Divine Revelation

Refer to our Sunday Experience pages to find different prayers to pray as a family sometime during the week as well as setting up a prayer space and other activities as a family.


For the Learn do the following:

1. Watch Video at the top of the page. (if you want more resources, or are interested in learning more about the topic click on the Extra tab).
2. Click on the appropriate grade for your child.
3. Read the "relates to..." section at the beginning.  This is helpful to understand what to convey to your child is important about this lesson.  It will        help make the lesson both an intellectual and a lived lesson.
4. Read through and familiarize yourself with the sample script. 
5. Teach your child the lesson, either using your own words or the sample script.
6. Either discuss the questions with your child (best option), or have your child write out answers to the questions.
7. Have your child do the activities and/or do the activities with them.  
8. If working with a parish return the appropriate material in the way they have requested.

All Content for "The Way", Learn, is original content and copyright of the Diocese of Kalamazoo and may not be copied, reproduced, or used without prior written consent of the Diocese of Kalamazoo.   © 2020 Diocese of Kalamazoo

Relates to Jesus: The gospels are the story of the life and actions of Jesus Christ, how he came to love us and set us free.

Relates to my Faith: The bible helps us to know how God loves us and how we are to love Him.

Sample Script:

As Christians, we believe that the Bible is a gift given to us by God. The Bible contains the words and teachings of God, which help us come to know who God is and how He works with people. The Bible tells us many stories of how God desires to be with us and how even when His people would sin or make bad choices that would make God sad, God would continue to reach out to forgive the people and bring them back into right relationship. So, when we think about the Bible and what it says about God, we can say that the Bible tells us of God’s love for you and me and for all people.

We have a special part of the Bible called the Gospels which tell us about the life of Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God. The Gospels are made up of four books, with one each written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Matthew and John are two of Jesus’ Apostles or close friends while Mark and Luke were followers of Jesus. While the Gospels tell of the life of Jesus, they are also special in that they show us very clearly the love that God has for us. Jesus teaches us how we are to respond to God’s love and how we are to love one another in return.

So, the Gospels are super important! That is why when we go to Mass on Sunday, we see the Gospels get a special treatment. We might see the Deacon process or walk in with the Gospels raised over his head at the beginning of Mass. This shows the special place that the words and teachings of Jesus have for what we believe. We notice how there are two readings, one from the Old Testament or first part of the Bible and one from the New Testament or the second part of the Bible, that are read before the Gospel reading. These first two readings are important and tell us about God from two different perspectives. We sit for these readings. When it comes time to read the Gospel though, we announce it’s arrival with a song, usually the Alleluia, and stand to sing praise to God. Jesus Christ in His words as spoken through the Gospel is here, so we stand in reverence and respect to let Jesus know we are listening and ready to receive His love and truth through what is read.

The Bible and especially the Gospels then are to be taken good care of. We need to listen to these words read to us when we go to Mass. We need to make sure that we are allowing these words to sink into our minds and hearts so that we can keep God close to us at all times. The more we listen to and hear the word of God, the more we come to know about God and His love for us. We also come to know how God wants us to treat our family and friends and classmates, making the words of Jesus come alive with our lives: “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you” (Matthew 7:12).

In order to best know and understand the word of God as presented in the Bible, we need to do more than just the important work of listening when at Sunday Mass. We need to do our best to read the Bible, especially the Gospels, each day of our life. Just like the best way to come to know our friends is by spending time with them, the best way we come to know about God is by spending time with His Word. So, even if we just read two or three sentences a day together with our family, we will come to grow in our knowledge of the love of God for us pretty fast.

It is also important to spend time in prayer with the Bible. Again, the Bible is God speaking to His people. But sometimes the words He says might not make sense to us. So, when we hear something from Jesus in one of His stories or we hear a word read from the Bible, we should ask God in our prayer, “What does this mean? What are you trying to say to me with these words or stories?” We should ask our family members too, as they might be able to help us as well.

So let’s take care of our Bibles by listening to and reading the words so we can hear the loving voice of God speaking to us!
 

Questions and Activities

1. Who does the Bible teach us about?

2. Why is it important for us to hear from the Bible?

3. Why are the Gospels important?

4. Why do we stand at Mass for the Gospels?

5. How often should we listen to or read the Bible?
 

Activities

Make a picture book of some stories from your family.  Then make a picture book of a story you know from the Bible.

Read a story out of the Gospels with someone, tell them who you would like to be in the story and why.

Relates to Jesus:  Jesus is revealed to us in the story of God's love that is given to us in the Bible.

Relates to my Faith: The revelation of God through the Bible and presented at Mass, is how we come to know and love God everyday.

Sample Script: When we go to Mass on Sunday, we realize the important role that the Bible has to play. The Bible is the focus of the first half of Mass in which we generally read some from the Old Testament, a letter from the New Testament, and a passage from the Gospels that cover the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The Bible is so important because while it talks about historical things and offers nice words and lessons, it is so much more than that! The Bible is the very Word of God that speaks life and love into every moment of our lives. The Bible, in a very real way, is speaking directly to you and me so that we can each personally encounter the love of God and so that we can be directed to live in that love.

One of the cool things about the Catholic Church is that if you are able to go to Mass every day for the next three years, you will have ended up hearing most of the Bible read to you. The cool thing about this is that it points to the importance of having the words of the Bible present in your life. God’s word is a life-giving, loving word that desires to be with you and not leave you alone to experience life by yourself kind of word. God wants you to know and realize that He is always with you and that He has something specific to say to you about your life. The Bible truly reminds us that God wants to be very close and to be in relationship with you in your life and we should do the very best that we can to live with the Bible being very familiar to us.

It is important to know too that the Word of God that we hear at the first part of Mass is speaking so as to show us how these words take action in the second part of Mass with the Eucharist. Jesus Christ, who is the fullness of God’s revelation of love to all people, is the eternal Word of God who speaks to us through the Bible. In the Eucharist, Jesus gives us the Word of God with His Body and Blood so that we each might be fully united to our loving God within our very person. God’s love for us is most clear through the revelation and gift of His Son Jesus Christ at the Holy Mass.

So, we see the importance of listening and doing the very best that we can to be attentive at Mass. Jesus comes to meet us at Mass and wants to fill us up with God’s love. Now, we will have times when we are distracted, when our minds wander, when we are confused about the readings or about what the priest is doing up there, or we’ll even have times when we plain just don’t want to be there and want to go do something else more entertaining. But remember that we go to church, we go to Mass worship God who freely gives us life and who freely offers us His love so that our life can find happiness and peace and joy and so many good things. So again, it is so important that we give our time at Sunday Mass the best that we can give. It is helpful to you and me but best of all it pleases God when we give Him what we can.

