Summary: This text may feel challenging to some readers, as it seeks to highlight a crucial yet often overlooked point: we tend to take the Gospels for granted, assuming they are merely straightforward accounts or summaries of the Apostles’ teaching. While they certainly are that, they are also much more. The Gospels are the fruit of a long, Spirit-led process that unfolds only after Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit enables the Apostles to interiorise and deepen their understanding of the Lord’s words and deeds. The Gospels “bear the scent” of the Apostles; they carry within them the imprint of their spiritual journey. These texts are not simply recollections of past events—they are theological testimonies shaped by lived experience and divine inspiration, far surpassing mere memory.
However, this depth is not automatically perceived. One must read the Gospels attentively, with a heart open to the Holy Spirit. A superficial reading will miss the living power of the text. It is always a movement of initial openness—a desire to learn, to see, to be led—that allows the words to come alive. Without this spiritual disposition, the text remains closed; with it, the Word becomes life-giving.
“Several have undertaken to compile a narrative of the events which have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word. It also seemed good to me, having investigated everything accurately from the start, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the teachings you have received.” (Lk 1:1–4)
“When the Comforter comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness to me; and you also are to bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning.” (Jn 15:26–27)
“Therefore one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day he was taken up from us—one of these must become with us a witness to his resurrection.” (Acts 1:21–22)
When two of the apostles and two other disciples of Jesus from the first and second generation (Luke) undertook the writing of their Gospels, what were they aiming to accomplish? What is the nature and purpose of their writings? What is the theological and historical status of the text we call the Gospel? What truth do the Gospels contain—and in what way is this truth to be understood? Are they merely accurate historical accounts of events as they occurred—and in this sense, do they convey historical truth?
It is essential not to neglect certain significant experiential facts. At least two among them (the apostles Matthew and John) had known Christ nearly “from the beginning”. “Nearly”, because Matthew’s call does not take place right at the start, unlike that of some disciples of John the Baptist. Their experience, at least for these two, is threefold:
- They followed Christ with all the limitations of untransformed human nature. They had not yet passed through the mystery of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection. Yet they were witnesses of all his words and deeds.
- Following the Resurrection, they returned to the beginning, specifically to Galilee, where the Risen Christ awaited them. During forty days, he instructed them about the kingdom (cf. Acts 1:3).
- Finally, the coming of the Holy Spirit initiated a new and utterly unique stage in salvation history: the Spirit, as interior Master, transformed them inwardly.
a) The Spirit recalled to them the words of Christ—often through the evocation of places and memories—making the memory alive and present, rendering the words newly effective. The Holy Spirit became the interior Teacher.
b) He made the words of Christ living and efficacious within them, incarnating them deeply.
c) He impelled them to bear witness—not as external reporters, but as men who “saw” what they proclaimed through the light of the Spirit.
d) The other ten apostles undertook a similar mission, but Matthew and John—the first and last of the evangelists—were chosen for a specific task within this apostolic witness. To them were added two disciples: Mark, closely associated with Peter, and Luke, tied to Paul but also exercising critical distance, as he outlived Paul and wrote in a time when the Church faced new challenges (notably the Johannine movement, cf. Acts 18–19).
Within the apostolic testimony they were called to offer—guided and animated by the Spirit—they received a unique grace: to set down their witness in writing. This was not a “complete” record in the material or chronological sense, but “complete” according to the divine will and eternal plan, intended for the People of God until the end of time. They wrote their Gospel. The overarching divine plan is our salvation; the more precise divine intention is our sanctification.
It is not enough to believe that Jesus is our Saviour. One must follow his teaching, practise it, and be transformed in him by his Spirit in order to be united to him.
