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St. Jerome said, sixteen hundred years ago, that ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ. A generation ago, the Second Vatican Council strongly encouraged all Catholics to contemplate the Word of God in Scripture in order to discover the Word of God incarnate, the Word made flesh.
The last three decades have seen the birth and growth of Scripture sharing groups among Catholics. This is one of the most important fruits of the Holy Spirit acting in the Church today. When we pick up the Bible and savor God's Word in human words, the Holy Spirit has an opening to enter our lives, strengthen our faith, and move our hearts. When Scripture reading is done in groups, believers strengthen the faith for each other and make themselves instruments of the Spirit's action. Listening to others in a group helps each participant to see some new dimension of the text and to understand how the Spirit who inspired the sacred authors continues to inspire the lives of Christ's followers today.
Because the Church knows Christ, her bridegroom, she recognizes God's Word and is able to tell us which books and writings are, in fact, divinely inspired. Alone or in small groups, as well as in the liturgy, we listen to God's holy Word as members of Christ's Church. Sharing the Scriptures means being attentive to both the text and to its various contexts: the original context of each book's human author, the context of the entire Bible, the context of the Catholic faith, and the context of our own experience. Each should enter into a group sharing.
To understand the Scripture, it helps to work ourselves into the context of the human authors. God uses helpers to write the Scriptures, and the meaning the human writer had in mind is basic to all other meanings of the text. Discovering this basic meaning often takes some personal study, and it is a great help to have a Catholic biblical commentary or a dictionary at hand during Scripture sharing. Perhaps one of the members might research the historical context before the group meets. In trying to tease out the original meanings when we do not read Hebrew or Greek, it is often helpful to compare two or three different English translations. This opens up the range of possible meanings in the text.
Each passage of Scripture is set in the context of a particular book, but the book is set in the context of the entire Bible. Since God is the primary author of Holy Scripture, the meaning of individual books and texts must be read in the light of God's complete self-revelation. God does not contrdict himself, and understanding one book of the Bible well sheds light on all the others.
While we are thousands of years removed from the original setting of the inspired texts, yet the relationship between God and the human family provides a clear line of continuity between us and the children of Abraham and the first disciples of Jesus. While the original contexts are foreign to us, their very difference from our own culture and way of life highlights the continuity of faith. We read Holy Scripture in the context of the Catholic faith, in the light of faith in Christ.Jesus of Nazareth is the clue to inderstanding all of revelation and all of Scripture. Jesus knew and loved and prayed his people's sacred books. He used Scripture in preaching. We read the Hebrew Scriptures with Christ, especially the Psalms, to discover their deeper meaning. When read with Christian faith, the Hebrew Scriptures become our Old Testament, while the Gospels and the New Testament books are explicit witnesses to Christ. To be the Church is to be "in Christ:" St. Paul's constant phrase. Conformed to Christ in baptism and confirmation, we read Scripture with joy because it speaks to us of Our Lord.
In fact, we read Holy Scripture in the context of our own experience.Often a passage will speak to us because it helps us to understand our own life, especially our personal relationship to God. Sometimes it will contain just the word of encouragement or correction needed at the moment. God's word is a two edged sword, always able to pierce our hearts.
The Church recognizes layers of meaning in Scripture when she distinguishes various spiritual senses from the literal sense of the original historical context (see the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 115-119).
Today, the contexts of Scripture sharing groups add further richness to our understanding of the Bible. They are an instrument God is using to change our lives and help us to grow in Christ.
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Pope John XXIII had hoped that the Second Vatican Council would be "a new Pentecost". Is Pentecost reproducible? Can Christians today be a part of a new Pentecost?
In the New Testament there is a particular word coming directly out of the Pentecost experience which describes Pentecost and which the Church today needs to recapture. That word is witness. The early Church was a witness. The first Christians thought that their main responsibility was to share their experience of the risen Christ with others. That is the purpose of the witness: to tell what that individual has seen and heard. The first disciples had been with the Lord, called by Him, walked with Him. They had heard Him teach: they had watched chikdren come to Him; had seen old people hang upon His words. They had observed the tide of oppositiono on the part of the Scribes and Pharisees; they had been with Him in the Garden when He was arrested; they had gone with Him to Pilate's judgment hall. There they had heard Him condemned to death. They had seen Him scourged and beaten. They had walked with Him on the way to the Cross. They had been part of the funeral procession that ended in Joseph's newly-hewn tomb. Then they retreated back into the upper room to bar the door and were so afraid. As one of their numbers said later. "We had thought that this one should redeem Israel. And now this one was dead." Suddenly the risen Jesus stands in their midst. They had seen the Risen Christ. For them tragedy was turned into triumph, despair into victory, death into life.
And so these first disciples witnessed, and as they witnessed change was effected in the life of the people and in the life of the world.
The mission of the Church today is to witness, to proclaim the Good News: Jesus Christ, who died on Good Friday, was walking around on Easter Sunday. Christ who was crucified by sinful people rose from the dead and created a kingdom of forgiven and believing sinners. The Christian Church exists for no greater purpose than to preach this good news. The Church has a life-giving mission. Through its sacraments and word it can bring life and salvation to those who accept the good news.
