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Michael Hagan
Hello and welcome to the Providence College podcast. I'm Michael Hagan from the class of 2015, and I'm joined by producer Chris Judge of the Class of 2005. Our guest today is Marcelino D'Ambrosio of the Class of 1977, whose book Jesus The Way the Truth and the Life and a corresponding study guide was published by Ascension Press in

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Michael Hagan
2020. Marcelino is a leader in Catholic media, heading the Crossroads initiative and a scholar and teacher of Catholic theology. He's known to many as Dr. Italy. And he grew up a short walk from Providence College near near La Salle Academy.

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Michael Hagan
Marcelino, thanks for joining us.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Michael, it's a pleasure to be with you.

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Michael Hagan
So more ink has been spilled over Jesus than just about any figure in human history. What makes your book unique among texts about Jesus of Nazareth?

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Well, the first thing I want to say is that it is not the last word, and it can't possibly be the last word. I'm very upfront about it. Jesus is a real live human being, a man who walked along the dusty Rhodes between Galilee and Jerusalem 2000 years ago in a very specific place and time.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
But at the same time, I believe as the Catholic Church believes that he is God incarnate. And if that's the case, then there's more to him than can possibly be captured by anyone. And that's why we even have four gospels.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
We don't have just one inspired account. We have four different accounts, and they're almost like four different TV cameras. You know, at a PC basketball game, you need a lot of different angles to try to get some sort of objective perspective on the game, right?

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
So what's unique about this book, though, I think, is that I am a scholar. But before I was a scholar, I was just a regular. I was a kid who was a rock and roll musician looking for adventure.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
And I found a greater adventure in Christ. Even though I was brought up Catholic, it wasn't really the heart of my life. Back when I before I went to P.S., I was already playing professional music. And so Jesus came alive to me at age 16, and I've been following ever since as a disciple.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
But also, I was a communicator, popular communicator, as a musician, as a guy who spoke to a crowd on stage. How to engage a crowd had to speak in very nonacademic language. And I think a lot of times academicians can be so academic that people think they're deep but can't really understand them and certainly can't apply what

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
they say to real life. So this picture of Jesus really synthesizes a lot of recent scholarship, but it does it in a way that really packages it to be consumed and to be enjoyed by anybody. And so the book is is written for the Catholic, who wants to go deeper, but it's also written for someone who just

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
wants to kind of find out who this figure is, who doesn't necessarily believe that he is anybody except an important figure in history, perhaps for some people, but would like to really discover him. So I think the book is kind of unique in that respect, in that it's deep and yet very accessible and in life giving.

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Michael Hagan
So when did you decide to begin your project and how did you determine the scope of it?

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Well, first, I just want to say that I this project is owned by Ascension Press, and that's a Catholic press that's done an amazing job at getting more Catholics in the English speaking world, reading the Bible than probably any publisher, maybe any organization.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
They've done an amazing job over the last 20 years, honestly. And one of the first big things that I did with them was write a guide to Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. And rather than being a short little track, it was about 90 100 page short book Q&A format.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
And it was actually done in close coordination with the release of the movie, and it sold over 1,000,000 copies. Lots of people. It was a very first Catholic book out there. I think that was bought in large quantities and given away for for very small amount of money.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
And recently there's some other folks who do that kind of thing. But anyway, this that that was their launch, and they've they've been really an awesome and awesome force in the church. So anyway, I've been talking to them about doing a book and they said, You know what, we really need.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
We've done a lot of Bible studies on books of the Bible, an overview of the whole Bible. You know, a study on Matthew, a study on John. We don't have it. It's just a study on the person in ministry and teaching of Jesus.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
And we think you might. Do you think you might be down for that? And so I said, absolutely, because really, honestly and truly with Catholics, there's a problem. We have such a rich faith that many Catholics don't know where to start when it comes to talking about what the Catholic faith is about.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
And a lot of times we lose the center in all the peripheral stuff church politics, you know, particular issues of canon law or issues of, you know. And like the Eucharist, which is so important, but obviously the Eucharist goes back to a person to Jesus.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
And so we got a center in rice center in the person of Jesus. That's really what the second Vatican Council was about. And that's been a passion of mine. That's what the Crossroads initiative has been about since I founded it with, with some other guys back in the 1980s.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
So, you know, we want to bring people to a real encounter with Jesus, and that happens has to happen over and over again. It doesn't happen just once in your life. So anyway, I said, Yeah, let's do it.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
And so I partner with a few other guys, and this book is a standalone, but it's done in conjunction with videos, a ten part video series that we shot in the Holy Land. I was joined by Jeff Kevins, Dr. Edward.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
And it's a very conversational match. It's almost like a travelog, a Bible study and a travelog format. So it's very vivid, very, very much very earthy. We're eating Middle Eastern food, we're talking to Middle Eastern people, we're going through the sights and talking about a lot of the content that made its way into this book.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
So the book is in conjunction with this study, and that's how the study came to be. It really was a conversation, a passion of mine, a longstanding passion of mine, a need of ascension press to come up with something like this.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
And it's been, I think, the bestselling Bible study of Ascension Press since it was released in 2020, despite the pandemic and all the problems of supply chain and the lockdowns and all that stuff. It's outsold anything that they've ever done.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
I think.

