Brad Miner is senior editor of The Catholic Thing, senior fellow of the Faith & Reason Institute, and a board member of Aid to the Church In Need USA. He is a former Literary Editor of National Review. …
For a long time, the so-called prologue . . . was called “the Last Gospel,” because it was read after the dismissal at every Mass. Thus would the people leave having heard not only some things that Jesus said, but who Jesus was: and thus might the temptation be checked, to patronize Jesus, to humiliate Him by exalting Him to the status of a great teacher, a deeply spiritual man, an advocate for the poor and the insulted and the injured, and so an icon of peaceful resistance against evil. …