Verbum Domini II—God’s Word Goes Out to the Nations

On several occasions Jesus of Nazareth, the Teacher, sent his friends and disciples to carry to others the Message of the Kingdom. Sometimes on foot, sent out in pairs, from the rooftops, using all sorts of media. And in those gatherings they reminded others of the deeds and miracles they had witnessed. Such as on the occasion in which the multitude was hungry, where Jesus multiplied the fish and bread. And then he told them to gather up the left-over food. This would serve them well later, as well as to remember the miracle. Everything, even that which appeared to be insignificant, was important.

Years went by. They continued to remember, but these were later generations. The living memory was written down. Those documents were preserved, those pieces of cloth, parchment, bits of ceramic which on one occasion was found stamped with the memory of Yahve’s presence, Jesus, of the Chosen People. Many of those scripts were passed down from generation to generation. Some outlived the Roman invasions, the Temple’s destruction, the debacle of a village. Yet, although they were simple pieces, with no apparent value, for the believers they contained fragments of the living Word of the Lord. And they needed to care for them like great treasure.

Centuries have now passed. But those remains, those ceramic bits, those manuscripts have been preserved. And a family of believers in the Lord Jesus, in a God who is our Father, have dedicated their energies for years to gather those lost texts, those objects that, at one time, were used in the community to make known, to praise, and to learn about the Lord.

The Green family, who for years have dedicated themselves to gather those fragments, like the apostles who gathered the left-overs of the multiplied bread, those texts, those ceramic bits and writings, they wanted everyone to see. Those objects will be a part of a Museum, the Museum of the Bible, so that others can appreciate and study them, and be available to serve all. There will be room in this institution for biblical objects proceeding from diverse traditions of faith based on the Bible. From the respected and age-old tradition of Judaism to the diverse groups of the Christian faith such as the Reformed tradition, as well as Catholic and Orthodox.

While that Museum opens its doors there will be an exposition of some of the backgrounds which, in the future, will be incorporated in permanent, as well as temporary, expositions in the Museum.

This exposition will take place in Vatican City, near Peter’s tomb, who was one of the twelve followers of Jesus. Between April 1 and June 22 we will have the opportunity to contemplate these treasures of the Green Collection together with other artefacts on loan, the property of cultural and ecclesiastic institutions such as the Vatican Library and Museum. Among the hundreds of objects to be exhibited we underscore ten, considered the TOP TEN:

1. Three fragments of the Dead Sea scrolls, the oldest known texts of the Hebrew Scriptures. 
2. A double page of the “Codex Vaticanus”, one of the four uncial codices, that is, the oldest complete manuscripts of the Greek Bible, from around the years 325 to 350 A.D. This is a loan from the Vatican Library, in Vatican City. 
3. Five pages of the Bodner Codex of the Psalms, which contains the nearly complete Book of Psalms in Greek. Written on papyrus and dated from the Third and Fourth Centuries A.D. 
4. Pages of the Rescriptus Climaci Codex, a manuscript in palimpsest, which contains the text of the Bible in Greek from the Eighth Century and texts of the Sixth Century in Christian-Palestinian Aramaic, a language similar to the Aramaic that Jesus spoke. 
5. A copy of the complete Bible of Tours, the oldest known copy of this Bible edited and published by Alcuino of York in the Ninth Century in the Abbey of San Martin in Tours, France. A work on loan, which is the property of the Library of the Abbey of Saint Gall in Switzerland. 
6. The “Bath Old English Gospels”, a copy of the only complete translation of the Gospels in ancient English, done in the Ninth Century and, for the first time in history, is presented in an exhibition outside of Britain. On loan from the Parker Library of Corpus Christi College, which is part of the University of Cambridge. 
7. A fragment never before presented of the first commentaries in Hebrew on the Pentateuch prepared by Rabi Sa´adia Gaon and dated in the Eleventh Century, discovered in Geniza of the Sinagogue of Ben Ezra in El Cairo, Egypt. 
8. The “Book of Hours and Psalter” of Elizabeth of Bohun, countess of Northampton, edited in the Fourteenth Century and one of the most extensively decorated manuscripts that exist in its class. 
9. A sample of the first edition of the King James Bible - the great “HE” Biblia of 1611- the most influential translation of the Bible ever produced in the English language. 
10. One of the three Rolls of the Torah from the Jewish community of Kaifeng, in China. On loan from the Bridwell Library Special Collections, of the Perkins Theological Seminary, annex of the Southern Metodist University.

