Read the Bible with Me!

Welcome to the Pauline Family's "Year of the Bible"! We've been reading the Bible clear through this year. We've reached the New Testament, so read along with me. But first, 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 in glory. 

Open my mind today to the gift of life and truth your Word offers me through the Church. By your Holy Spirit, grant me wisdom and strength to put this Word into practice and to become, myself, a presence of Jesus for people who are looking for you.

Jesus, eternal Word and Son of the Father, live in me with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Today's chapters are John 20-21 and Acts of the Apostles 1.

One thing that John's account of the empty tomb has in common with the Synoptics is that, contrary to social norms, in the case of the Resurrection of Jesus, women were the first to give testimony. (Not that it was accepted!) We can cut the men disciples a little bit of slack, however: In the ancient world, when a sentence of death was passed against the leader of a movement, it could be applied to all of his followers. But nobody would give women a second thought. So it was women who came to the tomb "on the first day of the week, while it was still dark." It was Mary Magdalen (and others? "We don't know" she said.) who saw the stone rolled away and "ran" to inform "Peter and the other disciple" about the abnormal state of affairs. And after the two men made their observations (and the beloved disciple "saw [the grave-clothes] and believed"), Mary Magdalen was the first person on earth to see the Risen Jesus.

John gives us several accounts of appearances of Jesus to the disciples that we do not find elsewhere; or rather, details of stories that may be alluded to in the Synoptics, such as the situation with Thomas in the mist of the Eleven. We learn from John that the sacrament of Penance was a post-Resurrection gift to the Church. And in Chapter 21, we see that Peter's threefold denial of the Lord in the light of a charcoal fire did not mean a loss of his role in the Church: Jesus confirmed it ("feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep") in the light of a charcoal fire; the only two times the word "charcoal" appears in the Bible.

Scholars say that much of Chapter 21 is non-Johannine in style, but the last two verses tell us what we really need to know about John's Gospel, and about all the Gospels! 

As we turn the page, we find ourselves back in the company of the urbane reader Theophilus, the addressee (and financier?) of Luke's Gospel: "In the first book, Theophilus, I dealt with all that Jesus did and taught until the day he was taken up..." (Acts 1:1-2a). 

In the Acts of the Apostles, Luke is continuing the story of Jesus, but now it is the story of Jesus as lived by the Church! And that means he will be telling a story that was originally written by the Holy Spirit. (Remember in John's account of the Last Supper Discourse that Jesus promised to "send the Holy Spirit from the Father"? Luke uses language very much like that.) In 28 chapters, the Holy Spirit gets mentioned (as "Holy Spirit," not including other expressions) 41 times! Early on (Acts 1:8), Luke lets us know the scope of his second volume: It is to show the "witnesses" going outward, under the power of the Spirit, from Jerusalem "to the ends of the earth"! 

Start reading John here and Acts of the Apostles here.

For additional background 

This year for "Buy a Nun a Book Day," one of the first books I received was Dr John Bergsma's Jesus and the Old Testament Roots of the Priesthood. As I read it, I saw how many of the Old Testament "types" and institutions we read about through the year were fulfilled (super-abundantly) in Jesus and in the Church. This is especially clear in the Gospel of John, which in a way is the most "priestly" of the four Gospels. 

If you have questions about the priesthood in the Church, or about the difference between our baptismal participation in the priesthood of Christ and that exercised by our ministerial priests, or even simple questions like why Catholics call priests "Father" (when Jesus said, "Call no one on earth 'father'"), or if you would like to see in a fuller way how very many Old Testament types were pointing to Jesus and to the Church, this very readable book is for you.