When I read the Gospel and find there testimonies from the Law and from the Prophets, I see only Christ; I so see Moses and the Prophets and I understand them of Christ. Then when I come to the splendor of Christ Himself, and when I gaze at that glorious sunlight, I care not to look at the lamplight. For what light can a lamp give when lit in the daytime? If the sun shines out, the lamplight does not show. So, too, when Christ is present the Law and the Prophets do not show. Not that I would detract from the Law and the Prophets; rather do I praise them in that they show forth Christ. But I so read the Law and the Prophets as not to abide in them but from them to pass to Christ. -- St. Jerome, Tract. in Marc., 9:1-7.
Hmm. He has a point, of course... the Law and the prophets were a baby way to relate to God; Christ is the mature way.
ReplyDeleteBut Christ, the Light of the World, is precisely the One who illumines the Law and the Prophets, who shows them to be radiant with His own splendor. So it's not exactly that they don't show! It's that we understand them now in a new way (not the way Jews do, for example).
I believe I've missed something here.
The key I think to understanding his point is in the middle, the analogy of the lamp in the light.
ReplyDeleteJesus being the Word made flesh is the total summation of the Law and the prophets and therefore outshines them.