Exhibition Photo Gallery

“All of it was very good”

The history of Judeo-Christian salvation presented in the Bible opens in the book of Genesis in the Old Testament with a marvelous statement: “God looked at what he had done. All of it was very good!” (Gen 1,31). However, the obvious tragedy of evil, the overwhelming evidence of suffering, pain, violence, injustice, iniquity, and death… in the world, experienced in a thousand conflicts that are individual, or in the family, social or international contexts, cause men to ask, since the beginning, about the reasons for this disorder, for the attacks against the original harmony that God gave to his creation.

The biblical and Christian interpretation perceives the experience and the cause of evil as “sins” (plural, in the Old Testament) and as “sin” hamartía (Greek, singular, in the New Testament). This latter interpretation, of greater interest to us as Christians, as men and women of the New Testament, consists in a structural posture, a fundamental option of human life that is contrary to our Creator and compassionate and merciful Father, contrary to his will, and in the final analysis, contrary to brotherly love (especially toward the weakest), as revealed by Jesus of Nazareth. We should love in the same way and in the same proportion as God loves us. Thus, if life in God is life in love, sin is life without God, that is, without love, and the terrible manifestations of evil are understood as an absence of God’s love in the life of men and women, his creatures, his children. But, on the other hand, every definitive healing of any experience of evil in the world –-from a Christian viewpoint–- comes from the love of God among men.

In this historical juncture between modernity and post-modernity, people today are searching, without an absolute truth to orient and regulate their life. Human life today is lived out in the moral relativism of half truths, of pocket truths, of a life style that is “yours to choose,” according to which nothing has value or all has equal value in the practical sense that it gives satisfaction here and now; for we live each day without a transcendent vision of history and with the sad perspective of no future. The only thing that matters today is immediate satisfaction and all is valued or justified for that purpose.

In the world of moral relativism, laxity, subjectivism, and sentiments (as opposed to reason), a theological interpretation of evil, universal and objective, has lost its place, since everything is valid today, especially if it is prohibited, as long as it produces pleasure. On the other side we find the postures and behaviors of men and women, more appropriate to modernity, that tends to judge everything as evil, as sin, rigorously, scrupulously and, in the words of Jesus himself, “strain the gnat and swallow the camel”. Lent reminds us that not everything is sinful, although sin exists: the denial of God’s will that requires us to love each other as brothers for the construction of a better society and world than that in which we live and for which all of us are responsible.

“The Lord saw how bad the people on earth were and that everything they thought and planned was evil. ⁶ He was very sorry that he had made them…”(Gen 6,5-6). Lent, the liturgical season with a strong call for conversion (metanoia) is, above all, an important moment to again interpret the world and human history in light of the One upon whom our life depends. Through Christ, with Him and in Him, humanity has a new opportunity and Lent needs to be seen as an appropriate time to look again at our life and that of our neighbors according to God’s desire that we discover his love, yet at the same time, unveils our denial of God’s love and the love of our brothers. A time in which we need to discover our sin: our lying, our uselessness, our deceptions and fears; in reality, our lack of faith which is a lack of confidence in God who has been loving us and calling us eternally to his home, to life in Him.

          The conversion to which the Word of God and the liturgy of the Catholic Church calls us in the season of Lent consists of an awareness of God’s love manifested in our life, in all that we are and have and, with that, the awareness of our sin as a fundamental posture contrary to the basic love of God. Lent is a season for sincere repentance, to conform our life to the life that Jesus proposes for us in his gospel and for an absolute confidence in the forgiving love of the Father.

          All this, contrary to a society that is apparently satisfied, proud, egotistical, with its scientific and technical conquests that instead of leading us to “love one another,” have left us enclosed behind walls, full of the most sophisticated weapons designed to kill, far from life in the original Paradise for which we were created.

