The Sacred Scripture, entrusted to the Church and preserved and explained by her, performs an active role: indeed, with its efficacy and power it sustains and invigorates the Christian community. All the faithful are called to drink from this wellspring, first and foremost in the celebration of the Eucharist and the other Sacraments. Love for the Sacred Scriptures and familiarity with them must guide those who carry out the ministry of the Word: bishops, priests, deacons, catechists. The work of exegetes and those who practise biblical sciences is invaluable, and Scriptures have a central place in theology, which finds its foundation and soul in the Word of God.
The Church ardently desires that the Word of God may reach every one of her members and nurture their journey of faith. But the Word of God also propels the Church beyond herself; it opens her continually to the mission towards everyone. Indeed, we live surrounded by so many words, but how many of these are empty! At times we even listen to wise words, which do not however affect our ultimate destiny. On the contrary, the Word of God responds to our thirst for meaning, for the truth about our life. It is the only Word that is always new: revealing the mystery of God to us, it is inexhaustible, it never ceases to offer its riches.
Dear friends, living in the Church one learns that the Sacred Scripture is totally relative to Jesus Christ, and one experiences that this is the deep reason for its value and its power. Christ is the living Word of the Father, the Word of God made man. All the Scriptures proclaim his Person and his saving presence, for each one of us and for all humanity. Let us therefore open our hearts and minds in order to receive this gift, following the example of Mary, Mother of the Church.
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[1] S. Girolamo, Comm. in Is., Prol.: PL 24, 17 B.
We’re reading at Mass today the story of the Syrophoenician woman who asks Jesus to cure her daughter. Mark 7, 24-30
My mother (God rest her) used to sneak food under the table regularly to her beloved cocker spaniel, Buffy. Once when I visited home after becoming a priest I said–in a losing attempt to keep Buffy’s weight down– “Mom, you shouldn’t feed that dog scraps from the table.”
She replied, “You don’t live her. He does. Besides, I’m not feeding him scraps from the table. He’s eating the same food we eat.”
I could never understand all the logic of her answer, but I gave us trying to stop her. I remember her every time this gospel is read. She put me in my place.
Maybe that’s what the Syrophoenician woman did to Jesus when she met him on his excursion north into gentile territory near Tyre.
Father John Donohue, SJ, offers an intriguing commentary on Jesus and this woman in Mark’s gospel. (The Gospel of Mark, John Donohue, SJ and Daniel Harrington, SJ (Sacra Pagina), Collegeville, Minnesota 2002. ) Their meeting takes place following the feeding of the 5,000 in Jewish territory (Mark 6, 30-44) and Jesus’ announcement to the Pharisees and the scribes from Jerusalem that “all food is clean.” As a sign that the gentiles too would receive the Bread of Life from his hands, Jesus journeys into gentile territory to feed another 4,000. (Mark 8,1-10)
Now, you would expect him to welcome any gentile he met near Tyre, but the woman who meets Jesus alone in a house is harshly rejected when she asks him to heal her daughter. “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.”
The woman doesn’t take no for an answer. “Even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps, Lord.”
Matthew’s gospel, written after Mark, says the woman’s daughter was healed because of her faith. Not so, Father Donohue says. According to Mark, it was because she got the best of her argument with Jesus, the only one who does that in the gospels. “It’s not right to ignore us,” the woman says to him. Jesus heard the truth from her and accepted it.
I like Rembrandt’s drawing of Jesus preaching to a crowd. All ages, shapes and sizes of ordinary humanity are there. . Jesus’ disciples, like Peter, James and John are there, but they don’t stand out.Some of his enemies are there; they don’t stand out either. They’re all there listening, except maybe the little child on the ground playing with something he’s found. Jesus sheds his light on them all, even on the little child.
Did Rembrandt find these faces in the people of his neighborhood, ordinary people? If so, this crowd could be us. Mark’s gospl recall Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem.. Some women from Galilee follow him. He calls Zachaeus, the tax collector, down from a tree to join him. Follow me, he says to a blind man begging in the same place for years. He called people of every shape and form, sinners, tax-collectors, everyone.
They follow him, not just to see him die, but for glory. “Come with me this day to paradise, “ Jesus says to the thief on the cross. Our creed says he descends into hell, to those waiting for centuries for the redemption he brings. He calls all generations to follow him.