Stages
First and foremost, we must become aware of a fact that may surprise us. The apostles and disciples of Christ knew Christ in two ways: once without the Holy Spirit and once with the Holy Spirit. During their life with Him, they knew Christ; they were with Him “from the beginning” (Lk 1:2; Jn 15:26–27; Acts 1:21–22). Yet despite the power with which Christ came, despite their initial faith, they had not received the Holy Spirit. That knowledge, whether one likes it or not, is limited. It is human and relies on human means. Was there spiritual growth within them? Did grace work in them? It is difficult to say how far, because the Holy Spirit had not yet been given! “Now He said this concerning the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were about to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” (Jn 7:39)
Is there a real understanding of Christ without the Holy Spirit? If some wish to believe that the Holy Spirit had been given before Christ’s death and resurrection, how then, even after forty days of preaching, did the Lord command them to wait for the promised Spirit? “And while staying with them, He charged them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, He said, ‘you heard from Me.’” (Acts 1:4)
We must therefore maintain a balance between asserting that nothing happened before the coming of the Holy Spirit and acknowledging that everything happened in the apostles before the Spirit’s coming. Certain stages were crossed through Christ’s words and deeds before the Spirit’s arrival in them. Having said that, there remained much that was human in them, and the risk was that everything remained at the surface. We recall that on the day of His Ascension, some still asked Him: when would He establish His Kingdom? They perceived it in a worldly way. “So when they had come together, they began asking Him, saying, ‘Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?’” (Acts 1:6)
Let us posit as a hypothesis—which is more than plausible—that the apostles indeed witnessed Christ’s words and deeds, yet received and understood them in a still too human manner. They themselves testify to this in the Gospels: Peter in Mt 16 refusing the Passion; some disciples ceasing to follow Christ when His teaching on the Eucharist became too hard to hear (Jn 6). Many other examples abound.
Thus, there is listening and understanding—but these are human. Christ’s work is divine. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh.” (Jn 3:6) They heard it in a fleshly manner! Some may object: but Peter confessed divinely the nature of Christ (Mt 16): “You are the Son of God.” Yes, but the Lord quickly hastened to say that this was revealed to him by the Father and did not stem from his own experience. Similarly, in Jn 6, Peter declared, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life!” Yet the Lord did not trust in what is in man. Again, the Holy Spirit had not been given; they had neither been purified, nor transformed, nor exalted by the Spirit, so that their work might be divine. “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit”; its fruit is divine, its work is divine. The human cannot know where it comes from nor where it goes (cf. Jn 3:5–8), for the human is limited.
In this sense, the Gospel cannot be written under these conditions. There must first come purification, recognition of their radical weakness (passion and denial), the resurrection (Mary’s faithfulness), further instruction during the forty days, and finally the Ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit.
What does the Holy Spirit do? “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.” (Jn 14:26)
As we see, the Holy Spirit does not rely on emptiness. He uses the words of Christ already spoken. In this sense, the return to Galilee is fundamental, for it is a return to Christ’s catechetical and thaumaturgical journey. “Go quickly and tell His disciples: ‘He is risen from the dead, and behold, He goes before you into Galilee; there you will see Him.’ … Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid. Go and tell My brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see Me.’” (Mt 28:7,10) The Apostles return to Galilee and receive forty days of instruction about the Kingdom because they must retrace the beginnings of their journey with the Lord. However, it is only after Pentecost—when they receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit—that they are able to begin the deeper work of interiorisation and spiritual recollection, enabling them to bear witness fully, both through their preaching and eventually in writing, for the sake of the Church.
The Holy Spirit will draw upon the apostles’ first experience of Christ. He will fully utilize it—but He will do it in His own way. That first experience is the foundation upon which He builds His work of remembrance and teaching (deepening, interiorisation, development of the inner life, spiritual integration). This initial experience of Christ—having been with Him “from the beginning”—is repeatedly emphasised as a necessary condition (Lk 1:2; Jn 15:27; cf. Acts 1:21–22).
The Holy Spirit recalls. Human weakness causes us to forget many things, and might remind us only of trivialities. The work of remembrance by the Spirit must not be underestimated.
