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synod on the word of god

the bible in time

the year of st paul

the second conversion

A Review of TopicalTheology 4

VOLUME FORTY - TWO _ SUMMER _ 2008

Editorial

Mark Kenney SM

Mark O'Brien OP

Brendan Byrne SJ

Michael Trainor

Anne Hunt

John S. McKinnon

Michael Trainor

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Our God Speaks

Synod on the Word of God

The Bible in Time

Paul the Apostle. Personal Story,Mission and Meaning for the ChurchToday

Towards a Parish Spirituality of theWord of God

Poverty, Riches and ChristianDiscipleship

The Sermon on the Mount.Part One: The Second Conversion

Preparing To Celebrate The LiturgyOf The Word

COMPASSVOL. 42, No. 4 — SUMMER 2008

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THE ATTENTION of the CatholicChurch in these months is very muchdirected towards the mystery of God’s

self-communication to humankind. The 12th

General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops(Rome, October 5th - 26th) was convoked todiscuss as its subject ‘The Word of God in theLife and Mission of the Church’. We are alsoin the Year of St Paul (June 29th 2008 - June29th 2009), a year to commemorate the 2000thanniversary of the apostle’s birth.

The Word of God, we are reminded, isfirstly the eternal Word, the second person ofthe Trinity, in whom the Father totally ‘speaks’himself. The word of God is also the SacredScriptures which testify to God’s self-revela-tion in human history.

God ‘speaks’ to us in his Son. God makesthe first move—the Spirit of God enables usto open our hearts in welcome and respond.Our response is faith. We need God to revealhimself personally to us personally, and weneed to accept God’s self-revelation in faith.Otherwise God remains unknown to us.

God reveals himself as a God of love. Butthe little we are able to absorb of God’s rev-elation of himself only makes us realise thatGod in himself is transcendent mystery: wecan never comprehend God. God is ‘in lightinaccessible, hid from our eyes’ as we prayfrom an ancient hymn in the Prayer of theChurch.

Indeed, none of these thoughts are new:Christians have been saying it all since the be-ginning. John wrote in his gospel: ‘No-one hasever seen God. It is God the only son, who isclose to the Father’s heart, who has made himknown’ (John 1.18). And in the Epistle toDiognetus (2nd C.), an early example of Chris-tian apologetics, we read:

No man living has ever seen God or known him.He himself has given us the revelation of him-

self. But he has only revealed himself to faith,by which alone are we permitted to know God.(Ch. 8,5.)

God also speaks to us through the writtenword of God. The Bible is the story of thisinter-personal encounter of God and the Peo-ple of God. What we read in the Bible is the‘history of salvation’. It is the love story ofGod and us, God’s people, a story that beginswith Creation and opens into eternity. For uswho read this story with faith the Bible, readand understood within the tradition of authen-tic interpretation, answers all the ultimate ques-tions: What is the origin of all things? Whyam I here? How am I to live? What can I hopefor?

I suspect that the ultimate question facingthe Western world in our time is: What can Ibelieve in? It appears to be so for the peopleof our area, Erskineville, Sydney. As parishpriest I quote frequently and with a certainrelish a Sydney Morning Herald journalistcommenting on the findings of the Bureau ofStatistics:

The heart of atheism appears to be in the innerwest. Residents of Camperdown, Erskineville,Enmore, Newtown and Annandale are morelikely to shun religion than any of their otherSydney neighbours.’ (SMH 13.10.2008, p.6.)

Here we are in the heartland of Sydney athe-ism! Far from being depressing, I find it anenergizing thought. It makes the ringing of ourrecently-restored church bell at the beginningof Mass a more significant act, as also the mes-sages we put up on our outside notice boardfor the benefit of passing traffic, as also theletter-box drop to all households in the areaprior to Easter and Christmas whereby we ad-vertise the times of our festive celebrations—just some of the ways we let our atheist neigh-bours know we are still here.

—Barry Brundell MSC, Editor.

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ON OCTOBER 5, 2008 the 12th Gen-eral Assembly of the Synod of Bish-ops opened in Rome. It met for three

weeks concluding its work on October 26. Thetopic for this conference was ‘The Word ofGod in the Life and the Mission of the Church’.This was a significant event since it was thefirst time since Vatican II and the promulga-tion of Dei Verbum, ‘Dogmatic Constitutionon Divine Revelation,’ that the Bible was thefocal point of a major meeting.1 It is also sig-nificant that the synod on the Word of Godcoincided with the celebration of the year ofSt. Paul whose life was dedicated to the proc-lamation of the Word. Although the Synodcompleted its work in October, the final docu-ment by Pope Benedict will not appear forsome months yet. Nonetheless, now is an op-portune time to reflect on the work of theSynod and the propositions that it presentedto Pope Benedict for his final statement. Thisarticle will treat the Synod in three ways: 1) itwill place the Synod in the context of theChurch’s ongoing teaching concerning thewritten Word of God; 2) it will examine thepreparation and composition of the Synod; and3) it will present the main issues and recom-mendations that came from the Synod.

The Synod in the Context of ChurchTeaching

The Church teaching regarding the Bible isquite large.2 For the purposes of this article,we can begin with the encyclical of Pope LeoXIII, Providentissimus Deus, ‘On the Studyof Scripture,’ (18 November 1893).3 ThisPapal document opened the door to contem-porary biblical studies. It acknowledged the‘historical, archaeological, and scientific dis-coveries of the nineteenth century, which pro-

foundly affected the interpretation of theBible’.4 Although this was a meagre start to acritical study of the Bible, it prepared the wayfor the influential encyclical of Pope Pius XII,Divino afflante Spiritu, ‘On the Promotion ofBiblical Studies,’ (30 September 1943).5 Thisdocument advocated a critical approach to thestudy and interpretation of the Bible. Althoughit never mentioned a particular method of in-terpretation, it is clear that it promoted the useof the historical-critical method. It emphasisedthat the goal of exegesis should be the expla-nation of the literal sense of the Scriptures inorder to make known the intention of the au-thor in writing. In order to accomplish this,the exegete must make use of the original lan-guages in which the Bible was written. Mostimportantly, however, the exegete must be at-tentive to the literary forms which composethe Scriptures for these are vital to a properinterpretation of the text.6 This encyclical ofPope Pius XII prepared the way for the docu-ment that Vatican II would produce about theBible and its interpretation.

Dei Verbum7 does not address biblical in-terpretation until Chapter Three. The first twochapters deal with Divine Revelation and itstransmission. In addition to interpretation,Chapter Three addresses several other issuesregarding the Scriptures. First it describes theprocess of inspiration followed by a briefstatement regarding inerrancy. It states, ‘…wemust acknowledge the Books of Scripture asteaching firmly, faithfully, and without errorthe truth that God wished to be recorded inthe sacred writings for the sake of our salva-tion.’8 For its statement regarding interpreta-tion of the Bible, Dei Verbum freely drawsupon Divino afflante Spiritu. In order to beable to understand what God has communi-cated through the Scriptures, it is necessary

SYNOD ON THE WORD OF GODMARK KENNEY SM

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to determine what the authors intended toconvey by what they wrote. In order toachieve this, it is essential to determine theliterary forms of which they made use. Inaddition, the exegete must take into consid-eration the human author’s customs and cul-ture and the influence these could have onthe style and method of composition.

The last document to be considered is notstrictly part of official Church teaching butreceived the endorsement of Pope John PaulII. This is the 1993 publication of the Pontifi-cal Biblical Commission, The Interpretationof the Bible in the Church.9 The PontificalBiblical Commission is a group of scholars thatworks in association with the Congregation forthe Doctrine of the Faith. A major part of thisdocument is devoted to the historical-criticalmethod and its importance in the interpreta-tion of Scripture. Regarding this method, itstates:

The historical-critical method is the indispen-sable method for the scientific study of themeaning of ancient texts. Holy Scripture, inas-much as it is the ‘Word of God in human lan-guage,’ has been composed by human authorsin all its various parts and in all the sources thatlie behind them. Because of this, its proper un-derstanding not only admits the use of thismethod but actually requires it.10

Although the historical-critical method isessential to biblical interpretation, it is notsufficient in itself for a complete understand-ing of the biblical text; other methods must beemployed with it. The Pontifical Biblical Com-mission presents a description and evaluationof a number of these interpretive approacheswhich include: new methods of literary analy-sis, the sociological approach, the approachthrough cultural anthropology, and contextualor advocacy approaches which include libera-tion theology and feminism.

This brief survey of Church teaching re-garding biblical interpretation provides animportant context for a discussion of the Synodon the Word of God. Elements of these docu-ments, particularly Divino afflante Spiritu, Dei

Verbum, and The Interpretation of the Biblein the Church, constantly arose during the ses-sions of the Synod.

The Preparation and Composition of theSynod

In preparation for the Synod, standard proce-dure was followed. On 27 April 2007, theLineamenta or working document for theSynod entitled The Word of God in the Lifeand Mission of the Church 11 was presented.This document offered a number of themes aspossible topics for the Synod. The purpose ofthe document was to stimulate reflection anddiscussion prior to the convening of the Synod.The document was composed of an Introduc-tion and three chapters entitled: Revelation,the Word of God and the Church; The Wordof God in the Life of the Church; and the Wordof God in the Mission of the Church. Eachsection was followed by a series of questionswhich the participants of the Synod were in-vited to answer. The responses were sent tothe general secretariat of the Synod before theend of November 2007. These responses wereused in setting the agenda for the Synod whenit met.

The participants included 253 bishops rep-resenting 113 Bishops’ conferences, 25 repre-sentatives of the Roman Curia and the Unionof Superiors General. There were 41 expertsfrom 21 countries of which 6 were women and37 auditors from 26 countries of which 19 werewomen.12 In addition to the usual participants,there were also a number of specially invited

Fr Mark Kenney is amember of the AtlantaProvince of the Maristsin the United States.Formerly he was theDirector of Formationfor the AtlantaProvince, and now helectures in Scripture atthe Catholic Institute ofSydney.

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guests. These included Rev. A. Milloy, secre-tary general of the United Bible Societies, andFrère Alois, prior of the Taizé Community. Forthe first time, a non-Christian was invited toaddress the assembly. Rabbi Shear YashuvCohen, the chief rabbi of Haifa, Israel, spoketo the Synod on the Jewish interpretation ofthe Scriptures. Anglican Bishop N. T. Wright,the bishop of Durham, England and a worldrenowned New Testament scholar also ad-dressed the Synod.

The Synod met for three weeks.13 TheSynod opened with five reports from the fivecontinents (Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania,and America) regarding the state of the Biblein their regions of the world.14 The first weekand a half was devoted to the Synod partici-pants delivering five minute reports on vari-ous aspects of the Bible. In addition to regu-lar meetings of the total assembly, the par-ticipants were divided into discussion groupswhich met throughout the remainder of theSynod.

On 14 October, towards the end of the in-dividual reports, the Pope addressed the en-tire assembly for a short, ten minute, period.He stated that Dei Verbum had called for twomethodologies for appropriate exegeticalwork. The first methodology is the historical-critical method. The second methodology isthe theological which includes three elements:1) canonical exegesis which stresses the unityof the entire Scripture; 2) the living traditionof the whole church; and 3) observance of theanalogy of faith. Pope Benedict observed thatthere appears to be a lack of the second meth-odology, the theological, in current biblicalexegesis. A proper balance must be achievedbetween historical exegesis and theologicalexegesis.15

At the close of the Synod, a list of fifty-five propositions was submitted to the Popefor consideration for the document that hewill issue. These propositions are only advi-sory and the Pope will decide which of theproposals will be included in the ApostolicExhortation.

Issues and Recommendations of the Synod

The fifty-five propositions were presented tothe Pope in the form of a formal proposal. Thedocument was composed of an introductionand three parts, following the format of theLineamenta that was sent out before the Synodconvened. Thus, the titles of the three parts ofthe proposal document were identical to thethree chapters of the Lineamenta. This classi-fication will be used in the discussion of theproposals.16 The propositions can be dividedinto two types. The first is a recommendationfor some specific action to be taken concern-ing certain issues. The second type is simplyan affirmation or acknowledgement of a valueor present situation that the Synod would liketo see continue.

Part I, ‘The Word of God in the Faith ofthe Church’, begins by clearly defining theterm, ‘Word of God’. When this term was usedin the Lineamenta, it was used in an ambigu-ous way to refer to both the person of Jesus asthe Word of God and Scripture as the Word ofGod. The proposal clearly indicates that theprimary meaning of the ‘Word of God’ is Je-sus. Sometimes, in order to make the distinc-tion between Jesus and the Bible, the Scrip-tures are called the ‘written Word of God’.

The sixth proposition urges that a patristicreading of the Bible not be overlooked, espe-cially its use of the two senses of Scripture:the literal sense and the spiritual sense. Thedocument is very clear on determining the lit-eral sense; scientific methods of critical ex-egesis are used. The proposal, however, is notso clear on determining the spiritual sense. Itsays, ‘The spiritual sense also concerns thereality of the events of which Scripture speaks,taking account of the living Tradition of thewhole church and the analogy of faith, whichimplies the intrinsic connection of the truthsof the faith among themselves and in their to-tality in the design of divine revelation’.17 Itwould be helpful to have some clarification asto the process that can be used in determiningthe spiritual sense of Scripture. Also, differ-

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ent meanings can be attributed to the term‘spiritual sense’; therefore, it is necessary toknow how the term is being used.18

The Synod members also reiterated theLineamenta’s assertion that there is a closeconnection between the Word of God in theScriptures and the Eucharist. This was one ofthe reasons why the Synod on the Word of Godfollowed the Synod on the Eucharist, to em-phasise the unity of the two. Following fromthis is the importance of Scripture in the sac-raments of penance and the anointing of thesick.

A strong recommendation was made by theSynod for a revival of the ancient practice ofLectio Divina. This subject was brought to theSynod floor on the second day during the open-ing address of Cardinal Marc Ouellet of Que-bec City. This recommendation was the resultof what proved to be a major thrust of theSynod: a pastoral approach to the Bible thatwould aim to make Scripture more availableas a source of spiritual nourishment and meansof attaining a personal encounter with Jesus.Lectio Divina is mentioned a second time inProposition 22 which refers to the prayerfulreading of Scripture.

Dei Verbum was naturally a documentquoted many times during the Synod. TheSynod felt that the treatment of the conceptsof ‘inspiration’ and ‘truth’ was not clearenough and requested the Congregation for theDoctrine of the Faith for a clarification of theseimportant biblical issues and also to commenton their relationship.

One of the last propositions of Part Onereaffirms God’s preference for the poor asfound in Scripture and also describes the pooras apt agents of evangelization of the Wordfound in Scripture.

Part Two, ‘The Word of God in the Life ofthe Church’, can be divided into four majorareas: Scripture and the liturgy; the recommen-dation made by Pope Benedict in his interven-tion; the Scriptures in relation to specificgroups in the church; and the role of Scripturein pastoral ministry. Seven of the propositions

deal with the Bible in the liturgy. A revision ofthe Lectionary is called for so that the linkbetween the Old Testament readings and theGospel readings may be more evident. Thisrevision should also provide for a more diverseuse of Old Testament passages and themes. Itis recommended that a homily be given atevery Mass, even at weekday Masses. To aidin the preparation of homilies a ‘Directory onthe Homily’ should be prepared which wouldcontain the principles of homiletics as well asthe biblical themes found in the lectionaries.The Synod recognized and encouraged the roleof the laity in the ministry of the Word andrequested that the ministry of lector be madeavailable for women

A substantial part of the second section ofpropositions addresses the recommendationthat Pope Benedict made in his short interven-tion during the Synod. The Synod calls for theexegetical process to be conducted on two lev-els as presented in Dei Verbum: the historicaland the theological. The methodology of theformer makes use of the historical-criticalmethod; while, the methodology of the latterutilizes the unity of the Scriptures, the livingtradition of the church, and the analogy offaith. There should also be greater dialogueand collaboration among exegetes and theo-logians.

A number of propositions speak to the useof the Word of God among various groups suchas families, priests and those in formation forthe priesthood, small communities for the pur-pose of studying and praying the Scriptures,those in consecrated life, and youth. The im-portance of Scripture in pastoral ministry isemphasised with particular attention to thosein the field of health care. The second part ofthe propositions ends with the role played byScripture in Christian unity.

The third and final section of propositionsis entitled ‘The Word of God in the Missionof the Church’ and is directly concerned withthe missionary aspect of the Bible. Every bap-tised person is called to be a missionary of theWord of God. Before mission is possible, how-

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ever, the missionary must be permeated withthe Scriptures and the Synod realises that theway in which the Scriptures are read is veryimportant to this mission. Despite the Synod’scautions about the use of historical criticismin exegesis, it also recognises the necessity ofthe method. If the historical dimension of theScriptures is neglected the danger of a funda-mentalist interpretation is very real. Althoughthe Synod strongly recommends the use ofLectio Divina, the method must be used inassociation with the recognition of the humanelement that is present in the inspired text.19

Several propositions are devoted to therole of the Bible in interreligious dialogue,especially with Jews and Muslims. The thirdsection of propositions also comments on theuse of the Scriptures in promoting a properecology. The list of propositions ends with acall for Catholics to follow Mary’s examplein relation to the Scriptures, one must havean attitude of prayerful listening and yet becommitted to mission and proclamation at thesame time.

Summary

The purpose of the Synod on the Word of Godwas made clear in the Lineamenta. It was tobe a pastoral Synod focusing on the Word ofGod in the life of the church as well as in themission of the church. In this respect, thisSynod adopted a new approach in its reflec-tions on the Bible in the church and in theworld today. From the brief historical study in

the first section of this article, it can be seenthat since Pope Leo XIII’s encyclicalProvidentissimus Deus in 1893, church docu-ments and even Vatican II were primarily con-cerned with scholarly, exegetical interpretationof the Scriptures. The Synod on the Word ofGod acknowledged the importance of schol-arly exegesis but also saw the need to addressanother important aspect of the Scriptures—the spiritual dimension for the individual aswell as for the entire church community, thussetting a new direction in the church’s reflec-tion on the Word of God.

The recommendations presented to PopeBenedict reflect the pastoral concerns of theSynod. They include the use of Lectio Divinafor the spiritual enrichment of the individualas well as methods of improving the use ofScripture in the liturgical life of the church.These methods include the preparation of bet-ter homilies, methods to enhance the liturgyof the Word in the Eucharist and other sacra-ments, and means of engaging the laity moreactively in these areas, requesting that womenbe admitted to the ministry of lector. Finally,the Synod spoke to the fundamental mission-ary activity of the church that must always beat the centre of any discussion of the Word ofGod—it must be proclaimed to all the nations.

In view of the variety of issues and con-cerns that the Synod addressed regarding theBible, it will be interesting to see how PopeBenedict brings them together in his forth-coming Apostolic Exhortation on the Wordof God.