It is also important to do all that we can to think about and pray to God when we are not at church. God wants to be a part of our life and if we can open ourselves to think about Him, God will bless us with a deeper understanding of Him and help us to grow closer to Him in relationship. Anything that we can do is pleasing to God; praying to Him daily or praying to Him in addition to the prayers you say together with your family, reading the Bible either by yourself or reading together as a family, asking God’s help to understand something from the Bible or asking your family to help you understand something that you read in the Bible… These offer real ways to grow closer to God and to help make Him all the more real and special in your every day life.

Questions and Activities

 1. The Bible is ______ word to us.

2. What part of Mass is the Bible read during?

3. Why does God give us the Bible?

4. Other than praying to God what is a good way to show our love for Him and honor Him?

5. How often should we read the Bible?

Activities

1. Read the Gospel for next weekend (or have it read to you), think about how God is showing His love to you through that story, draw a picture about the Gospel.

2. If you have a bible at home make a cover for it, or just make a cover for a bible if you were going to be putting a bible together. 

Relates to Jesus:  Jesus shared in our temptations to sin, but unlike us, he rejected every temptation and lived a life free from all sin.

Relates to my Faith: Jesus told us, “You must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Mt 5:48). He also said, “With man these things are not possible, but with God, all things are possible (Mt 19:6). Therefore, it is possible for me, as it was for every saint.

Sample Script: In the first chapters of Genesis, we hear the story of God creating the universe and the world and all the plants and animals. Finally, He creates man and creates us very good. God created Adam and Eve to be in a harmonious relationship with Him and only asked that we do not disobey Him by eating from one tree in the Garden. Unfortunately, being persuaded by the devil disguised as a serpent, Adam and Eve eat from the tree which resulted in the original sin of disobeying God.

One of the results of this original sin is concupiscence, which is the disordered desire to choose sin over good. We can think of it this way, much like if there is a big red button that says do not touch, and we want to touch it, concupescience makes all temptations like that big red button. Because of this concupiscence which remains even after our baptism, we are tempted very easily to follow these disordered desires, making it too easy to fall into and commit sin in our daily lives. Like Adam and Eve, our relationship with God suffers, putting our disordered wants and desires ahead of His and disrupting the harmony that is intended to exist between Creator and creature. We know all of this through the revelation of God to us in His bible.

What are we to do then as Christians? We have a desire to be loved and to be filled with good things that we know can only find fulfillment in life with God but we also have concupiscence which puts us in a constant struggle of also desiring lesser things that don’t fill us up and pulls us away from God. As Christians, we need to be boys and girls, men and women, who learn to recognize the voice of God in our life so that we can choose the good over everything else.

How do we come to learn the voice of God? We need to be people to consistently reach out to God in prayer, asking for His help in times of temptation. We need to read the Bible often, coming to know His word, His stories, His voice so we can hear Him calling us to choose the good. We need to become familiar with the Church’s teachings the come to understand what God is asking of us. The Church approves the use of sacramentals, which afford us spiritual gifts to help us on our way and keep us close to God (i.e. holy water to bless us, the Rosary to seek Mary’s help and intercession, etc.). Staying close to Jesus by receiving Him in the Eucharist at Mass and asking mom and dad to take you to the Sacrament of Reconciliation on a frequent (once a month) schedule. These practices and others help to learn the voice of God and give us actual grace to assist us in the daily work of choosing God over anything else.

God certainly speaks to us and just as we have come to understand from the creation story in Genesis, He wants to be in relationship with you and me. So it is not just a one way street of we need to come to know God; God wants to come to know us so that we might have a companion through our life (and what a companion!). The Creator of the universe, who created you and everything else out of love, wants to be in relationship with you. The Bible is the written word of God, He isnpired the authors to write down the thoughts and ideas He wants us to know. By reading the Bible and coming to know God’s Word, again we come to know who God is but we also hear Him speak to us, saying something personal that fits in our life that draws us closer to God. We hear in His teaching through the stories of the Scriptures how the lessons are important for you and me and we recognize that when we follow these teachings that good things often come forth, showing us the grace that exists for those that listen to the voice of God.

The more we come to know the voice of God and we put into practice what we hear from Him, we begin to build-up our life in virtue. Virtue is practicing and living the good that we are all called to, living a life that is balanced and ordered and focused on achieving the good. Living a virtuous life is supported by and always open to grace from God to keep us focused on our relationship with Him. Virtue also keeps us from falling into vice, or into a life of sin, that throws things off their order and prevents us from recognizing the voice of God in our lives. We need to be always practicing virtue, to practice the good in our life so that we can always remain in relationship with our loving God and rightly live the that we were originally intended to.

Question and Activities

1.  How does God speak to us?

2. What is concupiscience?

3. Why does God give us the Bible?

4. What is the best way to hear God speaking to us?

5. What are some ways that we can overcome temptations and be close to God?

Activities

1. Draw an image of Adam and Eve being tempted, then draw an image of what you will use if you are tempted like Adam and Eve.

2. Read a story from the bible, then explain what you think the story means to someone in your family.

Relates to Jesus: Through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit working in the Church, we experience the real Jesus Christ in the words and stories of the Bible, which speak the truth of God present and active in our life.

Relates to my Faith: We can place our confidence in Sacred Scripture as a Living Word who helps us know, love, and serve God.

Sample Script: The Bible is made up of 73 books that cover many different time periods and characters and perspectives. It tells stories of men and women dealing with a number of things in their particular time and place. Most important within these stories is the detailing of how God is interacting with people and their lives. Knowing that God wants to be in relationship with His people, the Bible is the primary source to turn to for us to see how God has interacted with humanity and offers us a lens in which we can see Him interacting with us.

This lead in helps us to understand that God is the author of Sacred Scripture. He wants us to know Him and while we can experience Him in a variety of ways, the Bible provides a direct line of contact. We say in the language of the Church that the Sacred Scriptures of the Bible are divinely inspired, meaning that the stories and teachings found within are authored by God Himself. God desires or wills that the contents of the Bible are placed there intentionally to tell humanity who He is and to encounter Him there within.

