Treasuring the Word of God

Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Earlier this week I was speaking with a friend I have known for a few years now.  I wouldn’t say I know him really well, but continue to get to know him in the few times when we see each other throughout the year.  He asked me how St. Matthew was doing, and I mentioned how we’re growing.  He told me that he attends a Protestant community, but then opened up and told me that he was baptized Catholic, and even was an altar server.  He said that he never really liked going to Mass.  At this Protestant community he enjoyed the music, but then also mentioned how he really enjoyed the Bible study that the community puts on for adults and kids.  He then shared that he never remembered his dad ever opening up a Bible, and how strange that was, and how he makes sure that his children know the Bible well and he, as their father, shares that with them.  After he had shared this, he had to get to something else, but I said we should sit down and talk about his experiences more when he has a chance.  We’ll see if that ever happens or not.
    Are we familiar with the Word of God?  St. Jerome famously said, while commenting on the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, that ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.  How familiar are we with the Scriptures?  Do you as parents, especially fathers, take leadership in sharing the Word of God and unpacking it for your children?
    The Bible is our book as Catholics.  The Catholic Church, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, decided which books would be in it.  Holy Mother Church chose to include the books that the Jews venerated as God’s revelation to humanity, and chose to include four Gospel accounts of the life, Death, and Resurrection of Christ, letters from some of the Apostles, and the Apocalypse of Saint John, also called the Book of Revelation.  God didn’t send down a list on papyrus.  Those whom God called to act in the name of Christ and with His power, the bishops, discerned which writings were consistent with what Christ had revealed and the Apostles had passed down, and which were inconsistent, or even simply not necessary for salvation.  What a scandal that a Catholic wouldn’t feel comfortable with a big part of how God has revealed Himself until he left the Catholic Church!  

    When we starve ourselves from the Scriptures, we are like the young girl who is at the point of death, or the woman with the flow of blood.  We need Christ to heal us and raise us up.  If we are so near death from lack of familiarity with the Word of God, then sometimes it takes another to bring about the resurrection of our faith life.  In the Gospel it was the young girl’s father who pleaded with the Savior to heal his daughter.  Fathers, you often have an important role to play in reinvigorating the life of faith in your families, especially your children.  But I would also say mothers play such an important role in modeling familiarity with the Word of God as well.  
    Sometimes we can bring ourselves to Christ and the Scriptures, because we know they will bring us healing.  We have tried everything else, all the other doctors that are available to us.  We have tried every other kind of wisdom, but have found it lacking.  But in the Word of God, if we have faith in its power, as the woman had faith that she could receive healing even if she only touched the clothes of the Lord, we can find the healing we have desired that we have found nowhere else.  But we need to have faith in the power of God’s Word.
    Now, I know that Catholics often point out, and rightly so, that God’s revelation does not limit itself to the Scriptures.  The Bible itself is part of a greater revelation, because the Bible comes to us not from itself, but from the living Tradition of the Church.  And certainly we should also learn what the popes and bishops have taught us throughout the two millennia of the Church’s history, especially that which is part of the deposit of faith.
    But that deposit of faith always finds its roots in the Scriptures.  Not everything that the Church teaches explicitly connects to a particular passage, but everything at least implicitly connects to the Scriptures.  From our belief in the Trinity, our Blessed Mother’s immaculate conception and assumption, the seven Sacraments, and all that is part of Christ’s one Church, we find either direct or indirect evidence of it in God’s revelation through His Word.  The Church Fathers knew this all too well.  If you read any of the Church Fathers, they quote the Scriptures fluidly through their own writings.  The Bible was a story with which they were intimately familiar and through which they could understand the truths of faith.  One of the great fruits of the Second Vatican Council was a call to return to familiarity with the Scriptures that the Church had during the time of the Church Fathers.  We are still growing in that fruit of the Council, but it was a great blessing of the Holy Spirit, nonetheless.
    So many Catholic families need healing from the Word of God.  So many Catholic families are at the point of spiritual death because they do not read the Bible.  Today, reach out to the Lord to find healing in the Word of God.  Allow the Word of God to raise you to new life through its power and its wisdom.  May your children never say of you, as my friend did of his father, that you never opened the Bible for them and helped them know and love the Word of God, the loving communication of salvation from the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.