The Sacred Scriptures: Take Up and Read

From this Sunday’s readings we can draw on many themes and reflect on many different aspects of the Christian life, i.e. The Resurrection, sin and forgiveness, conversion, resting in the Lord, etc.  For me, however, there was one verse from the Gospel which really jumped off the page and that was the verse that said, “Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.”

Our non-Catholic Christian brothers and sisters love their Scriptures and many denominations study and know the Scriptures by memory, having the ability to quote verses and chapters.  Largely that is not the case within Catholicism and that is so for a number of reasons, some reasons being neutral, such as cultural, other reasons being negative, such as, “don’t read the Scriptures because you will not understand them,” at least back in an earlier time of our history.

It is a cultural reason that we do not read Scripture like other Christians.  The reason is that we are not a Church of the book or in ecclesial terms we do not believe in “sola scriptura,” (Scripture only).  A large part of our culture is sacramental.  The sacraments are vital and should be a large part of how we worship and practice.  And yet, we could take a lesson from other Christians.  That lesson is as St. Augustine who was moved to do exactly so when the angel said to him in the garden, “Take up and read!”

The angel says the same words to us “Take up and read.”  Why should we take up and read?  We take up and read because the story of our God is contained within its pages, but it is also the story of salvation and the story of us all.

In those pages we find incredible stories about Abraham and Sarah, Moses, Ruth, Queen Esther, King David, and then the story of Jesus and His Apostles.

We read these stories so that we can know and understand human nature, human relationships, and must of all understand God’s relationship to us.

We do not only take up and read to gain knowledge but we can also pray the Scriptures.  We can do so by meditation and reflection on certain passages.  During the Easter season for example we may meditate on the Resurrection stories.  Sometimes the Scriptures can serve as answers to our prayers; one may search the Scriptures for an answer to a question about life.

I have mentioned to you before that St. Jerome said, “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.”  Immerse yourself into the bible.  Know it, breathe it, live it!  If you are looking for a great story about the key to life, you don’t have to run to the movie theater to watch a movie (though that is fun) or read the latest teen dystopian novel (that could be fun as well) but turn first to the greatest story, the main story, for without it the others make no sense.  It is in the story of the Bible that you will find your ancestors, you will find your God, and you will also find yourself!  “Take up and read!”