Armed with the Sword of the Spirit

Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  I was once speaking with a traditional Catholic years ago, who said, “I don’t read the Scriptures.  That’s what Protestants do.”  And I remember thinking how sad it was that this person thought that reading the Bible was a Protestant thing.  I tried to encourage him to read the Scriptures, but to no avail.
    Hopefully, that is not the position of anyone here.  St. Paul today speaks about the Scriptures as the “sword of the Spirit.”  St. Jerome, in a homily on the Book of Isaiah, famously wrote, “Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.”  But do we heed St. Jerome?  Are we armed with this important weapon of our faith?

    Christ Himself uses the Scriptures to take away the power of the temptations in the desert.  When tempted to turn rocks into bread, Christ quotes Deuteronomy 8:3 which reads, “it is not by bread alone that people live, but by all that comes forth from the mouth of God.”  When tempted to throw Himself down from the temple, because Satan said, quoting Psalm 91, that the angels would protect Him, Christ responds with another Scripture, again from the Book of Deuteronomy, this time 6:16 which reads, “You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.”  And the last temptation of Christ, where the enemy says that he will give Christ all the kingdoms of the world if he worships Satan, Christ forcefully quotes Deuteronomy 6:13, which reads, “The Lord, your God, shall you fear; him shall you serve.”  Even when the devil takes Scripture out of context, Christ uses Scripture to defeat the temptation.
    Certainly, as we saw from that example, one can take Scripture out of context.  Which is why we should have a decent understanding of not just a few verses, but a good grasp of the whole, as well.  Often times, Protestants and Evangelicals will take a verse of Scripture out of context, so it is good to review together the entire chapter to make sure that the phrase is not part of a larger whole which gives a different meaning.  After all, there is part of a verse in the Psalms that reads, “‘There is no God.’”  However, the first part of that verse which gives it context is, “The fool says in his heart,” which changes the whole meaning of that verse.
    Knowing Scripture also helps us defend our faith, whether in public or in private.  Recently, a decently well-known politician said that the Scriptures don’t deal with abortion, and certainly don’t condemn it directly.  His opponent, a Catholic, easily rebutted that claim by pointing out the fifth commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” which especially means killing an innocent human being.  Or, I recently mentioned to an evangelical that I had just gone to confession, so if I died, I had a strong sense that I would eventually make it to heaven.  He responded, “I don’t think that’s how it works,” and went on to explain that he simply confesses his sins to God; he doesn’t feel the need to go to a priest, because only God can forgive sins.  I responded that that was an interesting principle, and certainly God can forgive sins directly, but if God didn’t intend for us to go to confession, why did Jesus give the Apostles the authority to forgive sins?  He asked where that was in the Bible, and I responded, John chapter 20 (I couldn’t remember the verses), where Jesus says, “‘Receive the holy Spirit.  Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.’”  I also pointed out that Jesus said something very similar in Matthew 16 where He gave the keys of the kingdom to St. Peter.  He wisely said he wanted to review the chapters I had mentioned, and I hope to continue that conversation with him some day.
    Now, to be fair, I’m fairly well-trained in Scripture.  I went to school for 8 years before ordination, and we dealt with a lot of Scripture.  And I pray with the Scriptures on a daily basis, and have gone through reading the Old Testament one year and the New Testament the next year over a course of many years.  But I know that sometimes it can seem difficult to understand certain passages, and that’s where having a Catechism of the Catholic Church, to keep with you when you read the Scriptures, can help you make sense of difficult passages.  There’s a cross reference in the back of the Catechism that can help you know how the Church interprets a particular passage.  As St. Peter says in the first chapter of his second epistle, “there is no prophecy of scripture that is a matter of personal interpretation, for no prophecy ever came through human will; but rather human beings moved by the holy Spirit spoke under the influence of God.”  The official teaching office of the Church, which we call the Magisterium, guides us infallibly on how to interpret the Scriptures, because the Scriptures are a product of the Church, not the Church is a product of the Scriptures.  If we rely only on our understanding, we will splinter into thousands of groups, like the Protestants have, because there are different senses of Scriptures, even within the same book.
    All of this is to say: read the Bible!  We offer Bible studies here, and we recently had the Catholic Biblical School of Michigan here to advertise the classes they offer online and in-person at Holy Redeemer in Burton.  Whether it’s an intro course to help you feel basically familiar with the Scriptures, or maybe a deeper dive into particular books, knowing the Scriptures will help you know Christ better.  Do not neglect to carry your sword with you into spiritual battle!  Stay armed with the Word of God: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.