This authorship of God came through the divine inspiration of the Holy Spirit guiding the human authors of each book to use their own words to communicate the truths of God. The inspiration from God did not take away the free will of the human authors, making them some kind of divine robot. Rather, the words and stories that came forth from their pen brought forth the necessary Truth that was intended. The words found in Sacred Scripture are said to be alive, having been inspired by God who is love and truth, and Who seeks to encounter you and me in our present state in life.

The Catholic Church holds this teaching of the divine inspiration of the Scriptures to be of the most importance. The Word of God is what is central to our belief and is the foundation of our worship of God in the Holy Mass. Jesus Christ, as Word of God, gave of Himself in word and sacrament to the Church so that God might be ever-present to His people and that we might receive the divine inspiration in our lives. The bishops of the Church, who hold the special responsibility of being our chief teachers in the faith, help to uphold the divine nature of the Bible through their preaching and reverence for the Scriptures in all that they do as leaders of the Church.

So what does this all mean for you and I? The fact that God is the author of the Sacred Scriptures and that these passages of the Bible are divinely inspired, should provide us with great confidence that truth and goodness is being made available for us. God wants us to be in contact with Him and He wants us to know about Him and the life that He has for us. Knowing that God is love, we can faithfully read the Scriptures knowing that God wants us to know that we are loved and cared for. The divine inspiration of the Bible should then inspire us to share these stories of love with our family and friends so that they can come to know the love of God which also calls out to them. This gift of sharing the Sacred Scriptures makes you and I evangelizers, people that hand on the Good News that God wishes all to hear so that life and love can be experienced. By sharing the Good News, we pass along the inspiration of the Scriptures and ultimately the presence of God.

Questions and Activities

1. Who is considered the author of the Scriptures?

2. How man books are in the Bible?

3. Do the authors of the Bible write word for word what God wants written or do they use their own words to tell God's story and truth?

4. How can we use the Scriptures to get closer to God?

5. Name some way that you can share the Scriptures with someone else.

Activities

Use your own words to explain to someone else that God loves them more than anything else in the world.

Write down the names of all the old testament books and then write out the names of the new testament books of the bible.

Relates to Jesus: Jesus' life and ministry, as explicated in the Gospels, shows us that He is fully God and fully man. We come to know Jesus in the Gospels, learn to model and follow Him, and witness to others about our Savior.

Relates to my Faith: The Gospels must be at the center of our faith life in order to be a disciple. The Gospels are the best source to train us in being authentic Christian examples.

Sample Script: We are blessed to have a God who is love and truth. Because He is love, and knowing that love is meant to be shared, we know that God wants to be in relationship with you and me. Because He is truth, and truth is meant to be known, we know that God wants to share the truth with you and me so we can know the reality of things. The love and truth that God has for you and me is revealed and given to us through the Holy Scriptures of the Bible. We see in the Bible the love and truth that God is and how these get shared with the people in the stories. And since these stories are authored by God, the love and truth told in the Scriptures are alive for us to not only read but to experience in our own lives today to show us the love and truth present in our own situations and experiences.

Our own reading of the Bible is important so that we can come to learn and know the love and truth of God around us in our life. While the entire Bible offers us this love and truth, it is particularly important that the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John become familiar to us as they tell the words and life of Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God who is the fullness of revelation that shows forth the love and truth of God most clearly.

The Gospels are the heart of the Scriptures, containing the important work and mission of Jesus Christ to save us from our sins and to bring us back into loving relationship with the Father. Jesus is the fullness of revelation that fulfills all of the law of the Old Testament and proclaims true all that was foretold by the Prophets. Jesus is the summary of the Bible while also being the central point; namely to love God and to serve Him with all your mind, heart, body, and soul and to love our neighbor as our self. Jesus’ words and life as found in the Gospels also provide us with our supreme role model for living the Christian life, Who calls us to follow after Him by being His disciple and to offer a living witness to the truth and love that God desires for all through His Son Jesus Christ.

While it is true that we receive the grace to be a disciple through prayer and practice of virtue and the like, we receive the supreme grace to be like Jesus from Jesus Himself, given to us in word and sacrament at each Sunday Mass. Hearing His words in Scripture, receiving the Body and Blood of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, worshiping together in community with our brothers and sisters who make up the body of Christ the Church, we come face-to-face with our Savior.

Important to note is that the celebrant or the leader of the Mass in each parish is the pastor, who when he is performing his liturgical duties is acting “in persona Christi” or the person of Christ and carries out the work that Jesus handed on through the Apostles to be present until the end of the age. We understand here the importance of the reader of the Gospel then, the reading of Jesus’ life and words, is the ordained man who has the grace to be in the person of Christ; we understand the importance of the prayers and actions over the bread and wine that becomes the Body and Blood of Christ to be the priest just as Jesus who offers the sacrifice of himself for the souls of his parish; we understand the importance of the role of the lay faithful who make up the body of Christ to pray for and support the pastor who represents Jesus the head of the Church in teaching and governing souls so as to attain salvation. Being in the person of Christ is a special grace to both lead the people of God in right worship and to be a witness of Jesus so that all might encounter Him through the Mass and the priest and be drawn ever closer as a disciple. Since the priest has this special role, it is the priest (or sometimes a deacon) that reads us the Gospel, and then gives us the homily to understand the Scriptures that are read at Mass. It is important to know as well that next to the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, and the priest as being in the person of Christ, the book of the Gospels has a special place as an image of Jesus (this is why we stand for the Gospels).

Questions and Activities

1. Who or what is the central point of all the Bible?

2.  What group of books of the Bible have a special place as an image of Jesus?

3. What is the role of the Scriptures (or Bible) at Mass?

4. How can we know about the love of God?

5. Why should we read the Bible?

Activities

Read one of the Gospels for half an hour, write down something you learned about the love of God, or specifically about Jesus.

Write a prayer to God thanking Him for giving us the Bible so that we may know His love.

Relates to Jesus: Jesus is the central figure of the scriptures and establishes the Church to assist in giving His life giving message to all generations after His death, resurection and ascension.

Relates to my Faith:  The Scriptures and Tradition help us to stay true to the faith that Jesus has given to us, while God also speaks privately to us in the Scriptures to encourage our own faith and grow in love and knowledge of God.

