Day 8. September 18, 2006
Movement 1. Dei Filius
Lecture 4. Jesus Comes to America: New Spain, New France and New England (Part 1)
Despite Jesus' new accessibility imprinted in the Protestant Reformation, Jesus first came to the New World in Catholic missions. Franciscan and Jesuit missionaries sought, like Puritans and other Protestants later, to convert Native Americans to Christianity. Christ the Body who Catholicism brought to the New World was material, visible, and portable, but Catholic missions found conversion difficult nonetheless because of linguistic and especially cultural differences. The concept of individual sin, for example, had no parallel in the New World. But Jesus the Body fleshed out in Jesus the celibate, Jesus the martyr for his people, and especially Jesus the miracle worker offered meaningful connections to New World peoples. Mary, the universal Mother, became the New World's special patron. A clip from the film The Black Robe illustrates the challenges, commitments, connections, and passions of Jesus' North American arrival.