1 Since Vatican II there have been a number ofpapal addresses concerning the Bible as well asthe 1993 document from the Pontifical BiblicalCommission, The Interpretation of the Bible in theChurch. For all of these, see: Béchard, DP. (2002),The Scripture Documents: An Anthology of Offi-cial Catholic Teaching. Liturgical Press,Collegeville. The Pontifical Biblical Commissionalso produced a second important document on theScriptures that was published after Béchard’s book

NOTES

appeared: (2002), The Jewish People and theirSacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible. LibreriaEditrice Vaticana, Città del Vaticano. The Synodon the Word of God is the first international gath-ering on the Bible since Vatican II.2 Documents regarding interpretation of Scripture

go back to the patristic period with St. Cyril, bishopof Jerusalem (315-387 C.E.). Much of this mate-rial remains untranslated in the Latin. All the docu-ments that are discussed in this article can be found

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in Béchard 2002.3 Béchard 2002, 37-61.4 Fitzmyer, JA. (2008), The Interpretation of

Scripture. Paulist Press, New York, 4.5 Béchard 2002, 115-139.6 Fitzmyer 2008, 5-6.7 Béchard 2002, 19-33.8 Béchard 2002, 24.9 Béchard 2002, 244-317.10 Béchard 2002, 249. For a history and descrip-

tion of the historical-critical method, see Béchard2002, 249-252, and Fitzmyer 2008, 59-73.11 The full text can be accessed at http://

www.vatican.va/roman_curia/synod/documents/rc_synod_doc_20070427_lineamenta12 For a complete list of the participants, see the

Vatican website: http://www.vatican.va/n e w s _ s e r v i c e s / p re s s / s i n d o / d o c u m e n t s /bollettino_22_xii-ordinaria-2008/02_inglese/bol_02.stml13 For a complete outline plus summary of the

various sessions see the Vatican website: http://www.vatican.va/news_services/press/sinodo/docu-ments /bol le t t ino_22_xi i -ordinaria-2008/02_inglese/b00_sommario_02.html This sourcecontains mostly summaries of the participant’s in-terventions. The National Catholic Reporter alsoproduced a daily summary of the activities of theSynod which includes a discussion of the major

themes and issues that arose during the sessions.See http://johnallen.ncrcafe.org14 http://ncrcafe.org/node/215515 The official text of the Pope’s address to the

Synod can be found at: http:/ncrcafe.org/node/221016 All fifty-five propositions can be found at the

National Catholic Reporter website: http://ncrcafe.org/node/2228. The Vatican website con-tains only a summery of the propositions in Eng-lish; it does not list them all.17 John Allen, ‘Synod: Final Propositions of the

Synod of Bishops on the Bible’, 2008, http://ncrcafe.org/node/2228. Accessed 28 October2008.18 Fitzmyer, 2008, 91.19 The process of Lectio Divina contains four

steps: lectio (reading); meditatio (meditation);oratio (prayer); and contemplatio (contemplation).In the first step, reading the text, it is necessary tounderstand the background of the Scripture pas-sage in order to properly understand what the pas-sage is about. To achieve this, the person mustmake use of contemporary biblical criticism. Infact, the use of such material can even be incorpo-rated into the prayer of Lectio Divina. For moreinformation regarding the use of biblical criticismin Lectio Divina, see Christopher Hayden. (2001),Praying the Scriptures: a Practical Introductionto Lectio Divina. St. Pauls, London, 61-62.

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‘The word of God is living and active, sharper than anytwo-edged sword.’ What great power and what great wis-dom there is in the word of God, these words demonstrateto men seeking Christ, who is the word, and the power andthe wisdom of God. This word, with the Father in the begin-ning and co-eternal with him, was at the appointed timerevealed to the apostles, and by them proclaimed, andhumbly received in faith by the peoples who believed. Theword, then, is in the Father, in the mouth of the preacher,and in the heart of men.

—Baldwin of Canterbury (12th C.), Tr. 6.

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THE RECENT SYNOD of Bishops onthe Bible continues a longstanding prac-tice in which the church periodically

reflects on its study and proclamation of theBible in a prayerful yet critical way. As part ofits agenda, this Synod reflected on past andcurrent ways of reading the Bible with a viewto preparing for the future. It may thereforebe of use to readers to cast an eye over someof the major moments in the Church’s studyand use of the Bible during the past two thou-sand years.

At the risk of being simplistic, I will focuson three major moments. There is the ‘earlychurch’ period characterised by the develop-ment of the allegorical or typological way ofreading the Bible; this continued into the me-dieval period. There is the subsequent rise ofcritical historical reading in the wake of theRenaissance and the Protestant Reformation;and there is the more recent turn from a his-torical focus (how the Bible was produced) tostudying the various books of the Bible asworks of literature.

Earlier ways of reading the Bible shouldnot be dismissed as primitive or passé. Theyare in their own way as sophisticated and sub-tle as anything taking place today and theirinfluence continues to be felt. The fact that anew way of reading the Bible arises in reac-tion to an established one is as much a tributeto its impact as a sign of its limitations.

The Context of the Early Church

They say that context is the key to under-standing almost everything and this is cer-tainly true of Bible study. The historical, so-ciological, religious and psychological con-texts of readers—whether individuals orChurch—have had a major impact on how

the Bible has been read.The context of the early Church illustrates

this point very clearly. It was the new religionon the street and had to establish itself amongthe plethora of religions that already occupiedthe turf of the vast Roman Empire. Much liketoday, religions, sects and fads of various kindscompeted for people’s attention and devotion(cf. Paul at the Areopagus in Athens in Acts17). As New Testament (NT) authors gradu-ally wrote down their accounts and proclaimedtheir faith, they and their successors had toexplain and defend these accounts in relationto the established ‘sacred text’—the Old Tes-tament (OT). By claiming that Jesus is the ful-filment of the OT, the Church locked itself intoan ongoing debate with Judaism and its takeon the text. The question arose: how could theestablished Scriptures be read in a way thatprovided a responsible yet convincing re-sponse to disagreements and disputes?

The Greeks had asked a similar questionearlier. During the Hellenistic period the worksof Homer and Hesiod came to be seen as some-what alien and, dare we say, primitive. Platoproposed to ban them from his utopian Re-public. Nevertheless, this was their ‘classical’heritage and many were reluctant to ditch it.Greek genius came to their rescue by propos-ing that the text was saying one thing whilemeaning another—‘allegoria’ in Greek, ‘alle-gory’ as the English derivative. An alert, sen-sitive reader could see signals in the text thatpointed to this other, deeper meaning. Strangeand even offensive passages could thus be in-terpreted in a way that made them acceptableto the Hellenistic mind. This was a key devel-opment in what the Greeks called‘Hermeneutics’, the art of interpretation. In myjudgement, it springs from a common convic-tion that ‘there is more to it than initially meets

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the eye’. In reading or hearing a sacred or clas-sic text, on being introduced to a ‘famous’person, we are instinctively inclined to payattention and to see more than appears at firstglance. The question of course is whether the‘more’ is actually signalled in some way in atext or whether we claim to see it there be-cause we want to.

This Greek approach was well suited to theneeds of Judaism and Christianity, and indeedany number of religions of the day. Early Chris-tian writers of the NT and later ‘patristic’ (‘fa-thers’) periods trawled carefully through theOT looking for signals that pointed to Jesusand his mission. Stories about OT figures suchas Abraham and David, and accounts of OTinstitutions such as the temple were scrutinisedto see whether and in what way they might betypes of Jesus and the Church, their fulfilmentor anti-type. Similarly, events such as the cross-ing of the sea in Exodus were read—that is,claimed—as foreshadowings of Christian sac-raments.

This Christian way of reading the Biblecontinued to be refined during the patristic andlater medieval periods. Exegetes (scholarlyreaders of texts) claimed to discern the fol-lowing four levels of meaning (senses) in atext although, of course, they did not make thisclaim for all biblical texts.

1) The literal sense—what we might callthe ‘surface meaning’ of the text; the eventsportrayed, the images used, etc. The Bible istalking about real people in the real world.

2) The allegorical sense—also called the‘spiritual sense’ or the ‘typological sense’. De-tection of this sense is based on the premise thatthe text (and so its author—God) intends to saysomething more or other than that which theliteral sense suggests. It occurs in the NT (e.g.,Paul’s claim in 1 Cor 10:1-4 that Jesus was therock that accompanied Israel in the desert). Thefaith context of the reader is a critical factor;the ‘fathers’ argued that Christian faith ‘ena-bles’ a reader to see the true (i.e., Christian)meaning of OT texts. Allegory was employedto explain and harmonise disturbing texts.

3) The moral sense—the text is understoodprimarily in terms of the spiritual/moral lifeof the believer. At times it can be difficult tomaintain a clear distinction between the alle-gorical and moral meanings. An allegoricalreading may ‘unearth’ a moral meaning in thetext.

4) The eschatological or anagogicalsense—a key purpose of the Bible is to helpus arrive at our eschatological or final goal(heaven).

In the medieval period a shorthand Latinversion of these ‘four senses of Scripture’ wasdeveloped as a teacher’s aid. One can imag-ine students belting out this little ditty as theycaroused in the taverns of the universities ofParis and Oxford:

littera gesta docet (the literal sense proclaimsthe events)quid credas allegoria (the allegorical sensewhat you should believe)quod facis moralis (the moral sense what youshould do)quo tendas anagogia (the anagogical sensewhere you are going)

The allegorical method was championedby the famous theological school of Alex-andria in Egypt. It provided a comprehen-sive interpretation of Scripture from a Chris-tian perspective and in time came to domi-nate the scene. It had the advantage of be-ing able to appeal to some biblical texts thatthemselves employ typology and allegory(e.g., 1 Cor 10:1-4 noted already). Never-theless, it did not go unchallenged. At timesthere was intense debate about the appro-

Fr Mark O’Brienlectures in Old Tes-tament studies. He hastaught in theologicalinstitutes in Melbourne,Adelaide, Oxford,Karachi and Sydney. Hehas now resumedteaching in theMelbourne College ofDivinity.

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priateness of some interpretations and a ri-val school developed in Antioch to promotea more literal or historical reading of theBible. Such debate and rivalry has the salu-tary effect of exposing the limitations of in-terpretation. We have insight into the mean-ing of texts but we are limited by our his-torical context or horizon and by our inabil-ity to appropriate and process all the liter-ary phenomena in a work such as the Bible.No single approach can explain it all.

A problem with the allegorical or typo-logical approach was that fertile imaginationsclaimed to find evidence of Christianity al-most everywhere in the OT. Did God revealanything of enduring value to ancient Israelor did God only let them see the surface whilethe real meaning was concealed until the com-ing of Christ or, more pertinent perhaps, un-til the advent of Christian allegorical ex-egesis?

Renaissance and Reform

As medieval Europe recovered from the bu-bonic plague and stability and wealth returnedpeople once again had time and money to studyGreek and Hebrew. This helped fuel the Ren-aissance with its interest in things classical andancient. Accompanying these developmentswas an increasing awareness of how differentancient literature and the people who producedit were. There was a sense of alienation a bitlike that felt by Hellenistic Greeks of earliertimes. The difference however was that Ren-aissance scholars were driven by a curiosityabout the past and a desire to understand it inits historical setting, not to ‘translate’ it intocontemporary idiom.

All this, plus a mounting critique amongthe Protestant Reformers of the establishedway of reading Scripture, led to the rise of whatis called ‘Historical Analysis’. As a Christianform of interpretation of the Bible, its avowedaim was to peel away the layers of allegoricalinterpretation and recover the original (histori-cal) meaning of the biblical text. It was be-

lieved that this would enable the reader to hearonce more the original (and therefore true)meaning of the Bible; to hear the call of aprophet’s word as the original hearers did, notoverlaid with centuries of allegorical interpre-tation.

As with allegorical exegesis/analysis, thisnew approach was refined over time and de-veloped a number of specialisations. Thesesought to trace the history of a text from itsearliest stages (e.g., a parable of Jesus deliv-ered orally), its development in the tradition(oral and then written stages) to the finalstage(s) when it became part of, say, the Gos-pel of Luke (final editing or redaction). A keyfactor driving this focus on the history of thetext was the conviction, based on a carefulanalysis, that many OT and NT texts are theproduct of more than one hand. When onelooked closely at the language of Genesis forexample, the terms for God, for places, forpeople, change in a way that seemed unchar-acteristic for one author. As well, scholarsjudged that some texts (the flood in Genesis6-9, the deliverance at the Sea in Exodus 14)were woven together from more than onestrand or version. Thus, closer inspectionshowed—in a different manner to patristicexegesis—that there is more to it than initiallymeets the eye.

Because historical analysis arose in con-junction with the development of modern sci-entific research in the West, exegetes soughtto be as objective and scientific as scientists.That is, they sought to be ‘critical’, to con-stantly check what they were doing and elimi-nate errors as much as possible. Explanationsof a text were presented as ‘hypotheses’ (sci-entific proposals) to be assessed and replacedby a better one if possible (hence ‘criticised’).This kind of biblical study came to be termed‘The Historical Critical Method’ (or HCM).It has had considerable impact on modernreading of the Bible, initially in the Protes-tant Churches and, particularly since VaticanII, in the Catholic Church. Nevertheless, likepatristic exegesis, it has its strengths and limi-

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tations. It has been criticised for being toointerested in the early stages of biblical textsrather than the ‘present canonical text’ andfor fragmenting the text in its search for stagesof composition. It has also been accused ofusing the biblical text as a quarry to constructcritical histories of the biblical period ratherthan analyse the text for its theological con-tent. The rise of the ‘history of religions’ ap-proach in universities means that the Bibletends to be studied as one among many an-cient religious artefacts; if a student wants tobe seen as scientific, for the purposes of thescholarly exercise, he or she must set asidebelief in the Bible as the revealed Word ofGod.

In the face of mounting skepticism fromscientific historians, the HCM was employedto defend the historicity of biblical narrativesabout such topics as creation, the flood, theexodus, the birth of Jesus. Ironically but thank-fully, its rigorous adherence to ‘scientific, criti-cal method’ led it to conclude that the Bible isnot a historical record in our sense of the term.Nor is it about scientific facts. The literaryforms of the Bible are those of an ancient so-ciety and to expect them to conform to thecanons of contemporary history writing is todistort them. This was an important break-through; the Bible no longer had to competewith critical reconstructions of ancient historyor scientific discovery and was free to play itsprimary role—to communicate theologicalmeaning.

The HCM also helped reshape the theol-ogy of inspiration. The traditional notion drewheavily on the dramatic figure of the prophetstriding across the landscape, ablaze with di-vine charism. Careful historical analysis of thestages of a text’s composition argued that in-spiration operates in all the ways human be-ings communicate and compose texts: there isnot just the charismatic individual, there arealso the disciples who debate and treasure hisor her word, there is the patient scribe wholaboriously writes it all down, and there is thesynagogue or Church that in time recognises

it as the Word of God.

Contemporary Context

In the 20th century, the context in which studyof literature took place in the West shiftedagain—from a focus on the circumstances ofa text’s author(s), the history of its composi-tion, etc to a focus on the text as text, as some-thing to be examined on its own terms. This‘turn’ from what is called a ‘diachronic’ ap-proach (from the Greek dia-chronos = throughtime) to a ‘synchronic’ approach (sun-chronos= the given moment of reading) actually tooktwo turns. One concerns the intricate relation-ships between the various parts of a text andhow these parts combine to make a meaning-ful whole. According to this approach, a textcreates within its contours a world of meaningthat can be discerned by a sensitive reader/listener without having to reconstruct its his-tory (for many ancient texts a highly specula-tive endeavour). A key player in this approachhas been French ‘Structuralism’. It argued thatif one could identify the relationships betweenthe parts of a text and the whole (its surfacestructure) one could gain access to the deepstructures beneath where the real meaning lies.

Is this a kind of allegorical or spiritual ex-egesis by another name? Or, more generally,is this another manifestation of that deep hu-man conviction that ‘there is more to it thaninitially meets the eye’? The Structuralist ap-proach seems to have waned somewhat inpopularity but its enduring legacy is to havedrawn our attention to how literary works areintricately structured and how each part playsa role in the overall meaning of the text. In theOT this applies particularly to narrative (story),poetry and law texts, in the NT to narrative(Gospels) and letters. Patristic and Jewishscholars of antiquity would be smiling.

The second but related turn concerns thereader and the dynamic encounter between textand reader involved in the act of interpreta-tion. A common term for this approach is‘Reader Response Theory’. With the turn away

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from historical questions such as who wrotethis text and when, the focus on the reader wasalmost inevitable. There is nothing we lovemore in the modern world than analysing our-selves—quite understandable given the rise ofpsychology and related disciplines. A changeof context produces a change of focus; thereading subject now displaces the author as akey player in deciding what a text means.

The theory argues that once a literarywork is created it becomes detached from itshistorical and authorial moorings and entersthe constantly fluctuating world of the read-ing public. Who decides what it means? Ac-cording to Reader Response Theory it is eachreader or hearer who has to say what it means.In a sense this was always the case but onecustomarily or instinctively deferred to au-thors when they expounded the meaning oftheir works. But an author expounding his orher work is in effect another reader. One mayinitially think that he or she will know betterthan anyone what the text means but how canone be sure? The only way is to test an au-thor’s claims by examining the literary sig-nals in the text and their relationship, as anyreader must do.

Reader Response Theory has been accusedof replacing authorial intention with readerinvention and this is a danger. But I think it isable to respond to this charge reasonably well.Far from eliminating the role of the author,the theory, in a paradoxical kind of way, ex-alts the author almost to divine status. Ratherlike God, an author creates a text with a worldof meaning in which, as Structuralism argues,each part contributes to the meaning of thewhole, the world of the text. A reader is in-vited to enter this world of the text and createhis/her understanding of it (acting in the im-age and likeness of the ‘god’ who created this‘world’, namely the author). Each reading mustoperate within the parameters of the world ofthe text created by the author; otherwise it can-not claim to be an authentic reading. But, justas our perspective on God’s creation is lim-ited, so is our take on a text. We cannot claim

to have adequately appropriated each andevery signal, let alone all the intricate relation-ships between them.

These contemporary turns have not putpaid to historical critical analysis. Far from it.Readers still need to become familiar with OTand NT contexts, to study Greek and Hebrew,and so on. In fact, the HCM has been able toteam up with Reader Response Theory to forgeyet another approach called ‘Advocacy Ex-egesis’. Key players here are ‘Feminist Ex-egesis’ and ‘post-Colonial Exegesis’. Thesehave stimulated a lively debate by seeking toexpose the biases in both biblical authors (evi-dent in their texts) and its readers (until re-cently in the West, the preserve of white, maleacademics). Race, gender, religion, society, ge-ography, history are all contextual factors thataffect not only the production of the Bible butits interpretation. ‘Post-Modern’ and‘Deconstructionist’ readings have for their parthighlighted the ‘unfinished’ nature of reading.The Bible always ‘escapes’ our attempts tograsp or fix its meaning.