Lent is a call to build an ethical and moral society. The “amorality” (life without moral norms) and “immorality” (life that is opposed to moral principles) of so many, traverses these days the highways of the world, opening trenches of violence, blood, death, crisis, wars, divisions, hunger, injustice, iniquity, misery, etc.

The Christian theological system enables believers in Christ to again start something fresh, begin again, trust again in a loving Father, enjoy the embrace of his eternal love. The Sacrament of Reconciliation enables us to experience that the original harmony is still possible, that broken relations with God, with others and with nature can be finally healed and that the goodness of all things that God loved on the first day of creation is also possible today.

I invite you to live intensely this Lenten season of 2014 as a precious space and time which the Catholic liturgy grants us the possibility to seek again among us the lost Paradise that God made when he “saw that all of it was very good”.

“A joy that no one can take away from you” (John 16,22)

On November 24, 2013, with the conclusion of the year of faith, the solemnity of Jesus Christ, King of the universe, and the first year of the pontificate of Francis, the apostolic exhortation EVANGELII GAUDIUM (The joy of the Gospel) was published in Rome, a document that can be considered as the thinking and pathway of what Pope Francis wants his pontificate to be and, therefore, his vision for the mission of the church in this significant historical and social juncture of the human journey.

From the joy that springs from the gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ that calls human beings to live as children of God and brothers of all in the certainty of a God revealed by Jesus Christ as a compassionate and merciful Father, Pope Francis calls all the members of the church to become missionaries, (See Chapter One) those who proclaim this good and joyful news. He invites us to go into the world, to break out of our comfort to reach —with the truth of the gospel which is Jesus Christ himself— the places, circumstances and human realities so much in need today of the gospel and the “joy that no one can take away from you” (Jn 16,22). This missionary task of the church in the world must be fulfilled by the church like a mother with an open heart that understands and embraces all human beings in her bosom. A mother with the ability to understand, interpret, love, forgive, become and convert —to the light of the gospel— the realities in which people today live and express themselves.

Among the realities that Pope Francis considers as working to deter the joy of the gospel that people should experience is the economical situation that excludes from its benefits the vast majority of human beings (See Chapter Two), due to the idolatry of money, that oppresses and undermines instead of serving, that tyrannizes and enslaves instead of empowering and making effective the solidarity, liberty, abundant life and fraternity of all people. The idolatry of money that generates inequality and injustice and, as a result, the violence that blocks the experience of the joy of the gospel and which engulfs humans in an individualistic sadness that destroys the sense of vocation of human existence.

The analysis of the great realities experienced by humanity launches —according to Francis— great missionary challenges before the church and every believer today. Challenges that have to do mainly with the enculturation of the faith and, concretely, with the way the gospel should be made known (See Chapter Three).

This evangelistic task, Pope Francis reminds us, has —both intrinsically and essentially— a social dimension (See Chapter Four). Certain community repercussions are verified by what in earlier ecclesiastical discourses were called the preferential option by the poorest of the poor. A preferential option that presupposes the vision and construction of a missionary church that is poor, of the poor and for the poor, if it desires to be and remain totally faithful to its founder: our Lord Jesus Christ.

This social dimension that springs from the Good News as lived and taught by Jesus Christ is manifested and realized especially in the gift of social and religious peace. Social and religious peace that requests a renewed dialogue between faith, reason and science, and an ecumenical dialogue between the various religions.

Finally, Pope Francis reminds us of the great motivation that we have as believers, in the bosom of the Catholic Church, to renew our missionary nature and task (See Chapter Five). In this motivation we find the salvation that God offers us in Jesus Christ, loving us as his children, the activity of the Spirit of the Resurrected One in the midst of his church and the presence of Mary as mother and star of the new evangelization.

If we sought to summarize these thoughts of Francis and of what he desires with his Petrine ministry for every disciple of Christ in the church and for the world today, we would have to say that Pope Francis dreams of:

• A church that is a sign in the world of the joy that springs from the gospel.
• A church that moves outward —as a missionary— toward all the human realities in order to save others with the joy of the gospel.
• A church that lives a continuing experience of renewal, that is, conversion.
• A church that behaves like a mother with an open heart, especially among and with the poorest and those who most need to experience God’s love.
• The love of God that fills with joyful hope that gives life to every person and all of humanity.