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Michael Hagan
That's remarkable. Congratulations. Thank you. And I should mention to our audience that we will include links to to Marcellino study both link to purchase the book and the study guide, as well as to access the videos in our show notes.

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Michael Hagan
So be sure to check there if you're interested in Dr. Dean Ambrose's project. So tell me a little bit about what audiences you had in mind when you wrote this book.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
OK, well, there's a dual purpose in almost anything I do, and essential press has its purpose. And so let me just say Ascension Press has a market and a group of Catholic people around the English speaking world who love to do small group studies, and they're Catholics who are committed already.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
They're more than usually the typical Sunday churchgoer. So that's a sanctions audience, and we wanted to give them something that would really feed them and help them to grow in their relationship with Jesus. So that's a sanctions target market.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
But I wrote the book and we did the study to reach way beyond that target market to really I had in mind that this could be read by committed Catholics who believe in Jesus. It could bring them much further than they've ever been before and their relationship with them.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
But it would give them a tool to give away to relatives who haven't been going to church or friends who are Hindu, Buddhist, unchurched, who want to know more about this figure of Jesus of Nazareth. And so we deal with the very beginning with some questions like did he ever exist?

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
We ever know that he exists. Some people say, Did you know? And Why do we trust the gospels? Why are they historical reliable or are they just fables? Or, you know, how do we deal with these things? So these are questions that anyone has.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
And I think they're important questions. So we deal with those. So in other words, people can pick up this book. I wanted this book to assume nothing. I wanted people to be able to pick it up and delve in, dove in and really encounter Christ as a person is as the man from Nazareth, whether they come from

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
a Christian Catholic background or not.

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Michael Hagan
Now, how did your experience in education at Providence College come to bear on your project?

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Well, I have to tell you that I had this conversion in my life when I was 16 and very during that time, very soon after, I got to know a young priest, Father Charles Demick from PC, who taught theology.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
And so my friendship with him began. I began learning from him before he was ever my first theology professor, which he became. So two years later, I I start studying theology and humanities at Providence College, and he's my first professor, so he had a huge impact on me.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
And what I love about Giles. Father Giles is now retired. He's still very much with us, but and I keep in touch with him still. He was a frequent guest at our family table in Providence when I live with my parents and we've continued to get together over the years.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
But anyway. Father Giles is remarkably learned, but at the same time, very down to earth, and I was shocked that in his class I could sit and retain what he said. Of course I took notes and of course I did some study, but I didn't have to really study hard because he made his lectures so interesting and

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
so vivid that it was just easy to remember. So he was a model for me in terms of a teacher and a writer, although I didn't read his writings. I wanted to write the same way that he delivered and and so that's part of my inspiration that leads to this book.

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Michael Hagan
Yeah, it's interesting. We have something in common there, and I'm sure it's a different father, Giles. But I was baptized by the father, Giles, who was actually a high school teacher of my father and father. Giles has had a huge formative influence on the faith life of my family, so that's a funny coincidence.

