"Jesus of Nazareth" Chapter 6

This chapter "The Disciples" describes the significance of the structure and number of Apostles and disciples selected by Jesus, and how they correlate to his intention of world wide for all peoples mission. Pope Benedict does a very good job and this is a worthy chapter without getting too deep into distracting detail.

He describes the symbolic and theological significance of the numbers 12, 70, and 72 without going too far into the temptation of numerology and giving numbers a power that they simply do not have. Whenever I read anyone write about the symbolism of numbers I hold my breath and worry about the author veering into that all too familiar ditch - yes, even the Pope! But Pope Benedict did not disappoint; he took the symbolism exactly as far as they should go and no farther.

First, I will say a few things that I wish Benedict had touched upon in this chapter. There are other social implications for Jesus' selection of twelve Apostles and seventy two. The reasons are not just symbolic and or based on Jewish law and lore. Here are some additional thoughts. This was the very beginning of the Church and evangelization of the New Covenant. Jesus knew there would be extreme hardship and persecution, and accurately foretold all of this to the Apostles and disciples. He knew that they would have to work together in at least pairs, and in fact, sent out the disciples in pairs to evangelize. In those days, both humans and God spoke in terms of "the four corners" of the earth in order to designate a worldwide mission. That also happens to be the geography of the Mediterranean region in order to access Europe, Asia, and Africa. With Peter designated to establish the Rock of the Church wherever he placed his bishop's hat, Jesus was thinking in terms of 2-3 Apostles for each "corner" of the earth. James, the most traditionally "Jewish" of the Apostles, stayed in Jerusalem as the bishop, while the other Apostles were free to come and go in their evangelization. With that simple logic of logistics, the number twelve makes perfect practical sense for the number of Apostles. There is nothing wrong with understanding the numeric significance of the number twelve in Jewish scriptures and lore unless one starts to think that Jesus was conducting numerology. He was not; Jesus was selecting the right quantity of Apostle for the job and for the times. Jesus certainly did not mind the symbolism of, for example, the twelve tribes of Israel, but he'd never chose the number twelve just for that reason. If he thought that fifteen Apostles were needed to succeed, would he pick twelve just for the symbolism? No, of course not. So bear in mind that while everything Pope Benedict writes is insightful and true, it's never more important than Jesus' total understanding of God's plan and who/how many are needed to make this a practical reality. Jesus was the inadvertent author of the first managerial self help book in a way... because one could see the value of selecting the right people for the right jobs.

This is even more clear if you think about the disciples and their structure. Again, Pope Benedict writes insightful and true analysis of their numbers, and speculation about the derivation of lore about this number. And he correctly writes about the role of women in support of the disciples. But he does not write about the practical reasons for this number and structure, perhaps because he is focusing on Biblical symbolism rather than the sociology of these earliest Christians, and how Jesus would understand the needs of the community very clearly. The Apostles can be thought of as the bishops. But the disciples should be thought of the prototype laity. Yes, you didn't misread - I did say the disciples as prototype laity. The disciples were the models of the priesthood, but they were also the model for the laity in giving birth to this new Church. Here's why. The way conversion took place in this birth of the Church was person by person, individual by individual. But with each individual came a family unit. St Paul would write about this vital importance of the family. Each disciple was a "father" not just in a priestly sense, but in the sense that at that time, each disciple was a "father" of a family unit, who would also inevitably convert with him. It was really seventy-two "families" not seventy-two solo disciples who evangelized and established the early newly born Church. The disciple families initiated the now 2000 year old model of a Catholic Church based on the traditional family and their lay work sustained the early Church. Remember, the Apostles went back to fishing when they had to make a living and support the Church, and St Paul made tents to support himself and the early community as he traveled and evangelized.

Today everyone is so power and goal oriented that it's an inevitable error to think about those first days of the Church through the lens of "power." In other words, people think that Jesus selected seventy two for either a numeric, numinous power reason based on luck and lore, or that he selected seventy two "priests" in order to get busy and set up that big bad old bureaucratic Church power structure. No indeed... what Jesus was really doing was appointing seventy two family support structures each with a priest as an anchor. Notice that the Bible, for example in Acts, does not record great deeds of the disciples... and that is just fine, because their "deed" was to "be" the Church. The disciples were nameless (in a Biblical and historic sense) fathers who led the first Christian families - fathers as parents and fathers as priests. The numerical significance of seventy two is really just as there are four corners of the earth, there are "eighteen" disciples for each of those corners. That's about the size of a typical village in that time - eighteen extended families. Remember, though, that many thousands "heard" and "converted" wherever Jesus went and they too became part of the early Church family, through their descendents.

Now, just because the Apostles and disciples were married does not mean that priests should be married, because remember, the model of the priesthood, the first priest, is Jesus who is dedicated to God alone. But this is why deacons are able to be married and have families, and is one of the reasons that there is a renewal (thank God for prayers for vocations) among the deaconate. It's not just the challenges of the dwindled numbers of priestly vocations that fuels the call for deacons. It's a rediscovering of the original models of the seventy two disciples, with their families, who were both priestly and laity models for the Church in its first born days. In the early days disciples had to be priests and/or deacons and/or heads of lay families, because that was simply the reality of the people Jesus met and called. But very quickly the truth of the Church sorted itself out into the understanding that priests followed the example of the first priest, Christ, and that deacons followed the examples of the disciples. That is why there were six fold as many disciples as Apostles, and why they were for the most part unmentioned by name except in a few places in the Gospel, because they were the fabric of the Church, both as early "fathers" in a priest or deacon vocation, and as "fathers" of the Catholic community at large.

I hope this additional context setting was helpful to your reading of Pope Benedict's book, and also to your contemplation of the "why's" and the "how's" of development of this beautiful Catholic Church.