In terms of the Bible’s production, AdvocacyExegesis makes us aware how ‘incarnational’ theBible is. Its authors were inspired but this didnot remove them from their particular context orneutralise their gender (mainly male). As we wellknow, gender shapes the way one sees reality: itenables a man to see things that a woman maymiss, and vice versa. Awareness of this aspect ofthe human condition should have considerablebearing on the Church’s reflections about thedynamic relationship between Scripture and theongoing Tradition.

In terms of interpretation, Advocacy Ex-egesis is a timely reminder that reading theBible should be undertaken as a communityexercise where our individual strengths andlimitations, our insights and our biases, cancome under critical, public scrutiny. Weshould treasure readers of past ages—thepatristic and medieval periods, the modernhistorically focused period, etc—as part ofthis reading community. We can learn fromtheir insights and hopefully spot their mis-

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takes as well as our own. We should also,wherever possible, listen to members of otherChristian churches, to Jews and even to non-believers, all who form part of the larger com-munity reading the Bible. If we can’t read theBible together and learn from one another,then the hard work of the Synod is likely tobear little fruit.

In the wake of this brief sampling of themany and competing ways in which the Biblehas been studied, one might well wonderwhether reading it is worth the effort. The con-texts in which we read texts change and willcontinue to do so; there is no avoiding this fact.But, two basic things endure. The first is thatwe grasp what is being communicated (con-

Ackroyd, P. R & C.F. Evans (eds). The Cam-bridge History of the Bible (I. From the Begin-nings to Jerome; II.The West from the Fathersto the Reformation; III. The West from the Ref-ormation to the Present Day). Cambridge U.P.Bray, G.. (1996), Biblical Interpretation Past andPresent. Leicester: Apollos.De Lubac, H. (1998 and 2000, French original1959), Medieval Exegesis. 2 vols. Grand Rapids:Eerdmans/London: T & T Clark.Grant, R. M. A Short History of the Interpretationof the Bible. Philadelphia 1963; 2nd rev. and en-

tent) by paying attention to the way it is com-municated (the literary form, such as a com-mand, a statement, a story, etc). The second isthat our grasp of the whole (a literary form)depends on our identification of its constitu-ent parts (words, phrases, sentences) and howthese combine to create a whole. We employthese linguistic skills almost instinctively withthe literature of our culture (newspapers, nov-els, etc). Authors, whether ancient or modern,employ the same basic techniques; they cre-ate whole texts out of parts and they commu-nicate something in a certain way or ways. Aslong as we recognise that the Bible stems froma different culture, we should have no inhibi-tions about our ability to read it.

larged edition, with D. Tracy, Philadelphia/Lon-don: Fortress, 1984.Barton, J. (ed). (1998), The Cambridge Com-panion to Biblical Interpretation. CambridgeU.P.McKenzie S. L. & S. R. Haynes (eds) (1993), ToEach Its Own Meaning. An Introduction to Bibli-cal Criticisms and Their Application. Louisville:Westminster John Knox.Pelikan, Jaroslav (2005), Whose Bible Is It? AHistory of the Scriptures Through the Ages.Penguin Books.

SOME FURTHER READING

THE BIBLE IN TIME

Just as the substantial Word of God became like menin every respect except sin, so too the words of God,expressed in human languages, became like humanlanguage in every respect except error. —Pius XII, Divino afflante Spiritu.(EB 559)

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THE FEAST OF Ss Peter and Paul on29 June last inaugurated a ‘Year ofPaul’. The year long celebration is to

mark the 2000th anniversary of the Apostle’sbirth. Fixing upon the year 8 CE for that eventis somewhat arbitrary since, as Pope Benedictconceded in a homily announcing the celebra-tion, historians prefer to speak more generallyof a date some time between 7 and 10 CE.Whatever the historical uncertainty, a Paulinescholar can only rejoice that the CatholicChurch has chosen to single out Paul for ayear’s jubilee in this way, and do so in an ex-plicitly ecumenical context, as Benedict madeclear.1

Nonetheless, having been involved inteaching and speaking on Paul for over thirtyyears, I am well aware of the emotions he canraise—especially in regard to the female halfof the human race. The other thing aboutPaul—and this affects everyone—is that muchof what he has written is not easy to under-stand. Reinforcing this impression is the factthat, in the context in which his writings aregenerally heard, namely the readings at Sun-day Mass, Paul has been allocated the‘unwinnable’ middle slot on the ticket: theSecond Reading. While the First Reading,from the Old Testament, usually has some ech-oes in the Gospel, and so comes back to mind,the middle reading, lacking such resonance,fades into forgetfulness. In the brief span of apastoral homily, few preachers recall thePauline reading and give it some explanation.

A colleague of mine is wont to excuse hisneglect of Paul on the spurious and somewhatmischievous basic that he doesn’t believe in

reading other people’s mail. My attempts toexplain that none of Paul’ letters, even the briefone to Philemon, were really private and thateach would have been read out publicly forthe whole local church to hear, fall upon deafears.

But really the fact that the writings of Paulhave been included in our canon of Scriptureis not really due to the apostle himself. He,I’m sure, never foresaw such an outcome. Hewas simply writing to local churches for press-ing pastoral reasons. After his martyrdom inRome, the letters were made into a collection.Then Luke gave his memory a second windby making him one of the two heroes, alongwith Peter, of the sequel he wrote to his Gos-pel: the Acts of the Apostles. It was a laterdecision of the Church, under the guidance ofthe Holy Spirit, that the letters of Paul (includ-ing some written later in his name rather thanby him directly) should be included in thecanon of the New Testament. This meant that,along with the four gospels and other writings,Paul’s letters came to be part of that collec-tion of writings to which the Church turns againand again to see as ‘in a mirror the reflectionher own essence and identity,2 and above allto refresh, through the Spirit, the knowledgeof her Lord.

This evening I am going to concentrate onthe Paul we know from his Letters, rather thanfrom the later account given by Luke in theActs of the Apostles. I propose to present Paulunder three headings:

1. To explore what I believe to be the centreand heart of his spirituality and personal vo-cation.

PAUL THE APOSTLEPersonal Story, Mission, and Meaning for the

Church Today*

BRENDAN BYRNE, SJ

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2. To say something about his understand-ing of mission to be apostle to the nations.3. To offer some thoughts about Paul’s sig-nificance for the on-going life of the Church:that is, what I believe to be the ‘Pauline char-ism’ in the life of the church, matching thatof Peter, with whom he shares the joint feastthat we celebrate on 29 June.

Paul’s Vocation

To explore the heart of Paul’s spirituality it isnecessary to consider something of his earlylife. Paul grew up in Tarsus, a prosperous cityin southern Asia Minor, capital of the Romanprovince of Cilicia, a fertile stretch of landbetween the Taurus mountains and the Medi-terranean Sea. His family, then, belonged tothe Jewish Diaspora, the communities of Jewsthat had spread throughout the major cities ofthe Greco-Roman world. The proficiency inthe writing of Greek and the use of rhetoriclater displayed in his letters suggest that Paul’sfamily was wealthy enough to see that he re-ceived a good education in both Greek andJewish learning. In this sense he grew up aperson of two worlds—a very good prepara-tion for his subsequent missionary career.

As a young man, to deepen his knowledgeof his ancestral faith, Paul went to Jerusalem.Here he became a Pharisee, a member of thatmovement in Judaism that saw the Law ofMoses supplemented and interpreted by a hostof oral traditions which they—the Pharisees—guarded and preserved. Early in his letter tothe Galatians Paul assures readers that he ad-vanced beyond many of his contemporaries inhis zeal for the traditions of the ancestors:

You have doubtless heard of my earlier way oflife in Judaism: that I was violently persecutingthe church of God and seeking to destroy it. Imade progress in Judaism beyond many con-temporaries among my people, being far morezealous for the traditions of my ancestors. (Gal1:13-14).

Soon the young Pharisee found himself prin-cipally exercising his zeal by seeking to root

out and suppress members of a movementwithin Judaism who believed that a certainJesus of Nazareth, crucified as a messianic pre-tender by the Romans a few years before, hadbeen raised by God from the dead, provingthe truth of the messianic claims made con-cerning him. We do not know what preciselyit was about this new movement withinJudaism that so provoked the ire of youngzealot. But it would seem that he inflicted suchinjury upon the community that the memoryof his brief persecuting career remained bitterand dogged him long after he had himselfjoined its ranks (cf. Gal 1:23).

Conversion and Call

The turnaround in Paul’s life on the road toDamascus must be reckoned one of the trulymomentous conversions in religious history.Aside from the three accounts in the Acts of theApostles (Acts 9.1-19; 22.1-16; 26.2-23), Paulhimself refers to it in various places in his ownletters. The briefest but the one I believe goesstraight to the heart of the matter is tucked awayin a clause of a longer sentence again early inthe letter to the Galatians (1.15-16):

But when God, who had set me apart while Iwas still in my mother’s womb and called methrough his grace, was pleased to reveal his Sonto (in, through) me, so that I might proclaimhim among the Gentiles,…

‘(T)o reveal his Son to me’: the last phrase,‘to me’, is richly ambiguous, especially if weare right to hear echoes of biblical (OT He-brew) language behind the Greek. Does Paul

Fr Brendan Byrne, SJ,teaches at Jesuit Theo-logical College, Park-ville, Victoria. He is theauthor of nine books,including the comment-ary on Paul’s Letter tothe Romans in the SacraPagina Series (1996).

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mean ‘to reveal his Son to me’, or ‘in me’ (thatis, in my inmost being), or ‘through me’ (thatis, as an instrument of the Gospel to the na-tions)? Perhaps he means all three. The keything, though, is that the crucified Nazarene,one whose mode of death attracted the curseof the Law (Deut. 21.23; cf. Gal. 3.10-13) andwhose proclamation as Messiah, therefore,amounted to nothing less than blasphemy, wasnow revealed to him as God’s only Son. Therevelation turned upside down Paul’s under-standing of God, and God’s ways with Israeland the world as a whole.

Paul gives a more sustained theologicaldescription of this moment in 2 Corinthians.Speaking of the divergent reception the preach-ing of the Gospel receives he writes:

For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine outof darkness’, who has shone in our hearts toilluminate the knowledge of the glory of Godon the face of Jesus Christ’ (4:6).

In language uncannily reminiscent of theFourth Gospel (John 1:1-5) Paul seems hereto think of coming to faith as akin to the act ofcreation: to God’s saying in the darkness ofunbelief: ‘Let there be light’—a light whichreveals the crucified One to be the Son of God,the very image (eikôn) of God (2 Cor 4:4; Rom8:29).

It is impossible, I think, to overestimatethe radicality of this experience, the way inwhich it completely cancelled out everythingthat Paul thought gave him value in the sightof God hitherto. This is how he describes thetransfer from one way of life to another inPhilippians:

3:4 … If anyone else has reason to boast inthe flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on theeighth day, born of the people of Israel, ofthe tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of He-brews; in respect to the law, a Pharisee; 6 asto zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to right-eousness under the law, blameless. 7 Yetwhatever gains I had, I have come to regardas loss because of Christ. 8 Indeed, I havewritten off everything as loss because of thesurpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus myLord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of

all things, and regard them as garbage, in or-der that I may gain Christ 9 and be found inhim, not having a righteousness of my ownderived from the law, but one that comesthrough faith in Christ, a righteousness fromGod based on faith. … 12 Not that I have al-ready obtained this or have already attainedthe prize; but I press on to capture it in thesame way that Christ Jesus has captured me.

That last phrase sums up the experience sopowerfully. Paul strives to ‘capture’ the prizeas Christ has ‘captured’ him. The Greek verbsuggests the kind of vigorous action a parentmight take when grabbing a small child whohas suddenly headed out on to a dangerouslybusy road.

So when we ask what was central to Paul’sfaith, we have the response right here: it is thissense of being ‘captured’ by Christ. The risenLord has taken over his life completely, dis-placing the Torah (Law of Moses), which hadup till now been everything to him. This is howhe sums up his new existence in Galatians:

2.19 For through the law I died to the law, sothat I might live to God. With Christ I hang upona cross; 20 it is no longer I who live, but Christwho lives in me. And the life I now live in theflesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who lovedme and gave himself up for me.

Where Paul the Pharisee would have said, ‘Forme to live is the Torah’, Paul the believer inJesus can simply say ‘For me to live is Christ’(Phil 1.21a).

That sense of being grasped by the Son ofGod in a love that was both deeply personal,and supremely costly in that it involved deathby crucifixion, is the heart of Paul’s spiritual-ity and the engine of his mission. It is surelyremarkable that the most striking sense of be-ing loved by Jesus in the New Testament comesfrom one who, in contrast to the remainingapostles, never actually knew Jesus ‘accord-ing to the flesh’ (cf. 2 Cor 5:16). This reflectsthe situation of all subsequent believers rightdown to ourselves. Paul guarantees that we canhave a relationship with the Lord just as inti-mate as those, like Peter and John and Andrew,

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who walked and talked with him on the dustyroads of Palestine.

Paul’s Mission

Paul’s brief allusion to his conversion early inthe letter to the Galatians (1:16) suggests thathe considered his coming to faith in Christ andhis vocation to be missionary to the nations tobe virtually one and the same. In particular,his passionate belief that believers from thenon-Jewish world (‘Gentiles’) were not to haveimposed on them the obligation to becomeJews first before they could be members ofthe community of salvation flowed directlyfrom it. What he had experienced so person-ally—namely that all his righteousness underthe Jewish law really counted for nothing (Phil3:4-9)—played itself out in his personal strat-egy of mission. There was no longer any ‘holynation’, walled up in righteousness overagainst the ‘unclean’ nations of the world. Inthe crucified Messiah God had swept away thatseparate holiness and exposed its sinfulness(Rom 3:21-30). In the face of a human aliena-tion from God that was truly universal, theGospel was calling into being a community ofbelievers, made up of Jews and Gentiles alike,made holy through baptism and the gift of theSpirit. This divine outreach of grace meant thatit was outdated and indeed contrary to God’spurpose to try to enforce Gentile converts tobecome ‘holy’ through taking on ritual observ-ances of the Jewish law. The barrier between‘holy nation’ and ‘unholy rest’ had irrevoca-bly been cast down:

You are all sons (and daughters) of God in ChristJesus. Inasmuch as you have been baptized intoChrist, you have put on Christ. There is nolonger Jew or Greek, slave or free, male andfemale. For you are all one person in Christ Je-sus (Gal 3:26-28).

It is in the name of this truth that Paul felthimself obliged to issue his celebrated rebuketo Peter at Antioch, when Peter, who had pre-viously eaten with Gentile believers, withdrewto a separate table following the arrival of more

law-observant believers associated with James(Gal 2:11-14):

We are Jews by birth and not ‘Gentile sinners’.Yet knowing (or ‘having come to know’) that aperson is justified not by works of the law butby faith in Christ, we have put our faith in ChristJesus in order that we might be justified by faithand not by works of the law’ (Gal 2:15-16).

What Paul is doing here is recalling the fun-damental ‘conversion conviction’ that all be-lievers of Jewish origin such as Peter and him-self had come to share. God had thrown downthe barrier that had previously meant so muchto them. To seek to re-erect it by establishingseparate tables is truly to ‘transgress’ (v. 18);it is to fly in the face of God’s act, rebuffingthe supremely costly work of Christ upon thecross (Gal 2:18-21).

It is also important to note that what Paulis insisting upon here is very much in continu-ity with what we know from the Gospels wasthe practice of Jesus. Jesus kept ‘bad com-pany’—or what a lot of people at the timethought was bad company—by dining with‘tax collectors and sinners’, celebrating withthem the outreach of God’s mercy:

10 And it happened that as he sat at table in thehouse, many tax collectors and sinners came andwere sitting with him and his disciples. 11 See-ing this, the Pharisees said to his disciples, ‘Whydoes your teacher eat with tax collectors andsinners?’ 12 But he, hearing it, said, “It is notthose who are well who have need of the doc-tor, but those who are sick. 13 Go and learnwhat this means, ‘‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’(Hos 6:6). For I have not come to call the right-eous but sinners.’ (Matt 9:10-13).

Paul’s mission strategy is totally in line withthis practice of Jesus.

A New Humanity Called into Being byGod’s Grace

So what does Paul think he’s doing? What isGod’s dream for humanity that he thinks he’simplementing by going around the world inthe service of the Gospel? Paul saw that dreamsketched out in Scripture—what for us, of

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course, is the Old Testament. To be more spe-cific, he focused very much upon the figure ofAbraham. In Paul’s view, when God calledAbraham and promised him that he wouldbecome the ‘father’ of a great many nations(Gen 17:5), that in his offspring (‘seed’) allthe nations would find a ‘blessing’ (Gen 12:3;22:8; 26:4), when God did that, God wasn’tjust calling into being the nation of Israel; therewas also a wider promise being made: that inone particular descendant of Abraham, theJewish Messiah, God’s original plan for hu-manity as set out in the story of creation at thebeginning of the Bible, would begin to be fullyrealized (Rom 4:1-25; Gal 3:6-29).

That original design, for human beings andfor the entire world, had been and continuesto be, frustrated by human sin. Paul has a verysophisticated view of sin. For him it is ulti-mately a radical selfishness, poisoning rela-tionships in all directions: with God, with one’sfellow human beings, with one’s body, withthe non-human remainder of the world (Rom8:18-22). The life of Jesus Christ, above allhis self-sacrificing death upon the cross, rep-resents an outpouring of God’s grace and lovesufficient to turn back the vast tide of humansinfulness (unleashed, in Paul’s view, byAdam) and reclaim the human race for truehumanity in right relationship to its Creator.We have been reading the texts from Paul’sletter to the Romans that assert this overpow-ering force of grace in the Sunday readings inrecent weeks. It is so hard, to communicate inthe brief space of a homily, the simple andwonderfully hopeful truth that these texts areasserting over and over:

For if through one man’s trespass, many died,much more have the grace of God and the giftin grace of the one man Jesus Christ aboundedfor many (Rom 5:15)

If through one man’s (i.e., Adam’s) trespass,death reigned through that one man, much morewill those who accept the overflow of grace andthe gift of righteousness reign in life throughthe one man Jesus Christ (5:17)

Paul loves that ‘much more’ on the grace side!

Recently I was given a little book contain-ing the writings of Cardinal Francis XavierNguyen Van Thuan. Francis Thuan was theyoung and very energetic bishop of Nha Trangin Vietnam, who was imprisoned by the com-munist regime after the fall of Saigon in 1975for thirteen years. For eight of those years hewas in solitary confinement, when he coulddo simply nothing.3 Later, he described to afriend a very low point of his imprisonment inthese words:

My morale was at its lowest. I was almost in de-spair. In the darkness of my cell, cut off from mydiocese, from God’s people, from any humancontact, I could not do a thing for anyone; I couldnot even talk to anyone. I felt completely use-less. I prayed, but God did not seem to hear. Thenall of a sudden I saw, as if in a vision, Christ onthe cross, crucified and dying. He was completelyhelpless…certainly worse off than me in myprison cell. Then I heard a voice—was it hisvoice?—saying: ‘At this precise moment on thecross, I redeemed all the sins of the world’4

I think the grace and insight granted there toFrancis Van Thuan expresses precisely Paul’ssense of the victorious overflow of God’s graceand love in the obedience of Christ’s deathupon the cross. It was a single act of divinelove so great as to overwhelm all the world’sevil at a stroke.

