From time to time readers ask, “How do you study Scripture?” The Church has much wisdom to give us about how to study Scripture and apply it to our lives. Today’s readings lend themselves to consideration of that question and some of the Church’s answer.
The Question to Jesus
Our Gospel reading begins today with a Scripture scholar asking Jesus a question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” That is essentially the question behind all our Scripture study. We do not read Scripture for entertainment or curiosity or to consider if it is true or not. We read and study Scripture because we see it as God’s Truth. In Scripture, God tells us what we need to know to live with him forever. Though God spoke in Scripture through many authors over many centuries, God is the author of the Bible. God is Truth and God speaks Truth to us in Scripture. (CCC 105-107)
Jesus’ Answers
Jesus answers the scholar with a question: “What is written in the law? How do you read it?”
The scholar replies, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”
This small exchange shows a very important point of how Catholics view Scripture. The catechism explains this well:
Still, the Christian faith is not a “religion of the book.” Christianity is the religion of the “Word” of God, a word which is “not a written and mute word, but the Word which is incarnate and living.” If the Scriptures are not to remain a dead letter, Christ, the eternal Word of the living God, must, through the Holy Spirit, “open [our] minds to understand the Scriptures.” (CCC 108)
In other words, reading Scripture is meant to be a conversation between God and us. God in Scripture speaks to us through the Holy Spirit that lives within us. We read and think. We read and have emotional and thoughtful responses as we apply Scripture to what’s happening to us today. Jesus wanted to know how the scholar was applying the Hebrew Scriptures to his own life.
But neither Jesus nor the scholar stopped there. Notice a sentence that might get lost to us because of the story that follows: “But because he wished to justify himself, he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
God’s Truth for Us
We bring ourselves, just as we are, to Scripture. We bring our level of Christian and personal maturity. We bring our known and unrecognized sins. We bring the problems of the day that trouble us. Then we encounter God’s Word—God’s voice to us, here and now, at this very moment. God speaks in the Scripture. We speak in how we respond to what “jumps out at us.” That is how we know God’s Word, God’s Truth, for us TODAY.
In the conversation in today’s reading, Jesus responds with the parable of the Good Samaritan. When he does, he shows another core concept of how Catholics read Scripture: we read it to be converted. If Jesus had told the same story, except with a Jewish scribe in the hero role, the scholar would have likely felt justified. “Ah, yes,” he might have said, “yes, to do good to others is a part of the Law.” He would have felt justified and left as he was, not converted.
But that wasn’t what Jesus did. In the culture of Jesus’ day, Samaritans were people on the fringes. They were considered as outside of God’s Providence. They were people of the opposite polarity—to put it in terms of our times. “What?” The scholar must have asked himself. “Why would this rabbi put that unexpected factor in the story?” Not only that, but Jesus finished with the instruction “Go and do likewise.” Was rabbi Jesus saying that he, an up-and-coming student of the law, should take for his model a man from society’s fringes? How could that be?
Well, yes, that was what Jesus was saying, and that was probably a disturbing thought. I have heard it said that the purpose of Scripture is “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” And that is a part of how the Catholic Church sees Scripture: it is to have a personal effect on us. That effect may be comforting or disturbing. But it does not leave us as we were.
Safeguards
The Church also gives us some safeguards for interpreting Scripture. As St. Paul says today to the Galatians: there is one Gospel of Jesus Christ. Though Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John give four different perspectives of Jesus, his teaching and person is the same in all four Gospels. Those Gospels are the core of faith because they are the stories of the living Word of God. All the other verses of all the other books of the Bible need to be interpreted in light of the Gospel message.
The catechism outlines those safeguards this way:
- Be especially attentive “to the content and unity of the whole of Scripture.” In other words, we are not to find a verse or phrase in Scripture and take it out of context to mean something that conflicts with the general meaning of Scripture.
- Read the Scripture within “the living Tradition of the whole Church.” Again, we are encouraged to also interpret a particular passage in light of how the Church has come to understand it. That is why writings of early Church fathers, medieval monks, and saints of all ages are considered as we think about what Scripture says to us. Pope Francis, in fact, used today’s Gospel in a prominent way in his new encyclical, Fratelli tutti, that was written to guide our world to recover from the COVID pandemic. He signed it in Assisi on Saturday. In it, he uses the parable of the Good Samaritan to organize his thoughts about how to make the world a more equitable place.
- Be attentive to the analogy of faith—that we have different gifts and ministries—there is an element of individual calling in how we interpret and apply Scripture. (CCC 109-114)
Applications
If you wanted to, you could probably surf the internet to find 10 Catholic interpretations via reflection or homily of today’s readings. There would be similarities and differences, but, hopefully, they would all match the criteria I’ve quoted here from the Catholic catechism.
For myself, in part because readers comment it is helpful, I try to include background information about a text to help readers see how it fits into the cohesive whole of God’s Word. I give a bit of how I apply it to me—hopefully enough to spark your own prayer.
Last week, in writing about Job, it seemed to me that the opening lines about a conversation between God and Satan could be interpreted “out of context” to mean that God would kill someone’s family without consideration of the people. That is an interpretation that would be outside the Gospel message. I mentioned that Job was a “teaching story,” which is a genre of the Wisdom literature of which Job is a part. I did that to help put those verses in context of the whole. (BTW, Job could also be biographical, but it’s purpose was teaching people how to deal with suffering, not narrative history.) That, I hope, was an example of giving contextual background to help us all interpret Scripture wisely.
And What about You?
Perhaps this extra information today is helpful to you. Perhaps not. If not, I encourage you to dig to find the meaning God has for you today:
- Read today’s readings slowly. Maybe a couple of times. What phrase or idea jumps out at you?
- Think about that. That is what God wants to talk to you about today. What question might you ask of that reading and phrase? Ask it of God.
- Read the Scripture with the phrase or idea in it again. How do you respond? What emotions and counter thoughts does the passage give you? Are you disturbed or peaceful? Talk to God about all that.
- Now rest. Sit. Something might emerge—a comfort, an idea about what you might do, a discomfort, a stirring. Give that to God, and, through the day, or maybe in a week or two, see what God does with it.
Prayer:
Your Word, Lord, is a lamp for my feet and a light to my path. Lead me, guide me.
Note: Paragraphs 101 through 141 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church describe how the Church sees reading Scripture. Die Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation from Vatican II, puts Church teaching on Scripture in full context with some beautiful wording.