Christmas and the Sacred Family

Christmas is an annual occurrence based on a historical and saving event: the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, which Christians commemorate liturgically using the same name. In a materialistic society like ours, Christmas has been converted into a season for buying and selling, for spending and consuming, for show-off and waste. And in this enormous consumer traffic, the message that we remember as Christians, the significance of which we celebrate on this occasion is manipulated, glossed over or lost, or even forgotten.

The significance that Christmas has for the world in general and for Christians in particular is enormous. What we are celebrating is the birth of JESUS OF NAZARETH, who is for all peoples a model of Humanity and Divinity: since Jesus is both divine and profoundly human.

When we confess Jesus as God who has become human, we are confessing at the same time the final and definitive destiny to which all humanity is called: incarnating divinity in history, and in daily living humanizing the divine life. At Christmas time, therefore, we celebrate the joyful and hopeful certainty that in the birth of Jesus, God has shown that he wants to live with us always, revealing in himself the Way, the Truth and the Life to which we have been called.

The historical fact of Christmas occurs in the context of a family. Among the many aspects that give meaning to the commemoration of the first Christmas, the value that God accorded the family in the birth of Jesus takes on special meaning among us.

We are experiencing in our times a profound human crisis in all aspects. The serious problems that are evident in this crisis reveal a more profound and definitive crisis in the very heart of human beings: a de-humanization that is contrary to all that is meant or implied in the message of Christmas. Yet, at the same time, the serious social problems that emerge from the heart of people have their origin in a profound crisis in the family.

There is an extensive list of great conflicts which today threaten the family model proposed on that first Christmas Eve and presented in the proclamation of the Catholic Church in the Western world:

• The generational gap between parents and children in a world that is rapidly changing.
• The breakups, divorces and rapid and easy annulments in “express” fashion.
• Unfaithfulness in a pan-sexual society where such is proposed and stimulated.
• The lack of commitment in a hedonistic society that delights in levity, changes of fashion, meaninglessness, easy come-and-go, throw-aways, appearances that are purely superficial.
• The world of academia and labor that separates, alienates and disintegrates families.
• “Machismo” and feminism.
• The pretended scientific manipulation of God’s designs concerning creation and family life.
• Abortion.
• Promiscuous use of tobacco, alcohol, and drugs.
• The senselessness of life in a society that quickly destroys the will to live, when the end of life is reduced to something merely material and historical, masking the transcendent vision of men, of the world and of history, etc….

In a world that pleads for the plurality of ideas and life style as well as respect for individual liberty and human rights, the Truth — under that pretext — should not be denied, confused or diluted in the midst of the rash of individual, small and almost always selfish pocket versions of truth. It is the Church’s responsibility, on the basis of the Good News contained in the gospel for every man and woman of good will, to proclaim every day and, especially at Christmas time, that every person has the right to be born and “to grow in grace and wisdom” in the bosom of a family constituted by a father, a mother and children: a family model in which are replicated and lived out the relationships defined as parental love, and filial and fraternal love, that we recognize and venerate in the very heart of the Holy Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The troubling statistics that cry out to us concerning the millions of boys and girls that seek to “grow” and “mature” in “homes” that are dysfunctional, with a single parent, or “substitute” homes, with grandparents and other relatives or in government institutions that try to “replace” inexistent families, sound an alarm that warns us of something that is occurring in our communities as well as an urgent challenge for us to give value to living out the model of Christian family suggested in the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Today, as never before, there is a nostalgia for Nazareth.

• Nostalgia for homes where parents and children live together in harmony.
• Nostalgia for homes like the example of Nazareth: where the parents love and fulfill God’s will, loving and nourishing the the life of their children.
• Homes in which the children fulfill God’s will, obeying their parents.
• Homes that tend toward the construction of a world of fraternal relationships lived out first at home in family relationships.
• Homes in which love and respect prevail over the circumstances of life that are always difficult and always changing.
• Homes with parents that are dedicated to the care of their children, and where the children are attentive and devoted to their parents.
• Homes that are true domestic churches, initiating the experience of the church and seedbeds of permanent evangelization.
• Homes in which parents and children grow in their humanity, cooperating with the creative work of God through their daily tasks.
• Families that are true homes, that is to say, where the home fires burn with love that is able to warm and illuminate a world so often cold and in darkness.