Sample Script:

When Jesus Christ had conquered sin and death by dying on a cross and by rising from the dead, He didn’t want to just stop there and leave us all on our own. His intention was always to remain with us in the Holy Spirit through the life of the Church. Further, He wanted to be so closely connected to us that He didn’t just want to leave us the three years of work He put in but wanted us to continue to search for and delve deeper into the meaning of God and our relationship with Him. To put this another way, Jesus left us the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, to continue the exploration of God in Scripture and in the Tradition of the Apostles that is handed on down from generation to generation in pursuit of leading all people to the fullness of truth. The Scriptures are written down and collected together as the Bible, the Tradition is handed down from generation to generation through the Church to help us understand the Scriptures.

This combined reality of Scripture and Tradition makes up the Sacred Deposit of Faith, which gives us in the Catholic Church the whole revealed truth. The Deposit of Faith allows the faithful to have confidence in what we profess and believe in. It affords us a certain knowledge in what we can say about God and His Church, assisting us in our relationship with the Divine. Here, we draw closer to the life of faith as what we believe takes shape and form and becomes something that is not just a thought or an idea, but rather is a Person who offers us love and fulfillment.

The Deposit of Faith is protected and handed on by the Church’s Magisterium or teaching office. Jesus entrusted this office to the Apostles who today are the Bishops, with the Pope as the head authority. This grace given to the Pope and the Bishops comes through ordination by the Holy Spirit and allows for an authentic interpretation of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition so that the faithful may be led in a trustworthy manner towards our Lord Jesus Christ.

This gift of faithful interpretation is important so that it does not lead you and I astray as we seek to learn and grow in the faith and in our relationship with God and His Church. Having a correct interpretation of Scripture and Tradition allow us to worship God correctly and approach Sunday Mass with proper attention and intention which ensures that both our physical and spiritual well-being are ready to meet the Lord with praise and adoration. A correct interpretation also allows for our private devotional life to be in good order so that we reach out for and encounter God with humility and openness and not with a false or prideful motive that seeks our own interpretation or spin in order to try to get what we want from the Word.

It is important to point out too that our confidence in having the right interpretation of Scripture allows us the freedom to dive into the Word of God often and prayerfully receive the Lord. The authentic voice of Jesus exists here and He calls us to experience the truth that He has in store for us. We come to know Him and as we come to know Him we come to learn more about ourselves, what we are strong in and what we are weak in as well. This growth of understanding about who we are as a son or daughter of God affords us the grace to live life as God has intended. The more we come to the Scriptures to explore our relationship with God, the more we grow in what is most valuable and most worthwhile in this life.

What is most valuable in this life is to realize that this life is meant to be lived in love. Our study of Scripture (and Tradition, and the Church) shows us that the center of this love is God, this love is shared with others, and this love plays itself out best with us when we discover that we are made for holiness which allows this love to continually and constantly move back to God and neighbor. Reflecting on the Word of God in Scripture opens us up to receive the truths of God’s love for us and shows us the way that He is calling us to live a holy life. So amazing it is to consider, that with Scripture being the living Word of God, that these printed words of the Bible speak directly to my situation right now and shows me the way to walk to encounter Jesus and to love the other before me. May we constantly pray over and reflect upon the Sacred Scriptures often in our life!

Questions and Activities

1. What makes up the Sacred Deposit of Faith?

2. What does the magisterium do for us when it comes to God's revelation?

3. Why do we want to make sure we have the right interpretation of the Scriptures?

4. Why is it important that we read the Scriptures?

5.  What is the difference between Scripture and Tradition?

Activities

1. Write a paragraph about why it is important that we have the magisterium to help us interpret the Scriptures.  

2. Explain the difference between an official interpretation of the Scriptures and what God may say to you personally when you read the Scriptures.

Relates to Jesus: Just as Jesus connects God to humanity through His Incarnation, Jesus unites the Old Testament and the New Testament by fulfilling the Old and revealing the fullness of truth in the New.

Relates to my Faith: The all encompassing nature of Revelation as found in the Church's Scripture and Tradition allows the faithful to confidently walk through life knowing the closeness of God.

Sample Script:

Sacred Scripture, or the Bible, is structured as the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament makes up the first part of the Bible and is comprised of 46 books. The New Testament makes up the second part of the Bible and is comprised of 27 books. Each book of the Bible, whether Old or New Testament, consists of chapters and verses that assist us in finding passages that we are looking for. For example, John 3:16 means that this passage is in the book of John, in the third chapter at the sixteenth verse. There are many different translations of the Bible, but everyone should own a New American Bible (NAB); this is a Catholic translation that the Church uses for the readings we hear at Mass.

The Sacred Scriptures are written in many different formats and help us to understand how some of the books of the Bible were written. Some of the formats include historical books (Joshua, 1^st or 2^nd Book of Samuel, 1^st or 2^nd Book of Chronicles) that detail some historical moments of Israel and God’s presence among His people during those particular times. The Bible also contains prophetic books (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Jonah) that detail messengers who received words or visions from God and spoke words of attention and warning to bring the people back. Some of the letters of the Bible are just that, letters (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Hebrews). These are written to specific communities dealing with specific questions and issues that offer much for our own communities even today.

The Bible is also made up of passages and stories that are both literal and spiritual in meaning. For example when the Bible says that Abram took his family and left his home for the promised land, it means that he physically did this. However when Jesus says we are the salt of the earth, it means that we give goodness to the world, not that we are actually made of salt. While there are many different examples of both of these meanings, it is important to remember that God uses the Scriptures to give us a point of encounter with Him to let grace or the life of God to be with us. Whether something is scientifically or historically or spiritually true, while important to know these are literally devices throughout the Scriptures, the point to remember is the presence of God speaking to you and me in and throughout each and every page.

Another critical feature of the Bible is the connectivity that exists throughout. Yes, there is an Old and New Testament and they each cover many different things. A popular phrase to explain the connectivity goes something like this; everything in the New Testament is hidden in the Old, and everything in the Old Testament is unveiled in the New. This saying is getting at the point that the Bible is entirely cohesive and united from the first word in Genesis to the last word in Revelation. Jesus Christ is a constant throughout both Testaments, being the Word that speaks and runs hidden in the Old and the Face that reveals all in its fullness in the New. The Old and New Testament tell the story of God’s revelation within human history that speaks a full message of God’s love even to His people today, thousands of years later.

The differences of the Old Testament and the New Testament truly show how the two build upon and support each other. The Old Testament is a record, if you will, of God’s formation of His people and of His covenants with them, showing how God constantly and consistently sought to be united with His people even though we often choose our own direction. The New Testament brings to fulfillment this revelation and covenants and describes the new life with God through His Son Jesus Christ and in His Church guided by the Holy Spirit.