The Human Response: Faith and Hope

What, then, is required on the human side inresponse to this divine gift? Again, Paulpointed to Abraham as a model of the appro-priate response: faith and hope. Faith to be-lieve in a God who deals with sinful and weakhuman beings on the basis of such love andacceptance; hope that such a God will, despitethe continuing existence of evil, deliver on thepromise of salvation. As a Pauline scholar, Ifind Benedict XVI’s latest encyclical, SpeSalvi wonderfully ‘Pauline’ in its expositionof Christian hope.

So the Gospel that Paul proclaims is basi-cally a summons to the nations of the world toabandon idolatry—in both its ancient and mod-

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ern forms—and align themselves alongsideIsrael with this outreach of divine grace: to bethe ‘beachhead’, if you like of a new human-ity. Or rather, not a new humanity but human-ity as the Creator intended it to be coming truefor the first time. That is why Paul says in atypical throwaway line: ‘if anyone is “inChrist”, behold a new creation’ (2 Cor 5:17).

This is all very good and well. But Paul,no less than any other early Christian believer,was acutely conscious of a great trauma thathas left its mark upon virtually all the writingsof the New Testament: the fact that the bulk ofIsrael, the Jewish people, has not respondedto the Gospel but instead continues to cling tothe Law of Moses. Paul addresses this issue inchapters 9-11 of his letter to Rome. After along and complex discussion he emerges witha hope for the eventual salvation of ‘all Israel’on the basis that the calling and promises ofGod are never revoked (Rom 11:25-32).

25 Brothers and sisters, I want you to under-stand this mystery: a hardening has come uponpart of Israel, until the full number of the Gen-tiles has come in. 26 And so all Israel will besaved; …

28 As regards the gospel they are enemies foryour sake; but as regards election they are be-loved, for the sake of their ancestors; 29 forGod’s gifts and calling are irrevocable.

Relations between Christians and Jews downthe centuries may well have taken a less tragicpath had the Church not neglected this chal-lenging but ultimately hopeful Pauline text.

Paul is not, then, indifferent to the fate ofhis Jewish brothers and sisters. But Paul un-derstands himself to be at the service of a mis-sion to the nations, beginning from Jerusalem,continuing in Asia Minor and Greece, andranging, in ambit at least, as far as Spain (Rom15:19, 23-24). At the service of this missionhis preaching of the Gospel amounts to a ‘call-ing out’ from the nations those destined to bemembers of the renewed People of God.

In line with early Christian tradition, herefers to this community, whether taken as awhole or in its various local expressions, as in

Ephesus, Corinth, or Philippi, by the Greekword ekklêsia. This word, which of coursecomes down to us as ‘church’, refers in every-day Greek usage to an assembly of the citi-zens summoned (literally, ‘called out’) by thecivic herald to gather in assembly to hear offi-cial announcements and make an appropriateresponse. The aptness of this term to desig-nate the community summoned and addressedby the Gospel is patent. The community of be-lievers, both local and worldwide, consists ofthe ‘called out’ ones: called out of darknessinto God’s wonderful light. The members ofthis community enjoy a ‘citizenship’(politeuma) vastly more privileged than thatof Rome—which in the ancient world was sodesirable—the citizenship of God’s Kingdom,with the risen Lord, rather than the Romanemperor, as its ‘Lord’.

Paul’s Significance: the Pauline Charism

Rather than speak of solutions that Paulcommends in the particular pastoral situationsaddressed in his letters, I have tried to conveythe essence of Paul’s personal vocation andmission. I have done so because I really be-lieve that it is theological vision (his sense ofGod as a God of grace) and his christologicalcommitment (adherence to the person of Je-sus Christ) that is his greatest legacy to theChurch. But now in the concluding third partof this talk, I would also like to suggest that inall of this Paul has left what might be called a‘Pauline charism’ to the Church, a Paulinecharism sitting alongside the ‘Petrine charism’that the Catholic tradition sees incarnated inthe primacy exercised by the Pope as Bishopof Rome. As you are aware, the church com-memorates the apostles Peter and Paul in thejoint feast we have just celebrated on 29 June.The high status of both apostles might seemto suggest that each merits a feast all to him-self. But from the fourth century they havebeen yoked together as proto-martyrs of theChurch of Rome.

I would suggest that we do not regard this

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yoking together of Peter and Paul as simply ahistorical accident, but see it as symbolic oftwo distinct charisms bequeathed to the church.The Petrine charism would represent unity andcontinuity with the tradition, and the faithfulpreservation and transmission of the tradition.The Pauline would represent the more out-ward-going missionary impulse, and the pro-phetic challenge to traditional understandingand practice that the experience of missionconstantly raises, as the Gospel encountersnew cultures and the radical alteration of cul-tures traditionally Christian. The charisms,Petrine and Pauline, are complementary toeach other yet co-exist in a state of some ten-sion, their relationship at risk at times of get-ting out of balance and distorted.

Of course both formulations of thecharisms are a little oversimplified. Paul, forinstance, cared deeply for the unity of theChurch. The collection he so scrupulouslygathered from his Gentile communities for therelief of the mother community in Jerusalemwas for him a key symbol of unity (cf. Gal2:10; 1 Cor 16:1-4; Rom 15:25).

However, I think it is true to say that theReformation in the 16th century saw an ex-plosion of the Pauline charism that could not,for various reasons—national and social, aswell as religious—be contained within thestructural unity of the Christian church. Stungby the Reformers’ protest, and by the disunityand hostility that followed, the Roman churchin subsequent centuries placed more and morestress upon the Petrine charism, a processreaching its apogee in 1870 with the defini-tions of papal primacy and infallibility at theFirst Vatican Council.

My sense is that the impulse leading up toand bearing fruit at the Second Vatican Coun-cil in many ways represented a recapturing onthe part of the Roman communion of thePauline charism that had largely become theprerogative of the churches of the Reforma-tion. The ecumenical spring associated withthe Council received no little impulse from thework of great Catholic Pauline scholars of the

last century such as Pierre Benoit, OP andStanislas Lyonnet, SJ.

In the wake of the Council, GiovanniBattista Montini, who chose the name Paulfollowing his election as pope, faced the diffi-cult task of holding together the two charisms,the Petrine and the Pauline, in those turbulentyears. With what success he did so and to whatextent his far less hesitant successor, John PaulII, did so in continuity with the Council, is nowa subject of some controversy. My impressionis that, at least in official circles, enthusiasmfor the Pauline charism has waned in theCatholic Church in recent times. The celebra-tion beginning on 29 June, by highlighting thePauline charism, offers a chance to redress thebalance:

1. To hear Paul’s unique witness to God as aGod of grace2. To be caught up by his passionate devo-tion to the person of Jesus Christ, who—like all of us—he never ‘knew’ according tothe flesh but whose personal relationshipwith him simply led him to sum up his life:‘for me, to live is Christ’.3. To be grasped by his profound sense thatit is the impulse of the Spirit poured intoour hearts, rather than detailed prescriptionsof law, that should regulate and energizeChristian life.4. That those responsible for guarding thetradition and unity of the Church should beopen to the challenges presented when theGospel is preached in new situations and cul-tures.

There are so many other areas to mention butfor the present I shall have to confine myselfto these essential four.

The great Lutheran Pauline scholar of thelast century, Ernst Käsemann, was wont tosay: ‘Paul has always caused trouble in theChurch’. That was certainly the case in theearly days as many New Testament docu-ments make clear; then there was the Refor-mation and, as I have remarked, the stirringtimes of Vatican Two, and its troubled after-math, which most of us have lived through.

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I’m sure there have always been people whojust wished that Paul would go away. But Godhas given him to the Church and so to us.The Year of Paul may stimulate us to let hisvoice be heard, and to give due weight to thePauline charism, complementary with that ofPeter, sometimes in tension with it, but nec-

* This article is an edited version of a talk given in Melbourne on 2 July 2008 to inaugu-rate the Archdiocesan celebration of Year of Paul. Some content towards the end hasalready appeared in an article, ‘A Tale of two charisms’, in the London Tablet for 12 July2008, pp. 161-7. I am grateful to the Editor of the Tablet for permission to reproduce thismaterial here.

1. Homily of His Holiness Benedict XVI at thecelebration of the First Vespers of the Solemnityof the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, Basilica ofSt Paul Outside-the-Walls, Thursday, 28 June2007. The homily was given in the presence of adelegation from the Ecumenical Patriarch of Con-stantinople. It can be accessed at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/homi-l i e s / 2 0 0 7 / d o c u m e n t s / h f _ b e n -xvi_hom_20070628_vespri_en.html2. Cf. Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum §7;

essary for the life of the Church. Borrowingand applying an image of John Paul II, wecan say that the Church needs to breathe withboth lungs, Pauline and Petrine, if she is tobe faithful to the witness that joined them indeath and continues in their joint legacy toher life and mission.

NOTES

Pontifical Biblical Commission, The Interpretationof the Bible in the Church (Rome: Libreria EditriceVaticana, 1993) III, B, 1.3. After his release and expulsion from Vietnam,Bishop Thuan toured the world giving talks andmissions. He came several times to Australia, wherehis mother lived to a great age. He was made acardinal by Pope John Paul II and died in 2002.4. Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan, Five Loavesand Two Fish (Boston: Pauline Books and Media,1997) p. vii.

Brendan Byrne’s most recent publication is A Costly Freedom: A Theological Reading ofMark’s Gospel (Strathfield: 2008).

PAUL THE APOSTLE

In the Letter to the Galatians, St Paul gives a very personal profession of faith inwhich he opens his heart to readers of all times and reveals what was the mostintimate drive of his life. ‘I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gavehimself for me’ (Gal 2: 20). All Paul’s actions begin from this centre. His faith isthe experience of being loved by Jesus Christ in a very personal way. It isawareness of the fact that Christ did not face death for something anonymous butrather for love of him—of Paul—and that, as the Risen One, he still loves him; inother words, Christ gave himself for him. Paul’s faith is being struck by the love ofJesus Christ, a love that overwhelms him to his depths and transforms him. Hisfaith is not a theory, an opinion about God and the world. His faith is the impactof God’s love in his heart. Thus, this same faith was love for Jesus Christ. —Benedict XVI, Homily for the Opening of the Pauline Year, 28th June 2008.

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IT IS THURSDAY morning. I am the non-resident priest moderator of the parish ofElizabeth, South Australia, and I’ve come

for the weekly meeting with the parish pasto-ral team.

Elizabeth is about fifty kilometres north ofAdelaide. I live forty-five minutes closer tothe city with a full-time ministry of teachingat our Catholic Theological College, a mem-ber college of the school of theology atFlinders University. I make this journey toElizabeth at least twice a week. On Saturdaynight and Sunday morning I preside at the par-ish celebrations of the Eucharist, staying over-night on Saturdays with a retired priest wholives in the area.

When I arrive on this particular Thursdayand before the meeting, I join the pastoral teamand other parishioners in the church for theLiturgy of the Word, led by one of our parish-ioners. This is the regular weekday Liturgy.Some of the parishioners are slowly warmingto it though most would still prefer daily Mass.

A few years back this one parish was oncetwo. But the gradual decline in numbers ofpriests in active ministry, their ageing and re-tirement precipitated the need by the leader-ship of the diocese to respond as best it couldto this dawning moment. It adopted the pasto-ral strategies of parish twinning and amalga-mation—not unusual responses in the Austral-ian Catholic Church. As a result, the parish ofElizabeth was created, amalgamating two par-ishes, closing two Mass centres and rational-izing Sunday Mass times. The forging of this

new parish occurred not without its pain, strug-gles and attrition. Elizabeth is now one of thelargest Catholic parishes in the diocese in oneof the most socially and economically chal-lenging urban settings in Australia. Not longafter its creation I was appointed as parishmoderator together with a permanent deaconand pastoral director.

On this Thursday and after the Gospel theleader of the Liturgy of the Word offers a fewreflections about the readings. The notes in herhands indicate that she has spent a great dealof time mulling over the readings and puttingtogether some thoughts. I am encouraged byher courage and openness to reflect on thismorning’s scripture readings. After an accom-panying silence, the prayers of intercession,‘Our Father’ and Sign of Peace follow. A finalprayer and blessing conclude this simple li-turgical event in a refashioned urban parish.

In this new historical moment in the pas-toral and liturgical life in Australian Catholicparishes, more celebrations of the Liturgy ofthe Word will occur during the week in ourchurches, with the central focus of a parish’sliturgical life falling on Sunday celebrationsof the Eucharist. This is the Sacred Assemblywhen parishioners experience the ‘source andsummit’ of Catholic life. But in this in-betweentime, as we move from daily Mass to week-day Liturgies of the Word, with the heart ofthe celebrations of the Eucharist reserved forour Sunday gatherings, we are invited to re-claim an authentic spirituality of the Word ofGod. Though Vatican II reminded us of the

TOWARDS A PARISHSPIRITUALITY OF THE WORD

OF GOD

MICHAEL TRAINOR

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four-fold presence of Jesus in the Liturgy(Eucharist, the minister, the Word and the As-sembly) our post-reformation history hastended to emphasis the first two (Eucharist andminister) at the expense of a deep apprecia-tion of Jesus’ presence in the Word and theassembly of the baptized that gathers.

I would like to offer a foundation for re-newing the Word and reclaiming its centralitywithin a parish setting, what I am naming a‘spirituality of the Word.’ By ‘spirituality’ Imean the intentional formation of Catholicsthrough biblical education and liturgical ex-periences through which parishioners grow inbiblical literacy and become imbued with theWord in a way that their lives are deeply nour-ished. Their ‘spirit,’ that experience of God’sself revelation to them, is profoundly enlarged.Or, using a different but perhaps more famil-iar expression, they know themselves to be‘graced.’ I shall say more of this later when Iexplore the meaning of the expression, ‘theWord of God.’

The following essay falls into four parts.In the first I explore the Bible’s meaning of‘Word.’ In the second, I offer a summary ofthe renewal in the Word found in CatholicTeaching with its most recent expression inthe October 2008 Synod of Bishops. In a thirdpart I look at the meaning of the ‘Word of God’borrowing from the insights of one Catholicbiblical scholar, Sandra Schnieders. In a con-cluding section I suggest a way of praying theWord and, drawing on the Synod, some prac-tical suggestions for fostering a parish spiritu-ality of the Word.

The ‘Word’ in the Bible

The ancient Israelites knew that the first andimmediate indicator of someone being alivewas their breathing. Breath was life. They alsoknew that how people breathed indicated whatwas happening within them. In this sense,breath connected to a person’s personality andinner life. But the ancients also observed thesolidifying phenomena of breath on a cold

morning. The Israelites thus linked breath(ruach in Hebrew) to life, interiority, person-ality. Ruach was associated with a person yetstrangely capable of independent existence.The same word, ruach, translated our under-standing of ‘breath’ and ‘spirit.’ Ruach pro-vided the Israelites with one of their centralideas for understanding God. God’s ‘breath’or ‘spirit’ transmitted God’s life, expressedGod’s interiority, was intimately linked to Godyet capable of independent existence. God’sruach preserved divine transcendence whileat the same time enabled God to be imminentwithin creation and human beings. The worldcame into being through God’s ‘breath.’

For the Israelites, then, breath, the basisof ‘word,’ the sound made in inter-personalcontact, had a dynamic quality that both com-municated and brought about activity and be-ing. The spoken word (in Hebrew dabar)which relied upon ruach was the means of thiscommunication. Dabar was also an activitythat had influential communicative and dy-namic qualities. In summary, every dabar wasa ‘word-deed.’

We all know the experience of hearing aword from another and having that word, asound uttered by another, create an enormousresponse in us. This response might be one ofdelight, love, sadness or anger. Here we comeclose to the Israelite appreciation of dabar asword-deed. Their biblical writings presumethis understanding:

• In Genesis 1, God creates by means ofthe dabar, the word-deed. When God says,‘Let there be light’ (Gen 1:3), light is created.

Michael Trainor is apriest of the Arch-diocese of Adelaide andteacher at the AdelaideCollege of Divinity, withthe School of Theologyof Flinders University.

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God’s spoken word is effective. The creativeeffectiveness of God’s word-deed is furthercelebrated in many of the Psalms (e.g., Ps 33)and the Book of Wisdom.

• The biblical prophets saw themselves ascommunicators of God’s word-deed. Theirspeech reminded the Israelites of the essenceof Torah teaching. Their prophetic utterancesbrought them to a spirit of conversion to theTorah and justice for the poor. Whether peo-ple welcomed or rejected the prophets’ dabar,their word communicated affectively. A pow-erful and revealing example of the prophet’sdabar is found in Ezekiel 37:1-14

The prophet Ezekiel spoke God’s dabarin a time of the Israelite exile in the 7th centuryBCE. Ezekiel’s dabar was a word of hope andrestoration for the people. In Ez 37 the prophetfinds himself in a valley of dried bones, a vi-sionary symbol of the Israelites’ status in Ex-ile. As he speaks God’s word and releasesGod’s ruach into the valley and on to thebones, they come to life, knit or ‘clatter’ to-gether to form human bodies and be releasedfrom their graves. The key moment in theprophecy is God’s request to Ezekiel to speakGod’s dabar over the bones. This propheticact brings about God’s ruach. The dynamicresponse to the action of God’s word in thisvalley of dry bones is a symbol of the powerof God to bring the Israelites from Exile intotheir own land. Within our contemporaryecclesial setting and in the context of this re-flection on the spirituality of the Word, Ez 37is a metaphor for the power of God’s Wordwithin the local parish community,

Then God said to me, ‘Prophesy to these bones,and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word ofthe LORD. Thus says the Lord GOD to thesebones: I will cause breath to enter you, and youshall live. I will lay sinews on you, and willcause flesh to come upon you, and cover youwith skin, and put breath in you, and you shalllive; and you shall know that I am the LORD.’So I prophesied as I had been commanded; andas I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, arattling, and the bones came together, bone toits bone.’

God’s Word spoken through the prophetcreates a community from something thatseems utterly lifeless. The prophetic utterancegives this community bodily shape. The inter-pretation of the prophecy clearly spells out thetransformative and resurrectional impact ofGod’s Word.