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Michael Hagan
So besides Father Giles, are there any other professors or anyone else? Faculty, staff, neighbors, friends from your time at Providence College whose fingerprints can be found in your work?

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Yeah, I would say Father Dominic Rover was taught spirituality, and I took a course. I was in the honors program. And so it was a small group discussion, sort of a course. And it was it was really very influential.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
He was he had a great impact on me, for sure. And he both he and Father Giles were very deep men of prayer. Now all Dominicans should be and all priests should be, and all theology professors should be.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
But the fact is, they're not always, you know, so you really get a sense of holiness and of profound prayer from both of these men, but in a way that is not off-putting. It's very attractive. So Father Rover was also an influencer in my life.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
I had I was actually in the House of Formation program for the Diocese of Providence. So a number of Das and priests were professors APC, and they also had an influence on me, Father Robert Randall Bass and priest Father Bob Hayman.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
So they they were they were important as well.

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Michael Hagan
Another coincidence I've taken father had.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Oh, that's awesome.

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Michael Hagan
He taught me immigration history actually. Undergrad program here.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Excellent. Excellent. I had him for American history, undergrad American history. And yeah, he's really a good man. Yeah, and I'm a historical theologian, so I've my approach to theology is is from the vantage point of historical development, and he definitely influenced me there.

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Michael Hagan
So you arrived at Providence College in the fall of 1973. Now, it wasn't a very long trip because, like I said, you grew up right down the street near La Salle Academy, but nonetheless you arrive in the fall of 1973.

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Michael Hagan
The last draft call for the Vietnam War was made only months before the college was newly co-educational. What was it like starting your college education and in the wake of such turbulent and transformative events?

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Well, they were turbulent events for sure, and I was very much involved in a lot of things back in the seventies in terms of the Vietnam War, although I have no love for communism. I was very concerned about the corruption of the Vietnamese government and the futility of the war.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
So, you know, I kind of participated in in that movement, also in in the environmental movement, the very beginning, the first Earth Day. You know, I was part of a lot of things prior to coming to Providence College, and I remember the last draft lottery and fortunately, my number was a low number.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
So yeah, it was a turbulent time for sure. It was a delightful time, however, to come to Providence College. It was an exciting time. You know, a lot of folks now look back from the point of view of the church.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
You know, it's a turbulent time because it was post Vatican two time. And there's a lot of folks who look back on the seventies and see the seventies as a really terrible time in the life of the church with bad catechesis and very shallow spirituality and all that, it's kind.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Fashionable right now to have that opinion. But, you know, there were crazy things going on, for sure. But there are a lot of exciting things going on in the life of the church. During this time, I was involved in what I think to be to this day.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Very important social justice movement was support for American farm work farm workers. And I was very much a part of that movement and it was beautiful to see a movement that really, in my mind was was spiritual. It was not simply political or simply economic of solidarity of people in the church with migrant farm workers in California

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
who are struggling. That was a good thing, but spiritually it was amazing what was going on, I think, during that time. The Christian movement for many, many Catholics in the 1960s and seventies, going to a Cassio or a junior version of search was the first encounter they really had with with Jesus as a person in a conscious

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
way. And also the first time they ever share their faith or heard other Catholics share their faith. You know, for many of us, we had doctrine to believe and we went to church, but sharing our faith with one another and sharing our struggles and our adventure of trying to live out the gospel with other people, that was

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
very unusual. We're very, very close lipped and private about our faith, typically. But there was a newness in the air about about an excitement of following Jesus, and I experienced that doing my first search just before I came to Providence College, which had junior Cassio.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
I also experienced the charismatic movement, which was very alive in Providence. It was a center of the charismatic movement, and it was beautifully integrated with the church. It was. It was, and spirituality and the sacraments and contemplation. And Father John was the MC from B.C., was a leader in that movement.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
So anyway, it was an exciting time of discovery rather than I don't remember it as a horrible time, but really as kind of an exciting time with good new things happening.

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Michael Hagan
So did your music intersect with your activism, more with your spirituality and faith at all and in those days?