Two things are necessary if the Church today is to be the Church. First, the people of the Church have to have the experience with the Risen Lord. His resurrection must become real. We must really believe that He died and rose again and lives forever and that because He lives, we too shall live. These cannot be just words to us but living truth, truth that transforms us so that we are never the same again.
In the second place, we must speak out to what we have experienced. We must witness to this personal experience. I am convinced that people come to Jesus because of the testimony and good example of another. But I am convinced that a person stays with Jesus only when that person has experienced the Risen Lord.
We must become men and women of one idea: the Lord is risen, the Lord is risen. By and large we do not do this. We are more reluctant to share our faith than anything else we have. We operate on the supposition that faith is too personal to talk about it to others.
Our Lord never discounted the proportions of the task to which He was calling His people. He knew the difficulties, the problems that they would face in witnessing. He understands the opposition: the hatred, the prejudice, the fears, the suspicions, the misunderstandings, the charges that would be leveled against His followers. And so He did not send His disciples out alone. He sent them out in company with their fellow disciples.
He established His Church as a community so that the Church could provide two kinds of help. It would be first of all a launching pad for forays into the world. The people who went forth could always know that the community of the Church was behind them. For example, Saints Paul and Barnabas went forth as missionaries from the home Church, carrying with them all the prayers and concerns, the encouragement and strength of the home Church. They did not count themselves alone. They knew the Church went with them,
But there was another side to this. After Paul and Barnabas had been out in the world, had been beaten, had become bruised and battered, they could return to the home Church and find a welcome and an understanding. They could be refreshed and encouraged for the next foray into the world. This is a support that is possible only within the community of the Church.
The mission of the Church, the work of the Church, is not to be done in the Church but in the world. The Church was not founded for the sake of the Church but for the sake of the world. It is in the world that people live and die without Christ. It is in the World that people need what the Gospel can give them. So the Church must always be a launching pad for its mission to the world.
The Church must be a witnessing community. Unless we are that, we are nothing. This is the task to which we are called, this is the responsibility that is laid upon us. "This Jesus whom you crucified, God has raised up, we are all witnesses" (Acts 2:32). Are we? That is the question. Are we witnesses to the Risen Lord? Do we fulfill this scripture passage?
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"I was in prison and you visited me." This simple and prophetic challenge of Jesus (Matt 25) requires each of us to experience life through a new perspective - that of the prisoner. Visiting a prisoner means letting go of privileges, preconceptions and prejudices. It means reaching out and touching a person who is hurt, angry, poor and powerless. It is in prison that I have met Jesus.
There is no better way to share the experience of the early Church, of the martyrs and saints, than to visit prisoners. In a sense, Christianity's womb is prison, for it is from the passion of our Lord, the captivity of Paul, the crucifixion of Peter, that our faith was born. Prison is the crucible of our faith as shown by John the Baptist, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Agnes, St. Blaise, St. Thomas More, St. Joan of Arc and Maximilian Kolbe. The Church has long recognized persons who visited prisoners, including: Our Lady of Sorrows, St. Vincent de Paul, St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Joseph Cafasso, St. Peter Claver, St. Martin de Porres, Mother Emily Gamlin, and Pope John Paul II.
The men and women "inside" reach me that faith is all about life and death struggles and challenges every day. Visiting Jesus has opened my life to conversion and shown me what a gift it is to wake up each morning. For it is in prison that Jesus lives.
Visiting prisoners is not easy. The State makes it hard, with many forms to fill out, limited visiting times and meeting rooms, personal searches, and changing rules. The correctional officers are captives of low-paying jobs, a culture and set of rules that deny them dignity. So many take out their frustrations out on visitors. One day Bibles are allowed in, other days refused. But certain rules always apply: do not carry jewelry or money, do not give inmates your address and phone number, do not tally during count, always obey the correctional officer's orders.
Prisons are not always the cell-blocks shown in the movies. Some are open dorms crowded with beds. Pruvacy, dignity and personal property are foreign concepts to these men and women. Some are in personal prisons with walls so high and thick that only God's grace can overcome. Those in solitary confinement are lirerally entombed alive, screaming for human contact and God's love. The women are almost all mothers and long for their children. Who will hear their stories, who will bring comfort and who will be their voices?
On any single day this year, over ONE MILLION persons are in U.S. prisons, and over 500,000 fellow citizens are incarcerated in jails. That number is increasing by 10% per year. About 150,000 women are behind bars. About 4.5 million children have parents in jail or prison. The legal system has custody of almost six million Americans. The current political climate is to "lock 'em up and throw away the key," because prisoners are considered animals who can't be rehabilitated. As Christians, we must stand up to this evil - for it is a lie that prisoners are not humans, that they cannot be rehabilitated. (Tim Allen of Home Improvements is an example of what an ex-offender can do with his life, as are Charles Goodyear, John Bunyan, Robert E. Lee, and Edgar Allen Poe - each made great achievements after imprisonment.) Most of the thousands of men I have met do not know their fathers, most of the women have been abused, all have been victims or crime. The majority are in for substance abuse and few have graduated from high school. Who will be listening to their stories, binding their wounds, breaking bread with their lives, bringing them the Eucharist?
