This is an archival transcript of a talk given at a 1980 community meeting. We donât have a recording of this meeting. The talk began with comments about the temptation of Christ in the wilderness. What was at issue was the correct reading and interpretation of Scripture. Paul DeCelles then talked about how moving forward as the body of Christ in the world requires an understanding of Scripture, reading the Bible with care and interpreting it correctly. He also offered several ways to maintain a state of âreadinessâ to receive the word of God.
Recently, I had a chance to go to Mt. Sinai. As we were going down the Sinai peninsula, I was amazed that there was not anything green as far as one could see; it was a totally desolate area. When we finally got to the area of Mt. Sinai, there was, in fact, some grass there, and some trees, because there is a source of water there. As we climbed up to the top of Mt. Sinai, I kept thinking what a terribly desolate place this is and how awful it must have been for the Israelites to wander around in the desert for 40 years. I thought how difficult it must have been for Moses to have gone up to the top of this mountain, leaving behind the people who were so dependent on him. He was gone for a long time, disappearing into a cloud that thundered and that flashed lightning and, I imagined, that must have been a dreadful sight.
I was struck, though, how it must have been for the Israelites to be confronted by a man who came down from the mountain like this, carrying something like tablets with him, saying this is the word of God. But the people werenât ready to receive it. They had built a golden calf and had strayed from the Lordâs ways. Of course, eventually, they smashed the golden calf and reorganized themselves. When Moses went back up and got permission from God to come back down again, and then teach them the law all over again, they were ready and waiting to be told what to do.
Imagine yourself being one of those people wandering aimlessly through a desert. This is our situation. We wander around in our own personal deserts sometimes. And the word of God comes to us like it did with Moses, bringing it down to the Israelites. We donât have to wait for 40 days and 40 nights for it, and we donât have the advantage of a lot of thunderstorms, and so on, to shock us into turning to the Scriptures. But we can turn directly to it now at any time of need, or any time we want instruction, or reproof, or correction, or training in righteousness.
The point I want to make is that we need to be ready to receive the word of Godânot like the Israelites who were, at first, as unprepared as one can be. We should be as ready as the Israelites were to receive the word when Moses came down out of the mount the second time. We should be ready to hear it and, when we do hear it, to act upon what God has just revealed to us. This is the prerequisite to understanding the word of God, that you are ready to act upon it. In a sense, God does not want to talk to us unless we are willing to do what he says.
Have you ever felt that way with your children? Has it ever been in your mind that you just donât want to tell your child that one more time, because every time you do tell him he doesnât do it? So what is the point of just beating your gums? If he shows some kind of inclination to learn and wants to do what you tell him, then you are very eager to share with him what you have to say.
Of course, I am not saying that if children donât listen to you the first hundred times that you stop talking to them. Because it is the parentâs responsibility to continue to talk. And the Lord continues to talk to us. What I am saying is, that our disposition to be ready and faithful to receive what God has said, and to do it, is one of the things that is prerequisite for us to respond rightly to the Holy Spirit in Scripture.
The second predisposition we ought to have is that our hearts should be burning within us. On the road to Emmaus, the first thing our Lord did for the disciples was to give them a little Bible course so that they would be in position to understand what Scripture had been saying about him all along, and that they had been unable to understand on their own. âThen they said to each other, after they realized who it was, and he had left them: âDid not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?â â
We should have reverence for the word of God. In the Eastern Church, the Bible is handled with the same reverence as the Eucharist. Eastern liturgies talk about âbreakingâ holy Scripture as the first part of their liturgy and then, in the second half of the liturgy, attention is turned toward breaking the bread and receiving the Eucharist. In fact, some of the churches, instead of having a tabernacle for retaining and preserving the Blessed Sacrament, have a stand in a very prominent and dignified place where they reserve the blessed Scriptures. I believe we need to incorporate that kind of attitude in our lives in the Western Church. We are dealing with a holy God, whose word is there in an inspired way in the holy Scriptures, and we need to approach it with reverence.
The fourth point I want to make is that we should have a longing attitude with regard to Scripture. Many of you, I am sure, have seen The Fiddler on the Roof, and there is a great song in there in which Tevya, who is one of the main figures of the movie, is singing, and one of the things he says is that the sweetest thing of all is to read the Scriptures. He just longed to be able to spend his timeâif he were a millionaire, he would be able to spend all of his time just reading Scripture.
