The Various Lives of Jesus

Periods of great faith are times when representations of Jesus and his life are most popular, and they are connected. They then appear in all aspects of daily life and leave us their architectural, artistic, or literary trace. However, it was not their historical accuracy that made them successful, but their ability to make Jesus and his life relevant, to embody him in those eras in a way.

Saint Nicephorus of Constantinople (758–828), defending icons against the iconoclasts who considered their worship idolatrous, said: "God having made Himself visible by the Incarnation of Christ, to depict in image the humanity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, as He appeared on earth, is to confess the reality of His Incarnation and of our Salvation."

It is this ability to join Jesus on the roads of Palestine through time and space that characterizes the work of Maria Valtorta and with a specific purpose: "To awaken in Priests and laypeople a vivid love for the Gospel and for all that relates to Christ (EMV 652, p. 550)."

The Blessed Allegra, in his analysis of Maria Valtorta's work, concluded among other things:

"There is therefore in Maria Valtorta's work a transposition, a translation of the Good News announced by Jesus in the language of today's Church, a transposition willed by Him, given that the seer lacked any technical theological training. And this is intended, I think, to make us understand that the message of the Gospel announced today by His Church, in the language of today, is substantially identical to that of His own Teaching from twenty centuries ago."

Against a contemporary current, this renowned biblical scholar thus recognizes that fundamentally Maria Valtorta's work, "willed by Him," defends the immutability of the Gospel. Thus, the bottle of spring water is not the source, but what it contains is "substantially identical" to it. Every representation of "the humanity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, as He appeared on earth" confesses "the reality of His Incarnation and of our Salvation," which is why it is surrounded by veneration.

This is a truth willed by God, developed under His impulse but sometimes distorted.

Illustrated Lives of Jesus

When medieval artists depicted the Apostles in the clothing of their time, they represented an acculturated reality. The bas-reliefs surrounding the high altar of Notre-Dame de Paris depicted scenes from the New Testament. They nourished the prayer of generations of faithful, and yet the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple followed the Adoration of the Magi, which is impossible since the latter occasioned the flight to Egypt. The reality was in the heart of the faithful, not in historical expertise.

Jesus wanted to continue speaking to believers throughout the ages. The Relics, especially those of the Passion, serve this purpose and live on in popular traditions. He who so loved His own continues to love them until the end of time. Not intellectually but in a physical relationship, like photographs of loved ones that populate our proximity, like memories that populate the minds and hearts that reunite, greet, and write each other.

This mutual and incarnate love is found in Maria Valtorta's work, which reports the circumstances in which the Relics of the Passion were gathered, venerated, and passed down. There is nothing more human in this reflex and nothing more divine in its realization.

Veronica (Nike in the work) brings her veil to Mary in Divine Consolation (EMV 612.20) — Longinus (Saint Longinus) brings the memories of the crucifixion (EMV 614.6) which Mary joins with those of the Last Supper, gathered in a chest (EMV 641.3). Nicodemus, breaking with a Jewish prohibition, has the first crucifix carved to preserve one of the two burial cloths, that of the embalming (EMV 644.6).

Commented Lives of Jesus

These lives of Jesus are numerous in the wake of historico-critical exegesis which emerged in Germany in the mid-19th century. They are almost all commercial successes. Among them:

Ernest Renan (1823–1892). He wrote his in 1863. For this father of positivism, Jesus is only a historical figure, with no other attributes. He did not write a new life of Jesus but commented on what he thought of Him. It was a great success and a reference for a whole current of thought breaking from Church tradition.

At the turn of the century, several of these "lives" appeared.

In 1928, Father Marie-Joseph Lagrange (1855–1938) published "The Gospel of Jesus Christ" which met immense success because he made it accessible even though his commentaries condensed the advanced knowledge accumulated by this founder of the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem and the Revue biblique. He also offered a presentation in a single narrative. This unification, logical since Jesus only lived one life, is a long quest since Tatian's Diatessaron (170 AD).

Father Lagrange put historico-critical method at the service of a theological reading of the Bible. That was his goal. But he defied the official current that viewed this enterprise as "modernist," condemned by Pius X. His successor, Benedict XV, also condemned Father Lagrange's approach in the encyclical Spiritus Paraclitus on September 15, 1920. Here we find the difficulty for established circles to welcome the breath of the Spirit and their reflex to oppose it invoking disciplinary condemnations which only last until they are lifted. Thus the encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu by Pius XII indeed reopened, in 1943, the right to historical exploration of the Bible. Today Father Lagrange is considered the principal figure in the current renewal of Catholic exegesis and his beatification cause was introduced in 1988, fifty years after his death.

Although condemned and published in an officially hostile climate, "The Gospel of Jesus Christ" was published with a letter from Cardinal Pacelli, future Pius XII, then Secretary of Pope Pius XI, in whose name he thanked Father Lagrange.