The Holy Spirit teaches. He utilises the Word of Christ (inventing nothing new), yet enables us to understand it in a new, interior, experiential way. This work is fundamental. The Lord could have preached for fifty years—it would have changed nothing. The apostles’ human understanding and practice would have remained superficial without the Spirit. That is why Christ says it was to their advantage that He departed! If He did not, the Spirit would not come, and without the Spirit, there is no interiorisation; worship offered to God would not be in Spirit and Truth, it would not be Spirit-led, but human. “Now I go to Him who sent Me; and none of you asks Me, ‘Where are You going?’ … Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.” (Jn 16:5–7)
“But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” (Jn 4:23–24) “I do not receive glory from men.” (Jn 5:41) “He did not commit Himself to them, because He knew all men.” (Jn 2:25)
It is the Spirit—and only the Spirit—who is able to bear witness. “Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed, and no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.” (1 Cor 12:3)
The work the Spirit accomplishes in the apostles is to purify them, transform them, elevate their understanding and action so that it becomes divine. The Spirit’s work is to penetrate Christ’s words in a new way in the apostles. They had known Christ in a human way—“according to the flesh”. “Therefore, from now on we regard no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer.” (2 Cor 5:16)
“He who comes from above is above all. He who is of the earth is earthly, and speaks of the earth. He who comes from heaven is above all.” (Jn 3:31) “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world.” (Jn8:23–24) This work of the Holy Spirit is essential and vital. There can be no truly divine understanding of God’s Revelation without the action of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who integrates the Word of Christ, Christ Himself; it is He who enables a new knowledge of the Word—not through purely intellectual effort but through the incarnation of these words in us. This incarnation of Christ’s Words in us, effected by the Holy Spirit, is a divine work that transforms us into Christ, making us living Christs. That is why, as Christ said, it was necessary that He go away, so that the Spirit might come, and that the initial human knowledge of Christ becomes divine through the Spirit. It is not optional; it is imperative. Human knowledge must pass away so that one may understand and live Christ “from above.” “You are from below; I am from above.” (Jn 8:23) This transition from “from below” to “from above”—from human to divine—is essential. Decades ago, one attempted a “Christology from below”! “That which is born of the flesh is flesh.” (Jn 3:6)
The Gospel
Let us return to the question posed at the beginning of our reflection: what is the Gospel? Is it solely the historical account of events and sayings, derived from the memory of the Evangelists or from their work of compiling catechesis or texts? In no way ought we deny the facts or the initial knowledge of Christ. That initial knowledge is the foundation—or rather, the raw material—upon which the Holy Spirit works. Equally, we cannot neglect the interiorisation and testimony of the Apostles and disciples to Christ’s words and deeds. This experience rests on two elements: first, the initial memory of Christ’s deeds and words; second, the Spirit’s work of recalling and deepening (spiritual learning, interior experience of those words and actions). In this sense, the Lord declares: the Holy Spirit will bear witness, and you will bear witness. The Spirit takes my words and expounds them in an interior and divine manner that only He can. He bears witness of me to you. Then you, after the work of the Spirit and with that work at work in you, will bear witness. Your word will be the fruit of this entire journey of transformation. It will be a living word because it comes from a heart transformed by the Spirit—a heart that has experienced Christ’s Word in a new way, through the Holy Spirit.
The Gospel is therefore not merely the record of a memorisation of what occurred (Christ’s words and deeds) by eyewitnesses. That would be an incomplete account. The Gospel is the initial memory, reworked by the Holy Spirit who recalls and teaches: hence it is a profound narrative conveying and interpreting the experience of the Apostles and disciples. It is a narrative interiorised by the Holy Spirit. In this sense, the Gospel is the living testimony of the Apostles—their living word, a part of their very flesh, so to speak—a narrative born of a spiritual and experiential integration of Christ’s Words, subsequently formed by the Holy Spirit as well. The Gospel is living testimony—it is apostolic. It is not merely a historic, compiled account of events—it would lack divine life. The Gospel bears the Apostle’s fragrance. As Pope Francis said, “The shepherd must smell of his sheep” (Evangelii Gaudium, 24), we must say: the Gospel must smell of the Apostle—and this is necessary, otherwise it is not testimony of both the Spirit and the Apostle. The Gospel’s word smells of Christ; it also smells of the breath of the Spirit who interiorised it in the Apostle, and therefore of the Apostle’s breath. The Lord breathed on them to give them the Spirit: “After saying this, He breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” (Jn 20:22) The Gospel is the breath of the Apostles (their breath)—not human breath, not human memory, but truly divine and living testimony, driven by the Spirit within them, flowing completely and perfectly through the Apostle’s transformation. It is not one or the other, but both.
Note: This is the sense in which the Gospels present the spiritual journey of the Apostles. See the following study for an in-depth exploration of the Apostles’ spiritual journey as depicted in the Gospels. (see here)
From Testimony to Holy Scripture
We have gained a deeper understanding of the nature of the testimony that the Apostles were called to give, and how the Holy Spirit acts within them. All the Apostles, all disciples, all of us, are called to bear witness to Christ in this way. But this does not make us Evangelists. Yet the Gospels—the four Gospels—hold a unique status within Christian Faith. They are not occasional writings, letters, or memoirs; they are intended by the Holy Spirit to be four texts of both normative authority and mysteriously complete wholeness. Note, in passing, that Catholic faith holds that Revelation in Christ concluded with the death of the last Apostle. Indeed, the last one to write was John, the last to die as well. Revelation is, so to speak, bracketed between the Gospel of Matthew—the apostle of Christ—and the Gospel of John, likewise an apostle of Christ. Certainly, among the four Gospels one observes a progression, a development, a deepening. Between Matthew and Mark on the one hand and Luke on the other, there is a significant leap in quality and depth of interiorisation. Not that Matthew lacks depth, nor that Luke’s profundity diminishes Matthew. Both—or all three, including Mark—remain, and must remain. Finally, between Luke’s Gospel and John’s—despite strong similarities—we reach with John a summit of completeness unmatched elsewhere.