One time I had a chance to go to a yeshiva in New York. And on the first floor, as I went by the door, I could see a large room full of kids who were studying holy Scripture. Now the books were bigger than they were. It was a very impressive sight. They [the books] must have been about 4 feet tall, and the kids were all quite small. They all had yarmulkes on and they were kind of gabbling together like geese. Actually, I understand they were studying two-by-two, and so each pair would have a book they could pour over, and they were just eating that book up. It was just amazing.There must have been 40 children there. And you could just see that their whole life was aimed at consuming that holy Scripture.
It reminds me of a story that a friend told me, that he had heard from a rabbi, about a couple of cows. Isaiah had two cows and he was going to sacrifice one of them. He had to go to the top of a mountain to do it. He had to take the other cow along with a wood pile on his back, and other things that he needed for the sacrifice. So, the two cows were going up behind him, the one obviously very eager, and the one behind that one, carrying the wood, had its head down and was kind of grumpy and moping along. Finally Isaiah went back and said, âWell, what is wrong with you anyway, cow?â And the cow said, âWell, I know that, when we get to the top of the mountain, you are going to sacrifice that other cow, and I would like to be the one that gets sacrificed because I want to be a holy offering to God. I canât think of anything more wonderful than being in a position to offer my life to God. I would like to be offered up but, instead, all I get to do is to carry the wood up there and watch the other cow get this great, good thing [to] happen.â And Isaiah said to him, âWell, you donât understand right, then. You see, if you didnât come along and do these necessary things, the things that have to be done in order for the sacrifice to take place, then I would not be able to offer the other cow up to God. So you see, you are an integral part of what is happening here. You are doing something very important. It is true that you are not doing the most important thing, but you are doing something extremely important.â And so, when it was explained to him, the cow got a lot happier. And so, he kind of perked up a bit and they went on for another 15 minutes. And Isaiah turned around and he noticed that once again the second cowâs head was down and there were tears dropping now. So he went back and he said, âWell, now what is wrong?â And he said, âWell, I understand, but canât I feel bad anyway?â
It seems to me that this is something like the attitude we need to have. There are other things that we must do. We have to work. We have to make provision for all kinds of things. But our attitude should be that, when we do not have the chance to read Scripture, or when we are reading it and it is time for us to go do something else, that we should have a little sadness at having to depart from the best thing you can do, to do something not as important. It may be something we have to do but, if we could spend more time at studying the word of God, we would be better off.
The next point I want to make is that we should approach Scripture in the awareness that it is a mirror. It is a reflection of the Lord himself. In the Second Vatican Council, in the âConstitution on Divine Revelation,â it says, âThe sacred Scriptures of both testaments are like a mirror in which the Church, during its pilgrim journey here on earth, contemplates God from whom she receives everything, until such time as she is brought to see him face to face, as he really is.â Also, when we look at Scripture we have to see ourselves in light of what Scripture says we ought to be. We need to approach it that way, not judging Scripture according to us or modern science or psychology, but rather judging ourselves in light of what God says in holy Scripture.
The next point I want to make is that we should have a spiritual hunger for it. St. Athanasius tells us that, â. . . the word, which is from him, suffice[s] to nourish those who hear, and stand[s] to them in place of all food.â We should regard Scripture as divine food, as sustenance for our lives, and when we donât have it, we should experience a hunger for it. We should have an appetite for reading Scripture.
I was talking to someone in the community who said that, when she didnât read Scripture for a while, she found that something vital, crucial, something like food, was lacking from her life. If she wasnât reading and meditating on it, there was a definite lack in her life, and her life simply wasnât focused right. She said that holy Scripture is the word of God and God is revealing himself in it and, âIf I donât take in him in holy Scripture, when am I going to take him in?” Where am I going to take him in, if not from the word of God? If it is not the word of God that I am eating and consuming, then it is the word of the world that is on my mind. I believe we should have a hunger and we should cultivate it.