Following Jesus to glory means taking up our cross each day.“Then he said to all, ‘If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily *and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.’” ( Luke 9, 23-24 )
Jesus speaks to “all”. Everyone in this world has a challenge to take up and a burden to bear. “Take up your cross.” It’s a cross distinctly ours, not the physical cross Jesus bore; it’s the cross we bear. “Do you want to see the cross? Hold out your arms; there it is.” (Wisdom of the Desert)
He blesses those who share his cross. He gives them strength to bear what they have to bear and to carry out the mission they have been given.
Even the little child in Rembrandt’s painting is blessed with his grace, even though he’s in his own world, playing with some little thing, not hearing a word. Even the child is blessed. Light falls on him.
The feast of our Lady of Lourdes was added to our church calendar in1908, just 50 years after reports of Mary’s apparitions at the grotto of Massabielle near Lourdes in France to the young girl, Bernadette Soubirous. There Mary identified herself as the Immaculate Conception.
Originally, the feast was called the Apparitions of Mary at Lourdes.Now in our calendar it’s the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. The change underlines the presence of Mary rather than her apparitions. Apparitions are momentary, rare, presence is lasting and abiding.
Mary is present in the church as an abiding witness to the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus, her Son. He was born of her and she testifies to the reality of his humanity. She witnessed his death and resurrection, so she testifies that he is God’s Son and our redeemer.
Her testimony is important for the church. In the Acts of the Apostles, (1,14) Luke places her among the key witnesses to resurrection of Jesus. In the 4th century, when the identity of Jesus as truly divine and truly human was disputed, Mary was the crucial witness church councils consulted. Many of the great churches honoring her were built at that time.
Mary is a reassuring presence in the church, especially in difficult times. Certainly, the times of Bernadette were difficult. France was experiencing hard economic times but also religious doubt caused by the Enlightenment was widespread in that country.
The apparitions to Bernadette, a young peasant girl, touched ordinary people in France and elsewhere in the world, and resulted in increased devotion to Mary, Here’s Bernadette’s account of the apparitions:
“I had gone down one day with two other girls to the bank of the river Gave when suddenly I heard a kind of rustling sound. I turned my head towards the field by the side of the river but the trees seemed quite still and the noise was evidently not from them. Then I looked up and caught sight of the cave where I saw a lady wearing a lovely white dress with a bright belt. On top of each of her feet was a pale yellow rose, the same colour as her rosary beads.
At this I rubbed my eyes, thinking I was seeing things, and I put my hands into the fold of my dress where my rosary was. I wanted to make the sign of the cross but for the life of me I couldn’t manage it and my hand just fell down. Then the lady made the sign of the cross herself and at the second attempt I managed to do the same, though my hands were trembling. Then I began to say the rosary while the lady let her beads slip through her fingers, without moving her lips. When I stopped saying the Hail Mary, she immediately vanished.
I asked my two companions if they had noticed anything, but they said no. Of course they wanted to know what I was doing and I told them that I had seen a lady wearing a nice white dress, though I didn’t know who she was. I told them not to say anything about it, and they said I was silly to have anything to do with it. I said they were wrong and I came back next Sunday, feeling myself drawn to the place….
The third time I went the lady spoke to me and asked me to come every day for fifteen days. I said I would and then she said that she wanted me to tell the priests to build a chapel there. She also told me to drink from the stream. I went to the Gave [de Pau], the only stream I could see. Then she made me realise she was not speaking of the Gave and she indicated a little trickle of water close by. When I got to it I could only find a few drops, mostly mud. I cupped my hands to catch some liquid without success and then I started to scrape the ground. I managed to find a few drops of water but only at the fourth attempt was there a sufficient amount for any kind of drink. The lady then vanished and I went back home.
I went back each day for two weeks and each time, except one Monday and one Friday, the lady appeared and told me to look for a stream and wash in it and to see that the priests build a chapel there. I must also pray, she said, for the conversion of sinners. I asked her many times what she meant by that, but she only smiled. Finally with outstretched arms and eyes looking up to heaven she told me she was the Immaculate Conception. During the two weeks she told me three secrets but I was not to speak about them to anyone and so far I have not.
