Three options, no fourth

People who have not thought hard about Jesus often settle for him as a wise teacher. The Catholic Church has never thought that was an option. C. S. Lewis put it sharply. A man who claimed the things Jesus claimed was either telling the truth, or He was mad, or He was lying. There is no fourth slot in which He is just a kind moral instructor.

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The Gospels are blunt about what He claimed. He forgave sins, which the bystanders rightly noted only God can do (Mark 2:7). He said, Before Abraham was, I am (John 8:58), using the divine name from the burning bush. He told a paralysed man to walk. He told a dead girl to rise. He let people worship Him, and never once corrected them. He spoke of Himself as the bread of life, the light of the world, the resurrection, the way, the truth, and the life.

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The Catholic Church has held the same answer since the apostles. Jesus of Nazareth is the eternal Son of God, become man, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified, risen on the third day, alive, and present in His Church. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14).

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The Catechism's clear summary

The Catechism is short and direct here.

The unique and altogether singular event of the Incarnation of the Son of God does not mean that Jesus Christ is part God and part man, nor does it imply that he is the result of a confused mixture of the divine and the human. He became truly man while remaining truly God. Jesus Christ is true God and true man.

Catechism of the Catholic Church §464

This is not a riddle. It is the claim that the maker of the stars walked the dust of Galilee, ate fish, wept at His friend's grave, and let Himself be killed. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation (Colossians 1:15).

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The cornerstone

Bishop Mark Davies preached the Easter homily for 2026 in Shrewsbury Cathedral. He spoke of the men and women, mostly young adults, who had come to the Cathedral that year asking to be baptised. They had searched, he said, through the chaos and shallowness of contemporary life and found a person.

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This Easter morning, many thousands of adults, mainly young adults mostly from no religious background, have made their way through the shadows and darkness of our time like the women and the apostles on the first Easter morning to see and believe that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead and truly present in His Church, supremely in His Eucharist.

They have searched through the chaos and shallowness of contemporary life to find the cornerstone that is Christ Himself.

Bishop Mark Davies, Easter Homily 2026

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That image, the cornerstone, is from Psalm 118 and Acts 4. This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone (Acts 4:11). Catholics believe Jesus is not one option among many. He is the foundation that holds.

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Why the Resurrection settles it

Christianity does not stand on the moral teaching of Jesus, beautiful though it is. It stands on a single empirical claim: the tomb was empty on the third day, and the apostles met the Risen Lord.

• The empty tomb. All four Gospels record it. The first witnesses are women, whose testimony was not legally accepted at the time, which is the opposite of what someone fabricating a story would invent.
• The transformed apostles. Men who had run away on Good Friday were preaching openly within weeks, and most of them were eventually killed for refusing to recant. People do not die for what they know to be a hoax.
• The Eucharist. From Pentecost to this morning's Mass at Shrewsbury Cathedral, Christians have gathered around the same act, claiming the Risen Lord is given to them under the signs of bread and wine.

Why this is local, not abstract

It is tempting to think of Jesus as a figure from history who belongs to the past. The Diocese of Shrewsbury was founded in 1851 by Bishop James Brown, with 26 priests and 20,000 faithful, in the teeth of anti-Catholic feeling. They built the Cathedral above Town Walls because they believed Jesus Christ was alive and worthy of a worthy house. The Cathedral was opened by Cardinal Wiseman in 1856. The same altar still stands. The new altar dedicated by Bishop Davies holds relics of saints who died bearing witness to this same Jesus, including the Uganda Martyrs and the Curé of Ars.

St John Henry Newman wrote, He is not past, He is present now. And though He is not seen, He is here. If that is true, He is here in your part of the diocese this morning, in a tabernacle, behind a small red lamp.

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Your next step

Read the Gospel of Mark in one sitting. It takes about 90 minutes. It is the shortest of the four and reads like an eyewitness report. Then ask the question Jesus put to His disciples in chapter 8: Who do you say that I am?

If you want to talk to someone, email the Cathedral at admin@shrewsburycathedral.org.uk or come to Sunday Mass at 11 am at Town Walls, Shrewsbury SY1 1UE. The cornerstone is still there.