A single web page could never do justice to who Jesus is; after all, there have been thousands of books written about Him. But we'll do our best to share the essentials of who Jesus is, with the ultimate invitation at the end: To meet Him yourself.
Click on a question to learn more:
Who is Jesus?
What do Catholics believe about Jesus?
Did Jesus actually exist?
What did Jesus do on earth?
Wasn't Jesus just a moral teacher?
Did Jesus really rise from the dead?
Do you really believe Jesus is in the Eucharist?
So...what does that mean for me?
A definition for Jesus from a Christian textbook might read something like "The Son of God and Messiah who died to save humanity from sin and rose from the dead."
But for Christians, He is so much more. He is a friend, an advocate, a guide, and a Savior. He is personal.
Notice we said "is" and not "was." As Catholics, we believe that Jesus is still present, not physically like you and me, but still with us.
We can learn a lot about Jesus from the Creed, the statement of what Catholics believe:
The Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made."
This section talks about Jesus' divinity. He is the Son of God, but also totally one with God. He participated in creation along with God the Father and is the second person of the Trinity. (Catholics believe in one God with three persons.)
For us men and for our salvation, he came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.
This section talks about Jesus' humanity. Catholics believe that Jesus is fully divine and fully human, born of Mary through the Immaculate Conception (meaning that Mary did not conceive Jesus through normal human means, but by the Holy Spirit). He became human to save us from sin.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, he suffered death and was buried, and rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.
This section talks about Jesus' death and Resurrection. After three years of public ministry, Jesus was crucified and died. Three days later, He rose from the dead and appeared to many people in His human form. All of this was prophesied earlier in the Bible.
He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end.
This section talks about Jesus now. Forty days after the Resurrection, He went back to heaven to be with God. Catholics believe He will come again at the end of the world and people will be sent to heaven or hell based on God's judgment. Heaven will be forever; there will be no end of it.
The evidence that Jesus was a real person is pretty compelling. We not only have witnesses from within Christianity - the New Testament, which contains the Gospel accounts of Jesus' life as well as the letters of His apostles; historical writings all the way back to the First Century; and art and music from that time. We also have witnesses from both Jewish and Roman sources that did not believe in Jesus (Tacitus, Suetonius, and Josephus, to name a few). Even among people who do not believe in Him as divine, it is pretty universally accepted that He was a real person.
We don't know much about Jesus' early life, but He began His public ministry at age 30. At that time, He began to perform miracles, heal people, and teach them about crowds. His fundamental teaching was centered on love and mercy: how to love God and be in relationship with Him, how to receive God's mercy for failings, and how to love God by loving each other well.
Most importantly, Jesus was - and is - personal. He had dynamic encounters with individuals. While He preached to thousands, His most incredible conversations and healings took place at a personal level, seeing people for who they were as individuals, not stereotypes or sinners. Quite simply, He loved deeply and acted in that love.
If you want to know more about Jesus' life, you can read four accounts of His life in the Gospels.
Read the Gospel
C.S Lewis, the author of the Chronicles of Narnia, explains this wonderfully: "A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell.
You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. … let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that option open to us."
(C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book II, Chap. 3)
Christians don't just believe this through the eyes of faith; it also just makes sense through process of elimination:
Couldn't Jesus have just appeared to be dead, but not really died?
Crucifixion was a horrific form of death that had been perfected. No one survived - the Romans made sure of it. (One solider even stabbed Jesus to be sure He was dead.) This claim underestimates the severity of the wounds Jesus suffered. And even then, how did He get out of the tomb, which was closed off from the outside, and get past the guards?
Maybe the apostles hid the body or forgot where He was.
The apostles buried Him, so they would remember where it was, and even if they didn't, the guards would have told them. Likewise, they all died for their belief in the Resurrection. Statistically, at least one of them would have caved to save their life. Cover-ups weaken the more people who are involved.
Witnesses just hallucinated and believed they saw Jesus.
Psychologically, you cannot have a shared hallucination, and more than 400 people saw Jesus after His Resurrection. And again, the guards would have just shown people Jesus' dead body if they had it.
That leaves one other option: That Jesus actually really did rise from the dead.
Yes! To understand the Eucharist, we have to start with the Passover. The Passover took place thousands of years before Jesus. God's people were enslaved in Egypt, and He instructed them to kill a lamb, put its blood on their doorposts, and eat it. That night, an angel of death swept through the land and killed the firstborn son of anyone who did not have the blood of the lamb on their doorpost. They were set free and were able to leave captivity as a result. In other words, they ate what died in their place, and they commeorated that night yearly at Passover.
The night before His death, Jesus ate a final meal with His disciples called the Last Supper, part of the Passover. In that meal, He took bread and wine from the table and proclaimed that they were His Body and Blood. In this act, He became the Passover lamb they were celebrating: sacrificed for their freedom, this time from sin, and calling them to eat what was dying in their place.
He then instructed the disciples to break bread in His memory and as a sign of their community and communion with Him. Catholics believe that the ability to transform the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ has been handed down to priests today through the line of the apostles.
There have also been miracles documented related to the Eucharist, including the Eucharist bleeding and having a heartbeat.
You get to decide! That's the beauty of the free will God has given each of us: He doesn't force us to love Him.
For many of our parishioners though, all of that knowledge about Jesus means they are compelled to tell others about Him and try to live like Him. Accepting Jesus is something that changes everything, not just the "religious" parts of your life. Your whole life becomes for Him, oriented towards a desire to be united with Him in heaven and bring as many people with you as possible.
But know this: Jesus loves you so deeply, as deeply and intimately and personally as He did each person He encountered physically during His time on earth. No matter your past, what you've done, what you believe or don't believe - He loves you and knows you.