As has been so frequently remarked in this column, from the start of his pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI has tried regularly to deflect people's attention away from the Pope and direct it towards Christ. He very strongly believes that nowadays people talk a lot about Christ but many of them do not know the real Jesus Christ of the Gospels. Nor do they know all that well about the relationship between Christ and the Church.

Indeed, the world today is rife with varying interpretations of the divine founder of Christianity. But are many Christians, in reality, all that well versed with the authentic Jesus of Nazareth?

These very vital issues are addressed by Joseph Ratzinger in a new publication, the first volume of which, entitled Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, has just been issued in Italian and German. Translations in other major languages will follow shortly.

It has to be noted that, in the preface, signed "Joseph Ratzinger - Benedict XVI", the Pope explains that for decades he has noticed a growing scholarly distinction between the 'historical Jesus' and the 'Christ of Faith', a distinction that many Christians today consider accurate. But, the Holy Father argues, if the human Jesus was totally different from the Jesus depicted in the Gospels and proclaimed by the Church, what does it mean to have faith in him?

"Such a situation is tragic for the faith," writes Benedict XVI, "because it makes its authentic point of reference uncertain: intimate friendship with Jesus, from whom everything depends, is debated, and runs the risk of becoming useless".

In the preface of his first volume, Ratzinger, the brilliant theologian, writes that while he relies on modern scholarly Biblical criticism and historical research, he "wanted to attempt to present the Jesus of the Gospels as the true Jesus, as the 'historic Jesus' in the true sense of the expression".

Perhaps a pertinent question is: how does Pope Benedict find the time to write such a book, with other volumes to follow? In the preface, the Holy Father explained that he began this book during his 2003 summer vacation, and gave the final form to the first four chapters in the summer of 2004, adding: "After my election to the Episcopal See of Rome, I used all of my free moments to work on it" and "because I do not know how much time and how much strength I will be given, I have decided to publish the first ten chapters" as Volume One of Jesus of Nazareth.

Announcing the publication last November, Fr Federico Lombardi, director to the Vatican press office, said: "The Pope says clearly, with his usual simplicity and humility, that this is not a magisterial act, but a fruit of personal research and, as such, can be freely discussed and critiqued. It is not a long encyclical, but a personal presentation of the figure of Jesus by the theologian Joseph Ratzinger."

One admires the sustained effort of Pope Benedict to guide the faithful on the right path, these days, when Christianity is facing the dictatorship of relativism. In his book the Holy Father challenges the learned, or those who consider themselves as such, to put their blurred image of Jesus to the test, while he also exhorts all Christians to get to know deeper the Jesus of the Gospels.

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