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Yeah, it's interesting. I think as a secular rock musician, the closest I came to an intersecting was being behind, doing a large benefit concert and dance where all the proceeds were donated to be at this long time ago.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
But you know, there was a little country or a little section called Biafra. It's not a country anymore, but there was a struggle for independence and there was tremendous amount of famine. So anyway, we raised money for starving kids in Africa, so that's as close as rock and roll came to activism.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
I would say but, but my music, I ended up using music after my conversion, using it in praise and worship of God. So that was part of life in the 1970s for me and my time as a student at Providence College, playing the bass, the upright bass at mass was was kind of a great thing.

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Michael Hagan
So nowadays you run across the Crossroads initiative, which you mentioned. You're also a frequent world traveler. Can you say a little bit about your work in Catholic media and evangelization?

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Sure. I'll start with the music connection because we just talked about that back in the eighties when I wanted to do college evangelization, I had moved. After being an undergrad, a PC, I moved to Baltimore. I was doing grad work in DC.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Another musician. Yeah, my.

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Michael Hagan
Hometown.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Oh, wow, OK, well, I lived first up in the town cocktail area, then down in. But up until then in Clarksville, I was doing work with students at Thousand State University at Loyola University. It was basically evangelistic outreach.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
It was a campus ministry and we were trying to attract kids to events, voluntary events. Now it's hard to get students to show up for a class in the evening after they've been in classes all day. So we ended up doing a coffeehouse sort of music experience because me and some other guys who are former rock musicians

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
, we figured, OK, we'll do it. We'll put a band together and we'll talk between songs and we'll have food. College students always love food for free. So anyway, we began this event and we call it a crossroads and that grew into a band.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
And then we ended up traveling and and then it grew into a 501 C three and had a ministry. But the idea of Crossroads really is a creative sharing of the word of God through storytelling, through music, through art, through media.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
So we were some of the first to actually have a Catholic website back in 2003. It wasn't there weren't that many, and we were one of the first. So we wanted to make the richness of the Catholic tradition available to people online.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
We've been doing that ever since. And the website we have now has thousands of pages of searchable things by me, audio, video and writing commentary on gospel passages, but also some great tidbits, some great jewels and gems from the.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Catholic tradition, bite sized, easy to understand. You know, kind of like the fathers in the Saints greatest hits brought to you by the Crossroads initiative. So those are some things we have on the site anyway. That's been, you know, we've continued to be creative and that's why we got into radio.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
I was doing Catholic radio in the seventies in Providence with a local radio host before there are any Catholic radio networks. Father John Randall, a diocesan priest. Well, was was a guy that was doing radio, and myself and the other co-founder of Crossroads began doing a radio show with him.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
So that's really cool. And then when EWTN started, we were there helping out with music and stuff. And so anyway, we we've been using whatever means we can partnering with whoever we can to get the gospel message out there in an attractive, creative sort of a fashion.

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Michael Hagan
So how did you come to be known as Dr. Italy?

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Well, when I was in Providence, Michael, the name Marcelino was not that weird because, you know, there's a lot of people with names like Arturo and his last names like, you know, my friends, last names were like Cassini, you know, Google, the amino famiglietti.

00;19;48;18 - 00;20;08;07
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
You know, I had all these friends with names like that. Then I moved to Texas and I say, Hey, I'm Marcelino D'Ambrosio. Have anything shorter for that, you know? So anyway, I when it came time to do a website and have to put a URL out on the radio where people have to listen to it and get

00;20;08;07 - 00;20;22;10
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
it, or they had to see it on a television screen and they had five, ten, 15 seconds to copy it down or remember it, Marcelino D'Ambrosio. Akon was not going to work. So I bought the domain. Dr Italy.

00;20;22;18 - 00;20;40;04
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Com Very short. D.R. Italy ICOM hard to misspell. You can remember I'm a doctor. You remember I'm Italian. You know, that's all you need to remember. So it began as a URL and then radio hosts and podcast hosts and and emcees at it, live events.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
They saw that in the bio, and they began calling me that as a way to avoid mispronouncing my name. So anyway, that's how I got Doctor Italy.