I looked, and there were sinews on them, andflesh had come upon them, and skin had cov-ered them; but there was no breath in them.…Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath,prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thussays the Lord GOD: Come from the four winds,O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that theymay live.’ I prophesied as he commanded me,and the breath came into them, and they lived,and stood on their feet, a vast multitude. Thenhe said to me, ‘Mortal, these bones are the wholehouse of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are driedup, and our hope is lost; we are cut off com-pletely.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them,Thus says the Lord GOD: I am going to openyour graves, and bring you up from your graves,O my people; and I will bring you back to theland of Israel. And you shall know that I am theLORD, when I open your graves, and bring youup from your graves, O my people. I will putmy spirit within you, and you shall live, and Iwill place you on your own soil; then you shallknow that I, the LORD, have spoken and willact, says the LORD.’ (NRSV, Ez 37:4-14)

This lengthy passage from Ez 37 revealsthe dynamic drama in the power of God’s Wordspoken through the prophet. Notice the manytimes ‘breathe’ or ‘breath’ appear. The last linesums up the biblical theology of the Word: ‘I,the LORD, have spoken and will act’ (Ez37:14). God’s word spoken through theprophet is dynamic and life-giving for the Is-raelites. Its effect echoes the creative act ofGod’s breath in Genesis when God breathesinto the earthling’s nostrils and makes theearthling a living being (Gen 2:7)

• The power of God’s Word comes to itsfullest expression in the ministry of Jesus,whom the Gospel of John calls, God’s Word‘enfleshed’ (Jn 1:14)... The gospel writersshow how his ministry is one of word-deed.Jesus acts, especially in his healing actions and

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meal ministry, and speaks through his teach-ing. His words and deeds are two sides to hisone ministry revealing God’s dabar that cre-ates, frees, forgives, heals and raises fromdeath.

This biblical background to ruach anddabar is the foundation for our appreciationof the ‘Word of God’ which we celebrate andproclaim in our liturgies. The Word of Godaddresses the baptized community of Jesus’sisters and brothers. The Word effects; it hasthe power to impact, change, enliven and con-solidate.

The ‘Word’ in Catholic Teaching

The appreciation of the effectiveness and dy-namism of God’s Word finds an echo in Catho-lic teaching and practice through the ages.Caesarius of Arles (469-541) writes about therespect which Christians show to the Word ofGod. ‘The Word of God is in no way less thanthe Body of Christ; nor should it be receivedless worthily,’ says Caesarius in one of his ser-mons. He then poses an important question stillrelevant today.

I ask you, brothers or sisters, tell me: which toyou seems the greater, the word of God, or theBody of Christ? If you wish to say what is trueyou will have to answer that the word of God isnot less than the Body of Christ. Therefore justas when the Body of Christ is administered tous, what care do we not use so that nothing of itfalls from our hands to the ground, so shouldwe with equal care see that the Word of Godwhich is being imparted to us shall not be lostto our soul, while we speak or think of some-thing else. For the one who listens carelessly tothe Word of God is not less guilty than the onewho through their own inattention suffers theBody of Christ to fall to the ground.1

There are many things about Caesarius’instruction that make it remarkable for its time,not the least is the fact that the reception ofcommunion in the hand was the practice ofthe day. Caesarius places the reception of theWord on the same level of importance and re-spect as the reception of the Body of Jesus in

the Eucharist.This recognition of the equal reverence for

the Word and Eucharist finds an echo in the1962 teaching of Vatican II from Dei Verbum(‘On Divine Revelation’):

The Church has always venerated the divineScriptures just as the Church venerates the bodyof the Lord, since, especially in the sacred lit-urgy, the Church unceasingly receives and of-fers to the faithful the bread of life from thetable both of God’s word and of Christ’s body…like the Christian religion itself, all the preach-ing of the Church must be nourished and regu-lated by Sacred Scripture.2

This is one of the most remarkable state-ments of Vatican II. The Council bishops con-sider the ‘veneration’ of the Scriptures on thesame level of theological importance as ven-eration of the eucharistic body of Jesus. Theyunderstand this truth reflected in historicalpractice (‘The Church has always vener-ated....’). Rather than an historical accident,the veneration of the Word has ‘always’ beenthe part of the Church’s liturgical life. BothWord and Eucharist are sources of spiritualnourishment. In the celebration of the Eucha-rist, the baptised are fed from the table of theWord and the table of the Eucharist. The Scrip-tures, like the Eucharist, are essential for regu-lating and nurturing Christian living.

There are two other more recent examplesof the importance of the Scriptures to the lifeof the Catholic community. These are foundin the teaching of Benedict XVI and the Octo-ber 2008 Synod of Bishops.

Benedict’s teaching and encyclicals arelaced with insights that reflect his apprecia-tion of the Bible. Perhaps one of the clearestexpressions of this is seen in his general audi-ence address of November 7, 2007. It is acatechetical address on the life of St Jeromegiven to 40000 pilgrims gathered in St Peter’sSquare. In his address, Benedict:

• recognised how contemplation and soli-tude with the Word of God matured Jerome’sdeep religious sense, what Benedict called his‘Christian sensibility.’ Jerome’s attitude to theWord needed to be reclaimed today;

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• encouraged his audience to be in constantcontemplation and dialogue with the Word ofGod as found in Scripture. His recognition thatin the Scriptures we encounter the Word ofGod is important. It reveals the distinctionbetween the biblical text and God’s Word, apoint to which I shall return shortly;

• affirmed the personal and communal di-mensions of this Word. The Word is personal

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In Proposition 48 the bishops recognize thesymbiotic relationship that occurs between theWord as it is spoken into a particular culture.The Word ‘makes fecund’ what are recognisedas the spiritual realities of people’s culture andtradition. In the dynamic people are confirmedand perfected through the Word addressed tothem. For this relationship between Word andculture to be authentic, the bishops encouragethat the proclaimers of the Word (‘missionar-ies’) must be steeped in the social-culturalenvironment in which they live. In other words,Proposition 48 affirms that God’s Word can-not be unilaterally imposed on people, but mustsensitively address the world in which theylive.

From these selected propositions alone itis clear that the Synod recognized that the Bi-ble must more fully permeate the social andcultural context of Catholics. Liturgy, goodpreaching and the Word’s explicit social en-gagement were essential for this. They are alsoat the heart of a spirituality of the Word in theparish.

The ‘Word of the Lord’

At the conclusion of each of the Scripture read-ings in the Liturgy of the Word, the lector says,‘The Word of the Lord.’ The congregation re-sponds, ‘Thanks be to God.’ But for what arewe giving thanks? What is the meaning of theaffirmation that a particular reading from theBible is the ‘Word of the Lord’?

Fundamentalism and literalism are atti-tudes towards the proclamation of the Liturgyof the Word not uncommon in our parish com-munities. These attitudes emerge when thehearer believes that the physical reading of thebiblical text or the book out of which the read-ings are proclaimed (the lectionary) is liter-ally God’s Word. That is, God’s Word is to-tally identified with the lectionary and its read-ing, and vice versa. In this understanding, the‘Word of the Lord’ can be interpreted as mean-ing that what we have just listened to is actu-ally God’s Word, spoken (usually) in English

with a particular accent unique to the readerand heard and interpreted literally by the lis-tener.

There are several problems with this posi-tion. It comes from an implicit belief in verbalinspiration, that God told the writer of the bib-lical text (in English of course) what to write.And what was written must have been obvi-ous to the reading audience, after all, whywould God make things so difficult to under-stand? Therefore the plain or simple meaningof the biblical text, one which requires no studyor interpretation, must be God’s intendedmeaning. This understanding makes no allow-ance for the historical, cultural or social con-ditioning of the text, that the biblical authorswere people of their own day and culture whoheld beliefs and attitudes unique to their worldembodied in their writings, and not necessar-ily the same as ours.

There is another and more fruitful way toapproach the meaning of the ‘Word of theLord.’ This is through an exploration of meta-phor. The expression ‘Word,’ like all expres-sions applied to God (‘rock,’ ‘shepherd,’ ‘war-rior,’ ‘eagle,’ ‘father,’ ‘mother’) is a metaphor.It is our way of trying to understand some-thing beyond our ordinary experience whileacknowledging that our human experience isall we have to work with. A metaphor is ourway of saying that what we are trying to de-scribe both ‘is’ and ‘is not’ the expression. Godis like a ‘rock’ (firm, faithful, solid, reliable,dependable); but God is also not like a rock(cold, hard, brown…). The totality of God’sessence is not summed up in the metaphor‘rock.’

In the same way, ‘Word’ tells us somethingabout God, but does not express God’s total-ity. ‘Word’ is about communication. The ex-pression ‘Word of the Lord’ is using the meta-phor ‘word’ to describe God’s self-communi-cation and revelation.

From my own experience I know thatfriends gain an insight into who I am throughthe words I use. My words are an expressionand extension of myself. They reveal me. But

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I also know that my words are not my totalrevelation; they do not reveal who I am fully.There is more to me than readers will conjec-ture from the words that compose this presentessay, for example. From this point of view,my words are mysterious, at the same time theyboth reveal and conceal; they invite intimacyand friendship.

The expression, ‘Word of the Lord,’ isabout God’s self-revelation and communica-tion with human beings. It is mysterious andnever exhaustive. God’s Word invites us intointimacy and friendship. Vatican II remindedus that God’s revelation occurs in several ways,through the lives of faithful followers of Jesusthroughout history (summed up in the term‘tradition’), within creation, cultures, peoples,other faith traditions, and in a unique way inthe Bible. The ultimate expression of God’sself-revelation is Jesus. He is God’s Word,expressing God’s nature and desire for human-ity and creation.

The Bible is a particular witness to theexperience of God’s Word, of God’s self-com-munication as experienced by the Israelites andJesus of Nazareth, especially through his min-istry, death and resurrection. The biblical writ-ings witness to the imperfect, historically andculturally conditioned experience of God’sself-revelation to human beings. These writ-ings do not reveal the totality of God’s revela-tion. The Bible is a witness to people’s lim-ited experience of God. As the Catholic bibli-cal scholar Sandra Schneiders summarises it,the expression ‘Word of God’ is,

a metaphor for the totality of divine revelation,especially as it is expressed in Jesus. The Bibleis a witness to the human experience of divinerevelation. In other words, it is a limited, bi-ased, human testimony to a limited experienceof God’s self-gift. The Bible is not divine rev-elation nor does it contain divine revelation. Itcontains the necessarily inadequate, sometimeseven erroneous, verbal expression of the expe-rience of divine revelation of those who areprivileged subjects of that gift of God…TheBible is literally the word of human beings abouttheir experience of God.3

Within the parish setting, every time weproclaim the Scriptures in the Liturgy of theWord, we are hearing about the experience ofGod’s revelation encountered by human be-ings throughout history. In the First Readingfrom the Old Testament and in the Psalms welisten to the Israelites’ experience of their com-munion with God. The reading becomes theirword to us of their encounter with the God ofthe covenant who accompanied them through-out their history and spoke to them.

The Second Reading, usually drawn fromPaul’s letters, comes from a first centuryGraeco-Roman Jewish follower of Jesus writ-ing to Jesus householders about how to liveauthentically in relationship to God revealedin Jesus. The reading is Paul’s word to theseJesus followers, and through them to us to-day, about God’s Word, Jesus. The Gospelreading, likewise, is the word of the evange-list to a particular household of disciples ofthe late first century, focused on God’s ulti-mate Word, Jesus, in his healing and preach-ing ministry summed up in his passion, deathand resurrection. The Gospels explicitly con-cern Jesus, God’s Word enacted in the minis-try of Jesus. In all the readings, we encounterGod’s Word enfleshed in the lives of faith-filled people, the Israelites and Jesus house-holders, who reveal to us how this Word isencountered. The one who most transparentlyincarnates God’s Word is Jesus. From this per-spective, when we say ‘Thanks be to God’ tothe proclamation that concludes the reading(‘The Word of the Lord’) we are thanking Godfor the way the Word, God’s self-revelation,is tangibly experienced in history and culturesby particular believing communities, and howthis experience can be shared with us.

4. A Spirituality of the WordHow we move from the biblical text with

its unique culturally and historically limitedexperience of God’s Word to ourselves andour world is the focus of the final part of thisessay. This will lead to some practical sugges-tions inspired by the Synod’s Proposition 14

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for reclaiming the importance of the Word ofGod in the parish context.

The growth in a life of faith centered onthe Word of the Lord requires regular prayercentered on the Scriptures. Through conver-sation between my life and the world of theseprivileged believers in God as found in theBible, and especially with Jesus as revealedin the gospels, God’s Word ‘speaks’ and in-spires. The encounter of the Israelites and thewriters of the New Testament with God’s Wordas revealed to them, and especially in the NewTestament with God’s self-communication inthe story, ministry, life, death and resurrectionof Jesus, becomes a window and a mirror formy encounter with God now.

The following is a way that I have foundhelpful in enabling this conversation to deepen.It is centered on exploring the word ‘aware’and inspired by the prayer form, the ‘aware-ness examen,’ from St Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556), founder of the Jesuits. The prayer cantake place over a few or several minutes, pri-vately or with others, and follows a similarformat suggested by each letter of ‘aware.’ Icall it the ‘aware prayer.’

1. Attend: I attend to the presence of Godwith me now, over the past day, and through-out my life.

2. Welcome: I welcome what is going onin my life, world, parish, church, family. Mymind begins to settle on one particular personor event of the past twenty-four hours. I recalleverything about this encounter, with an aware-ness of God’s presence in that encounter.

3. Alert: I alert myself to the biblical textI am about to engage, something of its back-ground, history. Perhaps here I recall whatscholars have written about this text. Here Iacknowledge the time and culturally-condi-tioned background to the passage, and also thatthis text reflects people’s experience of God’sWord to them. The reflections on the Sundayreadings offered towards the end of each edi-tion of Compass may be of help here.

4. Read and Reflect: I prayerfully readover and reflect upon the passage before me. I

find it helpful to do this three times: once forthe head, (as I try and understand the meaningof the words of the passage); once for the heart(as I allow the passage to speak into my soul);a final time as I allow the passage to ‘wash’over me and make room of God’s Word tospeak to me.

5. Express: I express to God what I hearthe Word saying to me, my world and faithcommunity. I conclude expressing a brief wordof thanks to God for what I have experiencedand how this passage of scripture has spokento me.

This approach is simply a way of engag-ing the biblical text that respects the world andwriters of the passage while allowing it totouch my world and life. It is not intended tobe followed slavishly, but provides a frame-work for prayerfully encountering the Bibleto help build the spirit within. I have used this‘aware’ approach frequently in parish settings(even in homilies). It could be the basis forsmall groups of parishioners coming togetherregularly to pray over the forthcoming Sun-day readings. The regularity of such gather-ings fosters community and energy and the lastpart of the prayer (‘Express’) could be the basisfor a parish’s formulation for the Prayers ofIntercession.

This final point, how the parish’s Prayersof Intercession can be drawn from the prayerlife of small groups of parishioners regularlypraying over the Sunday readings, leads finallyto a few concluding suggestions for enhanc-ing the place of the Word within the parish’sliturgical life:

• Allow significant time of silence aftereach of the readings. Fifteen to thirty secondsoffers a way of ‘slowing down’ the readingsso that they become proclamations, and givespeople time to capture prayerfully the experi-ence of God’s encounter by those who firstinspired or wrote the readings.

• Process the lectionary through the churchfor every liturgical celebration. During thesinging of the Alleluia (and it must be sung,never said, otherwise it is excluded) include a

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procession of the Book of the Gospels whenpossible or practical.

• Celebrate parish liturgies whose exclu-sive focus is on the proclamation of the Word.This means educating parishioners about theLiturgy of the Word and its nurturing impor-tance. This could lead a parish to celebrate theLiturgy of the Word without the distributionof Holy Communion.

• Ensure that readers are carefully selected,regularly formed and encouraged to preparetheir particular reading for proclamation bystudying and praying over it.

• Encourage every parishioner to purchasea Bible. Offer educational opportunities forparishioners to learn about the Bible andwhat’s in it.

* * * *

Let me conclude with a lengthy but beau-tiful quotation from the recent bishops’ Synod.The quotation captures the bishops’ convic-tion that a biblical spirituality must totally per-meate our world. It also promotes study of theBible, values the importance of silence in en-gaging it, and encourages a way of attentionto the Bible that permeates daily life. In other

words, this quotation expresses and summa-rises the present essay and its focus on foster-ing a spirituality of the Word in our parishes.

The Word of God must run through the world’sstreets which today are also those of computer,television and virtual communication. The Bi-ble must enter into families so that parents andchildren read it, pray with it and that it may betheir lamp for the steps on the way to existence(cf. Ps 119:105). The Holy Scriptures must alsoenter into the schools and in the cultural areasbecause for centuries they were the main refer-ence for art, literature, music, thinking and thesame common moral. Their symbolic, poeticand narrative richness makes them a banner ofbeauty for faith as well as for culture, in a worldoften scarred by ugliness and lowliness….Dearbrothers and sisters, guard the Bible in yourhouses, fully read, study and understand itspages, transform them into prayer and witnessof life, listen to it with love and faith in the lit-urgy. Create the silence to effectively hear theWord of the Lord and hold a silence after thelistening, because it will continue to dwell, liveand speak to you. Make it resound at the begin-ning of your day so that God will have the firstword and let it echo in you in the evenings sothat the last word will be God’s.4

1 Caesarius of Arles, Sermo 300.2 Dei Verbum (‘On Divine Revelation’), par. 21.3 Sandra Schneiders, Beyond Patching: Faith andFeminism in the Catholic Church (NY: Paulist

REFERENCES

Press, 2004), 52.4 XII Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod ofBishops, ‘Message for the People of God by theSynod of Bishops’1 (5-26 October, 2008).

The presentation of the Gospels should be done in such a way as toelicit an encounter with Christ, who provides the key to the wholebiblical revelation and communicates the call of God that summonseach one to respond. The word of the prophets and that of the ‘minis-ters of the Word’ (Luke 1.2) ought to appear as something addressed toChristians now. —Pontifical Biblical Commission, The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, Ch. 4.

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TODAY’S DESPERATE situations ofuncaring wealth and degrading povertyprompt an examination of Christian

conscience, individually and ecclesially, in re-gard to issues of wealth creation and distribu-tion. This paper surveys current socio-eco-nomic data regarding the stark inequities inwealth distribution across the world and inAustralian society, and the Gospels’ perspec-tive on the demands of Christian discipleshipand its reception within the great patristic tra-dition. It is in that tradition of social teachingthat Pope John Paul II, while affirming the rightto private property, spoke in terms of the ‘so-cial mortgage’ inherent in the possession ofgoods.

Some years ago, I was in conversation with ananthropologist-missionary who had returnedfrom several years of work with some islandcommunities in the Pacific. He reflected atsome length on the experience, and made sev-eral points of cultural comparison. He de-scribed various aspects of the rich communallife that he had witnessed there, contrasting itwith the many manifestations in the first worldsocieties of social fragmentation and aliena-tion, such as suicide, depression, and mentalillness.

I was struck in particular by one startlingcomment: ‘We in the first world’, he mused,‘have forsaken the riches of interpersonal re-lationships for the prosperity of material pos-sessions.’ I have often pondered those words.They strike with particular force, as I drivethrough the city at night, and there,emblazoned on the city skyline above me,impossible to miss, is a summary of the day’s

results on the Stock Exchange. Just two num-bers and an arrow—the final stock market po-sition for the day, the net change from the pre-vious day, and the arrow (up or downward). Afew digits and an arrow say it all: a concisesummary of the change in my/our/someone’sprosperity.

