through faith without being very active followers. As to what he told the disciples, these were not the first laymen, but the first bishops. A man who cannot distinguish between what a layman needs to do to save his soul and what a bishop has to do to save many souls does not sound to me like a Catholic bishop, but like a Protestant in sheep's clothing.
"Like the disciples, let us ask the Father to give us the knowledge of Christ in the Holy Spirit,” he concluded.
They were praying in one way for knowing Christ better through the Holy Spirit, insofar as He was to remind them of all that He had said and done ever all over the three years. But in another way they were obviously praying to serve Him, to accomplish His commands, while all the while knowing Him very well indeed already. He had just given them one 40 day's crash course in Old Testament exegesis.
Perhaps the man who is considered by many the successor, and legitimately so, of the principal disciple St Peter, has forgotten this because this crash course would have been the obvious occasion for Christ to tell them the received interpretation of Genesis 1 and 2 as literal history was wrong - IF it was wrong. And Bergoglio is not exactly known to distance himself very actively from the errors of Georges Lemaître or Teilhard de Chardin ... errors which could only have been the truth if Christ had said that back in those forty days between Resurrection and Ascension.
And Jesus did not ask "who am I for you" at Caesarea Phlippi as if wanting to know how much He was worth to them, what they were prepared to sacrifice, He asked "who do you say that I am" as asking them to reveal their doctrine.
In a sense Bergoglio is also revealing his doctrine, but it sounds strange after St Peter's Thou art the Son of the Living God.
And in a very real sense He did not have to tell them to know Him, because they already did know Him through the Scriptures. They did know the angels that had visited Abraham and that had saved Lot. They did know the angel who fought with Jacob. They did know the God who had spoken in the Burning Bush. And so on.
This I wrote on FB, this I republish here.
Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
St Severian Bishop of
Scythopolis in Palestine
killed after opposing Eutychians**
21-II-2014
* Catholic News Agency: To know Jesus we must follow him, says Pope Francis ...
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/to-know-jesus-we-must-follow-him-says-pope-francis/
** Probably the quarrel was not about the Book of Henoch. And I am not sure that today's Copts qualify fully as Eutychians.
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