Mother, help our faith! Open our ears to hear God’s word and to recognize his voice and call. Awaken in us a desire to follow in his footsteps, to go forth from our own land and to receive his promise. Help us to be touched by his love, that we may touch him in faith. Help us to entrust ourselves fully to him and to believe in his love, especially at times of trial, beneath the shadow of the cross, when our faith is called to mature. Sow in our faith the joy of the Risen One. Remind us that those who believe are never alone. Teach us to see all things with the eyes of Jesus, that he may be light for our path. And may this light of faith always increase in us, until the dawn of that undying day which is Christ himself, your Son, our Lord!
Here’s the delightful story of St.Scholastica as told by St. Gregory the Great:
Scholastica, the sister of Saint Benedict, had been consecrated to God from her earliest years. She was accustomed to visiting her brother once a year. He would come down to meet her at a place on the monastery property, not far outside the gate. One day she came as usual and her saintly brother went with some of his disciples; they spent the whole day praising God and talking of sacred things. As night fell they had supper together.
Their spiritual conversation went on and the hour grew late. The holy nun said to her brother: “Please do not leave me tonight; let us go on until morning talking about the delights of the spiritual life.” “Sister,” he replied, “what are you saying? I simply cannot stay outside my cell.” When she heard her brother refuse her request, the holy woman joined her hands on the table, laid her head on them and began to pray. As she raised her head from the table, there were such brilliant flashes of lightning, such great peals of thunder and such a heavy downpour of rain that neither Benedict nor his brethren could stir across the threshold of the place where they had been seated.
Sadly he began to complain: “May God forgive you, sister. What have you done?” “Well,” she answered, “I asked you and you would not listen; so I asked my God and he did listen. So now go off, if you can, leave me and return to your monastery.”
Reluctant as he was to stay of his own will, he remained against his will. So it came about that they stayed awake the whole night, engrossed in their conversation about the spiritual life.
It is not surprising that she was more effective than he, since as John says, God is love, it was absolutely right that she could do more, as she loved more.
Three days later, Benedict was in his cell. Looking up to the sky, he saw his sister’s soul leave her body in the form of a dove, and fly up to the secret places of heaven. Rejoicing in her great glory, he thanked almighty God with hymns and words of praise. He then sent his brethren to bring her body to the monastery and lay it in the tomb he had prepared for himself. Their minds had always been united in God; their bodies were to share a common grave.
St. Ephrem was born in Syria in 306. He was a deacon of the Syrian church, recognized early on as a teacher of the whole Christian church. He’s a liturgical theologian; the church’s daily prayer inspired the hymns and homilies he wrote. He’s recognized today as one of the saints of the eastern churches contributing to our understanding of the church and the liturgy. In 1920 Ephrem was named a Doctor of the Church by the Roman Catholic Church by Pope Benedict XV.
One of Ephrem’s writings deals with a common challenge we face in prayer:: we can expect too much from it. This is especially true of daily prayer. Daily prayer, after all, is a “work” and we can get tired of work, no matter how great it is. Monotony so easily occurs. Be humble and patient in daily prayer and liturgy, Ephrem writes:
“Lord, who can comprehend even one of your words? Like those drinking from a running stream we only take in so much. Everyone finds something in God’’s word. The Lord’s word is many colored. If you gaze on it, you’ll see what you’re meant to see. It hides many different treasures. Seek and you’ll find what will make you rich.
The word of God is a tree of life bearing blessed fruit on each of its branches. It’s like that rock struck in the wilderness from which all drank. As the apostles says, ‘They all ate spiritual food and they all drank.’
So when you find a part of that treasure don’t think you have exhausted God’s word. Rather, this is yours so far. Also, don’t think the word of God is not much because this is all you have found. Thank God for what you have.
A thirsty person is happy to drink but he can’t drink the whole spring. Thirst brings you back to the flowing waters .
What you receive is enough for now; more is promised, but you can’t have all, there will be more if you persevere. Don’t give up. The time will come.”
(On the Diatessaron)
For Ephrem a spring of water describes the way we draw upon God’s wisdom and strength. We want more than we need or can take in. We want to know it all and do it all, but we only can drink one mouthful at a time. That’s the way we’re made.
The spring is never exhausted, though. It keeps flowing. The tree of life remains there all the time, the spring never dries up, but we don’t like waiting, day by day.
