The Jerusalem Kerygma and how the Church guards the faith as taught by Christ

Catechists’ Training Workshop

Title: “The Jerusalem Kerygma” and how the Church guards the faith as taught by Christ.

Audience: Catechists

Objectives:

1.      To explain “The Jerusalem Kerygma” in the Acts of the Apostles, and compare and contrast Kerygma with apostolic teaching.

2.      To explain how the Church faithfully guards the faith as taught by Christ and handed on to the Apostles.

Opening Prayer:

Lord Jesus, thank you for calling us to be a catechist, and giving us the opportunity to share our faith with others. May you guide our hearts, our minds and our lips to faithfully proclaim your message, so that catechumens may get to know you, love you, and praise you. May all our words and deeds reflect your love and mercy. Amen.

Content of Presentation

        The twelve Apostles lived with Jesus during his short yet intensive ministry on earth. During his ministry, Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom of God, and being the Son of God, he revealed in full the Divine Mystery to mankind, which God had already started to reveal to his chosen people of the Old Covenant, though in an incomplete way. It was “not (the Apostles) who chose to follow Jesus; it was Jesus who chose them, kept them with him, and appointed them even before his Passover, that they should go and bear fruit and that their fruit should remain (c.f. John 15:16)” (Catechesis Tradendae 10).These Apostles were the eye-witnesses of Jesus’ ministry, bearing the testimony of what Jesus had proclaimed notably his Death and Resurrection. The Apostles are “unique figures in the religious history of mankind,” because they were “called by the Lord God himself, incarnate and speaking to them in his human words,” and they “saw the Risen Jesus” (Kevane 256). They faithfully conveyed the words and deeds of Jesus to the hearers of their time, for they always bore in mind the missionary mandate of the Lord before his glorious Ascension: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:20).

        Since they were the eye-witnesses of Christ’s Death and Resurrection, their faith in the Lord enabled them to consolidate what they saw and heard from him before his death, and more importantly, after they were illuminated by the Holy Spirit upon the Resurrection of the Lord, they got a fuller understanding of Jesus’ words and deeds against the background of the Old Testament. Do you remember the conversion experience of the two disciples on their Road to Emmaus who came to understand that the Messianic Promise in the Scriptures was fulfilled in Jesus when they saw the Risen Lord breaking bread before them? (Luke 24:13-35). The Apostles also kept the Lord’s promise in mind that he would send the Holy Spirit among them: “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever” (John 14:16). “(T)he Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you” (John 14:26).

        On the Pentecost, the Holy Spirit did come upon the first believers (Acts 2:1-13). “The gift of the Holy Spirit, abundantly poured out by Jesus Christ (c.f. John 3:34), was the beginning of the Church, which is missionary by its very nature” (Lineamenta Preface). Immediately, St. Peter, the head of the Twelve, stood up with the eleven Apostles, raised his voice, and addressed the people (Acts 2:14). His initial heralding of the message about Jesus on the Pentecost, together with his other proclamations about the Lord as reported in the first ten chapters of the Acts of the Apostles is called “The Jerusalem Kerygma” (Kevane 257). Historically, a “herald” is the “official spokesman for the town council” (Kevane 257). He is qualified for the spokesman job with “his absolute fidelity to the message from the ruler: he simply delivers it, without addition or subtraction, without any negotiation” (Kevane 257). St. Peter was exactly playing the role of the “herald” when he proclaimed the message of Jesus to the audience. Let’s briefly examine the content of his message.

