The Sacred Scriptures are alive. They speak to the children of God a message of love and hope. To the person who is open to the Holy Spirit, they can give a personal message that conveys often exactly what they need to hear. Why then is it so often misunderstood? If Baptized Christians are filled with the Holy Spirit of God, why does one Church teach one thing, and another something different? When I was a young man I attended a church where the preacher chewed tobacco. While he was preaching one day, he spit in a cup right before declaring smoking a sin. One of the men who used to attend church with us had decided he had the call and started his own church. This man was a smoker and often would stand outside smoking just before the service. I listened as he preached that chewing tobacco was a sin.
Both men declared tobacco to be a sin, but only in a particular form. How did they get that from the Bible? Well, I would challenge they didn’t. Whatever preconceived notion that made them say this, it was clear they had a grudge against someone or something. As we celebrate this Feast today, set aside by Pope Francis to remember and celebrate the Sacred Scriptures, we have to keep them in the proper context. The Church is not founded on the Scriptures, the Scriptures are written by and about the Church. They speak of the love story of a God who is alive, moving in the world. They do indeed hold a special place in our worship, as the particular books in the Holy Bible were chosen by the Catholic Church precisely because they were already being used liturgically, and because they lined up with the Tradition of the Church.
That’s important to realize. We didn’t make our Traditions out of having read the Scriptures, our Traditions came from a long line of Apostolic teachings handed on from one teacher to a disciple. We are not just a people of the book, but rather a people of Christ. The Bible points to Him at all times. When it gives us a message, when we see something in there, we need to make sure it lines up with Apostolic teaching. After all, who can better tell you the meaning of the book, than the very people who wrote it? That’s why Saint Paul reminded the early communities in today’s second reading to “be united in the same mind and in the same purpose.” That purpose is to preach the Gospel, in our words and deeds, to the ends of the earth. That does require we understand the Bible, study it and learn it. Especially the Four Gospels which contain the very words and deeds of Christ.
We don’t stop with the written word though. In Latin, there are two words that speak of words: scriptum and verbum. Scriptum means written word. It has a sense of something static, unchanging, concrete. That’s a good way to describe the scriptures because the canon is finalized and has been for over 1700 years. Verbum, though, is the word the Church uses to describe the Scriptures being proclaimed at Mass. Verbum has the sense of a word that has wings, it’s animated, alive. It flies out to greet the ears of those who are listening. It has “action.” At Mass we truly live that prophecy from the First Reading, the one repeated in the Gospel, that the people have seen a great light. Mass is not just personal and private. It is communal and public. The Word of God was chosen not to be hidden on a shelf, or only to be read in our own homes, but rather to be declared publicly to the people, that they too can become ‘verbum’ and go out into the world.
At the end of Mass, we are given the task, the sending, to go forth and ‘glorify the Lord by our lives.’ That sentiment is echoed at the end of the Gospel for today when Peter, Andrew, James, and John dropped everything they were doing and went forth to follow Jesus. What does all of this have to do with us? With me? It challenges us to look at our lives right now, and ask ourselves is there anything in my way, anything preventing me from following Jesus. We must drop those ‘nets’ and follow Him. It’s a good day to get that Bible out, to spend some time with it. An easy way to do that is to take time every week to read the readings for next Sunday’s Mass. That way you can begin to let the word come alive in your heart, to prepare you for that most powerful experience that is the Mass, and to begin to transform your lives. The end goal is to let the Scriptures act as a guidepost, to point you to the living God, Jesus Christ, fully present body, soul, and divinity in the Eucharist.
A reflection for the readings for the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time: January 26th, 2020. This Sunday has been declared by Pope Francis to be “Sunday of the Word of God” in the Apostolic letter, Aperuit Illis.