Fr. Thomas M. Pastorius June 4, 2017 Spiritual Ponderings Sacred Scripture
Saint Jerome wrote “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.” It is therefore important for Catholics from time to time to refresh and expand their knowledge of Scripture. I hope that this month’s reflections will help you grow in your knowledge of Scripture.
One day little Joey was asked by his mother what he had learned in Sunday school. “Well, Mom, our teacher told us how God sent Moses behind enemy lines on a rescue mission to lead the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. When he got the Red Sea, he had his army build a pontoon bridge and all the people walked across the bridge to safety. Finally he radioed headquarters for reinforcements. They sent bombers to blow up the bridge and trap all the Egyptians on the other side so that the Israelites were all safe.”
“Now, Joey, is this really what your teacher taught you?” his mother asked.
“We, no, Mom, but if I told you what the teacher told us you would never believe it!” Joe answered.
The preceding story/joke hints at one of the problems that our world has today with Sacred Scripture. Most of people no longer read the stories of the Scripture within a sense of awe and wonder because we have heard the stories so many times before. The phrase “familiarity breathes contempt” certainly applies to many people’s experience of Scripture. It is not that we don’t like Scripture but rather we do not treat it with the respect it deserves. We are not letting it penetrate into the core of our being so that it can shape us. Our lack of awe when it comes to the Bible has led many people into totally misunderstanding the Bible and the Church’s teaching on Sacred Scripture. The following are ten guidelines that help me understand Sacred Scripture better.
1. Word of God We Catholics believe that Bible is truly the Word of God but God did not dictate the Bible word for word to the Biblical authors. We believe God inspired the Biblical authors within the context of their day. For example God did not whisper into the ear of the author of Genesis how exactly created the world in seven days. Instead we believe the author inspired by God to write about how God brings order out of Chaos used the idea of God creating the world in seven days to teach us that world was not an accident but was deliberately planned by God. It is in this way that we believe God inspired the Biblical writers.
This inspires me to even greater amazement that God could painstakingly inspire each author through his or her cultural experiences to write about Him in the way that He wanted. It would have been easier for Him to just divinely dictate to someone. God though does take short cuts. He is an expert craftsman.
The Bible is yet another way God communicates with us that both protects our free will and requires a little bit of faith on our part.
2. Sacred Scripture and Tradition Someone texted me the other day a yes or no question and I responded by typing “y” for yes. I was caught off guard a few moments later when I received another text explaining why the person had asked the first question. I quickly realized that he had mistaken the “y” I used to symbolize for my yes for “y” that might symbolize the question why. This was once again another reminder of how important context is when communicating with others.
God in His wisdom gave us not only the Bible but also a key from which to make sure that we are interpreting the Bible in the correct way. This key, we call Tradition with a capital “T”. Tradition helps us interpret the Scriptures in the way that God intended us to.
Many Protestant faiths declare that we should only follow Scripture the problem with that is twofold. The first is nowhere is Scripture does it say that Scripture alone should be used and secondly Scripture can be interpreted differently if we do not have a common frame of reference. For example Jesus tells his followers one moment that they must “Hate their father and mother…” If we do not have tradition we run the risk of interpreting this in a very literal sense.