Jesus the Teacher Within

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Laurence Freeman. Jesus the Teacher Within

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For Rosie

–Jesus (Jn 17:16)

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The identity of Jesus can be validly expressed in diverse and even divergent ways. The most eloquent and universal expressions are at home in silence. The main purpose of this book is to stress the often neglected value of silence in responding to the question of Jesus that, more than any other question, defines our relationship to him. It is the indefinable silence at the heart of the mystery of Jesus which ultimately communicates his true identity to those who encounter it. And it is a universal identity. He belongs to the Jewish tradition messianically. But he has come to belong no less to the rest of humanity. Every religious tradition will employ its own terms to describe him. If there is a unity in all these responses it will not be linguistic or theological but a mystical unity beyond words, concepts and images. We know the highest truth by love not thought: the Christian mystical tradition, together with its sister traditions, is sure of this. The silence of love, not logic, is the sharing of one’s self-knowledge with another.

Jesus’ question welled up from the silence of his own self-knowledge. He posed it while he was ‘praying alone in the presence of his disciples’. This context of prayer is all-important for understanding his question. It is the context of discipleship and spiritual awakening: community, friendship and shared consciousness. Let us look at what this context of prayer, in which the defining question of Christian identity is first raised, means for us today. By understanding prayer we learn how to read the gospels, the essential texts of Christian faith. We also learn what discipleship means and how to see prayer as a journey of the soul into the boundlessness of God.

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