        First and foremost, he cited from the prophet Joel whom God had foretold through his mouth of the coming of the Lord that “everyone who calls on his name shall be saved” (Joel 2:32; Acts: 2:21). He also cited from Psalm 16:8 and Psalm 110:1 to show that King David was actually referring to Jesus as the Lord when he mentioned “Lord” in his psalms (c.f. Acts 2:25-28, 34-35). And indeed, “all prophets, as many as have spoken, from Samuel and those after him, also predicted these days (about Jesus)” (Acts 3:24).So what exactly is “The Jerusalem Kerygma” or St. Peter’s heralding message? It is rather simple: Jesus is the suffering Messiah whom God had foretold through all the prophets (Acts 3:18); he is the Son of God the Father (Acts 2:33), “both Lord and Messiah” (Acts 2:36), “Holy and Righteous One” (Acts 3:14), “Author of life” (Acts 3:15), “Prince and Savior” (Acts 5:31), and God’s Spirit is with him (Acts 10:38); he was put to death on the cross (Acts 2:22, 3:13, 4:10, 5:30, 10:39); but God raised him from the dead (Acts 2:24, 3:15, 4:10, 5:30, 10:40); he is now at the right hand of the Father (Acts 2:25, 2:29, 2:34, 5:31); and he will come to judge the living and the dead (Acts 10:42). Whoever repents and believes in him will have their sins forgiven and be saved from God’s judgment (Acts 4:12, 10:43). Does the above sound familiar to you? “This message is the essential content of Christianity. It contains the substance of the Apostles’ Creed and the outline of what will become the four Gospels” (Kevane 258). In fact, “(a)ll the phrases of the Apostles’ Creed as it is known, professed, and prayed today can be constructed from these discourses of Peter” (Kevane 260). “In Catholic doctrine there exists a ‘hierarchy’ of truths, since they vary in their relation to the fundamental Christian faith” (Unitatis Redintegratio 11). “The Jerusalem Kerygma,” which is the basis of the Apostles’ Creed, is fundamental to Catholic faith. Let’s also bear in mind that the four Gospels were not yet written when St. Peter heralded the message about Jesus.

        Filled with the Holy Spirit, St. Peter and the other Apostles continued to herald the truth about Jesus to non-believers. Even if they were arrested and ordered to stop the heralding, they answered: “We must obey God rather than human authority … And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey them” (Acts 5:29-32). Indeed, “(t)he whole of the book of the Acts of the Apostles is a witness that they were faithful to their vocation and to the mission they had received” (CT 10). How about St. Paul, the other important figure of Acts? Unlike the Twelve, St. Paul the Apostle was not with Jesus during his ministry on earth. He received a mysterious call from the Lord on his way to Damascus (Acts 9:3-9, 22:6-11). He did not receive the message from a human source, nor was he taught of it, but he received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ (Galatians 1:12), and was converted immediately as a result. He told the Corinthians: “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve … Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me” (1 Corinthians 15:3-8). It is apparent from the above passage that the revelation received by St. Paul was basically the same message as “The Jerusalem Kerygma.” In reality, Paul “placed Christ’s resurrection at the heart of Kerygma” (Liégé 316). “(I)f Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain (1 Corinthians 15:14),” he said. Without the four Gospels being written by then, how did St. Paul know about the other facts of Jesus, e.g., the Lord’s Supper which he elucidated in the First Letter to the Corinthians? (1 Corinthians 11:17-33). Presumably, he received these facts from apostolic teaching. In other words, “(t)he revelation came (directly) from God; (while) the facts about Jesus came to St. Paul by the tradition of catechetical teaching” (Kevane 261). The above shows that St. Paul himself “bears witness to the Deposit of Faith and Morals in itself and to the fact that it was being handed on by teaching” (Kevane 261).

        On the other hand, being the “Apostle to the Gentiles” of which he took pride (Romans 11:13), St. Paul in turn preached the Person of Jesus Christ among the Gentiles. While using the Kerygma as the basis of his teaching, he also interpreted Jesus’ words and deeds to the hearers in accordance with the needs of the audience. He reiterated that he “was appointed a herald and an apostle, a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth” (1 Timothy 2:7; 2 Timothy 1:11). It is interesting to note that St. Paul emphasized that “he is not only a ‘herald’ but also a didaskalos, a ‘teacher’ of these truths” (Kevane 263). St. Paul’s teachings to the Gentiles captured in his Epistles are also faithfully handed over to the later generations of Christians as the Deposit of Faith. Together with the Four Gospels, the Acts and other inspired writings of the New Testament, the early Church discerned those books and letters which were written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit for inclusion into the Canon of the New Testament, which in conjunction with the Old Testament form the Sacred Scripture.

