Take time to understand the Word – start at the end to interpret the beginning

By Kaelanne Jordan

mediarelations.camsel@catholictt.org

If one should ever come across “strange things” that the Church teaches, don’t start by believing that the Church is wrong; and don’t start believing you are right either.

“If I had done that, I would have written off Pope Benedict and just go my way. But it’s because, like a grain of sand in an oyster, and it was just irritating me and irritating me, and the more it irritated me is the more I kept searching and looking. And when I did find it, I rejoiced because I found a pearl of great price…” said Archbishop Jason Gordon in his feature address for the 4th Annual Sunday of the Word of God, Sunday, January 22.

The event was hosted by the Catholic Bible Institute (CBI) with the theme Building Community through the Word of God. Venue was the Catholic Charismatic Renewal Centre, Knaggs Street, Frederick Settlement, Caroni.

In cautioning against the impulse to believe that the Church’s more than 2000 years of existence is “foolishness”, the Archbishop urged faithful to rather, investigate, “what is the wisdom here and how do I get my heart to this, how do I understand this deeper?”

Archbishop Gordon reminded faithful when they approach the Word of God, they are not encountering a book that was written by a contemporary of ours who received or wrote it for our society and for our time. Rather, it’s an ancient text that has been written for a specific people and written in a particular way from the perspective of faith.

“And from the perspective of faith, when we read the ancient text, we have to see how that faith was communicated within the ancient texts to the people of the first century and how it is an interpretation of the law, the prophets and the writings,” the Archbishop said.

The eternal Word that existed from the beginning is the one that we seek every time we read the words of the Bible. If faithful understands this, then they must start at the end to interpret the beginning.

The Archbishop referred to several indications within the Bible of how it should be read. He highlighted parts of the text from Nehemiah 8, which says that they started reading from early morning until noon and that not only did they read the Word, but they translated and gave sense of the Word.

The second clue in how to read the Bible comes in Luke 24: the way to Emmaus.

“…from Jesus’ perspective in Luke, it must start from the Christ’s suffering and dying and then from the perspective of the end, you make sensible everything that was written before Him.”

The Bible, Archbishop Gordon underscored, has always been a part and parcel of Christian meditation. The ancient monks developed this way of praying where they would meditate on the Word several times during the day.

The Word was so precious that not only did it regulate the life of the monastic community, but the Word also became the inspiration. The Archbishop referred to one of the earliest prayers in the Church, the Lectio Divina which “goes right back to the time of the apostles.”

This ancient prayer which begins with the reading, meditation, contemplation and ultimately to action, “is one of those ancient prayers that has really sustained the Church for her 2000-year history and has really given us a deep, deep sense of the Word of God,” the Archbishop said.

He commented that in our current time, it has been “recovered” by the Latin America movement called Biblical Animation of all Pastoral Life (ABP). It is a movement, Archbishop Gordon said, that really allows the Word of God to become the dynamic force in all pastoral engagements.

The Archbishop shared when clergy gather as a diocese, they would first begin with Lectio Divina then into the matter/s to be considered. “And many times, I recount where I went in thinking about the matter to be considered one way and in the midst of the meeting the Lectio comes alive and sheds its light and …. you find yourself peddling backwards now. Because the Word shedding its light on the matter pens the matter in a very different way and allows you now to see that matter from the perspective of God’s Word and therefore from the perspective of God Himself,” Archbishop Gordon explained.

He acknowledged that the CBI has kept the Word of God alive and active in the archdiocese and allowed many lay Catholics to an encounter with the Word, to allow the Word to be a Lamp for my feet, a light on my path, (Psalm 119:105.)