“O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, meddling, lust of power, and idle talk. But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience and love to your servant. Yes, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own sins and not to judge others, for you are blessed from age to age. Amen.O God, be gracious to me, a sinner.” (Prayer of St. Ephrem)
Years ago I stood with pilgrims looking towards Jerusalem where the Jewish temple once stood. Today’s reading from the Book of Kings focuses on the temple King Solomon built.
David before him wanted to build a temple, but the Prophet Nathan told him God doesn’t need a fixed place to dwell in. ( 2 Samuel 7, 4-17) God dwells in a tent, ready to go wherever his people go. A beautiful reminder– God is with us at all times, wherever we are.
Yet, God dwells in certain holy places, like the temple Solomon built on the threshing floor in the upper city in Jerusalem, A dark cloud filled the Holy of Holies, so awesome the priests can’t remain in the place. “… The priests could no longer minister because of the cloud, since the LORD’s glory had filled the temple of the LORD.” (1 Kings 8,22-30)
“Can it indeed be that God dwells on earth? If the heavens and the highest heavens cannot contain you, how much less this temple which I have built!” Solomon seeks God’s blessing for his people and himself there. “Listen to the petitions of your servant and of your people Israel which they offer in this place. Listen from your heavenly dwelling and grant pardon.”
A good reading to reflect on the presence of God in our lives. God promises to be with us in a presence always mysterious, beyond our understanding. He goes with us wherever we go. There are also holy places where God meets us– sacraments, signs, places he’s promised to be.
Jesus, the new temple of God, fulfills these Old Testament realities. He dwells among us, accompanying us on our journey of life in signs and sacraments. He will always be there. Yet his presence is also “a dark cloud,” the mystery of his death and resurrection. Awesome, mysterious, beyond our understanding.
Whenever we draw close and pray, he is there. Always there.
An heroic African woman from the Sudan, Josephine Bakhita was kidnapped by slave traders when she was 9 years old and forced into slavery for almost 12 years. Pope Benedict XVI wrote of her in his encyclical letter “On Hope” as an example of God’s gift of hope. “To come to know God—the true God—means to receive hope.”
“I am thinking of the African Josephine Bakhita, canonized by Pope John Paul II. She was born around 1869—she herself did not know the precise date—in Darfur in Sudan. At the age of nine, she was kidnapped by slave-traders, beaten till she bled, and sold five times in the slave-markets of Sudan. Eventually she found herself working as a slave for the mother and the wife of a general, and there she was flogged every day till she bled; as a result of this she bore 144 scars throughout her life.
Finally, in 1882, she was bought by an Italian merchant for the Italian consul Callisto Legnani, who returned to Italy as the Mahdists advanced. Here, after the terrifying “masters” who had owned her up to that point, Bakhita came to know a totally different kind of “master”—in Venetian dialect, which she was now learning, she used the name “paron” for the living God, the God of Jesus Christ.
Up to that time she had known only masters who despised and maltreated her, or at best considered her a useful slave. Now, however, she heard that there is a “paron” above all masters, the Lord of all lords, and that this Lord is good, goodness in person.
She came to know that this Lord even knew her, that he had created her—that he actually loved her. She too was loved, and by none other than the supreme “Paron”, before whom all other masters are themselves no more than lowly servants. She was known and loved and she was awaited.
What is more, this master had himself accepted the destiny of being flogged and now he was waiting for her “at the Father’s right hand”. Now she had “hope” —no longer simply the modest hope of finding masters who would be less cruel, but the great hope: “I am definitively loved and whatever happens to me—I am awaited by this Love. And so my life is good.” Through the knowledge of this hope she was “redeemed”, no longer a slave, but a free child of God.
She understood what Paul meant when he reminded the Ephesians that previously they were without hope and without God in the world—without hope because without God. Hence, when she was about to be taken back to Sudan, Bakhita refused; she did not wish to be separated again from her “Paron”.
On 9 January 1890, she was baptized and confirmed and received her first Holy Communion from the hands of the Patriarch of Venice. On 8 December 1896, in Verona, she took her vows in the Congregation of the Canossian Sisters and from that time onwards, besides her work in the sacristy and in the porter’s lodge at the convent, she made several journeys round Italy in order to promote the missions: the liberation that she had received through her encounter with the God of Jesus Christ, she felt she had to extend, it had to be handed on to others, to the greatest possible number of people.
