Studying God’s word

THIS is actually everybody’s responsibility and task. It’s not only for priests and nuns, or some people with leanings toward a vibrant spiritual life. Those who are in the middle of the world doing all sorts of things like business, politics, etc., have great need for God’s word.

            Reading, meditating and living God’s word is for all, mainly because God’s word is what gives us real life, and not just biological life, nor social or professional life, cultural or political life, etc.

             As one liturgical prayer puts it, God’s word is “the food of our salvation and the fountain of life.” It is the bringer of grace, the ultimate source of our life, the very essence of our dignity as persons and children of God. It is what brings us to eternal life, what gives us proper direction and meaning to everything in life.

            Even more, the Letter to the Hebrews gives us a wonderful insight into God’s word, especially insofar as one’s personal spiritual life is concerned. It’s a description that is worth our time and effort in digesting it.

            God’s word, it says, “is living and effectual, and more piercing than any two-edged sword, and reaching unto the division of the soul and the spirit, of the joints also and the marrow, and a discerner of the thoughts and intent of the heart.” (4,12)

            St. Jerome also has a good insight about God’s word as found in the Scripture. He said, “ignorance of the Scripture is ignorance of Christ,” basing that claim on what Christ himself said: “Search the Scriptures…they give testimony of me.” (Jn 5,39)

            We always have recourse to some word to animate our spirit and prime us to action. Thus, we have words derived from the sciences and the arts, and from our cumulative experiences in the different fields and levels in life that spring us to activity.

            We just have to make sure that we avail ourselves of the ultimate word, and not just some intermediate one that would have no foundation unless engaged with the ultimate, which is God’s word.

            We need to outgrow a certain bias, unfortunately quite common, that considers God’s word as meant only for a few people, or that deems it as one more among many other words which we may feel free to choose or not, or that it is just as good as the others.

            It’s not we are not free to choose God’s word, or that we are forced to have recourse to it. This is a no-no in us. This is unacceptable. We have to freely choose it, convinced that it is necessary for us.

            We just have to realize though that there is a certain point in life where freedom and necessity actually meet and share the same ground, like when we are free to eat or not, and yet we choose to eat because it is necessary. That’s just how the cookie crumbles, how our nature is.

            God is absolutely necessary to us, since he is the very foundation of our existence and also the very purpose of it, though we may not realize this truth fully. We just have to freely go to him, because God actually does not force us to come to him, though he does everything to draw us to him.

            It’s important that we get to know God through his word that has been revealed to us, so we can learn to love and serve him as we ought. And God’s word is now recorded in the Scriptures that go together with Tradition and the Church’s magisterium which has the proper authority to keep and teach it.

            We have to be wary of the tendency to have a very personalized, and often individualistic and reductive attitude toward God’s word. God’s word as recorded in the Scripture has to be studied within the context of the over-all teaching of the Church.

            Yes, we need to study it thoroughly, understanding by study as not simply a matter of an intellectual operation but also as an expression of faith and trust in God. We need to believe first before we get to understand it. And the succeeding acts of understanding it increases and reinforces our belief as well.

            Studying God’s word should therefore be a form of prayer. Such attitude does not compromise the intellectual rigidity that we should apply when we study God’s word. Rather, it facilitates and enhances the intellectual dimension of such study. It makes study go beyond the intellectual level to enter into the full range of our necessities.