00;20;49;11 - 00;20;56;16
Michael Hagan
But I'm realizing I've been mispronouncing your name. I've been doing the sea as like an s sound, and I'm hearing it's like a c h.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
So I can't believe you did that, Michael. And you're from Providence. You ought to know better, right? Even if your last name is not Italian? No, it's OK. No problem. You wouldn't believe I've gotten maraschino marciano, cappuccino, trampoline, you know.

00;21;10;12 - 00;21;13;27
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
So Marcelinho is like the least of my problems, really.

00;21;14;03 - 00;21;28;15
Michael Hagan
And so returning to your book, your title is really it's your central claim, Jesus, the way the truth and the life, which is, of course, taken from John's gospel, in which Jesus says, I am the way, the truth and the life.

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Michael Hagan
No one comes to the father except through me. Say a little bit about how you decided on this title and its significance in your work.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
OK, well, I'm going to be really honest upfront and say this. The publisher decided on the title. OK, but number two, when the publisher decided on the title, I, I kind of put the content. I really pondered and prayed over the title and decided to organize the content in terms of the title and really come at it

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
and maybe a different way. The way the truth in life is so often repeated that it's it can be trite and people really don't ponder it very much. But I just tell you, early Christianity was called the way, and you can see this in the acts of the Apostles or the road ad.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
And the whole idea really is it's not about Christianity and Catholicism. I don't like to use the term Catholicism. And the reason you don't find in the catechism, you don't find any of our documents officially. But our faith is not an ism, and many people think it is.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
People reduce our faith to a belief system or a moral code, but it's a very dynamic relationship with a person who's on the move and your whole life needs to be on the move. It's not about getting in the state of grace, going through the sacraments and then trying to maintain and keep out of trouble until you

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
die and get to heaven after a lengthy stay in purgatory. It's really about a dynamic journey that's the most exciting journey imaginable, and it's a literal journey for the disciples. They dropped everything and they walked nonstop around the country with him for three years.

00;23;03;01 - 00;23;20;00
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
And I think the recent TV series that is not on TV but is actually a nontraditional series. The Chosen I don't know if you've seen the chosen, the chosen tries to get this across, and I think they do a really good job.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
It's almost like Jesus on a three year camping trip with these guys. What you don't you can't pick up on the chosen is the arduous ness of following Jesus for these guys. I just said the camino of Santiago.

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Marcellino D'Ambrosio
I just walked 18 miles one day, 15 miles an hour. We averaged 15 miles a day for five days. And I'm in really good shape generally, I swim a lot, I run, I workout with weights. Well, this knock me out, man, I just realized something.

00;23;47;17 - 00;24;07;11
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
You can walk 15 miles, but if you don't practice walking up and down hills and you have to deal with hills, you're in big trouble. So I had I was sore. I was tired. Well, these guys did 20 mile walks regularly, constantly for three years, and in this was part of the and the heat was unbelievable.

00;24;07;11 - 00;24;19;18
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Anyway, I'm just trying to get it. I'm trying to get this across in this book. Number one, that that they were on this dynamic mission. But to be a Christian means to be on the move and not stagnation.

00;24;19;19 - 00;24;36;14
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
OK, and truth. Truth really means something can build your life on and rely on. And in this age we have right now where everything is up for grabs. It's very unstable, destabilizing and you can see the anxiety. You can see the confusion in this swirling world.

00;24;36;14 - 00;24;51;25
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Jesus is a place where you can build your life. He is a person, a rock on which you can build your life and life is really what it's about. People are all about vitality. Church is not about so much rules, regulations and arid doctrines.

00;24;52;04 - 00;25;11;03
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
All these things are meant to increase vitality that begins now, and it blossoms in eternity. But it's constantly growing or should be growing if we're deepening our relationship with Jesus. So anyway, that kind of dynamism is kind of the emphasis of the of the book because I really do believe it's the emphasis of the Christian life.

00;25;11;03 - 00;25;12;27
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Honestly, that's often missed.

00;25;14;01 - 00;25;25;04
Michael Hagan
So as you mentioned, as you were describing your book, it weaves together material from all four gospels, it doesn't. It doesn't just focus on one, it weaves together all four. What were the challenges of this approach?