What does this all mean for you and me? Two things stand out: One, Sacred Scripture is a gift from God that proves God’s love for His people, God’s love for you. Even though we fall away due to sin and choose our self above others, He continually calls our name and invites us to join Him again in relationship. Awesome! Second, we can trust Sacred Scripture as a revelation from God in that Jesus Christ and His Church is seen throughout, having endured thousands of years of humanity and our countless sins and failings, the Bible continues to proclaim truth and goodness and love that endures all things. Let us each come to care for, and study more, the Sacred Scriptures as given to us from God.

Questions and Activities

1. How many books of the Bible are there?

2. What is the difference between the Old and New Testaments?

3. What are some of the formats of the bible?

4. What is the difference between a literal and spiritual meaning of a verse? 

5. How does reading the Bible help us to know and love God better?

Activities

Find the following verses: John 3:16, John 6:56, Genesis 3:15, Revelation 13:1

Read Isaiah 53:5 and explain how even though this is the Old Testament it might point to something in the New Testament.

Relates to Jesus: Jesus reveals the face of God to us all, proclaiming His love and mercy, and by being Lord of all creation, He is also found in and throughout nature when we see the true, the good, and the beautiful.

Relates to my Faith: God's existence is proclaimed throughout creation and within the Church. We need both natural and supernatural (reason and faith) realities to come to a full understanding who God is.

Sample Script: God exists. We hear people and television and social media and billboards say this all the time. Now, don’t get me wrong, they are right. But how do we know? How can we prove God exists?

A popular argument that I think is pretty helpful for us today is one from natural reason. So, just for a moment, let’s take everything we have with Catholicism and religion and move these aside. Now, consider something we experience every day, let’s say simply the world around us. We see the grass and the trees and all the created world and we could ask how did those get here? Well, we could say seeds were planted and grass grew or acorns fell and took root and eventually trees sprouted up. Ok, how did the dirt to nurture the seeds come about? Some formulaic combination of molecules to make dirt made the dirt but what about the molecules? You can continue in this fashion to look at the rock under the dirt, the earth, the sun, the universe and you would still have the question where did thing x come from? There has to be some initial, first, ultimate cause of things from which everything can trace its source… This is what we call God.

There are a number of arguments one could put forth from simply natural reason that can bring us to God. Science, more and more and as we become more advanced, in fact points more clearly to the existence of God than ever before. And while science offers us so many answers and we are right to pay attention to the findings of science, science does not offer all the answers. There are things that science still does not know. Our faith life can help to fill in some of these holes (although faith itself does not have all the answers and it is necessary to keep a seat in the car for mystery).

Knowing that God exists and that His participation and activity can be seen throughout creation, it is no surprise that He reveals Himself to us in many ways. Just the fact that we can come to the existence of God through the created order, recognizing His participation in creation, allows us to posit that this God (who is a who and not a what!) cares for what He made. He didn’t just create to create because He was bored, but He created for a purpose. However, natural means can only tell us so much, it can not tell us the purpose of the creation.

Divine Revelation tells us this purpose, that God creates out of love and for the purpose of love, to love us and ask for our love in return. The fullness of this revelation comes forth in the presence of His Son, Jesus Christ, who reveals to us the love of God, who Jesus calls Father, and desires all humanity to be in intimate union with the Father and the Son by becoming a follower, a friend, a disciple. Thus, we can understand that God is like a Father, He loves us, He protects us, He leads us, and He cares for us like a Father and we only know this through revelation. This and many more revelations were handed down through the Sacred Scriptures, down through the Church, and down through Sacred Tradition and are now upheld and maintained by the Church’s teaching office made up of the Pope and the Bishops as the Magisterium. Here, the fullness of truth is taught and given to the faithful to guide them towards the loving goodness of God in truth. Many of these truths we can only know because of the revelation of God through the Scriptures and the Tradition of the Church.

What does this all mean for you and me? God is all around us. Whether we realize Him or not, whether we can prove He exists scientifically or not, whether we believe in revelation or not; God exists. And He exists as a loving Father who created you, knows you, and loves you. God wants to be a part of your life to walk with you during the good times and the bad times. He wants to rejoice with you, He wants to question with you, He wants to struggle with you. God wants to do anything and everything just to have you in friendship with Him. He is willing to live for you, and He is willing to die for you. The challenge for all of us is to be open to His inspirations, at each and every moment of our lives, so that we can come to realize His loving presence in our lives.

Questions and Activities:

1. What are some things we can know about God from reason, and what are some things we need revelation for?

2. Why did God give us the Scriptures?

3. What does it mean for God to be revealed as a Father to us?

4. How can the Bible help us to know God better?

5. How often should we read the Bible?

Activities:

Read the Creation story in the first three chapters of Genesis, explain in a paragraph something it teaches us about God.

Choose one of the Gospels and read a couple paragraphs a day each day of this week.
 

Relates to Jesus: Jesus is the Word of God. In the Old Testament, we learn God created us, that we broke faith with God, about our broken human nature, and our need for a Savior to be reconciled with God. We see how God slowly unfolds for us his plan of salvation by choosing for himself a people, Israel, to distinguish himself from those who reject God or choose false gods, and the predicted coming of a Messiah, especially through his covenants. In the New Testament (New Covenant), we see his plan of salvation fulfilled in Jesus Christ. 

Relates to my Faith: By prayerfully reading and pondering the Scriptures, we will know Jesus, and learn to think and act as he taught us therein.

Catechism of the Catholic Church: Nos. 74-141

CHAPTER TWO

GOD COMES TO MEET MAN

Video resources: 

St.Philip Institute on Divine Revelation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCuyyYSMlxQ (5:53 mins).

Three Minute Theology on Divine Revelation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n7aETt_9u0 (3:30 mins)

Three Minute Theology on Sacred Tradition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpdy4QJZ-GU (3:51 mins)

Scott Hahn on the function of the Holy Spirit as the principle of the living Tradition of the Church. Especially starting at 10:52. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CakGh4xD8cE&t=635s (51:24 mins)

 

Additional Narrative

The Catholic Church holds Sacred Scriptures in the highest regard. They are the Divine Word of God and tell us who God is, who we are in relation to God, and are the story of Salvation History written by more than fifty authors over the course of two thousand or more years. In this lesson, we will discover how the Church understands the Divine Word of God and Divine Revelation and come to understand the importance of Sacred Scripture as the story of our salvation culminating in the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and as the key to understanding who God is, who we are, why God created us, and our eternal destiny.