The importance of the financial market’sdata is reinforced on the national televisionnews service which now includes—as data ofnational significance, alongside the majornews stories of the day, international, nationaland local, and the weather forecast for the daysahead—a regular finance segment, giving abrief overview of changes in the currencymarkets, major movements in stocks andshares that day, and the overall movement inthe stock markets in the last twenty-four hourperiod.

If there was any need for confirmation ofthe inherent fragility and arbitrariness of theforces at work in the stock market, the dot-com fall-out in the late 1990s surely providedit. In those heady months preceding the crash,the so-called value of numerous info techstocks went through the roof, irrespective ofwhat market analysts at the time described asthe ‘lack of fundamentals,’ the lack of realvalue in the ‘bottom line financials’ of the com-panies concerned. It was (and still is) marketconfidence that rules the day, market confi-dence that drove the info tech share values tothose dreamy heights and, when the time came,it was the loss of market confidence that sawthose values plummet, wiping billions of dol-lars off share markets in a matter of days. But,actually, it was not the ‘fundamentals’ thatchanged, but rather market confidence, mar-

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ANNE HUNT

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ket opinion and expectation. We face a not-dissimilar situation at this moment, with theongoing ‘sub-prime’ lending crisis and the as-sociated financial downturn, occasioned by asimilarly toxic mix of greed and dishonesty.

These cameos serve to demonstrate thesocial construction of our notions of wealthand poverty, prosperity and well-being, be itin the first world or the third world or any otherworld. To speak, then, of poverty and riches isnot only to speak in terms of assets (or lack ofthem), whatever those assets be, but to speakin terms of values and attitudes, for it is val-ues and attitudes that determine what areclassed as assets of value (as my missionaryfriend saw so clearly, through his Pacific is-land experience). Those values and attitudesand their social capital are socially constructed.It is also attitudes and the hierarchy of valueswhich come powerfully into play in the distri-bution of poverty and riches, and in the crea-tion and use of wealth.

A Brief Socio-economic Survey, Globallyand Locally

A survey of the global distribution of povertyand wealth makes for very sobering readingindeed, for numerous surveys and studies tes-tify to the gross inequity in resource distribu-tion globally. As reference points for the pur-pose of global comparison, the World Banktakes $USD1 and $USD2 (adjusted to accountfor differences in purchasing power acrosscountries).1 On this scale, it has been estimatedthat, in 2004, 1 billion people (of the world’sthen 6.4 billion people) had consumption lev-els below $1 a day (classed as extreme pov-erty) and that 2.6 billion lived on less than $2a day.

Admittedly, living standards have risendramatically over the last decades. The pro-portion of the developing world’s populationliving in extreme economic poverty—definedas living on less than $1 per day—has fallenfrom 28 percent in 1990 to 21 percent in 2001.But, while there has been great progress in re-

ducing poverty and further progress is prom-ised with poverty identified as the Number 1Millennium Development Goal of the UnitedNations, it has been far from even, and the glo-bal picture masks huge regional differences.A closer look shows that global trends in pov-erty reduction have been dominated by rapidgrowth in China and the East Asia and Pacificregion. But in Sub-Saharan Africa, povertyactually rose from 41 percent in 1981 to 46percent in 2001, with an additional 150 mil-lion people living in extreme poverty.

In other words, at the start of this new cen-tury, poverty remains a global problem of stag-gering proportions. Almost half the world—nearly three billion people—lives on less than$2 a day. One billion children—about one halfof the world’s children—live in poverty. Thereare so many other statistics to which we couldrefer. For example, over 10 million childrendied in 2003 before they reached the age offive. Hundreds of millions of people live with-out adequate shelter and no access to safewater or health services.

But the situation in our own backyards isalso very sobering. A recent survey of eco-nomic and social realities in the current situa-tion in Australia, where we continue to enjoyconsiderable prosperity, shows serious frac-tures emerging. The Australian data are per-haps all the more sobering because we Aus-tralians like to think of this as the land of thefair go, a land of equal opportunity, a basi-cally middle class—indeed classless—society,which prizes an egalitarian ideal. This is aplace, we like to think, where anyone, with a

Associate ProfessorAnne Hunt is a lecturerin systematic theologyat Australian CatholicUniversity and at YarraTheological Union(Melbourne) and Rectorof the Ballarat Campusof Australian CatholicUniversity.

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bit of hard work and a bit of luck along theway, can succeed.

In the recently published study, entitledWho Gets What, authors Stilwell and Jordanof the University of Sydney, demonstrateclearly that dramatic economic and social in-equalities have in fact become a feature ofmodern Australia.2 While our society as awhole has become more wealthy, the wealthhas been spread very unevenly. Although wehave not inherited the class differentiation andsocial divisions of older societies and like topride ourselves on the lack of class structurein Australian society, on the basis of evidenceof income and wealth distribution, there isactually little difference in practice. Austral-ian society is an increasingly unequal societywith a growing gap between rich and poor.

Some Australians enjoy huge incomes andextraordinary affluence. Our corporate execu-tives, for example, constitute a new manage-rial elite, attracting spectacular remunerationpackages, and which are continuing to growin relation to average annual earnings of fulltime Australian workers.3 At the other end ofthe spectrum, we have the spectre of poverty.Many Australians face considerable economichardship and insecurity. Approx 20% of Aus-tralian households have an average annual in-come of less than $25,000. Meanwhile, wehave seen the emergence of the phenomenonof the working class poor—with an estimated1 million Australian workers with jobs, butwith fewer hours and less pay than they needfor the basic necessities of life. Having a jobis no longer a guarantee against falling intopoverty in Australia.4

This income divide correlates with the dig-ital divide. The striking differences betweenrich and poor households in terms of digitalaccess demonstrate just how profoundly eco-nomic inequality shapes access to resourcesand social opportunities, compounding thedisadvantage. Financial disadvantage meansaccess disadvantage which means informationdisadvantage.

But disparities in income pale drastically

in comparison with disparities in the distribu-tion of wealth in Australia: the wealthiest 10%of Australians own about 45% of the totalwealth, with the lower 50% of the Australianpopulation owning less than 10% of the na-tion’s wealth.

A similar situation exists in USA whereproductivity gains of recent years have foundtheir way into the pockets of the top 10% ofincome-earners. The greater proportion ofwealth lies firmly in the hands of a minority,with the top 1% of American households re-ceiving almost 17% of all income and holdingabout 38% of all net worth and 47% of netfinancial assets.5 The U.S. Census Bureau inits 2002 report estimated that 12.1%, in otherwords, one in eight Americans, lives in pov-erty.6 The U.S. Census Bureau in its 2006 re-port, the most recent such report available,estimates that 12.3% live in poverty.7

We could draw on many similar studiesfrom many other countries of the world whichsimilarly attest to the prevalence of poverty,inequality, and social exclusion.

Poverty, Riches and the Demandsof Christian Discipleship

The stark reality of poverty in our world, thereality of increasing inequality globally andeven in our own first world countries, inevita-bly leads to questions of the ethics—and forus, a distinctly Christian ethics—of wealthcreation, distribution and use.

We in fact face new moral questions re-garding wealth, with the emergence of the rela-tively new phenomenon of wealth creation. Nolonger does agriculture contribute the greaterproportion of wealth production. Wealth isnow created, by capitalist business enterprise,the multi-nationals, the markets, the entrepre-neurs. Look at the advertisements on TV or inthe paper, and you will find promises of wealthcreation services that will secure your own fi-nancial future! But wealth creation is not anatural phenomenon; it does not conform tophysical laws (e.g., gravity): it lies squarely

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within the realm of human judgment and de-cision, values and attitudes.

This intensifies the urgency of our ques-tions: Why are so many people so very poor?Alternatively, and perhaps far more to thepoint, why are so many people so very rich?What should we do about it? What does Chris-tian discipleship—even basic humaneness andglobal civic responsibility—demand of us?

Certainly, the Gospels offer no easy salvefor the consciences of the rich, including ourvery affluent selves.8 It is indisputably thepoor, not the rich, who are God’s chosen ones.In response to the question as to what one mustdo to inherit eternal life, Jesus comments:‘how hard it is for those who have wealth toenter the kingdom of God!’ (Mk 10:23). Inanother place, he exhorts his followers, ‘donot worry about your life, what you will eat,or about your body, what you will wear. Forlife is more than food, and the body more thanclothing. …Sell your possessions, and givealms.’ (Lk 12:22-33) Jesus unambiguouslycondemns those who ignore the plight of theneedy—‘for I was hungry and you gave meno food, I was thirsty and you gave me noth-ing to drink, …naked and you did not give meclothing’ (Mt 25:42-43) He warns the rich oftheir obligations: ‘From everyone to whommuch has been given, much will be required;and from one to whom much has been en-trusted, even more will be demanded’ (Lk12:48). He urges all to nobler motivations thanwealth accumulation: ‘Do not store up foryourselves treasures on earth, where moth andrust consume and where thieves break in andsteal; but store up for yourselves treasures inheaven, where neither moth nor rust consumesand where thieves do not break in and steal.For where your treasure is, there your heartwill be also’ (Mt 6:19-21). The writer of theFirst Letter to Timothy warns the communitythat ‘the love of money is a root of all kinds ofevil’ (1 Tim 6:10). The Letter to the Colossiansexhorts them: ‘Set your minds on things thatare above, not on things that are on earth,’ (Col3:2) The Acts of the Apostles tells us that ‘the

whole group of those who believed were ofone heart and soul, and no one claimed pri-vate ownership of any possessions, but every-thing they owned was held in common’ (Acts4:32)

Jesus’ parables, in particular, challenge usto another worldview in regard to poverty andwealth.9 Not a few of his parables concern theproverbial rich man! The evangelist Lukewould seem to be particularly interested in thisissue of poverty and riches, and offers a sus-tained counter-cultural challenge (in the Gos-pel and in Acts) to break with the economicsof the empire and adopt the economics of thekingdom of God.

The parable of the Rich Fool (Lk 12:13-21), for example, follows an appeal to Jesusto settle an inheritance dispute and Jesus’ re-buke that one’s life does not consist in theabundance of possessions (Lk 12:15). In thisparable, the rich man stores up the surplusesfrom his crops for the sake of future securityand prosperity. Very sensible according to theways of the world! But, so the parable goes,‘God said to him, ‘You fool! This very nightyour soul is being demanded of you. And thethings you have prepared, whose will they be?’’(Lk 12:20). Jesus thus starkly exposes the il-lusion of ownership and the futility of covet-ousness. The rich man is not wicked, but fool-ish.

In the parable of the Shrewd Manager (Lk16:1-13), a rich man commends a blatantlydishonest steward for his prudence in remit-ting debts to his master and thereby securingthe friendship and favour of those who wereindebted to the master. Jesus thus points to thepossibility of the creative use of wealth in thealleviation of debt and oppression. But, Jesuswarns, ‘You cannot serve God and wealth’ (Lk16:13).

In the very well-known parable of the RichMan and Lazarus (Lk 16:19-31), Jesus throwsinto sharp relief the consequences and the ul-timate cost of preoccupation with wealth. Therich man’s self-imposed separation from theplight of Lazarus is confirmed, not overturned,

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in the after-life, though their stations are re-versed. Lazarus is carried to the bosom ofAbraham, while the rich man is left to languishin the torments of Hades. God’s judgement isclear. Also very clear, and counter to any no-tion of a prosperity gospel, is that riches areby no means a token of divine blessing.

We find in Jesus’ teaching no explicit mani-festo for a redistribution of wealth and nogrand plan for revolution of the socio-politi-cal system. Admittedly, in Luke’s gospel, Je-sus announces his mission in terms of the Jew-ish Jubilee (Lk 4:18-19), that ancient traditionwhereby, in the 50th year, all debts were to becancelled and all slaves released and all landsrestored (Lev 25:10, 38-42), and the theme ofJubilee deeply informs Luke’s understandingof the kingdom of God.10 But Jesus’ teachingis even more radical and more subversive ofthe status quo than that: he urges all, rich andpoor, to the heart of the matter—itself a mat-ter of the heart—for where your treasure is,there your heart will also be. He exposes theillusion of ownership and of security; the follyof putting one’s confidence in wealth; and thefutility of greed and of envy of wealth. Hewarns the poor against the allure of wealth,and the rich against the illusion of possession.He cautions the poor against emulating therich; and he urges the rich to the right use ofriches. He warns rich and poor alike that richescan undermine the relationships—with one an-other, with creation, with our God—that areour greatest treasure. The exploited natural en-vironment and a plundering of natural re-sources are the dramatic instances of our day.

We see then, in the New Testament, theworking through of a number of issues con-cerning poverty and wealth in the early Chris-tian communities. Those issues are taken upby the Church Fathers who, even at a quicksurvey, have much to say on poverty and onriches and their right use. John Chrysostom,for example, comments memorably, albeitsomewhat acerbically, that God does not wantgolden vessels but golden hearts!11 The ChurchFathers highlight with remarkable consistency

the snares and seductions of wealth, the illu-sions and the obligations of riches, and theywarn against the almost irresistible tendencyof riches to spawn self-centredness and to de-tract from our concern for the common wealthand the common good.

It was that concern for the common goodthat Pope John Paul II captured so strikinglywhen, while unequivocally affirming the rightto private property, he spoke in terms of the‘social mortgage’ on all goods, a kind of morallien on all of our possessions, that is, a respon-sibility to use our assets in ways that accordwith the promotion of the common good. AsJohn Paul II explains:

It is necessary to state once more the character-istic principle of Christian social doctrine: thegoods of this world are originally meant for all.The right to private property is valid and nec-essary, but it does not nullify the value of thisprinciple. Private property, in fact, is under a‘social mortgage,’ which means that it has anintrinsically social function, based upon andjustified precisely by the principle of the uni-versal destination of goods.12

In speaking in this way, John Paul II stoodfirmly in the Church’s long tradition of socialteaching, wherein wealth is understood not interms of ownership or control, but of steward-ship and advancement of the common wealth.It is an understanding deeply grounded in theGospel and its reception within the greatpatristic tradition. It prompts an examinationof Christian conscience, individually andecclesially, in regard to today’s desperate situ-ations of uncaring wealth and degrading pov-erty, when questions of wealth and of wealthcreation and distribution have perhaps neverbeen so urgent and so critical.

NOTES1 For data on world poverty, see World Bank athttp://web.worldbank.org/poverty (accessed 5 Au-gust 2008). See the World Bank’s Report, WorldDevelopment Indicators 2007: http://p g p b l o g . w o r l d b a n k . o r g /world_development_indicators_2007; see tabu-lated data at http://siteresources.worldbank.org/

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INTMNAREGTOPPOVRED/Resources/POV-ERTY-ENG2007AM_tables.pdf. Full World BankInstitute report: http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/E X T E R N A L / D A T A S T A T I S T I C S /0 , , c o n t e n t M D K : 2 1 7 2 5 4 2 3 ~ p a g eP K : 6 4 1 3 3 1 5 0 ~ p i P K : 6 4 1 3 3 1 7 5~theSitePK:239419,00.html (accessed 5 August2008); see also United Nations at http://www.un.org/english and especially the MillenniumDevelopment Goals and related documents at http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/ (accessed 5 August2008); for World Wealth Reports, see http://www.us.capgemini.com (accessed 5 August 2008);for applied research and policy analysis on globaldevelopment and poverty issues, see World Insti-tute for Development Economics Research of theUnited Nations University (UNU-WIDER) at http://www.wider.unu.edu (accessed 5 August 2008). Seealso the WIDER study on The World Distributionof Household Wealth (5 December 2006). (For asummary, go to http://www.wider.unu.edu/events/past-events/2006-events/en_GB/05-12-2006(accessed 5 August 2008).) For one of the mostrecent reports on world poverty, see United nationsConference on Trade and Development(UNCTAD), Least Developed Countries Report2008, at http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/ldc2008overview_en.pdf (accessed 5 August 2008).2 Frank Stilwell and Kirrily Jordan, Who GetsWhat? Analysing Economic Inequality in Australia(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).See also Hugh Mackay, Advance Australia ...Where?: How We’ve Changed, Why We’veChanged, and What Will Happen Next (Sydney,NSW: Hachette Australia, 2007), esp. the chapteron poverty, 328-34.3 For a survey of Australian executive salaries, seeBosswatch, “Salaries High, Performance Low,” athttp://bosswatch.labor.net.au/campaigns/general/1031717447_28193.php (accessed 5 August 2008).In the U.S., the chief executive officers of large U.S.companies averaged $10.8 million in total compen-sation in 2006, more than 364 times the pay of theaverage U.S. worker, according to the latest surveyby the United for a Fair Economy. See “ExecutiveExcess 2007: The Staggering Social Cost of U.S.Business Leadership,” 14th Annual CEO Compen-sation Survey (Washington DC: Institute for PolicyStudies and United for a Fair Economy, 2007), seeh t t p : / / w w w. i p s - d c . o rg / re p o r t s / 0 7 0 8 2 9 -

executiveexcess.pdf (accessed 5 August 2008).4 The 20th AMP.NATSEM Income and Wealth Re-

port, Advance Australia Fair?, July 2008, draws on2001- 2006 Census data, and shows that, while thenation overall prospered in 2001-2006, many house-holds—and particularly middle income house-holds—were struggling to realise the gains of thisprosperity. The impressive increases in household in-comes across the board were largely offset by in-creased spending on housing and increases in the costof living more generally. See http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/irol/21/219073/infocus/natsem.pdf(accessed 5 August 2008).5 See Helen Alford OP et al, Rediscovering Abun-

dance: Interdisciplinary Essays on Wealth, Income,and Their Distribution in the Catholic Social Tra-dition (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame,2006), 7.6 U.S. Census Bureau, Poverty in the United

States: 2002 (Washington DC: U.S. GovernmentPrinting Office, 2003), see http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/p60-222.pdf. (accessed 5 August2008)7 U.S. Census Bureau, Income, Poverty and

Health Insurance Coverage in the United States:2006, see http://www.census.gov/prod/2007pubs/p60-233.pdf (accessed 5 August 2008).8 The Helsinki-based World Institute for Devel-

opment Economics Research of the United NationsUniversity (UNU-WIDER) finds that assets of just$61,000 per adult placed a household in the top10% of the world wealth distribution in the year2000, while assets of more than $500,000 placedone in the richest 1%, a group with 37 million mem-bers worldwide. See http://www.wider.unu.edu/events/past-events/2006-events/en_GB/05-12-2006 (accessed 5 August 2008).9 See Stephen I. Wright, “Parables on Poverty and

Riches (Luke 12:13-21; 16:1-13; 16:19-31),” inChallenge of Jesus’ Parables, ed. Richard N.Longenecker (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. EerdmansPub. Co., 2000), 217-239.10 See Albert Vanhoye, “The Jubilee Year in the

Gospel of Luke,” Theological-Historical Commis-sion, http://www.vatican.va/jubilee_2000/maga-zine/documents/ju_mag_01031997_p-22_en.html(accessed 5 August 2008).11 John Chrysostom, Homily 50 on the Gospel of

Matthew, §4.12 John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (1987), §42.

