Lesson: Introduction: apprivoiser (tame) the biblical text
Prayer Initial:
"O Lord my God, listen to my prayer: Thy mercy will grant my wish, that not only burns for me but also wants to serve the brethren. You see in my heart that is so. Let me offer sacrifice in the service of my thought and my word, and give me yourself what I have to offer because I am poor and destitute, but Thou art rich to all who invoke you, no worries you, you take care of us. Recurrence around my lips, inside and out, all rashness and all lying. Let your scriptures my chaste delights, I will not deceive me about them, nor deceive others with them. Lord, look and have mercy "(St. Augustine).
In preparing this course, I came to meet this verse of the Book of Hosea: "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge" (Hosea 4:6). I figured it would be a good idea to begin with and lietmotiv these lessons.
Many people are moving away from the faith because they take it for what it is. They learned it in an appropriate language for children, the language of catechists, grandparents, and have remained there, in their humanity atrophied religious. They grew very scientifically, economically, culturally, but the faith that has been adapted to childhood, diluted for the intelligence and imagination in children. Therefore, as the law of evolution, this body alive body weak fades with time, would disappear as a useless tail.
Staying with a childlike faith, is like a man who sticks to the idea of \u200b\u200bthe stork and even thirty years with his wife naively expect the finest in the arrival of the first born from the sky ... want to wait! Many live their faith as well, and die without seeing the birth of the new man in them, which is not another but themselves, their true destiny. We have different states of life, but the call to greatness, to be deified, it affects everyone, and those who lose this opportunity to become content with scientists, teachers, janitors, nurses, mothers or fathers natural ... these things are beautiful, but they are not realizing our full potential. We would like Pinocchio who is content to be a puppet - but in a great show - and our vocation is to be anything else. In the words of St. Basil: "Man is an animal called to be God."
Gathered here the center will not be me talking, but the word that turns to us. I fully my own the words of Pope Saint Gregory the Great: "I know that most of the time I realized in the presence of my brothers a lot of the Sacred Word which alone I could not grasp ... It is you who make me learn what I teach. I admit, it happens very often to listen with you what I tell myself. "
Ours is a course, but not as a course in botany or astrophysics, where you can remain indifferent, detached, it is rather a course like a river that will achieve its goals only if we involve in its flow. This is a course that is a prayer because when we read the Word is God that word, and that prayer is a dialogue, the course will include as part of the worship el'evocazione complementary. In fact, every other week and we will do during worship, so that symbolically (even if the moments are not distinguishable at all) listen to the Lord and talk to the Lord. Apply what they say so many saints, like St. Jerome, who says: "I pray? You speak to the Bridegroom. Read? You he speaks to you. "
Mind you as you read
What is striking about the Bible, and especially the book of Genesis is its simplicity and poverty of words and concepts. While this simplicity may offend and irritate the other, they safeguard the transcendence of God, his revelation el'ineffabilitĂ .
The Bible is a book of oracles that are opening rispote. Often the Bible is hard, really typical of any real meeting. The spouses who know something. If it were a book of oracles, would become an idol and had obscured its meaning, ie to become a book that leads to the Word, the only one that counts because the only 'life, the only one who gave his life for us. Hence the title of this first lesson, " tame the Bible." I wanted to use a French word more expressive. Apprivoiser - which means "become close" - the word, become intimate, familiar word. But even "tame", not taken in the sense of the word dominate, but in the sense of bringing the Word to domus own, their own home. With this course we try to become conquilini of the word, his family, that we may be dwelling on the Word and the Word could be home for us. Because who does not stay in the Word of God, even if it has all the houses in this world is no real fixed abode. Only the Word of God is stable.
scandalous back to the simplicity of the Bible, we see that apparently what Plato says and says what a great philosophy about God is much higher, much more is true, the Bible is enough "barbaric", simple, it seems pre-critical today, but he notes that precisely this is necessary, because we can see that the highest concepts about God never reach its true greatness, are always improper. But the biblical images make us, in fact, understand that God is above all the concepts, we find in their simplicity, rather than in big ideas, the very face of God and we are aware of our inability to really express what he is .
is the experience that made some of the smartest and most famous saints of the early centuries as St. Jerome and St. Augustine. Before his conversion, Augustine rejects the Word, is bored in the legend, the remains veiled. But he then converts it learns to read the Bible from the lips of a great teacher: Sant'Ambrogio. He begins to see beyond the letter of as Paul says, "the letter kills, the Spirit gives life" (2 Cor 3:6).
fact, the Bible according to a large number of fathers has 3 senses: literal, moral, spiritual or mystical sense.
Origen offers a very apt comparison. In the ninth Homily on Numbers, compares the Scripture to nuts, "This is the doctrine of the Law and the Prophets in the school of Christ: the bitter letter, which is like the peel, and secondly come to the shell, which is the moral doctrine and thirdly there is the sense of the mysteries, which feed on the souls of the saints in this life and in the future "(9.7).
What is the key to Scripture? - Christ is the love of Christ Jesus himself explained the Scriptures to the disciples and lights up showing how they relate to him, "beginning with Moses and the Prophets he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself" (Lk 24 27).
Often we read the Scriptures with a moral. The Bible is not a treatise on morality, an etiquette for the sky. Yes, it contains moral instruction, but it's a kit. The nucleus is one: "Jesus said to the Pharisees angry:" Search the Scriptures have in them the eternal life, well, they are the ones that make me witness' (Jn 5:39).
Why are these senses in Scripture?
Why is it written "four hands". It is the human word, truly human and yet is the word of God, truly divine. Where the author does not extinguish the divine, eclipses or violent but it respects the human author. And so there is a progression in revelation.
Unlike the Quran which literally means "read / dictated," Christians say that the Bible is revealed. A very effective example we see in a passage I read tonight. Ex 3.
The Burning Bush
The Bible is a word, not the prettiest, not the most learned, not the most poetic, it is like a bush, a bush maybe thorny. But this word, for his humility the Lord chooses and makes it glow in life, true life.
"The bush was not consumed 'the word does not end, its wealth of images that can not be exhausted by any single explanation.
"I must go and see this great show" The Lord does not allow His Word is being explored curious ... and therefore ordered Moses to stop, before realizing who he is.
"Take off your shoes': The Bible is approaching" barefoot in the heart ", a heart free from pride, prejudices, sin ...
It becomes a meeting place. Not only bush and fire, but a presence, the presence of the living God. (Cf. Mt 22:32).
Explanation of the four moments of lectio we adopt lectio, meditatio, oratio, contemplatio (actio).
For next time read at home (possibly in the family) the first chapter of Genesis, which will be the real start of our course. Reading at home is crucial not only to be familiar with the text, but also to meet with the questions and raises doubts that gives birth to ... and the mysterious power of the Word of God that releases.
(Note: these are the notes written during the planning for the journey. The material is not the same that is used or occurs during the course).