Father’s Day reminds us all that
Jesus’ own choice of Name for God was Abba,
meaning ”Papa” or “Daddy,” or some other form of endearment. This simple choice on the part of Jesus has
opened for us a glimpse into the very Heart of God and the center of
Reality. Our God, the God of the
Universe, is the Triune God. When we pray and say “Our Father,” we enter
into the Person of Jesus through the Power of the Holy Spirit, and we become
most truly ourselves. We are primarily
God’s children. Our identity comes not
from our experience of ourselves from the insider, nor from the encounters we
have “out there” in Creation, but rather from our relationship with God, Our
Father. As we celebrate our earthly
Fathers, Grandfathers and Godfathers, we give thanks to our Heavenly Father,
and to St. Joseph who first wore the name “Abba” in the life Jesus, for the
precious gift of life and the strength and sustaining grace that we receive
from them, in cooperation with our Mothers.
Happy Father’s Day!
This past week promised to be a bit
quieter since School has let out for the summer, but it proved to be busy
anyway. One event that was very positive
was a gathering of folks from the parish to hear about the Catholic Foundation
of the Diocese of Columbus
Year of Faith October
11, 2012 – November 24, 2013
We continue our journey through the Year
of Faith. As one way of observing
this year, each week a small section of the Catechism
of the Catholic Church is read before the start of Mass.
ARTICLE
3 SACRED SCRIPTURE
II. Inspiration and
Truth of Sacred Scripture
105 God is the author of
Sacred Scripture. “The divinely revealed realities, which are contained and
presented in the text of Sacred Scripture, have been written down under the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit.” (Dei
Verbum 11.)
“For Holy Mother Church, relying on the faith of the
apostolic age, accepts as sacred and canonical the books of the Old and the New
Testaments, whole and entire, with all their parts, on the grounds that,
written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author
and have been handed on as such to the Church herself.” (Dei Verbum 11; cf. John 20:31;
2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:19-21; 3:15-16.)
106 God inspired the human
authors of the sacred books. “To compose the sacred books, God chose certain
men who, all the while he employed them in this task, made full use of their
own faculties and powers so that, though he acted in them and by them, it was
as true authors that they consigned to writing whatever he wanted written, and
no more.” (Dei Verbum 11.)
107 The inspired books teach the
truth. “Since therefore all that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm
should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the
books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which
God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred
Scriptures.” (Dei Verbum 11.)
108 Still, the Christian faith is
not a “religion of the book.” Christianity is the religion of the “Word” of
God, a word which is “not a written and mute word, but the Word which is
incarnate and living.” (St.
Bernard.) If the Scriptures are not to
remain a dead letter, Christ, the eternal Word of the living God, must, through
the Holy Spirit, “open [our] minds to understand the Scriptures.” (Cf. Luke 24:45.)
Comment: Many churches and communities lay claim to
being “Bible Based.” The Catholic Church
is the Church that brought forth the Bible, through the inspiration of the Holy
Spirit, in the writing and in the gathering together and authoritatively
establishing of the Canon. We have the
Bible, because the Church received the life of Christ through Revelation, and
the Scriptures now serve to continue the witness of the first generations of
the life of the People of God to every generation. God wrote it through inspired human authors,
and the Spirit is still writing the life it contains in human hearts open to
receive it. How do you open yourself to
the action of the Spirit through the Bible?