In the Catholic Church, the Divine Word of God is not only Sacred Scripture (i.e. the Bible), but is also something we call, Sacred Tradition. It is these two pillars, supported by the Teaching Authority of the Church--what is formally termed, the Magisterium, which is made up of the Pope and all the world’s Catholic Bishops united with him-- that make up Divine Revelation (i.e., the one, Divine Word of God.) 

There are two images we can use to picture this relationship, one is to imagine two pillars supporting a roof in two dimensions. The roof is the Word of God. One pillar is Sacred Tradition. The other pillar is Sacred Scripture. These two pillars are supported by its base, which is the Magisterium. The second image we can use is a three-legged stool in which the seat is the Word of God, the three legs are Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture, and the Magisterium.

The role of the magisterium is critical, for it is to that body (cf. Jn 14:26 and Jn 16:13) that Jesus promises the Holy Spirit to guide them and remind them of all that he taught them. To its authority are the teaching and correcting functions of the Church. Jesus did not give this authority to all his disciples, but specifically to the apostles during the Last Supper. This is why in times past when the bible was becomign common available for private reading, the Church urged the faithful to be cautious or even discouraged the private reading of the bible. It is too easy to read into things that aren’t there or to misinterpret it.  Yet, with prayer, practice, guidance by the Church’s teaching authority, and scholarship--pretty much in that order--we can begin to glean the depths of God’s self-revelation to us in his Divine Word--remembering that his Divine Word is also the Second person of God, Jesus Christ--who reveals.the Father to us.    

In fact, the Church teaches that reading and reflecting upon the Scriptures is of paramount importance, “for it is in them God speaks to man” (CCC no.109). Therein, “the Father who is in heaven comes lovingly to meet his children and talks with them” (CCC no. 104), and St. Jerome said, “Ignorance of Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.” Even in the times of discouraging private readings, the Church always encouraged the listenting of Scriptures at Mass and the full understanding of the Bible. The Scriputres are God’s revelation of himself to us and also get to the heart of the truths about who we are as God’s human creatures. So, we cannot begin to come to know God without prayerfully reading and pondering Sacred Scriptures. This is also why the Church, from antiquity has included the proclamation of the Gospels and other Scriptural readings at the Eucharistic Liturgy (i.e., the Mass). In fact, the early Church simply continued the tradition of the readings of the Sacred Scriptures from the Sabbath practices in the Jewish synagogues. 

Now let’s look at a few basic important facts about the Bible. 

First, the Catholic Bible is not written by one author. It is inspired (a technical theological term, which we’ll discuss later) by one divine author, the Holy Spirit, but is in fact made up of 73 different books (46 in the Old Testament, and 27 in the New Testament) written by more than 50 different human authors over the course of two millenia (2000 years). The bible did not just plop down from Heaven one day in its completed, book-bound form. Even the chapters and verses were developed and placed in the Scriptures only relatively recently, the chapters first, and years later the verses. The first Scriptures were actually written on leather scrolls. Each book had its own scroll. Their maintenance and care was the job of the Hebrew scribes, scripture scholars who studied, interpreted, maintained fidelity to and re-copied by hand previous scrolls which had become frail and unusable. It was a very important and very meticulous function. 

However, before the many of the Old Testament (OT) Scriptures and stories of the New Testament (NT) were written down, they were first told orally, and passed down from generation to generation in tribal community gatherings at which divine worship was prescribed (see footnote on Sacred Tradition). But, unlike the telephone game (where you whisper something in someone’s ear and it comes out completely distorted and unrecognizable from what was originally said after being passed from person to person), you didn’t get to be the tribal storyteller until you knew it by heart and could repeat the story verbatim, and you were vetted and tested by the tribal scholars. This is no different than actors today who must memorize lines or children of the Islamic faith who must memorize and recite the entire Koran verbatim to be considered an adult in the Islamic community. It is as doable now just as it was when it was required by the Jewish community then! 

So, then, how did these stories come about in the first place? Were they just made up? To answer this question, we must first understand that there are many different literary forms in the various books of Scripture. The 73 books of the bible are categorized. Hebrew scholars recognized these differences and did the original cataloguing into three traditional categories: 1.The Torah (or Law) 2. The Prophets (in Hebrew, the Nevi’im) and 3. The Writings (the Ketuvi’im, i.e. the Wisdom books). Today, the categories are more specific, and include the Pentateuch (literally, the “five books”, which refers to the first five books of the OT), the Historical books, the Wisdom books, and the Prophetic books.

In the New Testament, there are five categories of Scriptures, the Gospels (i.e., the four books that chronicle the early and public life of Jesus and of his suffering, death, burial, and resurrection), Acts of the Apostles (the story of the development and spread of the early Church from the moment Christ ascended into Heaven), the Pauline Epistles (letters of St. Paul to various communities or persons), the Catholic Epistles (so-called because they are letters of one of the other Apostles to the Church universal, which is the meaning of “catholic”), and finally, the book of Revelation (titled the Apocalypse in older bibles.). 

Of these books, in Christianity, the Gospels are of the greatest importance because they are the words of Christ himself, the Word of God given by the Word of God whose very purpose in coming to earth was to save us from our sins and reveal the Father’s love for us. Since the Gospels are the primary source of God’s revelation of himself given by his very own divine son, all other scriptures are read in light of them. Jesus comes to fulfill what is written in the Old Testament (Mt 5:17). Thus, when we read the OT, any time we encounter what appears to be a contradiction between what Jesus says and what is written in the OT, Jesus has the last word. When there is a dispute within Christian circles about the meaning of Christ's words, it is the Magisterium which has the last word through the Sriptures have been interpreted through the history of Church teaching, and not only "in the moment" of the current ponitificate. Furthermore, no one moment in Church teaching has the final say in the meaning of a passage, but the passage must be studied and prayed over in the context of its total scholarship through the ages. Thus understanding the guidance of the Holy Spirit given by Christ to the apostles regarding his teachings in John 14:26, "The Advocate, the Holy Spirit that the Father will send in my name—he will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you." and in John 16:13, "But when he comes, the Spirit of Truth, he will guide you to all truth."