Bringing them Eucharist? There are a few super-maximum prisons where the Eucharist is placed in a plastic tube and transported pneumatically. There is the human, healing touch of Christ? In some jurisdictions, the jailers do not allow Eucharistic celebrations - on religious and security grounds. A few years ago my Bishop came on Christmas, and the room was surrounded by guards carrying loaded shot-guns. Fortunately, such situations are rare. More often, it is difficult to bring the Eucharist to prisoners because of a lack of priests or Eucharistic ministers. Clearly, the Eucharist is more important in prison as the sacrament of unity, of peace and of life. Its transforming grace overcomes the dehumanizing alienation and suffering so endemic in prison. It challenges us to be agents of peace and justice, and to stand by our God, and our neighbors, any neighbor on any cross, without distinction or prejudice.
Thomas Karwaki, a lay Eucharistic minister, is a prison chaplain, the former director of prison ministry for the Catholic Charities of Arlington, and a lobbyist for the families of prisoners.
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A recent article in America magazine (July 15-22, 1995) by Francis Kelly Scheets, OSC and Joseph Claude Harris, entitled "Is the Sunday Collection in Trouble?", reaffirmed for me the importance if not the urgency of the ministry of the National Institute for the Word of God. He writes "...In a study for the Archdiocese of Detroit, respondents ranked their pastor's ability 'to preach down-to-earth sermons' as twentieth among twenty-four qualities. An astonishing 16 percent noted that this quality was not to be found in their pastor at all."
Our Experience
These statistics support what I have been experiencing, along with Mary and Bill Graham, as we have been conducting more and more workshops in preaching, liturgical celebration and lector formation in seminaries, dioceses and parishes throughout the United States and Canada.
The real hurdle we experience in teaching the various arts that go into effective communication is the lack of focused imagination in the preaching act.
Creative Imagination
The clergy is by and large trained in an academic mode which requires the acquisition and retention of large amounts of information which then becomes a habit of expression as well. Theologically trained preachers tend to preach in a manner that approximates the textbooks and documents they have read.
Joy
Preaching, however, is more than simply teaching information. Preaching stirs the heart, moves the emotions, touches the soul of the listeners. In short, preaching is as much a matter of sharing joy as teaching truth. Propositions alone can teach vital truth; they cannot share joy. More is required.
And that is where the National Institute programs have been achieving success over the years since our founding in 1972.
Catholic Coalition
Such a creative approach is being reflected in the 1995 national convention of the Catholic Coalition on Preaching which meets this year in Chicago, September 24-27, 1995. Favorable reactions to the 1993 conference resulted in the attendance of more bishops and priests who are concerned about their own preaching and that of others.
Evaluations
The final evidence for the importance of developing the creative imagination in preparing and presenting homilies comes from the evaluations of the participants in our programs.
This past summer Bill Graham and I conducted a workshop for a mid-western diocese. One of the priest-participants wrote: "We need to hear it over and over again, every few years, that preaching is the only contact we have with 99% of our people each week, and it better be good contact and effective communication."
Integrated Preaching
Another element we are able to offer our participants in addition to the awakening of the creative imagination is the relating of the preaching of the liturgical homily to the other forms of parish preaching: evangelization and catechesis.
The book I wrote with Fr. Thomas P. Doyle, OP, Homilist's Guide to Scripture, Theology and Canon Law continues to prove invaluable for the training of parish preachers reaching out to all segments of the parish through an integrated preaching program.
Bible Sharing
Our ministry is not limited to the ordained. The formation and guidance of Bible sharing groups throughout the country and Canada continue to be a majot contribution we make to the life of the Church.
June 28-July 3, 1996, I will be conducting a Bible sharing retreat at the beautiful Dover Spiritual Life Center in Dover, MA.
On-line!
Finally, the National Institute is going on-line! We are still really just exploring this wonderful resource for spreading the gospel, but we are in there surfing. Our address is BURKEOP@aol.com. If you have any recommendations, we would love to hear from you.
Fraternally in Christ, John Burke, OP, Executive Director.
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Heavenly Father, Your Sacred Scriptures reveal the Good News that You love us. You have chosen us to reflect that love more abundantly by professing Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. May the Holy Spirit so transform our lives, that we increasingly proclaim the Good News to all creation. We ask You this in Jesus' name. Amen.
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A new English language catechism for the Catholic Church was recently released, reports Religious News Service. Following is an excerpt on the Bible: "God inspired the human authors of the sacred books, God chose certain men who, all the while He employed them in this task, made full use of their own faculties and powers so that, though He acted in them and by them, it was as true authors that they consigned to writing whatever He wanted written, and no more."
"The inspired books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scripture." St. Paul Books and Media
Continued in Part 2...
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