Read the Bible with Me! Day 1

Welcome to the Pauline Family's "Year of the Bible"! I'll be reading the Bible clear through this year, and I invite you to read along with me. 

It's always a good idea to pray before reading the Scripture, to open our mind and heart to the same Holy Spirit who inspired the writing of the Bible. This prayer, which will be our consistent prayer throughout the first five books of the Bible (called Torah by the Jews, and Pentateuch by many scholars), is based on a prayer by Blessed James Alberione. Let us pray:

I praise you, my God, with all people.
May they thank and adore you!
You have written your greatness in creation,
your Law in consciences,
your eternal promises in the Bible.
You are eternally faithful and always lovable!
As I read Sacred Scripture today, open my mind to hear your voice and understand your loving message.
Amen.

Today being Sunday, we start with two Psalms. Psalm 1 is especially fitting for beginning a project that will bring us into daily contact with the Word of God:

Blessed is the man who does not walkin the counsel of the wicked,Nor stand in the way of sinners,nor sit in company with scoffers.
Rather, the law of the LORD is his joy;and on his law he meditates day and night.
He is like a treeplanted near streams of water,that yields its fruit in season;Its leaves never wither;whatever he does prospers.
But not so are the wicked, not so!They are like chaff driven by the wind.
Therefore the wicked will not arise at the judgment,nor will sinners in the assembly of the just.
Because the LORD knows the way of the just,but the way of the wicked leads to ruin.

Today's three chapters are Genesis 1-3 (Genesis 1 starts here)  and then (because today is Sunday) Psalm 2. It is next to impossible to express how rich these ancient passages are in terms of the depth of revelation they contain. There is an ancient rabbinic tradition of interpretation, and building on that in the light of Jesus' coming, another two thousand years of Christian tradition. It was not by accident that the Gospel of John opens with the very same words: "In the beginning..."

I have personally been particularly blessed by Pope John Paul II's reflections on these chapters as found in the first section of his Theology of the Body. 

If you are looking for a solid but approachable companion to the Bible, I can wholeheartedly recommend A Catholic Introduction to the Bible: The Old Testament by Brant Pitre and John Bergsma. Although the authors are top-level Scripture scholars, they write for "real" readers. Notes include recent findings from archaeology and ancient manuscripts.

Original Sin: The Adam in All of Us

The first reading at Mass this week is from the beginning of The Beginning, that is, from the Book of Genesis. Today we reached the sad story of the original sin, the story, as Pope John Paul put it, of the temptation and sin against God's fatherhood; the rejection of God as good Father. The serpent offered our first parents the brightly colored water (there was no Kool-Aid yet) of a lie about God and themselves: that they were in competition; that God was holding out on them; that God was secretly threatened by the possibility of their full flourishing, and that all they had to do to be his equals was, you know...

Currently for my evening spiritual reading I am slowly making my way through a book on St Paul's insights on life in Christ. It's slow going because the book, by Father Giuseppe Forlai (of the Pauline Institute of Jesus the Priest) is in Italian--and I do my spiritual reading at night, so the old brain isn't exactly firing on all cylinders. (Plus my Italian vocabulary, cobbled together from reading the sermons of Blessed James Alberione, is heavy in old-fashioned pious language, while Father Forlai speaks and writes a very contemporary Italian--I keep a sheet of paper next to the book to write down words I need to look up.) Anyway, last night I came across just the perfect commentary on today's first reading, so I wanted to share it with you in a very rough translation (emphases are mine).

(Context: Father had gone to a public high school to give a talk about freedom, one of St Paul's favorite themes. When he mentioned the problem of sin limiting our human freedom, one of the students challenged him: You Catholics always bring up sin! It's just an excuse for you to claim that we need a savior... Father Forlai commented, at least to the reader, that everyday experience tells us that we live in a fallen world and that we contribute to that fallen state.)

Adam and I are connected. If we substitute the word “humanity” for Adam things might be a bit clearer. If I do wrong, this shows that humanity is capable of wrongdoing;  if humanity (for example a nation, a group, an organization) commits crimes, that's signifies that in them I too might have the capacity of doing the same evil, even if I find it revolting. This is not to say that I will commit it, but simply that I could be capable of committing it. We are interdependent in good and in evil, beyond the centuries that separate one generation from another. Whatever one says about it, I too am Adam; I keep that original evil alive in me: by sinning I give my assent to the evil that has preceded me.