Within each of the books, can be found different types of writing, etiologies, historical chronicles (remember, there is no objective history. All history is written through the view of one person’s understanding), poetic verse, prophetic utterances, psalms, songs, hymns, apocalyptic literature, Jewish exaggeration (used to drive a point home, e.g. when Jesus said, “If any man come to Me and hate not his father and mother, and wife and children, and brethren and sisters, even  his own life, cannot be My disciple- Lk 14:26), also parables, teaching stories, etc. By studying specific verses, through the use of what is called, exegesis, (i.e. the study of the Scriptures through use of other scriptures and outside sources) we can determine the type of literature we are looking at. This is very important in order to understand more fully what God is intending to convey to us in his self-revelation. It is also important to note that we must keep an open mind about what we are reading. Many scholars take the attitude that by accepting a specific biblical passage as a literary type, it necessarily excludes their historical reality. The story of Jonah and the “big fish” is a case in point. Christ himself refers to the reality of Jonah in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. So, we can trust that Jonah was a real prophet in history. The story of the “big fish” may or may not be an embellishment of Jonah’s personal life understanding the truth to be gleaned in the story of Jonah is to let God be God. A right attitude should always keep our hearts and minds open to the realities of God’s mysteries, and what he can do despite the laws of nature, even as many of us can give witness to the unexplained in things we have seen in our own lives. 

How the books of the Bible are written is a process that involves a human author and the Divine Author, who is the Holy Spirit. We call this divine Inspiration or simply, inspiration. It is God’s interaction, primarily through the Holy Spirit with the human author of everything that is contained in the Scriptures. In the many different types of writing in the Sacred Scriptures, most of them involve the telling of very real and significant interactions between God and his Chosen People in the Old Testament, Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection in the Gospels, and the actions of the Holy Spirit in the life of the budding Church in the NT epistles. Even the original oral stories told about creation, the Fall, Cain and Abel, the Tower of Babel, the flood of Noah’s time are the inspired interactions between the Holy Spirit and their human authors. 

For instance, we can envision the original human author of the oral story of creation perhaps standing on a mountain cliff using nothing but his powers of observation and reason to figure out how the world and the universe above him was created. We can be sure that those two stories of creation--which may or may not be literal accounts of creation (they are largely recognized as etiologies--stories of an origin of something)--were nonetheless guided by the Holy Spirit. 

So, if we can go back to our person standing on the cliff appreciating God’s creation and trying to figure it all out, we would accept that God is pleased with the fact our observer on the cliff is appreciating God’s creation, with God for his part quietly guiding our observer’s intellect and thoughts into a narrative of how God created the heavens and the earth. The story is accepted by the tribal community and congeals into theological truth to be passed on (oral Tradition). That the world began with nothing and before that nothingness God always was, remains now, and always will be; that he initiated the creation of all there is, that there is an order to it, and that order speaks to the reality of God, how we came to be, and why we are the way we are as fallen creatures in need of a Savior who will restore us to God.  

We can imagine a young child asking his father, “Daddy, how was the world created?” and thus the story is passed down. So, regardless of whether the creation stories are merely etiological stories, they speak to profound truths which God wanted us to know, namely that God created all. He created us in his divine image, he created male and female for one another, he created us to share in his divine life, we fell from grace and life in God through sin, but God had a plan of salvation which would culminate in the sending of his Divine Son, Jesus Christ, who would pay the price of our restoration to Him through his suffering, death, and resurrection. 

So, in Catholic scriptural teaching, it is not the scientific process of how the world was created that is important, but the fact that God created the world and that he created humankind, and that we fell, and that fall radically disrupted not only our original harmony with God and nature, but our very being, and that it just as radically affected the entire harmony of the universe, and that without God’s plan of salvation we could never undo the damage caused by sin or our separation from God. 

In our earlier lesson on the Existence of God, we already saw that there are two kinds of revelation: Natural and Divine. We saw that in natural revelation, we can use our reason, our built-in religious sense of something greater than us that came before us and started it all, and the created universe around us to reason our way to the reality of one Supreme Being who must be eternal, all-powerful (omnipotent), all-knowlng (omniscient), all-loving, and be the perfect model, originator (progenitor) and form (Plato) of everything that is intangible such as beauty, truth, love, etc). 

We also saw that we cannot reason our way to the reality of three persons in one divine being or that Jesus has two natures, two wills, one fully human, one fully divine, unmixed yet existing together (i.e. the hypostatic union) and is one divine person, the second, of the trintarian Godhead (That’s a mouthful!). For that, we needed the revelation of Jesus. We call this divine revelation, which, like the Word of God itself, is made up of our two pillars and guided by the magisterium as in our images above. Thus, the Church teaches that Jesus is the fullness of divine revelation. 

The totality of these truths taught by Christ and handed down to the apostles is called the deposit of faith and ends with the death of the last apostle. From that point, all that the Church has taught since and teaches today is the unfolding and exploring of the depths of those truths, which are infinite (unending) because God himself is infinite. There is no new revelation in the technical theological sense of that word.

The Senses of Scripture

Scripture scholars through the ages have determined the ways or senses or lenses through which we can read the Scriptures. There are two basic senses, literal and spiritual with the spiritual sense having three sub-categories, allegorical, moral, and anagogical.

In the literal sense of Scripture, we simply take the verse--in context--for what it is. We don’t try to read into it, but simply look at what the verse is saying. For example, “Jesus fed the five thousand with two loaves and five fishes, not counting women and children.” We don’t ask, does it mean symbolically? Did he feed them spiritually? What do the loaves represent? What do the fishes represent? No. We simply accept that Christ fed five thousand people, not including women and children, with five loaves and two fishes. 

Rather, it is In the spiritual sense where we view this passage in terms of allegory, moral teaching, and anagogy. Allegory is a literary device in which we can look at what is said through the deeper meaning of things by using figures of speech, historical parallels, unforeseen coincidences, connections to past events, etc. For instance, Scripture scholars have discerned that behind this account of the feeding of the five thousand is a deeper meaning dating back to the 20 barley loaves used by Elisha, the greatest OT prophet, to feed 100 (with some leftover), that the Gospel writers (specifically Matthew and John) are pointing out to their Jewish audiences that Jesus is greater than the greatest prophet of the Old Testament. Yet, no sense cancels out another sense. We cannot say that since there is an allegorical sense, the story is therefore contrived just to make a point. No, we can attribute the allegory to either the evangelists’ deep understanding of what they wrote or that Jesus himself knew what he was doing and the evangelists were simply unconsciously writing what they were either witness to or what was passed down to them via the oral tradition (i.e. the oral handing down of Jesus’ words and deeds by the original witnesses) being guided by Divine inspiration. 