The hope born in her which had “redeemed” her she could not keep to herself; this hope had to reach many, to reach everybody.” Benedict XVI “Spes salvi” 2007
Josephine Bakhita died February 8, 1947 and was declared a saint in 2000. She is the patron saint of the Sudan and victims of human trafficking. For more on her, see here.
Dear brothers and sisters, good morning and welcome!
The Conciliar Constitution Dei Verbum, on which we are reflecting during these weeks, indicates in the Sacred Scripture, read in the living Tradition of the Church, a privileged space for encounter where God continues to speak to the men and women of every time, so that, by listening, they can know him and love him. The biblical texts, however, were not written in a heavenly or superhuman language. Indeed, as daily life teaches us, two people who speak different languages cannot understand each other, cannot enter into dialogue, and are unable to establish a relationship. In some cases, making oneself understood to others is a first act of love. This is why God chooses to speak using human languages and thus, various authors, inspired by the Holy Spirit, have written the texts of Sacred Scripture. As the Conciliar document reminds us, “the words of God, expressed in human language, have been made like human discourse, just as the word of the eternal Father, when He took to Himself the flesh of human weakness, was in every way made like men” (DV, 13). Therefore, not only in its content, but also in its language, the Scripture reveals God’s merciful condescension towards men, and his desire to be close to them.
Throughout the course of Church history, the relationship between the divine Author and the human authors of the sacred texts has been studied. For several centuries, many theologians were concerned to defend the divine inspiration of the Sacred Scripture, almost considering the human authors merely as passive tools of the Holy Spirit. In more recent times, reflection has re-evaluated the contribution of hagiographers in the writing of sacred texts, to the point that the Conciliar document speaks of God as the principal “author” of Sacred Scripture, but also calls hagiographers “true authors” of the sacred books (cf. DV, 11). As a keen exegete of the last century observed, “to reduce human activity to that of a mere amanuensis is not to glorify divine activity”. [1] God never mortifies human beings and their potential!
If, therefore, the Scripture is the word of God in human words, any approach to it that neglects or denies one of these two dimensions proves to be partial. It follows that a correct interpretation of the sacred texts can dispense with the historic environment in which they developed and the literary forms that were used; on the contrary, to renounce the study of the human words that God used risks leading to fundamentalist or spiritualist readings of the Scripture, which betray its meaning. This principle also applies to the proclamation of the Word of God: if it loses touch with reality, with human hopes and sufferings, if an incomprehensible language is used, uncommunicative or anachronistic, it is ineffective. In every age, the Church is called to re-propose the Word of God in a language capable of being embodied in history and reaching hearts. As Pope Francis reminds us, “Whenever we make the effort to return to the source and to recover the original freshness of the Gospel, new avenues arise, new paths of creativity open up, with different forms of expression, more eloquent signs and words with new meaning for today’s world”. [2]
Equally reductive, on the other hand, is a reading of Scripture that neglects its divine origin and ends up understanding it as a mere human teaching, as something to be studied simply from a technical point of view or as a text “only of the past”. [3] Rather, especially when proclaimed in the context of the liturgy, Scripture is intended to speak to today’s believers, to touch their present lives with their problems, to enlighten the steps to be taken and the decisions to be made. This becomes possible only when believers read and interpret the sacred texts under the guidance of the same Spirit who inspired them (cf. DV, 12).
In this regard, the Scripture serves to nurture the life and charity of believers, as Saint Augustine recalls: “Whoever … thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures … but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbour, does not yet understand them as he ought”. [4] The divine origin of the Scripture also recalls that the Gospel, entrusted to the witness of the baptized, despite embracing all the dimensions of life and reality, transcends them: it cannot be reduced to a mere philanthropic or social message, but is the joyful proclamation of the full and eternal life that God has given to us in Jesus.
Dear brothers and sisters, let us thank the Lord because, in his goodness, he ensures our lives do not lack the essential nourishment of his Word, and let us pray that our words, and even more so our lives, do not obscure the love of God that is narrated in them.
[1] L. Alonso Schökel, La parola ispirata. La Bibbia alla luce della scienza del linguaggio ( The Inspired Word. The Scripture in the Light of Language and Literature), Brescia 1987, 70.
[2] Francis, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium (24 November 2013), 11.
[3] Benedict XVI, Post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini (30 September 2010), 35.
[4] St. Augustine, De doctrina christiana I, 36, 40.
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