Cathal BarryMany things about Jesus of interest do not figure in the Gospels, writes Cathal Barry
Concerning Christ's life the Creed speaks only about the mysteries of the Incarnation (conception and birth) and Paschal mystery (passion, crucifixion, death, burial, descent into hell, resurrection and ascension). It says nothing explicitly about the mysteries of Jesus' hidden or public life, but the articles of faith concerning his Incarnation and Passover do shed light on the whole of his earthly life.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church notes that many things about Jesus of interest to human curiosity do not figure in the Gospels. Almost nothing is said about his hidden life at Nazareth, and even a great part of his public life is not recounted. What is written in the Gospels was set down there "so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name" (Jn 20:31).
The Gospels were written by men who were among the first to have the Faith and wanted to share it with others. Having known in faith who Jesus is, they could see and make others see the traces of his mystery in all his earthly life. From his birth to his Passion and Resurrection, everything in Jesus' life was a sign of his mystery. His deeds, miracles and words all revealed that "in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily" (Col 2:9.). His humanity appeared as "sacrament", that is, the sign and instrument, of his divinity and of the salvation he brings: what was visible in his earthly life leads to the invisible mystery of his divine sonship and redemptive mission
The Church believes that Christ's whole earthly life – his words and deeds, his silences and sufferings, indeed his manner of being and speaking ñ is Revelation of the Father.
Redemption
It also teaches that Christ's whole life is a mystery of redemption. Redemption, according to the Church, comes to us above all through the blood of his cross, but this mystery is at work throughout Christís entire life.
In his Incarnation through which by becoming poor he enriches us with his poverty; in his hidden life which by his submission atones for our disobedience; in his word which purifies its hearers; in his healings and exorcisms by which "he took our infirmities and bore our diseases"; and in his Resurrection by which he justifies us.
Christ's whole life is a mystery of recapitulation, the Catechism states. All Jesus did, said and suffered had for its aim restoring fallen man to his original vocation.
As St Irenaeus said: "When Christ became incarnate and was made man, he recapitulated in himself the long history of mankind and procured for us a "short cut" to salvation, so that what we had lost in Adam, that is, being in the image and likeness of God, we might recover in Christ Jesus. For this reason Christ experienced all the stages of life, thereby giving communion with God to all men."