It’s baseball world series season: the Astros against the Washington Nationals. At the same time, we have local little league games. I read about a woman on her way home from work who stopped to watch a little league game. As she sat down, she asked a player what the score was. “We’re behind 14 to nothing,” the little leaguer answered with a smile. “Really,” the woman said, “You don’t look very discouraged.” “Discouraged?” the boy anwsered. “Why should we be discouraged? We haven’t been up to bat yet.” Now there’s an optimist.
The word of God takes us back to a defining moment in the life of ancient Israel: the Exodus or the deliverance of the Hebrews from their oppressors in ancient Egypt. Here in the wilderness, the Hebrews encountered dangers everywhere. They are probably fighting for land and water rights. Moses, atop a hill, displays the staff of God, symbol of God’s presence, and extends his hands, almost magically. Every time Moses lifts his hands up in prayer, the tide turns in favor of the Hebrews.
The message is simple: persevere in prayer, because God does hear us even though he may not always answer us in the manner we would like.
Paul here emphasizes the significance of the Bible and its importance in our lives. The Bible is the very “breath of God” which empowers us to be faithful disciples of Jesus.
In the Gospel according to Luke, we have a story about a crotchety, heartless judge and a persistent, bothersome widow. Because the widow doesn’t give up in her demand for justice, the judge eventually gives the widow what is rightfully hers.
The parable challenges us to persevere in doing what we can to right wrongs. In fact, persistence often makes the difference between success and failure.
Today I would like to highlight the Bible as a guide in light of Paul’s emphasis on its role in our spiritual life.
Now there are many different spiritualities in Catholic Christianity: including Benedictine, Franciscan, Dominican, Jesuit, Marian, and so on. All are different responses to the one common Christian call to holiness. The goal in all this, to paraphrase the musical Godspell, is to “see Thee, O Lord, more clearly, love Thee more dearly and follow Thee more nearly, day by day.”
Let me highlight a biblical spirituality. Did you ever wonder whether God speaks to us? In fact, he does! God speaks to us through the inspired word of God, the Bible, a privileged form of conversation between God and us, a two-way chat, so to speak. That’s why we should be ever attentive and responsive to the word of God in the liturgy.
Yes, God authored the Bible in the sense that the Bible includes what God wants us to know about God, his relationship to the universe, and his purpose for us.
But the authors of the Bible were real authors, using the languages, images, literary genres, and worldviews they knew in their cultures to communicate religious truths, not scientific theories. These authors knew nothing about evolution, the solar system or galaxies.
Moreover, the Bible is not one book, but a library of books written over 1,500 years by at least forty different authors—in prose and poetry, fiction and history, historical narratives and short stories, genealogies and sermons, parables and letters, songs and codes of law, blessings and curses, prophetic and proverbial sayings, and apocalyptic visions. Some of the books evolved over decades; others over centuries. They are not always easily understandable.
Catholics recognize that the biblical writers used various forms of communication or literary forms. And just as we interpret literary genres differently today, so too we have to interpret biblical literary genres differently. We first must discern what genre the writers were using. Then we will be able to discover more easily the fundamental religious truth that it is trying to communicate. Moreover, the Bible often speaks symbolically, as in the parables of Jesus.
The two creation stories, for example, communicate religious truths: God is our awesome Creator; we are mere creatures; we came out of nothingness and we will fall back into nothingness. Everything God created is good. We are made in the image of God, but we somehow broke our friendship with God and one another, and hence we often choose our worse over our better selves. We call this fall from grace “original sin.” But how did the biblical author communicate these religious truths? Through the cultural images and legends and traditions they knew.
Finally, I invite us to read the Bible prayerfully. We read not to find specific answers to questions the biblical authors never thought about, but to become the kind of person for our day that Jesus was for his day.
The scriptures in particular point to Jesus as the unique or definitive revelation of God to us. In other words, everything that God wanted to do for us or say to us, God did in Jesus Christ, gloriously alive. In this sense, there will be no new revelation. However, the Spirit of God in our global Catholic community guides us along the journey to our heavenly dwelling place, in light of new challenges in new generations and evolving cultures.
I invite us particularly to nourish our spiritual life through the Sunday readings in the Liturgy of the Word. In many ways, we are a Sunday people. Think about it. We gather every Sunday in churches across the globe to re-dedicate ourselves to God, to listen to God in the Liturgy of the Word and to presence sacramentally and mystically the living Christ in the bread and wine, to become one with Him in Communion, and then to go forth to continue the ministry of Jesus Christ until He comes again with great power and glory at the end-time.
Yes, God speaks to us in the Bible, and we listen; we speak to God, and he listens. Is there a word or a phrase that God is whispering into our souls? For me, that word today is perseverance. Last Sunday, it was gratitude. Yes, God wants to speak to us, to remind us of our purpose in life: to be in relationship with God and one another forever.
May we listen to God speaking to us in the scriptures, and may that word transform us into the best version of ourselves so that we will be channels of grace in our homes, workplaces and community.