I join with you in these days in which as Christians we live with the memory of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. I join in the joy of the world because “to us is born a son, a child has been given to us” that bears the name “Emanuel, meaning God is with us” and I encourage you to extend into all our homes, our family groups, our communities, the great, good, sacred and eternal lessons which we can learn and apply in the life of our family, illustrated in the home of the Sacred Family of Nazareth, on this Christmas and always.

Advent: The Hoping for Hope

With the Advent Season begins another year in the liturgical life of Catholics. Adviento is a latin word which means “to wait for what is coming, expectation of something that is waited for, something expected which will come and shape the present.”

What would human life be without hope? We would sink in a sea of uncertainty, of suffering, of pain and of evil without something to encourage us to continue trusting, trying, working, projecting, loving, believing and hoping . . . 

We, Christians, are essentially and fundamentally men and women of hope. In other words, men and women who live in a permanent advent: waiting that the birth of God comes at Christmas; waiting for the daily encounter with God through his creation, through our brothers and sisters (especially the poorest in society), through liturgy, through the sacraments; through the many signs and circumstances by which God comes near to us and meets us each day. Christians live waiting for God’s promises to be fulfilled; that God’s Kingdom overcomes the kingdoms of the world; that God’s mercy overcomes the lack of love; and that God’s power triumphs over the mean power of man.

But the fulfillment of this hope –as the Advent Psalm says--  for  “justice to flourish and peace to be abundant” it requires that we Christians construct, with our acts and our words, with our announcements and denunciations, and with our behaviors, attitudes, and works, a time and space in which Christian hope is possible; in other words a time and space in which God’s Kingdom becomes evident through us.

In this way, the hope we are waiting for takes us out of a passive attitude of resignation, and brings us to construct the hoping attitude we are wishing for  --the new heaven and the new earth we wish for! Even more so, Christians know that the daily wish for happiness becomes true only in the real hope: which is Christ and his life in us.  Christian hope is not a hope that can be reduced to ephemeral and temporary satisfactions; but one that pushes all our present lives towards a full and total future in God.

Advent, this liturgical time, just before the anticipation of Christmas is  –more than just a liturgical time--  a life attitude and a personal and communitarian commitment of the believers and those from the Church who believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Also the belief in a world in which the divine starts, shows, and stays in the most humane and every day aspects of our present history.

Liturgy, in this time of Advent, speaks to us of a hope which does not die in the day to day; a hope that lightens up each moment of our lives; a hope that is infinite and without conditions; a hope which has no limits and is eternal; a hope that opens up for us the beyond of our limited intra-history; and a hope which overcomes all forms of evil, pain and death.

Circumstances today, more than ever, urge us to live in the spirit of Advent. All around us there are manifestations of crisis: crisis of the human spirit; crisis of goals which humanity dreamed of; crisis of trust and confidence in men and institutions; crisis of trust in governments, regimes, political and economic models; lack of trust between peoples and nations; lack of trust and belief in spiritual leaders.  There is disillusion and mistrust because there is a hunger and a thousand forms of inequity, injustice, violence and death.  There is a collective feeling that our present has no future.  There is uncertainty, a loss of the sense of life and much anguish. We live in difficult times for all spheres of life. Nevertheless, Catholic liturgy, in this time of Advent, once more invites us to the wait for Hope, the commitment and construction of better times . . . 

The hope that the election of Pope Francis gives us, is a renewed enthusiasm for a better future for our Christian communities, the Church and for society. The Bishop of Rome with his words, gestures and act of faith, encourage us, move us and motivate us to work with renewed enthusiasm for the building of the Kingdom.