00;25;26;04 - 00;25;46;23
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Well, the challenges is where they couldn't follow the chronology or the the the sequence of one gospel. And I just point something out to everybody. You may know this. You may not know this, but you can't. We really can't know the exact chronology of the public Ministry of Jesus from a historical point of view, because the gospel

00;25;46;24 - 00;26;02;27
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
writers weren't really concerned to insist on this, and Mark seems to be followed by Matthew and Luke. There's a little bit of debate, you know, when some people traditionally thought Matthew was the first one, and Mark and Luke followed Matthew.

00;26;03;02 - 00;26;16;28
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
It really doesn't matter. But those three follow a kind of a course of events or a framework, a literary framework that's very different from the framework of John, right? And which one is right? Well, it really doesn't matter.

00;26;17;05 - 00;26;32;23
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
They don't really care. The main sequence is he was born. He was baptized. He worked miracles and taught in his public ministry called disciples. And then it's the sequence of his passion and resurrection. So between that, we really don't know.

00;26;32;23 - 00;26;49;21
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
And so I don't try to reconstruct that. And I think kind of following the four gospels gives me the liberty not to. But the hard part is, you know, I have to put it into a thematic structure. And so that was the challenge using the four gospels and had to decide, you know, I generally am referring to

00;26;49;21 - 00;27;07;12
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
all four. That's more complicated than just doing a Bible study on John or doing a Bible study on Mark. So but I think it's richer, and I think that's the way the church actually has always done the church and its picture of Jesus has taken a composite kind of a stereoscopic vision, you know, or from from all

00;27;07;12 - 00;27;09;13
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
four. If that makes sense, you know.

00;27;10;11 - 00;27;30;02
Michael Hagan
So in synthesizing the gospel accounts of Jesus, how do you bring together and what do we learn from the tension between and the differences between, say, the Jesus of Mark's gospel, who seems to deliberately conceal his true identity and say that Jesus of John's gospel, who more or less wears his divinity on his sleeve?

00;27;30;20 - 00;27;49;04
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Yeah. Well, I think that it's really helpful. There are two different starting points. first of all, you know, from the vantage point of his humanity, which you find, you know, that's called, you know, christology from below where you kind of starting with Jesus, the man, the carpenter from Nazareth.

00;27;49;04 - 00;28;02;12
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
You find that emphasis a little bit more in Mark particularly. But then you find two writers who follow Mark a great deal. But they start with the birth of Jesus, and they start with the divine origin of Jesus.

00;28;02;12 - 00;28;18;03
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
That's Matthew and Luke John. Obviously, his main focus is the divinity of Jesus is one of his main themes. And so it's splat right from the beginning, all the way through. Well, you know, it really doesn't matter whether Jesus was was.

00;28;18;12 - 00;28;31;25
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
It seems to me historically, I don't think anybody. There's not a lot of people out there in the scholarly world who would doubt that there is that Jesus does break it to him gradually in real life, you know, and I think so.

00;28;31;25 - 00;28;49;16
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
I think I follow that from the Synoptic Gospels, but I think the church has always resisted the tendency to collapse the mystery and just look at Jesus as a human being or just look at Jesus as God. And so the real challenge always is to keep the two together.

00;28;49;28 - 00;29;08;20
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
And what I try to do in this book, I think Catholics from about the fourth century have tended to emphasize the divinity of Jesus a little a little bit to the neglect of his full humanity. And so, you know, I'm trying to bring up that very earthy human experience, you know, Jesus and I try to bring out

00;29;08;20 - 00;29;24;26
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
something that Catholics often don't know about, and that is the Jewish life of Jesus, Joseph Mary, the Apostles and how the church's life is such a marvelous. In continuity with that, I teach liturgy and sacraments. So when I do teach that on the graduate level, I bring that out even more.

00;29;25;05 - 00;29;28;21
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
But I brought out a bit of that in the book and in the video series.

00;29;29;12 - 00;29;47;01
Michael Hagan
So speaking of that, a gradual revelation that that is characteristic of the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke in your chapter titled The Truth about Jesus. You write that if quote, if Jesus had explained his identity to his followers all at once, they would not have understood.

