This was written earlier but things got so crazy at the parish there was no time simply to post it! Here is Friday's installment of the next chapter of Dei Verbum.
So a priest friend who shall remain anonymous in order to protect his reputation, brought a movie over to watch about two years ago. “Dudes,” sayeth he, “this is in my book as part of the 100 must see movies so it must be good.”
Don’t believe everything you read.
And thusly did we watch, “The Way We Were.”
What an awful film. We just kept saying, “We don’t like these selfish characters. They shouldn’t be together and in any case, we are beyond caring.” Reading the “100 Movies Book” a little more closely it was disclosed that the authors also thought it shouldn’t be on the list but because it was so popular they felt obligated. (Talk about peer pressure at its extreme.)
This summer, in contrast, we went to the Ohio Shakespeare Festival at Stan Hywet Hall. We watched a much older story and were captivated by it. The clothes, dialogue, hairstyles, and popular culture topics were similarly out of date in this one too, but it still enthralled. This is because one speaks to our humanity more universally and the other . . . it just doesn’t.
So it is with Scripture. The Church uses Sacred Scripture because it continues as a “pure and lasting font of spiritual life.” It is the voice of the Holy Spirit sounding again and again and along with Sacred Tradition, presented with the Holy Eucharist to bring life and meaning and freedom to God’s holy people. Our preaching and, in fact, everything about this Christian faith is nourished by our Scriptures. They continue to speak to us because there is something basic about our humanity which is revealed in them. They remain relevant in the same way but only more fundamentally so as does a good Shakespearean play.
1 comment:
Father, the print is black on a black background, except for blue "S."
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