Read the Bible with Me!

Today is the 50th Anniversary of the death of Blessed James Alberione, Founder of the Pauline Family. Promoting "Bible Years" was a project dear to his heart, so this worldwide Pauline Year of the Bible reflects his lifelong commitment to the Word of God.

We have just four weeks of daily readings left to finish the entire Bible, from cover to cover! So let us pray:

Father,

When the fullness of time had come, you sent your Word in the One who said, “Whoever sees me, sees the Father.” No revelation can surpass this until Jesus comes again. By your gift, the Church continues to receive unfathomable riches from the inheritance handed on from the Apostles and guaranteed by the Holy Spirit.

Let the Spirit who inspired the writing of today's pages "guide me in the truth and teach me" to follow Jesus ever more closely, until he calls me to follow him to the Kingdom where he lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever. Amen.

Today's chapters are Ephesians 4-6.

In the second half of Ephesians, Paul moves into themes we have seen before, particularly the theme of the unity of the Church, expressed in a multiplicity of gifts and roles. The diverse manifestations of the Spirit (cf 1 Cor 12:7) are not meant to build up the individual who enjoys the gift, but to contribute to the healthy growth of the mature Body of Christ: the whole Christ, in all his parts. 

But that requires something of each individual, too! Look at Paul's call for ongoing conversion; his honesty about the temptations each person faces in life; the challenge not to "let the sun go down on your anger," as this would be an open door to the devil. "Bitterness, shouting, anger, fury and reviling": he knows all about it; the Christian must bring all of these tendencies under the dominion of the Spirit, and become "kind, compassionate, forgiving...just as God as forgiven you."

It is only natural that the first place that these virtues must be practiced is within the home. What follows in Chapter 5 is often called a "household code," as if Paul was just reiterating standard Roman-era expectations and not turning them completely upside down. The clue to Paul's subversive message is in the very opening (5:21), "Be submissive to one another out of reverence for Christ." Sadly, this verse is often omitted when Ephesians 5 is read on Sundays, even though this is the line that determines the way all that follows should be interpreted! Paul is giving us what we might call a Trinitarian approach to family life, because while Roman society was a series of one-directional submissions from lower to higher, the Trinity is a Divine series of relationships in which each Person is given and gives in a love that is complete mutual submission. And Paul is presenting a Christian household modeled on the love that was manifest when one of those Divine Persons "became flesh and lived among us."

Pope John Paul dwelt a great deal on Ephesians 5:21-33, "The Dimension of Covenant and of Grace," during his Theology of the Body series (TOB 87-102). What the great philosopher-pope was doing was sweeping back over his review of Genesis, the Sermon on the Mount, and the teachings of Christ on the Resurrection, and rereading them in the light of the "mutual submission" Paul presents as part of the "great mystery" [also translated "sacrament"] of Christ and the Church.  Paul is doing somewhat the same thing: taking up the images alluded to in 1 and 2 Corinthians and developing them so richly we have still not finished penetrating their depth.

The letter ends with a striking image of the cosmic battle that faces all of us, and the gear that is necessary for our ultimate victory. In the conclusion, we learn that it is Tychicus who is delivering the letter; we met him in Acts when he accompanied Paul on that last, dramatic visit to Jerusalem. Ephesians wasn't the only letter in Tychicus' satchel: he was also delivering Colossians and (we will see at the very tail end of the Pauline letters) a potentially life-changing message about an escaped slave named Onesimus.

Start reading here.

For additional background

Dr. John Bergsma's fascinating presentation gives the ordinary reader a sense of the many points of contact between the Gospels and the culture, spirituality, writings, and expectations of the Essenes. In many ways living a kind of porto-monasticism, the Essene communities sought to prepare for the coming of the Kingdom of David through fidelity to the "works of the Law" (sound familiar?) in rigorous cultic purity. Their leadership seems to have descended from the Aaronic high priesthood, and their founder was clearly a prophetic soul imbued with the Holy Spirit. Many practices and expressions that we find in the Gospels and the letters of St Paul are found nowhere else in extant literature than in the Dead Sea Scrolls, making them amazingly valuable in authenticating, from a purely historical perspective, some of the very details that had been deprecated by "historical criticism" as invented or anachronistic. 

N.T. Wright's Paul: A Biography is the book I would recommend to someone who wanted to read one (only one) book that combined the life and letters of St Paul. Written by a noted Scripture, this is a flowing narrative that is scripturally enlightening and historically sound. Wright gives the reader a way of following Paul through the Acts of the Apostles and the writing of his letters, making Paul the person that much more approachable, and the letters themselves more readable as a result of having a social and historical context.