00;29;48;00 - 00;30;03;16
Michael Hagan
So when we read the Gospels, we have the advantage of knowing where the story's going. How can we recapture the wonder of Jesus's earliest followers that what was unfolding in front of them? How do we empathize with the despair they feel when all seems lost on Golgotha?

00;30;03;26 - 00;30;15;17
Michael Hagan
How do we encounter the resurrected Jesus like we're on the road to a mass for Christians, the Jesus story is one that we grow up with. It's just always there. How do? We experience it as though for the first time.

00;30;16;06 - 00;30;36;23
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Well, guess what? That's why I wrote the book and we did the series, so I would just say, you know, I plug the series in the book and say, you know, experience it. one of the things I'll also say about the actual series is that there's a study guide, and the study guide really is to help people

00;30;36;23 - 00;30;49;16
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
work it through and their small group discussion questions. And those study questions and things can be done as you know, as individuals, they can be done by a couple just doing it together, or they can be done in a small group.

00;30;49;24 - 00;31;04;18
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
But I just got back from San Diego, where because of this series being run in the parish, they asked me to come in person and do a three night parish mission. But the excitement that people expressed to me about what they experienced going through this series.

00;31;05;18 - 00;31;22;10
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
There were some that had tears about it. And so it really did. The experience was a vivid rediscovery of Jesus and a sense of wonder you. You mentioned wonder. They experience that kind of wonder in doing the series.

00;31;22;17 - 00;31;38;00
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
I would also make a pitch for the series The Chosen that the chosen is not historically accurate in some background and details, and it's historical fiction as any drama would be, including Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.

00;31;38;07 - 00;31;50;16
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
I think The Passion of the Christ was extraordinary in what it captured, and I think the chosen is also extraordinary. I recently was was in Rome, the same time that Jonathan Roomy, the one who plays Jesus, who happens.

00;31;50;17 - 00;32;01;19
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
He happens to be a Catholic, a very devout Catholic, by the way, very committed Catholic. But anyway, I had a chance to meet him in Rome, but I think he's done a wonderful job interpreting the person of Jesus.

00;32;01;20 - 00;32;19;27
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
I would just say that's another suggestion I would make. That's absolutely free. People can download an app, watch that for free and choose to contribute to the to the production of the next series or not. But but it is a beautiful I think it's very provocative in in helping us get there to kind of a different place

00;32;19;27 - 00;32;24;22
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
of, you know, seeing things a little bit as the disciples did and seeing what their struggle might have been like.

00;32;25;29 - 00;32;37;18
Michael Hagan
So your book repeatedly makes the point that the incarnation the Jesus event takes place within and against the backdrop of history, not mythology. Explain the significance of this distinction.

00;32;38;15 - 00;33;05;01
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Mythology is happens in a dream time. There's no, you know, the mythology is is who has value. It speaks mythology, speaks about and tries to explain basic reality, human reality and divine realities. And through stories that happen in a nondescript sort of a time and most ancient religion that use mythology had a very natural cycle to their

00;33;05;01 - 00;33;22;08
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
their worship. A lot was about fertility and about the seasons. It was cyclical kind of approach to things. And really, Judaism is completely different, and our story starts with the people of Israel, where they see God entering into history in real time and real place.

00;33;22;13 - 00;33;44;01
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Now the problem is with Exodus, we're not exactly sure historically which Pharaoh we're talking about, but you know, roughly we're talking depending on what scholars you're looking at from 14 to twelve hundred B.C.. This really happened, and Abraham is a real person, probably around 1450 B.C. That's the best guess we have based on the story.

00;33;44;10 - 00;34;04;02
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Well, in our creed, we actually date Jesus, and we mentioned Punch Pilot. And the reason you do that is because people didn't use years so much as they used a ruler to kind of, you know, in the time of Pontious pilot in the third year of Tiberius Caesar or whatever, you know, this is the kind of the

00;34;04;02 - 00;34;18;26
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
way people would date things. So I just pilot's not a real hero. We're not proud of pudge pilots so much. He's very minor figure in Roman history. But anyway, it's during his time in a public situation that this happened.