I wish for all of us that this Advent 2013 fills us with hope; fills us with an always renewed strength to make possible our hope: which is that the Gospel of Jesus Christ be among us. That the Gospel be lived and announced by us for the construction of a better world;  a world which is more just, more humane and more according to God’s wish.

The Heart's Memory

Each year, as Thanksgiving Day arrives, I remember the Gospel story in which only one out of ten cured lepers --a foreigner--  returned to Jesus to express his gratitude and to give glory to God for being cured.

This nation’s historical tradition invites us to give thanks during one day each year. Without doubt, it is the date which gets the most people together. It is the most familiar and nationally recognized of all celebrations in the United States.  The tradition of this celebration goes way back to a historical gesture of which not all know the story but the majority celebrates. It is all due to the fact that the attitude and action of being grateful and giving thanks is a profoundly human tendency, and because of it, profoundly divine.

  

In the Eucharist, we Christians have the fountain, the base, and the beginning and end of the Christian life. The Greek word “eucaristía” means precisely, “to give thanks”. That is to say that the most authentic and genuine Christian posture is to live giving thanks to God who gives us all we are and all we have. 

In the present “consumer driven society”, the importance we give to money, the importance we give to having instead of to being, impedes us from remembering that always and in all circumstances we are not self-sufficient; that we do not auto-provide ourselves. We do not remember the fact that others work to give us things and services which we enjoy; that to live, we all need each other; that we are, beyond rational animals, beings which are solidary in good and evil; social beings that, as human beings and believers are part of the creative work of God, and that the main dynamic is to serve.

When we become conscious of our social nature and our importance in a creation in which everything created serves to help us live each day in the spirit of service and gratitude.

What allows our hearts to be thankful is the capacity for opening our senses and being conscious of everything we have and everything we are. The consequences of this thankful understanding come without delay: the grateful human being is a joyful man or woman, confident, humble and hopeful . . . and waiting on that loving presence which surrounds us, and which Christians call Holy Trinity.

When Jesus teaches us to see all good things as gifts from God, he at the same time teaches us to give all things as gifts. In other words, every good gift received from God commits us to place all at the service of our brothers and sisters, following a lifestyle that does not hoard life selfishly but favors all, especially the needy. Therefore, gratitude and gratefulness are attitudes which require of each of us a time and space in which all human beings can have the capacity, the possibility and the joy of being grateful. 

Gratitude is an attitude, but because it is an attitude it is also an obligation. Therefore on Thanksgiving Day we are grateful but also give away . . . May it be that, more than things we give our time, our presence, our lives –and not only one day a year—but each day of our lives. 

May you all have a Happy Thanksgiving Day! May we all be able to always be grateful and to aid others in having a reason to always be grateful!!

American Protestant-based group making inroads with Catholics

November 6, 2013

(Romereports.com) 

Founded nearly 200 years ago, the American Bible Society has always played a big part in spreading the Gospel within the United States.     

The non-profit organization was founded by Protestant leaders in the early times of the American nation. But in the past few decades they've begun reaching out to Catholics. 

“The mission of the American Bible Society is to spread the Word of God, to make available to all people. And certainly, an important segment of Christianity is the Catholic Church. And so this inter-confessional organization called American Bible Society is opening the door to the Catholic Church and serving the Catholic communities.” 

- Mario J. Paredes, American Bible Society

This outreach has reached the top levels of Catholicism. The organization's president addressed the Synod of Bishops in 2012. And their latest effort is the book Pray With the Bible, Meditate With the Word. It was published in collaboration with the LEV, the Vatican's publishing house. 

The book is described as a manual on Lectio Divina, studying Christianity's Holy Book. It features a four step process: knowing the text, understanding the words, meditating on their message and putting them into action. 

“The end goal of the Lectio Divina is to bring people back to the Bible, and to bring people back to praying with the Bible. It's to bring people to get to know the God of the Bible, and a relationship that can become a personal relationship between myself and the God of the Bible.” 

- Mario J. Paredes, American Bible Society

The book is available in three languages: English, Italian and Spanish. It's available at specialty bookstores. Over time, the American Bible Society has expanded its services beyond the United States. Keeping in line with their mission, this book is another resource they provide for Catholics worldwide to better understand the Gospel.