Word to the Wise
Thursday, September 10, 2009 - Thursday in the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time
[Colossians 3:12-17 and Luke 6:27-38]Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, as in all wisdom you teach and admonish one another, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.
One of the greatest achievements of the Second Vatican Council has been the promotion of scripture reading by Catholics! That seems like a strange thing to say about a Christian community, but all of us who were alive before that Council know that the church was extremely cautious about individuals reading scripture on their own. The history of this goes back to the Reformation and the claim that the ultimate interpreter of the meaning of a passage from the Bible is the individual person and not the Church. This view was rejected at the Council of Trent (1545-1563) but the result was the discouragement of personal knowledge of the scriptures on the part of Catholics beyond certain select passages to be used in "defense of the faith." I recall well my high school class in apologetics and how I used some of that material in arguments with my first roommate in college - a devout North Louisiana Baptist! The recent Synod of Bishops included in its recommendations to Pope Benedict XVI the ancient monastic practice of lectio divina, which is a prayerful, contemplative approach to reading scripture. St. Paul's exhortation to "let the word of Christ dwell in you richly" is well-served by this practice which involves praying initially for the help of the Holy Spirit, then a reading of a particular passage, some simple meditation on its meaning, then a second reading and perhaps some resolution about it in one's life and a concluding prayer. One can find any number of good guides for this spiritual scriptural practice at a Catholic bookstore. Whether or not one enters into lectio divina the necessity of becoming familiar with the Word of God is part of our faith commitment. St. Jerome is quoted as saying, "Ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ." The Second Vatican Council teaches in the document on the Liturgy that one of the forms of "real presence" is the presence of Christ in the scriptures. A famous Dominican novice master - famous because of his unintended humorous misstatements - once said to a class of novices: "Read the Bible, brothers! It's chock full of scripture!" Indeed, it is! May the word of Christ dwell in us richly! AMEN
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