In 1967, at the beginning of the Charismatic Renewal, I bumped into a fellow I had been real close to and had worked in all kinds of apostolic projects with. He had been at a prayer meeting the night before, and I said, âHi Gerry, how are you doing?â And he said, âWell, not much happened to me. All I can do now is read Scripture.â He said he couldnât put it down. And I was sure he had gone crazy. His answer had nothing to do with what I had asked. While we talked some more, I found out that what had happened was that he had been prayed with the night before and had asked for a special increase of the Holy Spiritâs activity in his life. What had happened was that he had opened up Scripture, and suddenly the words leapt off the page and he was unable to put it down. And he read Scripture all night. Now, I know the fellow, and I know a lot of other people who have been involved in prayer meetings, and many of them have had the same experience. When people come into a deeper walk with the Holy Spirit, what they experience is that something like scales fall from their eyes and they are able to understand what the Bible is saying to them. So I believe that one of the key things to do is to begin, always, by invoking the Holy Spirit, and asking him to enlighten us, so that we can read Scripture and have that kind of hunger, and awareness, and longing attitude that we should have toward him.
Now, let me go onto what some obstacles are. The first one is a lack of discipline. Often, we experience reading Scripture as something that requires a lot of concentration. Our minds begin to wander. We start at the beginning of a parable, for example, or a story we are very familiar with, and our eyes look at that parable, and immediately our minds go to the end, like we know it all already. And it is very hard for us to slow down and actually read it again, or read it for the first time, even though we had heard it many times before. We need to have some discipline in our own lives to make us do the things that we want to do. You see, this is a spiritual matter, and our flesh wars against the spirit. It wars against our reading holy Scripture, and we need to take into account the fact that it is not going to be as easy as falling off a log. We actually have to work at it. Prayer is a spiritual undertaking, too, and we have to work at praying, and anything having to do with the spiritual life is difficult and requires our undergoing some hardship.
Now another thing which is an obstacle for people that I know in reading Scripture, is that they just donât know how much they are supposed to readâhow much do you have to read? You look at some of the books in the Old Testament, and you know that you havenât understood much of them the first time out, and you say, like, âOne of the Bibles I have at home has 1400 pages, and I had a hard time reading War and Peace because it was about 1,000 pages. It is just formidable.â You look at this and think and wonder, âHow am I ever going to get through it?â Well, you donât have to read a lot. Just read regularly. But read something and donât get hung up on having to read the whole thing, or the whole thing at once.
Another hang up, or obstacle, we encounter is something I call the âtyranny of experts.â I would like to read you a quote from an âexpertâ about Scripture. First, I should tell you that certainly there are experts to which we are greatly indebted toâthe good scholarship and the expertise of all kinds of men and women, who have sacrificed their lives to the actual understanding and preparation of translations of the Bible, providing full footnotes, and all kinds of literature, which gives us wisdom about understanding the times of Jesus and the times of the Israelites, and so on. But there are some experts who write like this: âThe value of liberal theology was that it reassured Christians that they did not have to sacrifice their intellects to assent to conceptions that are simply silly in our century.â That is to say, when you read the Bible, you look at it and you just recognize that there are a lot of things in there that are simply silly in our generation. Now, I would say that, if you read a steady diet of people who write from that point of view about Scripture, you could be tyrannized by the experts. You will not want to read the Bible very much, if at all, except as a quaint antique. But also, when you read things like that, you feel like, âYou know, those people really do know a great deal about the Bible. And who am I? I donât have big heavy degrees in biblical studies. I mean, I didnât take any courses in theology in college.â You can really feel like, in fact, âIf a guy like that says that sort of thing, who am I to make any effort to understand Scripture at all? It is just too hard. It is above me. It is over my head.â You see that is the problem.
Well, I say that we just need to be aware of that problem so that we can avoid it. The Bible was not written for people like that only. It was written for us, each individual. And the Lord, the Holy Spirit, inspires you as you read the Bible so that you can learn the mind of God; whereas someone with a great degree reading the Bible, not inspired by God, may miss the point completely.
Another obstacle we run into is thinking that we have to have studied about it more. That we are simply too ignorant. And that is not so. God will use our time of reading Scripture as moments when he will teach us what he wants us to know. It is, of course, a very good thing to have some study of Scripture. To read Scripture and to study Scripture is also important. We can talk about study on another occasion.