In the preface to his work, Father Lagrange offers a reflection that enlightens our view of the work of Maria Valtorta:

"The gospel is unfathomable, and one can never write enough about Our Lord Jesus Christ if that might be useful to even a few Souls. However, I have abandoned proposing to the public a 'Life of Jesus' in the classical mode, to let the four gospels speak more, insufficient as historical documents to write a history of Jesus Christ as a modern would write the history of Caesar Augustus or Cardinal Richelieu, but of such value as a reflection of the life and Doctrine of Jesus, of such sincerity, such purity, that any attempt to revive Christ fades before their inspired word. The gospels are the only life of Jesus Christ that one can write. One only needs to understand them as best as possible."

What he strives to do through commentaries which are already, in an embryonic way, the living contextualization so well developed in Maria Valtorta's The Gospel as Revealed to Me. By commenting in a unified way on all four Gospels, he also opposed critical editions on Jesus that often lead to dislocating what is fundamentally alive because unified:

"Independent criticism [...] divided, fragmented, pulverized. Even today it is the final word of so many efforts to reach a dust of traditions sometimes struggling Against each other, sometimes derived from each other, less fortunate than Democritus's atoms since they never manage to constitute a living whole. And certainly, the analysis is legitimate, and this delicate operation can have only a negative result, that is, in the case where one would recognize no story that was plausible, much less fully established. This seems to be the opinion of radical criticism, that which speaks loudest: some have even concluded from examining tradition that Jesus did not exist."

Shortly after, in 1945, Daniel-Rops (1901–1965) wrote his Jesus in His Time, a work sold half a million copies. He calls upon historical science to support the Christ of the Gospels but comments on His life in its historical context without retelling it.

In 1996, Abbé Laurentin (1917–2017) wrote his Authentic Life of Jesus Christ in which he bears witness, for the same purpose, to his fields of excellence: history, theology, exegesis, etc., but this life of Jesus also comments on the main events without describing them. His life of Jesus was so remarkable that Cardinal Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) refers to it several times in Jesus’s Childhood, published in 2012.

Whether documented or imaginative, developed or episodic, favorable or hostile to Tradition, the "lives of Jesus" are commentaries on the Gospels.

The Gospel as Revealed to Me, on the contrary, reports the 373 pericopes of the four Gospels, but without commentaries. They are presented in the purity of facts and words, without additions. There are no historical or theological explanations except the scattered catecheses of Jesus who gives them with authority, without reference to a human author.

Studies, Essays, and Novels

Regularly, works are published that aim to reveal the hidden (or deliberately concealed) secret about Jesus’s life. The publication is sure of its success because "A time will come when people will not endure sound teaching; but according to their own desires, they will gather to themselves a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear," prophesied Saint Paul.

Indeed, these works rely on a narrow selection of sources: sometimes a single evangelist from whom they select a few verses which are mixed with exotic ingredients. In the resulting gaps, suppositions and extrapolations are built. The boundary disappears between the Gospel and the Da Vinci Code.

In contrast, Maria Valtorta’s work, just as popular, describes 652 visions that fully overlap the four evangelical narratives without omission (except for a few rare stylistic phrases) and without contradiction in acts, teachings, or characters, which, for their part, many publications about Jesus's life claim to find, quite the opposite.

Revealed Lives of Jesus

The work therefore does not belong to human studies about Jesus’s life, but to the "revealed lives" known in Church history, notably with the Mystical City of God by Mary of Ágreda (1602–1665) and The Visions of Anne-Catherine Emmerich (1774–1824), both of whom, to various degrees, received visions of the life of Christ and the commentary of Heaven.

Historians refuse to take private revelations as historical sources. Indeed, by definition, a private revelation is posterior to the time and belongs to the domain of the intangible. This is therefore perfectly acceptable... except in one case: when the historical visions are authentic visions that have traversed time. And the means to verify this is precisely to pass the reported elements through the sieve of current sciences. The treasure is thus accessible only if the chest is opened. Pius XII said: "whoever reads will understand."

If the light of stars dead millions of years ago is still visible, how much more can scenes lived only 2,000 years ago be visible, as through a camera, with the eyes of God.

Fellowship of the Church who are not part of the clergy or religious orders.

The Gospel as it was revealed to me (Maria Valtorta).

In-depth research on God, faith, religious Doctrine.

Second part of the Bible, from the coming of Jesus Christ until the Apocalypse.

Analysis of the historical, cultural, and literary context of Biblical texts to better understand what they meant at the time they were written and how they can be interpreted today.

Preliminary stage to canonization recognizing that a deceased person can be called Blessed because of their holiness.

In a Christian sense, study concerning God and divine things in the light of Revelation.

Manifestation of the Holy Spirit after the Bible to a person or particular group. It is individual and relative.

City where a bishop resides and where the cathedral, which is his main Church, is located. It is the administrative and spiritual center of a diocese.