        Human words alone, even when they were captured in the inspired books of the Sacred Scripture cannot fully cover the divine message of Jesus handed over to his Apostles. And indeed, it is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth whom the Father has sent in Jesus’ name, teaches us everything, and reminds us of all that Jesus have said to his Apostles (c.f. John 14:26). The Spirit was sent to guide the Church into all the truth (c.f. John 16:13). So the Church, “in her teaching, life and worship, perpetuates and hands on to all generations all that she herself is, all that she believes” (Dei Verbum 8). This is known as the Tradition of the Church. Essentially, the Apostles “entrusted the Sacred Deposit of the Faith (the depositum fidei), contained in Sacred Scripture and Tradition, to the whole of the Church. By adhering to this heritage the entire holy people, united to its pastors, remains always faithful to the teaching of the Apostles, to the brotherhood, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (CCC 84). “This ‘Deposit of Faith’ is like the treasure of a householder; it is entrusted to the Church, the family of God, and she continuously draws from it things new and old. All God’s children, animated by his Spirit, are nourished by this treasure of the Word” (GDC 94).

        To safeguard this Divine Deposit entrusted to them and “keep the Gospel forever whole and alive within the Church, the Apostles left bishops as their successors, handing over to them the authority to teach in their own place” (DV 7). The Magisterium of the Church, which consists of the bishops in communion with the successor of St. Peter, is the living teaching office to interpret the Word of God to ensure that the Divine Deposit handed over to them by the Apostles continues to be “guarded faithfully and explained infallibly” (Kevane 256). Yet, “(t)his teaching office is not above the Word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it draws from this one Deposit of Faith everything which it presents for belief as divinely revealed” (DV 10). Besides, we need to reckon that “God still speaks in and through the apostolic Church” (Liégé 317), thereby making her a living Tradition. The Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, continuously renews her understanding of the Divine Revelation by “interpret(ing) human life in our age, the signs of the times, and the things of this world, for the plan of God works in these for the salvation of men” (GCD 11). “Living Tradition constitutes a continued prophetism in the Church – not only an objective memory and Magisterium but also the entire presence and power of God’s Word, realized fully in Jesus Christ and extension of salvation in humanity” (Liégé 317). Let’s pray that we are always faithful in proclaiming to our catechumens the love of God who gave his only Son for our salvation, so that in the midst of a culture of individualism and materialism, all of us may uphold Christian faith to respect the dignity of human life and tender loving care to our neighbors, particularly the elderly, the poor and the disadvantaged.

Reflections:

1.      Recognizing that the Apostles based their preaching on the Kerygma, do we put enough emphasis on the Resurrection event as the center of Christian faith?

2.      Are we always faithful in handing on the Divine Deposit of Faith to catechumens? Or are we adding our personal opinions (even though occasionally) which are neither compatible with the Scripture nor the Tradition?

Works Cited

Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC). New York: Doubleday, 1995. Print.

Kevane, Eugene. Jesus the Divine Teacher: What the Prophets Really Foretold. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2005. Print.

Liégé, Pierre-André. “The Ministry of the Word: From Kerygma to Catechesis,” Sourcebook for Modern Catechetics, Ed. Michael Warren, Saint Mary’s Press, 1983, pp. 339-360

Pope Benedict XVI. Lineamenta on the new evangelization. Vatican, n.d. Web. 02 Feb. 2017. 

Pope John Paul II. Catechesis Tradendae. Vatican, n.d. Web. 01 Feb. 2017. 

The General Catechetical Directory (GCD). Vatican, n.d. Web. 01 Feb. 2017. 

The General Directory for Catechesis (GDC). Vatican, n.d. Web. 01 Feb. 2017. 

Vatican II, Dei Verbum. Vatican, n.d. Web. 01 Feb. 2017. 

Vatican II, Unitatis Redintegratio. Vatican, n.d. Web. 01 Feb. 2017.