FORMED Book Club: Ratzinger's Jesus of Nazareth, vol. 2: New Commandment & Judas' Betrayal

Ratzinger asks what is new about the ‘New Commandment’. It’s not only that we must now love as Jesus loved, i.e. that he is now the perfect exemplar whose love we must strive to imitate. No, more fundamentally, what is new is that we have a new foundation for love: with and in him. Jesus quotes Psalm 41, referring to Judas as ‘one who ate of my bread’. But John doesn’t use the Greek word for eating from the Septuagint; he replaces it with the word Jesus used in the Eucharistic discourse in Chapter 6. Ratzinger shows why this is significant.