Anne Hunt’s most recent book is The Trinity: Nexus of the Mysteries of Christian Faith (Orbis, 2005).

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THE COWARDLY desertion of Jesus byhis original disciples on the occasion ofhis arrest and eventual death may have

provided the providential catalyst which, byrevealing the patent inadequacy of their ego-motivated will-power, led them to recognisewhat, until then, had quite escaped their grasp.Their encounter with the risen Jesus who spon-taneously accepted and forgave them, withouta word of recrimination, had opened their eyesto a wholly other way of being human—the wayof absolute, unconditional love.

Through his resurrection, Jesus made it pos-sible to understand his death. By understand-ing his death, it became possible to understandhis life. The risen Jesus was a Jesus who sim-ply forgave his murderers and everyone else im-plicated in his death—which is everyone. Je-sus did not get ensnared in the reactive natureof human relationships. He chose to love, andso was free.

In the light of his resurrection it becameclear to his earliest companions that all alonghe had knowingly and freely embraced the vul-nerability and powerlessness of love and for-giveness. As they slowly began to integrate thesheer love offered them by Jesus and freedthemselves from the pervasive and addictivepower of their egos, they had gradually experi-enced in themselves a radical change of mindsetand, with it, the power to live from love as Je-sus had done. As Ezekiel had put it centuriesbeforehand, they had discovered within them‘a new heart and a new spirit’ (Ezekiel 36.26).

By collating the teachings of Jesus into theSermon on the Mount, Matthew revealed him-self as a disciple who, though living a genera-tion or two after Jesus and the original disci-ples, had found himself transformed by his en-counter with the crucified and risen Jesus alive

in the Church. His account of Jesus’ teachingreflected a growing insight and on-going con-version reaching beyond self-discipline andsimply observing moral norms to believing re-ally in love.

While the comments of Jesus were made,no doubt, at different moments of his publicministry, and had been recorded only haphaz-ardly in the sources from which he drew, Mat-thew selected and collated them masterfully.

In this examination of the first part of theSermon on the Mount, I believe that a genuineunderstanding of Jesus’ teaching supposes asimilar radical conversion in those who wish tomake sense of it today. Without that trust in love,the possibilities that the teaching takes forgranted cannot really be approached seriously;nor can will-power alone muster the strength tolive that vision freely and even, as Jesus prom-ised, joyfully. It is through this lens of what somehave called the ‘second conversion’ that I wishin this article to reflect on each of the sayingsof Jesus. I hope to show how Jesus invited hisaudience to move beyond clear rules and ac-cepted cultural behaviour to search for thedeeper, less tangible, values beneath them, and,empowered by the love of God, to respond toothers no longer from the limiting perspectivesof perfectionism and relentless self-disciplinebut from free, generous and undifferentiatedlove.

The Audience

The context of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mountis Jesus’ proclamation that ‘The kingdom ofheaven is close at hand’ (4.17). The Sermonseeks to spell out elements of the human re-sponse to that in-breaking reality.

Jesus did not speak in a cultural vacuum.

THE SERMON ON THE MOUNTPart One: The Second Conversion

JOHN S McKINNON

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COMPASS

Galilee was an occupied country. His audiencewas the rural peasantry of Galilee. Many of themfarmed their own small holdings; others weretenant farmers forced to sell out to pay debts,but still working what had been their own land;others were day labourers, working as seasonalrequirements dictated or allowed. Most of themlived at or under subsistence level, many goingto bed hungry each night. The regular mentionin the narrative of the sick and disabled re-flects the statistical consequence of endemicpoverty.

Matthew, on the other hand, wrote his gos-pel for an urban audience, living probably inAntioch in Syria. But their poverty differed lit-tle from that of the Palestinian peasants.Throughout the Empire generally, about sev-enty percent of urban dwellers lived precari-ously at or under subsistence level.

The Kingdom of Heaven

Jesus’ mention of the proximity of the kingdomof heaven fell on receptive ears. Later Jewishprophets had spoken of a coming kingdom ofGod. Invariably, they had envisaged it in termsof peace, and of redress for the poor and op-pressed. God’s preferential option was clearlyfor the poor. They saw salvation in terms of so-cial relationships, and pictured it according tothe only social model with which they were fa-miliar: that of kingdom. Most of them wouldinevitably have thought of kingdom in politicalterms, despite Jesus’ insistence on conversionand openness to the new.

Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount addressedissues of life within this kingdom: What will itconsist of? How will it take shape? Jesus didnot propose a constitution or draw up an alter-native code of laws. He stimulated the imagi-nation and called forth a vision of possibilitiesbased on his radical sense of the dignity of everyperson.

The Beatitudes: What Lay in Store?

The Sermon began with the Beatitudes, the first

four of which immediately engaged with the so-cial reality of the majority of listeners. The king-dom would primarily be good news for the ‘poorin spirit’, those who ‘mourn’, the ‘meek’ andthose ‘hungering and thirsting for justice’ (5.3-6). These were not moral attitudes, but a de-scription of the experience of the rural peas-antry of Galilee and the urban poor of Antioch:people whose very spirits had been crushed bythe might of Rome and the constant experienceof oppressive taxation and the unending strug-gle to survive. By meekness, Jesus was not re-ferring to personal humility, but to the habitu-ally hopeless attitude of inferior towards supe-rior. Truly they thirsted for a world governedby righteousness.

Drawing on the language of the prophets,Jesus assured them that God’s kingdom was forthem: they would be comforted; they would in-herit the earth (the land); and their hopes forrighteousness and justice would soon be ful-filled.

The immediate effect of Jesus’ insistenceof the nearness of God’s kingdom would haveserved to set free the yearnings and to engen-der hope in people trapped in poverty, oppres-sion and powerlessness. God was interested inthem, as the prophets had insisted. Change wasin the air. Yet, without dreams and without hope,even the exploited can be the last to move outof their poverty, and the first to resist those whodisturb the status quo.

The Beatitudes: Personal Cooperation

Too many revolutions have involved a simple

Fr John McKinnon is apriest of the Ballaratdiocese. He has workedin parish ministry, withthe on-going educationof priests, and haslectured at the Ballaratcampus of what is nowthe Australian CatholicUniversity.

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inversion of those in power and those withoutpower. Without personal change and conver-sion, the same injustices prevail, whoever mightbe on top.

It would be impossible for God simply toimpose an order of justice and peace. Any im-position ‘from above’ would fail to respect ba-sic human dignity. God is not interested in thefawning of robots but in the love of free per-sons. God’s kingdom would necessarily be awork of partnership between God and human-ity: impossible without God’s empowering love,empty without humans’ free response. Matthewwould speak of freely and deliberately ‘enter-ing’ the kingdom (5.20).

The next three Beatitudes addressed pre-cisely this question of the ‘how’, listing the non-negotiable essentials of ‘mercy, purity of heart’and ‘peace-making’ (community-building andreconciling) (5.7-9). Taken together, they sum-marise wonderfully the unsettling newness ofJesus’ insight into life in society and expose thefutility of universally endemic drives of desire,rivalry and competitiveness, and the violenceto which they give rise.

Roman rhetoric extolled Rome’s work forpeace. But Rome’s peace was achieved by sub-jugation and force. Rome worshipped the god-dess of war. Law and order favoured the wealthyand were built on self-interest, slavery and re-lentless exploitation of the poor. In such a world,consistent and ‘across the board’ mercy, purityof heart and radical peace-making were sub-versive.

Jesus paid the price of his insistence onmercy as the regulator of human relationships:he was condemned by the Jewish Council ofpriests and elders (26.3-5), collaborators of theRomans, denounced by the crowds (27.20-23),and sentenced to execution by the Roman gov-ernor (27.24-26).

As tactics to address injustice, terrorism andnational security in today’s world, mercy, pu-rity of heart and Jesus’ concept of peace still donot make practical sense, even to most Chris-tians. There is no way for people to discoverwhere Jesus could possibly be coming from

without their responding to the call to the ‘sec-ond conversion’.

The Beatitudes: Consequences

Against such a background, the last Beatitudemakes sense. Since mercy and peace-makingwere of the essence of the kingdom, entry intothe kingdom would require a choice for love,and, with it, the vulnerability and almost inevi-table victimisation it risked. Genuine disciplesof the crucified Christ could expect criticismand persecution (5.10-11). Nothing new: simi-lar fates had attended the Hebrew prophets be-fore them.

What is astonishing was Jesus’ invitation to‘rejoice and be glad’ in face of such victimisa-tion—a response possible only for people to-tally free from all co-dependence, people whohad learnt to respond from their own depths andwere freed and empowered to react neither fromtheir ego-driven self-interest nor in response tothe provocations of others. This was genuinehuman ‘life to the full’.

The Mission of Disciples

Matthew immediately proceeded to emphasisethe need for disciples to live confidently themessage of Jesus, even though such behaviourmight lead to persecution. They were to en-gage with their oppressive world. They wereto be ‘salt of the earth and light of the world’(5.13-16).

An important consideration is whether theywould carry out this role as individuals or ascommunity. Matthew did not address the issuedirectly, but he moved almost immediately toconsider issues of relationships within commu-nity. Obviously, in his mind, the more power-ful, and absolutely essential, witness to the king-dom is that of community. To use the languageof the Second Vatican Council: disciples, to-gether as community, would be sacraments ofthe unity of humankind (Const. on the Church,par. 9): they would embody it and they wouldbring it about.

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COMPASS

Where is the Kingdom?

In reassuring the rural poor of Galilee that thekingdom of heaven was close at hand, and, in-deed, in declaring to the poor in spirit that thekingdom of heaven was theirs, was Jesus naïve?After twenty centuries of Christians’ bearing theresponsibility to be salt of the earth and light ofthe world, is the kingdom of heaven any nearer?

The answer may depend on how we under-stand ‘near’. There is a sense in which the king-dom is in our grasp, in a way that was not sobefore Jesus’ death and crucifixion. At least,we know the way it can be entered—it is theway of love, not of rivalry; of vulnerability, notof violence; and of growing to see others, evenenemies, not as threats but as brothers and sis-ters

Fulfilling the Law and the Prophets

Jesus’ audience were all Jews; most of Mat-thew’s Christian community were Jews. Most,if not all, had been exposed to the rich Hebrewscriptural tradition. Matthew was Jewish. Likeother Jews, he had a profound respect for theTorah. Before proceeding to throw light on lifetogether in community, Matthew briefly di-gressed to discuss the attitude of Jesus to theJewish Torah. Until then, the Law had been theguiding beacon of life within Israel. Yet itseemed obvious that, for all its beauty, the Jew-ish Law, the Torah, had not managed of itselfto lead to God’s kingdom. It was powerless toengender and support the kind of radical changepromised by Jesus.

Matthew insisted that Jesus did not abolishthe Torah. Yet, he was proud that something newhad come with Jesus. He saw Jesus as fulfillingthe Torah—though he did not define preciselywhat that might mean.

With the death and resurrection of Jesus,heaven and earth had passed away and all hadbeen accomplished (27.45,52). The Torah asexternal source of moral obligation had beenfulfilled, though its content, in so many ways,continued to be relevant. Jesus fulfilled it by

drawing from its source in the heart of redeemedhumanity. As the last supper had indicated, thenew covenant had been inaugurated, and, ac-cording to the prophecy of Jeremiah, God would‘put his law within them and write it on theirhearts’ (Jer. 31.31-34).

Significantly, Jesus went on to contrast thedisciples’ moral response to life’s situations(that he saw as basic to the experience of thekingdom) to what the scribes and Pharisees hadso far adopted (5.20). The scribes, essentially,were the lawyers, the experts on interpretationand application of the literal text. Obsessed withlegal details, they lacked the imagination of theprophets; they were unwilling to look moredeeply into the human heart, made in the imageof God, and to find there the basis of all law.Pharisees recognised the inadequacy of the To-rah, and sought to supplement its teachings bya series of ever more detailed directions—the‘Tradition of the elders’. Theirs was the sterileperformance-focussed morality of ‘try harder’.With all their differences, both groups werecaptive to clearly formulated laws and by-lawsas sources of moral guidance and obligation.They understood the task of the ‘first conver-sion’; but had become fixated there. Jesus wouldencourage neither closer scrutiny of the literaltext nor multiply and fine-tune further minuteregulations. He implicitly invited his disciplesto adopt his approach and to discover the basisof the law—the sense of the common good writ-ten on human hearts—and to respond to life’sdilemmas from there.

Illustrating Fulfilment

In a series of six examples, Matthew illustratedand applied Jesus’ approach to the Torah.

Resolving Conflict (5.21-26). In the first ex-ample he extended the reach of the original pro-hibition of murder to embrace all negativity inhuman relationships, specifying anger, insultand condemnation. With two colourful illustra-tions he emphasised the non-negotiable needfor forgiveness and reconciliation. The illustra-tions had the effect of parables, leaving the hear-

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ers to ask just what was he saying. ‘Leave yourgift before the altar’ (in the Jerusalem temple),‘go back and be reconciled with your brother’(in Galilee) and only then return and ‘offer yourgift’ (in Jerusalem): forgiveness at any cost!

How were hearers to know how seriouslyJesus’ injunction was to be taken? The answercould come only from the same source fromwhich Jesus had drawn his observation: the hu-man heart on which God’s law has been writtenby the Spirit. Insight into the human heart woulddeepen only as people pursued across life theinner journey towards self-knowledge and for-mation of conscience.

Jesus also picked up on the prophets’ con-stant reminder that service of God presupposesright relationships with each other. Worship ofGod cannot sidestep works of mercy and jus-tice.

Why did Matthew choose this issue as hisfirst illustration of Jesus’ fulfilling the Torah?It hardly seems a serious moral matter. Theproblem lies precisely in the fact that peopleare so culturally conditioned to respond to oth-ers as rivals and threats and to see interpersonalconflict as inevitable, that they cannot imaginea society where people interact differently. Yet,if the primary instrument of the Christian re-sponsibility to be salt of the earth and light ofthe world is the witness of the Christian com-munity, it is precisely such everyday issues asconflict resolution and constant commitment togenuine intimacy and trust that distinguish lifein the kingdom from the surrounding ego-drivenculture.

In today’s world, it is often this lack of pro-found respect, not only between ChristianChurches but within the Church, that reducesits attractiveness and credibility within societyat large.

Women’s Dignity (5.27-32). Matthewmoved on from his consideration of the lack ofmutual respect and trust in society, and the ad-dictive response to control and dominate towhich it gave rise, to consider one particularinstance of that response: Jesus’ concern for thedignity and worth of women in the Christian

community. He extended the Torah’s prohibi-tion of adultery to include also the attitudes ofmale lust from which it flows. The lust that Je-sus had in mind was the attitude that saw womenas possessions, for male use, and that basedhuman relationships on power and exploitation,rather than on mutual respect and intimacy.

Jesus then proceeded to abolish the Torah’srequirement that men give to their divorcedwives a certificate testifying to their divorce bycalling into question the assumption on whichit was based. In Jesus’ mind, marriage was es-sentially a commitment to lifelong intimacy inwhich divorce should have no place.

By challenging these unquestioned patriar-chal attitudes of the culture, Jesus did more thaninterpret the law: he abandoned it. But, unlikethe Pharisees, he did not substitute for it an-other law of his own making. Twenty years later,Paul felt perfectly free to re-interpret the wordsof Jesus on divorce, though he was plainlyaware of them (1 Cor.7:12-16). Like Jesus, Pauldrew on the same radical demands of genuinelove and sought to apply them within a mixedJewish-Hellenistic context not envisaged byJesus.

By its clearly counter-cultural recognitionof the equal dignity of women and men, theChristian community would witness to the worldthe priority of intimacy over power in regulat-ing life in society.

Human Communication (5.33-37). The in-timacy presupposed in such a kingdom-com-munity could be built only on the basis of deeptrust. Against such a background, Matthew re-ported Jesus’ insistence on honesty at all times.Like a number of Pharisees of his time, Jesusrejected the trivialisation of God’s name in-volved in the practice of oath-taking to certifythe truth. But, rather than adopt their scrupu-lous and casuistic substituting of other basesfor oaths, he left no room for different levels of‘truth’ at all. ‘Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or‘No, No’’. Jesus’ critique of the Torah camefrom his recognition that honest and responsi-ble communication is indispensable for trust,as trust is essential for community.

THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT

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COMPASS

Interactions in the Broader Community(5.38-41). Having dealt briefly with issues af-fecting the witness capability of the Christiancommunity, Matthew drew on Jesus’ sayingsdealing with its direct interactions with the sur-rounding world. In a world dominated by com-petition, rivalry, self-interest and power, theywere to be different. They were not forcibly toresist the evildoer; they were not to get caughtin the endless cycle of retaliation and venge-ance, from which, precisely, the world needs tobe saved.

If not forcible resistance, then what? Mat-thew proceeded to give three instances of non-violent resistance, each involving an assertionof personal dignity, and the deliberate adoptionof a stance of vulnerability in love. By such re-sponses, disciples would challenge evildoersand confront them with their violence, and, bysuch challenge, hope to conscientise and con-vert them.

The first illustration was of a persondismissively slapped on the right cheek (with aright-handed backhander?). The person of-fended was to stand tall, and to turn the leftcheek to the offender (and thereby to confrontthe offender with the choice either deliberatelyand consciously to use an open hand or clenchedfist, or to recognise the injustice and desist).

The second illustration was based on Ro-man military regulations that allowed soldiersto force local residents to carry their packs, butset the limit at one mile. By going the secondmile, the conscripted resident would put the sol-dier in the uncertain position of being repri-manded by his commanding officer.

The third illustration used the tool of ridi-cule. Before the money-lender illegally de-manding to hold a debtor’s outer garment aspledge on a loan, the debtor was publicly toremove his inner garment and stand naked,thereby denying co-dependence, confrontingthe injustice, seeking to conscientise and hop-ing to convert the unjust offender!

Freedom to be Generous (5.42). To the threeillustrations of non-violent resistance, Matthewadded another of Jesus’ sayings. Though it did

not refer to evildoers, it continued the theme offreely chosen vulnerability: Give to everyonewho begs from you, and do not refuse anyonewho wants to borrow from you. In a worldwhere most people struggled to survive belowor just at subsistence level, Christian disciples,though desperately poor themselves, were todemonstrate solidarity and constant readinessto share.

The genuine needs of others are a constantreminder that love is always at a price, and thatthose who have been empowered to love haveaccepted their vulnerability and the pain in-volved in sharing generously.