This structure of progression or deepening is marked by several characteristics. One of the most important is that not only does the Revelation of Jesus Christ culminate, accomplish, and conclude with John, but it is also complete. There is depth, breadth, length, and height in the four Gospels capable of abundantly nourishing all humanity in all times! These qualities render this work unique. It is therefore not merely testimony —something everyone is called to live and offer—but a repository containing the whole truth. Much like the Ark in the Temple housed the two tablets of the Law, which themselves contain all! Who is the craftsman of this quadriform work, capable of containing the fullness of Revelation? It is the Holy Spirit. In this sense, testimony becomes Sacred Scripture—the Gospel—and it is the Evangeliary carried in the hands of the Priest or Deacon at each procession before the Proclamation of the Gospel.
Here is a unique work—a set of four Gospels, four pillars supporting the entire edifice. Who is the Author? Who transformed ordinary testimony into a work possessing such qualities? The Holy Spirit. There is an added Breath and a clear intent of the Spirit to craft a unique work for all time to come.
What do they contain? Christ’s words and deeds—but interiorised as spiritual building blocks, then chosen, collected, and precisely ordered by the Holy Spirit to form, in the final manuscript, a unique document—just as the Ark of the Covenant is a unique sacred chest. Certainly, Mary is our living Gospel, containing Jesus perfectly, in the Spirit; yet secondarily and in aid of our weakness, the four Gospels form, so to speak, this unique piece of furniture capable of containing the living and risen Christ, in the Spirit.
How Should We Read the Gospels?
Having gained a deeper understanding of the significance of the Gospels for Christian faith, the question arises: how are we to receive this unique testimony of the Spirit, conveyed through the two apostles and two disciples who authored them? We are invited to recognise the two fundamental layers that emerged from the preceding analysis.
The first layer comprises the historical gestures, deeds, and words of Jesus—those that were authentically spoken or performed at specific moments in time. It is important to note that these elements were selectively chosen by the evangelists; as St. John affirms, no single volume could contain all that Jesus said and did (cf. John 21:25). Therefore, the Gospel writers (guided by the Holy Spirit) exercise careful editorial discernment, emphasising particular episodes and sayings that serve their theological and pastoral aims.
The second layer is more complex and profoundly spiritual. It involves the active work of the Holy Spirit, who vivifies and interprets the words and deeds recorded by the evangelists. This divine action not only enlivens the testimonies of the authors but also shapes the overall composition of each Gospel. The Holy Spirit guides the evangelists to arrange their narratives with intentional structure and purpose, ensuring that the message is coherent and oriented toward a particular theological goal. Each evangelist’s unique intention informs the composition and presentation of their Gospel, offering the faithful a structured pathway to encounter Christ. Here the Holy Spirit reminds each writer some aspect of his experience, and brings them together, blends them, to create a structure.
While this structural and intentional dimension was not explicitly addressed earlier, it is crucial for how we receive the Gospel text. The Church continually reminds us to respect both the human authors’ intentions and their literary styles, which are harmonious with the profound guidance of the Holy Spirit. Accordingly, understanding the architecture of each Gospel—and the role that every narrative element plays within that framework—is essential for faithful interpretation.
Thus, our openness to the Word of God, especially in prayerful reading such as Lectio Divina, should be accompanied by a foundational formation in the purpose, structure, and aims of the Gospels. Each narrative detail supports the overarching theological goal, and each goal, in turn, gives meaning to the individual components. This reciprocal relationship enriches our engagement with the Gospel and deepens our encounter with the living Word of God.
Read Also
The Meaning of the Sermon on the Mount
Is John 1:14 About the Incarnation?
The Meaning of St. John’s Gospel and its Implications for the Life of the Church
More here: https://schoolofmary.org/lectio-divina/