00;34;19;08 - 00;34;32;28
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
It happened not in a corner, as St Paul says, as he's giving his defense in Acts of the Apostles before Roman governor. This happened publicly. This is a real event, a real historical person. So, you know, this is what it's all about.

00;34;32;28 - 00;34;49;13
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
God enters into history in a particular time and place, and one of the things that I point out is it's a very remarkable time and place when two cultures are colliding the Jewish culture of the of the Middle East of Palestine and the new Roman occupiers who have very different priorities.

00;34;49;20 - 00;35;02;28
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
They're on a collision course. It's kind of like a perfect storm, and Jesus walks into this and upsets both of them, both the Jewish establishment and the Romans. So it's really a very exciting story if you look at it that way.

00;35;03;00 - 00;35;07;23
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
And you look at the stage upon which this real, this very real drama takes place.

00;35;08;28 - 00;35;22;29
Michael Hagan
Now, realizing that the answer to this question could be different at any time based on circumstances or season of life. Is there one of the four gospels that you personally find most moving or instructive?

00;35;24;06 - 00;35;43;11
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
I keep changing. I thought Luke was my favorite because of the emphasis on the Holy Spirit, the great stories that we only have from Luke. Then I start going through a liturgical season where the church is reading Mark and I say, Man, Mark preserves some such vivid dialog and vivid memories.

00;35;43;21 - 00;36;01;20
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
And he's the guy who preserved some of the Aramaic words of Jesus like, you know, Tabitha, come the little girl, get up and father, you know, be open. You know, there's an earthiness to mark, you know, so I then I fall in love with Mark and then, you know, I'm reading John, and I'm saying, this is just

00;36;01;20 - 00;36;11;21
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
unbelievable stuff. So I keep going between the four. I'm sorry, I can't give you one favorite. It depends what season you have to ask me at different times of the year. I'll give you a different answer.

00;36;12;22 - 00;36;22;27
Michael Hagan
All right. And I've got one more question. If so, you're a 1977 alum, it is your reunion year. Any chance we'll see you on campus next summer?

00;36;23;03 - 00;36;39;00
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Oh my word. You know, I've been I've missed Rhode Island badly. I live in Texas. And, you know, particularly in the summer, the beach. So the last few years, because of COVID, I typically make a retreat at Portsmouth Abbey.

00;36;39;12 - 00;36;50;00
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
And while I'm doing that, I also visit a few people. You know, I have some time alone with God. I go to the beach, I pray with the monks and then I come up and visit people, or maybe tell me the date because I didn't.

00;36;50;00 - 00;36;57;23
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
I didn't know the date. So I'm going to have to try to figure, figure out if I can do this. All right. So do you know offhand or I'll have to go and read my alarm bulletin?

00;36;58;03 - 00;36;59;27
Michael Hagan
Terrible host. I do not have the dates.

00;36;59;27 - 00;37;01;29
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Oh man, I can't believe that, Michael.

00;37;02;03 - 00;37;09;07
Michael Hagan
This is a great opportunity for me to say that we've all put information about reunion in the show notes for anybody who's interested.

00;37;09;08 - 00;37;21;19
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
No, but I'd love to do it. I have one trip abroad in August. I'm hoping it's not going to conflict with that. And if not, I will make my retreat coincide with that as best as I possibly can and get up there and be awesome.

00;37;22;07 - 00;37;28;12
Michael Hagan
All right. Well, excellent. Marcelino Dr. Italy, it has been wonderful talking to you. Thank you so much for joining us today.

00;37;28;13 - 00;37;43;11
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
You're most welcome and I don't know if you're going to get a link to my website, but the website is simply D.R. Italy dot com. So that's Dr Italy Gqom Ennahda. The Ascension press site is another place that you can get all the Jesus materials and that's Ascension.

00;37;43;11 - 00;37;50;15
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Press dot com is even a mini site forward slash Jesus Ascension presseye.com forward slash Jesus.

00;37;50;20 - 00;37;53;22
Michael Hagan
All right, we'll include those in the show notes as well. Thank you very much.

00;37;53;28 - 00;37;54;22
Marcellino D'Ambrosio
You're most welcome.

00;37;55;04 - 00;38;09;25
Michael Hagan
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