The saying was attached awkwardly to whatpreceded it, and can get lost in the colourfuldetail of the illustrations it followed. Yet, fortoday’s Christians, it almost serves as a litmustest of their openness to the word of Jesus. Theglobal village has replaced the rural world ofGalilee. The statistics of poverty on a worldscale match closely the levels of the more lo-calised poverty confronted by Jesus. People inthe Third World beg from their comfortableneighbours in the First. Poor nations have beenforced to borrow, and repay their loans, at ratesthat ensure their continuing repression.

Unconditional Love (5.43-48). Matthewcompleted his review of Jesus’ fulfilment of theTorah with an explicit examination of the issueof love, on which the whole discussion so farhad been based. Jesus firstly clarified the in-junction to ‘love your neighbour’, found in theTorah; and moved on to contradict the attitudeclearly expressed in various Hebrew Scriptures,though never formally enunciated as law, abouthatred of Israel’s (and one’s own) enemies. Je-sus insisted that disciples love even their en-emies, and pray for those who persecute them.

Some would see this as the most distinctiveand challenging of all Jesus’ moral teachings.Certainly, it provides the explanation, motiva-tion and spirit behind all that Jesus had so farsaid about conflict resolution, the dignity ofwomen, trusting communication within commu-nity and non-violence.

Up to this point, although Jesus’ teaching

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had been clear enough, he had offered no rea-sons why disciples should behave in the wayshe indicated (other than that the merciful wouldreceive mercy, the pure of heart would see God,and the peace-makers would be called childrenof God). At this stage, he explained that suchbehaviour reflected the approach of God; anddisciples who wished to be like God, childrenof the Father, would find themselves drawn andempowered to act similarly.

God’s love is indiscriminate. God makes hissun rise on the evil and on the good, and sendsrain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Suchlove is not a reaction dependent on people’sperformance. Love flows freely from the heartof God because that is simply the way that Godis. God’s love is free response, not conditionedreaction. God is consistently free. God’s essenceis sheer love—what Matthew calls ‘perfect’. Je-sus calls his disciples to such freedom, and incalling them, he offers them the capacity to besuch: ‘Be perfect as your heavenly Father is per-fect’.

Until love is undiscriminating, until itreaches out equally to enemies as to friends,until it is ready to accept the vulnerability im-plied by it, until it is prepared, in a world stillgoverned by competitiveness, rivalry, powerand violence, to be victimised by those loved,it has still to grow. Unlike the tax-collectors andGentiles who surrounded them, and whose lovetended to be restricted to those who first lovedthem, Christian disciples were called to the in-credible freedom of spontaneous and genuinelyunconditioned love.

The Way of Jesus

Such was the love mirrored by Jesus. He knewquite clearly where his choice to love wouldlead him—to death. He lived with constant vul-nerability. He realised quite well, as the proph-ets before him had recognised, that a world gov-erned by rivalry, power and violence could notcope with one who lived and preached a mes-sage of unadulterated love. It would certainly

seek to destroy him. But no one could stop himloving. He chose freely to continue, even thoughhe knew he would be victim of the world’s fearand hatred.

By turning the other cheek, by giving hiscloak, by going the extra mile, he stood tall; herevealed the world’s endemic violence for whatit was; and called and enabled people to recog-nise their violence, to convert and to base theirlives instead on love.

Conclusion

The illustrations used by Jesus in Matthew’sSermon on the Mount were culturally condi-tioned; some seem ‘over the top’. Their pur-pose was to stimulate the reflection of the hear-ers, and to alert them to similar possibilities inother situations they might confront. Like para-bles, they left listeners wondering how seriouslyJesus meant to be taken. The pragmatic answerto that question is given only by listeners them-selves, and will reflect the level of their owngrowth into the mind and heart of Jesus. Disci-ples’ insights develop across time as their wis-dom deepens. Their answers need always to beprovisional. It can be disturbing and uncom-fortable to cultivate within us the heart of Je-sus.

Across the centuries the constant tempta-tion has been to domesticate the radical teach-ings of Jesus. Perhaps that is inevitable, giventhat discipleship, as distinct from Church mem-bership, is always a work in progress, and thatJesus’ mind is accessed only as people grow inwisdom. This might explain why the kingdom,promised by Jesus as near, still seems so faraway.

If the kingdom is still in process, it is be-cause God will not treat human persons as non-responsible and unfree. There is no shortcut togrowing responsibly and freely into love. Untila critical mass of its members embarks on the‘second conversion’, the witness of the Churchis doomed to be as ineffective as ‘salt that haslost its taste’ (5.13).

THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT

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COMPASS

The following is a brief overview of the read-ings of the Liturgy of the Word for major cel-ebrations proclaimed while this issue of Com-pass is current. It focuses on the readings forSundays of Year B, between January and April,2009, from the Solemnity of Mary, the Motherof Jesus, (Jan 1) to the Third Sunday of Easter(April 26) Please feel free to use or adapt thesereflections, with the customary acknowledge-ment of source.

Readings for Ordinary Time

In the readings for Ordinary Time (from Janu-ary 25, OT 3) the gospel selection from Markcontinues with the Jesus’ call of his first disci-ples and ‘the first days’ of his healing andteaching ministry. His proclamation in wordand deed reveals that God is present and ac-tive amongst human beings, especially re-vealed in Jesus’ response to the rejected andexcluded.

The first readings in February echo simi-lar themes about God’s action amongst the Is-raelite people in their life struggles (Job, OT5), purity sanctions (Leviticus, OT 6) andexilic experience (Hosea, OT 8). The secondreadings are drawn from Paul’s writings to the

Corinthian followers of Jesus. He writes toencourage their unity (OT 6), and offer an ap-preciation of God’s utter commitment to hu-manity in Jesus (OT 7), the source of every-thing (OT 8). Before we begin Lent, all thereadings over Ordinary Time in this early partof the year are replete with rich themes thatreflect on the heart of faith in God and Jesus.Finally, another reminder about the back-ground to Mark’s gospel, the key gospelthroughout Year B: Mk’s gospel is written fora struggling urban collection of Jesus housechurches possibly in Rome around 70 CE.Mark seeks to address serious issues concernedwith fidelity to Jesus, internal division andreligious compromise that have seen some ofMark’s Jesus householders placed under ar-rest, even executed. The struggles and divi-sions experienced by Mark’s first century com-munity in a world of political tension and re-flected in the gospel make it relevant for Aus-tralian Christians; it will encourage and chal-lenge throughout 2009.

Readings for Lent

During Lent, the scripture readings invite par-ticular focus as we prepare for the highlight

PREPARING TO CELEBRATE THE LITURGYOF THE WORD

JANUARY to APRIL 2009

From the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of Jesus (Jan. 1) to the third Sunday ofEaster (April 26)

Prepared by Michael Trainor

PART ONE: OVERVIEW OF THE READINGS

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of the liturgical year, Holy Week.The first readings of the first three Sundays

of Lent celebrate an aspect of salvation history:God’s initiative in committing to a liberatingcovenant with all of the cosmos (Lent 1),Abraham’s faith (Lent 2), and God’s response tothe desert wandering Israelites (Lent 3).

The second reading over these first threeSundays continue to proclaim aspects that re-flect on the mystery of God: liberating love(Lent 1), total commitment to humanity (Lent2) and God’s expression in Jesus (Lent 3). TheGospels of the first two Sundays take up theclassical themes of Lent as reflected throughMark’s Gospel: Jesus’ Baptism (Lent 1) andTransfiguration (Lent 2)

The Gospel readings from John over Lent3-5 emphasise the religious and faith-filleddynamic that comes through people’s encoun-ters with John’s figure of Jesus. Though alter-native extracts are offered (and a brief wordon each is added below), the usually preferredreadings are from Jn 4, Jn 9, and Jn 11. Thesereadings are central for our reflection and cel-ebration of Lent and touch at the most essen-tial aspects of religious living: our thirst forGod (in the story of the woman at the well,Lent 3), our need for spiritual insight intoGod’s life within that will deeply touch ourhearts (in the story of the man born blind, Lent4), and our search for ultimate life (the raisingof Lazarus, Lent 5).

The First Testament readings (Old Tes-tament) for Lent 3-5 explore themes linked toJohn’s Gospel and form part of the story ofthe Israelite community (water, light, life). Thesecond readings (Rom and Eph) continue tocelebrate aspects of the mystery of God re-flected in Jesus.

The Central Liturgical Celebrations ofHoly Week

• The two gospel readings from Passion Sun-

day and Easter allow us to reflect on Jesusfrom Mark’s perspective. These readings of-fer us the climax of Mark’s Gospel: Jesus,the abandoned and lonely one—isolated fromhis family and disciples, even experiencingabandonment from God (‘My God, my God,why have you abandoned me?’)—enters intohis suffering and death with fidelity. Nothingsways him from his commitment to God, de-spite abandonment.

Passion Sunday invites us to enter intoMark’s narrative of the suffering and dyingJesus, be with him and identity with how he ismisunderstood and rejected. In the EasterGospel notice how the angelic young manpoints the women to the place of solitude, ab-sence and isolation: the empty tomb: ‘He hasbeen raised. He is not here. See / contemplate,where they laid him!’ The tomb is the symbolof emptiness and ‘nothingness.’ Its contempla-tion prepares for God’s act, for resurrection.In other words, for Mark’s household of dis-ciples and our own, failure not success laysthe possibility of the future and the encounterwith the resurrected Jesus. When one is leftwith nothing, what is there left?• This view of Mark’s Gospel at the begin-ning and end of Holy Week creates a con-trasting frame to what occurs in the Gospelreadings in the middle of Holy Week, withthe Mass of the Lord’s Supper and the Cel-ebration of the Lord’s Passion. Here John’sGospel is the centre-piece. Rather thanMark’s solitary figure, we have John’s Je-sus who is confident, aware of God’s pres-ence and in charge of the events that sur-round his passion. He commissions his dis-ciples to lead through service. The passionis the moment of victory, glorification andenthronement. It is as though, for John, thefaithful reader cannot distinguish betweenJesus’ death and Resurrection. They are twoaspects of the one event celebrated in thePassion.

PREPARING TO CELEBRATE THE LITURGY OF THE WORD

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January 1—New Year’s Day: Solemnity ofMary, Mother of Jesus. Nm 6:22-27. The writerdescribes God’s blessing poured out upon a priestlypeople. Gal 4:4-7. Paul affirms Jesus’ human birththrough Mary, subject to life’s limitations. ThroughJesus we know that our relationship to God is thesame as his. Lk 2:16-21. The shepherds come tosee the child lying in a place of feeding. Theme—God’s Blessing. The first reading invites us to con-sider the kinds of blessings we would like God tobestow upon us, our family, friends and world.January 4, 2009—Epiphany: Is 60:1-6. The peo-ple of God will be blest with a divine light thatwill attract all the nations of the earth. Eph 3:2-3.5-6. God’s gift of solidarity with humanity(‘grace’) is now affirmed and revealed, even to themost unexpected of peoples (‘Gentiles’). Mt 2:1-12. The Magi, rather than magicians, astronomersor kings, are rather royal servants who find Jesusfrom their observance of the heavens and theirconsultation of the Jewish scriptures. Theme—TheDivine Quest. Every person is on a search. Theultimate search is for God. Epiphany celebrates theChristian search as disciples of Jesus. The searchis discovered and clarified through meditating onour history, creation and Scripture:January 11—Baptism of Jesus: Is 55:1-11. Theprophet’s invitation is to—Come! Be quenched!Live!.and Seek! 1 Jn 5:1-9. Our faith in Jesus al-lows God to bring us to life. Mk 1:7-11. Jesus isbaptised by John in the Jordan. The heavens are‘torn apart’ and the heavenly permeates the earth.Theme—Baptismal renewal: The first readingnames the essential desires of our lives, realised inbaptism and through communion with God in Je-sus. As we renew our vows of baptism, we recom-mit our selves to care for the planet and each other.January 18—Ordinary Time 2: 1 Sam 3:3-10.19.The young Samuel hears God calling but needs thehelp of another to know that it is God who calls. 1Cor 6:13-15.17-20. Paul affirms the centrality ofour physical bodies for our faith lives. Our bodiesare important. We live as human beings not as an-gels. Jn 1:35-42. This second extract from Jn’sGospel in the year of Mk has John the Baptiserdirect his disciples to Jesus who invites them tocome and stay with him. Theme—EncounteringGod. Friendship with God lies at the heart of eve-

rything. Samuel (first reading) hears God’s call butneeds help to recognise it; John the Baptist’s dis-ciples see Jesus but need help to follow him andtime to become his followers. The readings inviteour encounter with a companionable God revealedin Jesus. We, like the Baptiser’s disciples, are in-vited to ‘come and stay’ with him.January 25—Ordinary Time 3: Jonah 3:1-5.10.Jonah calls on the people of Nineveh to repent,and, to his surprise, they do! 1 Cor 7:29-31. Paulponders the larger context by which life is lived—God. Mk 1:14-20. Jesus’ first words in Mk’s gos-pel encourage a change of attitude (‘repent’) andan openness to God’s call (‘believe in the gospel’)revealed in Jesus. These are the key qualities fordiscipleship in the rest of Mk’s gospel. Theme—Openness. Both Jonah and Mark encourage a spiritof repentance. This is not the breast-beating atti-tude of one who should feel guilty or a permanentfeeling of paranoid moral corruption. Rather ‘re-pentance’ (metanoia, in Mk’s Greek) is an attitudeof openness to change. This is an attitude of theheart that allows God’s project (as expressed byPaul) to shape one’s life.February 1—Ordinary Time 4: Dt 18: 15-20.God promises the Israelites a prophet who willspeak God’s word. 1 Cor 7: 32-35. Paul encour-ages the Corinthian followers of Jesus to be freedfrom anxiety. Mk 1: 21-28. This is the first of manyexorcisms in Mk. Jesus confronts and defeats thepower of evil resident within a religious institu-tion. Theme-Freedom. The gospel focuses on Je-sus’ intent to heal and liberate one who is pos-sessed. This desire for liberation is also Paul’s in-tent for the Corinthians.February 8— Ordinary Time 5: Job 7:1-4.6-7.Job laments the struggles of daily life. 1Cor 9:16-19.22-23. Paul reflects on his mission for all. Mk1:29-39. A daily snap-shot of Jesus’ healing min-istry in the opening chapter of Mk. Theme—DailyLiving: Struggle, boredom and toil are part of dailyliving. Job reflects upon such a life and Jesus min-isters healing within this context. These images,drawn from Job and Mk, provide a way of celebrat-ing human existence, honouring people’s strugglesand recognizing the possibility of God’s healingpresence through the faith community.February 15—Ordinary Time 6. Lev 13:1-2,45-

PART TWO: NOTES ON THE READINGS

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46. Purity regulations especially for contractibleskin conditions are spelt out to protect the sanctityof a close-knit community. 1 Cor 10:23-11:1. Unity

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death are paths to life with God. Who suffers andcries aloud today in our midst? Who seek to trulybe alive in our communities and churches?April 5—Passion: Mk 11:1-10. Jesus’ discipleswelcome him into Jerusalem. Is 50:4-7. God’s serv-ant is attentive and trusts God, despite rejectionand suffering. Phil 2:6-11. One of the great songsof Holy Week: Jesus is God’s servant, who choosesto be like all human beings, and God exalts him.Mk 14-15. The climax of Mk, the passion story ofJesus’ suffering and ultimate abandonment.Theme—Abandonment. Jesus comes to claim hispeople as their leader and his leadership is one ofsuffering; Jesus’ who dies abandoned is able toidentify with all who feel abandoned, desolate andlonely. Mk’s Jesus is not an exalted figure, butmisunderstood and rejected. The passion story fromMk offers an opportunity to identify with Jesus inthis week, and to be with those who experienceabandonment and isolation in our world.April 9—The Lord’s Supper: Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14. The first Passover is remembered: God deliv-ers Israel through the blood of the Passover Lamb.1 Cor 11:23-26. Paul reminds the divided Chris-tians at Corinth about what lies at the heart of cel-ebrating the Lord’s Supper. Jn 13:1-15. In the actof washing his disciples’ feet, John’s Jesus offersthe model of active, community service. Theme—Service: This celebration reaches into the heart ofevery parish and faith community: selfless servicefocused on the Eucharist. How can we celebratethis happening in our midst and encourage it todeepen?April 10—Good Friday: Is 52:13-53:12. This isthe climactic ‘servant song’ celebrating the vicari-ous nature of the servant’s suffering, for the wel-fare of all. Heb 4:14-16; 5:7-9. Jesus is compas-sionate High Priest, with God, who knows oursufferings and weaknesses. Jn 18:1-19:42. Thispassion narrative, unlike Mk’s, is a true celebra-tion of victory over death. In fourteen dramaticscenes Jesus is presented as Lamb, judge, victor,source of Church’s life. Theme—Victory: Jesus, as

the Passover Lamb who brings people to life, isvictorious over death. Rather than a sombre ormournful liturgy, the readings encourage a confi-dence in God who is able to bring victory fromdeath. This is a much-needed focus in a world pre-occupied with war and retaliation..April 12—Easter: Feast of the Resurrection: Mk16:1- 8. This is the most important gospel procla-mation in the whole year: Mark’s Jesus is resur-rected and the women are encouraged to ponderthe place of emptiness, the tomb. Resurrection oc-curs in the most unlikely setting and moment—theplace of death and hopelessness.April 19—Easter 2: Acts 4:32-35. The power ofthe resurrection is evident in the fledgling Chris-tian community of Jerusalem. 1 Jn 5:1-6. Faith inJesus and his resurrection makes us ‘begotten byGod.’ We are in tune with God and experienceGod’s life within. Jn 20:19-31. The resurrectedJesus offers his frightened disciples peace. Heempowers them with authority to forgive sin.Theme—Forgiveness. The resurrected Jesus con-tinues to breathe into his community today the spiritof peace and forgiveness. Where is this seen, iden-tified and celebrated?April 26—Easter 3. Acts 3:13-15, 17-19. Peter’sfirst sermon to the Jerusalemites is a summary ofthe gospel of Luke (the writer of Acts) and an invi-tation to a spirit of ongoing ‘conversion.’ 1 Jn 2:1-5. Even sin cannot separate us from God becauseof Jesus’ advocacy. Lk 24:35-48. The risen Jesusappears into the midst of his frightened disciplesand eats a meal with them. The evangelist under-scores the reality of the resurrection. Theme—Re-ality of Resurrection. In Luke’s gospel, the disci-ples first think that they are seeing a ghost (in Greek‘phantasmos’) when Jesus appears among them.The resurrection is not a myth or invention by well-meaning believers. That Jesus rose from death is ahistorical truth. It is a reality that affects our be-ing, the universe and the soul of our communities.What are some of the signs of resurrectional life inour midst? What can we celebrate?

Scripture is most alive and imbued with spiritual energy during Mass, when theword that is proclaimed is heard, understood, loved and interiorised. This presup-poses great familiarity with the text which is attained only by constant reading ofthe word of God.

—Synod on the Word of God, Relatio post disceptationem, 24.

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