Another problem that we run into is that we feel that we are not spiritually mature enough. And again, all I want to say is that the Lord will fill the gaps in our spirituality. In fact, one of the ways he wants to fill our gaps is by us reading the Bible, and he will inform us and make us more spiritually mature. Reading the Bible makes it easier to read the Bible.
Now, the last obstacle I would like to point out to you is the tendency to read the Bible as though it were a history book, or a novel, or a newspaper. Now, we need to be careful. It isnât any of those. It is not one book written by one author. It doesnât have a sequence to it, where you begin reading it at the beginning and you just work your way through it to the end. It doesnât have a punch line, particularly, or the punch lines come up at odd places, considered from the point of view of a novel. In fact, if you view it simply as a history book, or simply as a novel or newspaper, you will miss the Holy Spirit, if that is the only way you view it. If you do not approach it as the word of God, in which the Holy Spirit was going to move and move you, if you donât approach it that way, you are going to miss what the holy Scripture is all about.
Now, let me give you just a few ideas of how to go about reading Scripture.
The first one is, always begin with prayer. Ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten your mind and inflame your heart, so that you will receive the Lord himself as you read Scripture. Secondly, read Scripture on a regular, disciplined basis. On a regular schedule, preferably daily. And at the same time and in the same place, if that is possible. Put some order in your life in regard to reading Scripture. This is, in fact, one of the places where it seems to me that we need to train ourselves and introduce some discipline in our lives. If we have 15 minutes a day set aside, at a certain place where, in fact, let it be the place where we regularly read Scripture. When we go to that place our minds are ready to get into Scripture right off the bat.
Sometimes read Scripture alone, and sometimes, I recommend you read it with others. Listening to them read it and maybe discussing it with them afterwards. Perhaps like the Jewish boys I referred to in the story of the yeshiva. Sometimes read it out loud. Some of the translations of some of the Psalms are beautiful when they are read out loud. Reading out loud can increase our attentiveness. It can have a bigger impact on us and it can help us memorize Scripture better. And I do recommend that we read Scripture enough so that it becomes embedded in our memory, so that when we preach, or teach, or explain to others the right way to live, we have, right at the tips of our tongues, the things that the Lord has said about these things.
Use a good translation. We are very fortunate today to have so many remarkable good translations and concordances. There are, however, a couple of translations that are inadequate today. One is the King James Version [KJV], which, when it was written was very good, but today the language has changed to such a degree that many of the words mean directly the opposite of what they were intended to mean when they were written. The language itself has changed. The same can be said for the Douay-Rheims translation of the Bible. Many of us probably have one of these two books at home. We may have grown up with them. I would recommend to you the RSV [Revised Standard Version], which is a modern translation along the lines of the KJV. It was initially intended to be an improvement on the KJV, a replacement for it. The RSV is excellent, and it remains very faithful to the original texts. When the texts that you are reading in English donât seem to make much sense to you, it is often theâthat the original doesnât make any more sense. That is to say, the translators donât know how to translate what is there, or they donât understand what it means. And so they have simply faithfully reproduced what is there.Â
Another one that I like is the Jerusalem Bible. Another one is the New International Version of the Bible, and many people like the New American Bible. I could recommend all four of those very highly, and I recommend that you have two of them, or more, at home, so you can compare what is in one translation with another, and aid you in the beginning of your study.
I recommend that you begin the reading of the Bible with the reading of the gospels, especially the Gospel of Luke. And also, then read the Acts of the Apostles, and start with what is, in fact, the most important part of the Bible for us, which is the New Testament. After finishing that, I recommend you move on to Markâs Gospel and then Matthew. Johnâs Gospel is difficult to understand, but it is beautiful to read, and the Lord certainly inspires us as we do it.
And at all times, carefully turn over in your minds and meditate on what you read. This is a quote from St. Augustine: âCarefully turn over in your minds and meditate on what you read âtil an interpretation be found which tends to establish the reign of love in your hearts. Let love be your object. Let that be your goal.â
Let me conclude with reading to you from the [sic] Romans 16:25-27 . . .
[Original transcript ended here. The text of the Scripture passage is as follows:
Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed and through the prophetic writings is made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faithâto the only wise God be glory for evermore through Jesus Christ! Amen. (RSV)]
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