Collins, Keenan Jones: Sharing the Priesthood of Christ

Since Paul interpreted his ministry of proclamation as a priestly service, a fortiori we should say this also about Jesus’ proclamation of God’s kingdom. Right from his ﬁrst chapter, Mark (and then the later evangelists) understood that being active in proclaiming/teaching was inseparable from Jesus’ being active in healing and other miraculous activity. Since Jesus’ teaching was priestly, so too was his activity as healer. Teaching and healing were two distinguishable but inseparable expressions of his priestly identity and activity. By preaching, healing, and forgiving sins, Jesus built up a ‘community of the faithful’, those who accepted his message of God’s kingdom that was already breaking into the world. One can summarize much of the public ministry of Jesus by speaking of him as feeding people at ‘two tables’. Centuries later Augustine, when commenting on the Lord’s Prayer, identiﬁed ‘our daily bread’ as both our daily material needs and our daily spiritual bread, with the latter including both the Word of God and the Eucharist. In this double perspective of the ‘Bread of Life’, Christ sustains his followers for time and eternity (John 6: 25–65).1

1 Commentary on the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, trans. D. J. Kavanagh (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1951), 135.

Augustine initiated an enduring tradition of interpretation, which would ﬁnd expression and endorsement at the Second Vatican Council: ‘Christians draw nourishment through the Word of God from the double table of holy Scripture and the Eucharist’ (PO 18).2

2 This theme of the ‘double table’ is expressed more fully in Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum (‘The Word of God’), 21; see also the decree on the renewal of religious life, Perfectae Caritatis (‘Perfect Charity’), 6. 3 See G. O’Collins, Salvation For All: God’s Other Peoples (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 82

This theme ﬁnds its counterpart or ‘early intimation’ (to use Newman’s language about the development of doctrine) in the ministry of Jesus. His priestly outreach to people took a double form: he both fed them with his teaching and shared his presence with them by joining them for meals. Those meals, especially his eating with the sinful and disreputable, characterized Jesus’ priestly ministry (e.g. Mark 2: 13–17 parr.; Luke 19: 1–10). The most vivid picture of Jesus nourishing people at a ‘double table’ comes from the stories of the feeding of ﬁve thousand (Mark 6: 30–44 parr.) and then of four thousand hungry people (Mark 8: 1–10 par.). The former group seem to have been predominantly Jewish and the latter predominantly Gentile—a way of expressing how Jesus’ mission went out to all people.3

3. On the two feeding stories, see J. P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, ii (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 950 66, 1022 38.

In the ﬁrst story Jesus ‘taught’ (Mark 6: 34), ‘healed’ the sick (Matt. 14: 14), or both taught and healed (Luke 9: 11) before feeding them. In the second story, situated in Gentile territory (the Decapolis), a ‘great crowd’ (Mark 8: 1; see Matt. 15: 30) was drawn to Jesus by his healing and teaching activity. What he does in feeding people on both occasions foreshadows the Last Supper and the institution of the Eucharist. During his ministry and at its end, Jesus nourishes people in a ‘double’ and priestly way.