In the moral sense of Scripture, we view what we are reading through how God desires that we act either in justice or in our moral behavior. Continuing our example of the loaves and fishes, we see that Jesus takes pity on the crowd and takes the opportunity to show God’s “hesed” (covenantal care and concern) and uses his power to care for the crowd’s temporal need to be fed. He provides an example of how we must serve the needs of others, both spiritually and temporally.

In the anagogical sense of Scripture, we view Scripture in terms of their eternal significance. The story of the miracle of the loaves and fishes point first and foremost to the Holy Eucharist and the eschatalogical banquet in Heaven (i.e. the beatific vision or final union with God) wherein all our needs will be taken care of, where there will be no fear and no concerns and safe in the “bosom of Abraham”, in union with God. God will supply all. Therefore, we should not be concerned on earth either, but rather place our trust in God’s providential love and care. 

The Mystery of God in the Old Testament

Atheists and agnostics often ask Christians how God could be a god of goodness and love when many of the OT stories appear to portray him as wrathful and vengeful. For instance, we see that God himself tells the prophets, “I am a jealous God.” We read that God “strikes down the Egyptians”, brings plagues that destroy entire armies, exiles Israel from its homeland, displaces entire cultures from land they have settled on and replaces them with his Chosen People. They ask how a god like that can be a loving God? 

However, without studying the context and specifics of these passages, these interpretations become a careless reading of the Scriptures. If we study these passages more carefully, what we really see is God’s providential care and protection of his chosen people at work. In the opening lines of St. Paul’s Letter to the Hebrews, he writes, “In times past, God spoke to the prophets in partial and various ways. But in these last days, He has spoken to us through a Son who he made heir of all things and through whom he created the universe” (Heb 1:1-2). Paul tells us that the answer to the fullness of God’s revelation is found in the depths of the love of Jesus Christ who gave his very life for our salvation. In St. Paul’s opening line, he is reminding the Hebrew community to whom he writes that if we really want to know the true nature of God, we need to look at Jesus “who is the image of the invisible God, the exact representation of the Father’s being” (Heb 1:3). When we remember that the Holy Spirit is the divine author, but is inspiring a human author who is looking at God through his limited cultural lens and limited understanding, the fullness of who God is as described in the OT necessarily lacks in its fullness until Jesus reveals it.

We also need to keep in mind that answering the question of who God is as he is revealed in the OT requires delving into very specific circumstances and remembering basic truths such as God is the creator of heaven and earth, and as such the earth and its lands and seas are not ours. “We are strangers and sojourners” (1 Chron 29:15).  It all belongs to God and recalling every instance where God strikes down another nation, it is because those nations are threatening God’s people with their very existence (i.e. the death of every last man, woman, and child) and were given every chance to turn away from their evil. Israel for its part, was told by God himself to rely on his strength and not their own. So, we have to ask the question, would it have been just to let Israel’s enemies destroy them, or was God trying to show those who refuse to believe in his power and might to what limits he will go to save his people who call on him? Is a father supposed to stand by while his child and wife are threatened with violence and death when he has the power to protect them? As God spoke to the prophet Ezekiel, “Is it my ways that are unfair, or is it yours?” (Ez 18:25). In the final analysis, what these passages are ultimately pointing to is the coming of the Messiah as the New Covenant, which tells us the ultimate truth about God’s saving action which will culminate with his Second Person’s death on the cross in Christ’s human nature experienced in a mystical way by his divine nature, and thus it can be said that God is not a stranger to the reality of human death. And so, it is important to understand that the New Testament is hidden in the Old Testament, and the teachings of the Old Testament, are revealed in their fullness in the New Testament. 

One of the ways we can easily discover these hidden realities is through typology, which is the study of figures and symbols in the OT that point to the realities revealed and/or given by Jesus in the NT. For instance, Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, despite the fact that all are fallen, are all father figures that point to God’s providential care for his people, while King David, is a type of Christ who is priest, prophet and king. The flood is a type of baptism. Eve is a type of Mary--the Mother of all the Living. Manna is a type of the Eucharist. The bronze serpent that Moses is told by God to fashion that cures all those bitten by the saraph serpents in the desert of Sin is a type of the Cross, the instrument of our salvation. The saraph serpents and the serpent in the garden is a type of Satan as tempter and destroyer, and so on.  Each imperfect type in OT is fulfilled, perfected or made clear in the Gospels. 

The Five Covenants of the OT

Scripture Scholars from antiquity have also identified five covenants (i.e. solemn promises between God and man) in the Old Testament. Each successive covenant is greater in scope. For example, the first covenant is between Adam and Eve and is at the level of the individual. The second covenant is with Noah and is at the level of family. The third covenant is with Abraham and is at the level of tribe, The fourth covenant is with Moses and is at the level of nation. The final covenant of the OT is with David, and is at the level of Kingdom. 

Likewise each covenant carries a promise, a condition, a sign, and in some cases, is preceded by a “tardemah”, a deep sleep into which God puts the subject of his covenant, when he is about to make his covenant. Adam’s sign is the sabbath. Noah’s, the rainbow. Abraham’s, circumcision. Moses’, the Passover. David’s, the throne. Adam is put into a deep sleep just before he creates Eve. Abraham is put into a deep sleep--actually a mystical trance--in which he has a vision of carcasses divided in two with a smoking censer that moves between them. Each covenant leads to the greatest and final covenant, Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist (so think of what that means next time we ask whether it is important we participate in Sunday Mass!)

The New Covenant and the Preeminence of the Gospels

With the coming of the Messiah (“Christ” in Greek--which means, “the Anointed”), God gives us “the new and everlasting covenant” (Words of consecration from the Mass), at the level of Church, the sign of which is the Eucharist, the mediator of which is Christ himself, whose role in the new covenant is that of High Priest, that is, the one who is the offerer of the sacrifice which is himself. Thus, he is also the sacrificial Victim. His blood is offered and poured out from the cross, just as the priests of the temple in the Old Testament sacrificed and poured out the blood of bulls, goats, and other specific animals as thanksgiving and sacrificial offerings of various kinds. Jesus becomes all those things wrapped in one eternal sacrifice. Furthermore, Jesus links his sacrifice to the Last Supper, which becomes the Eucharist. Thus, at every Mass, Jesus is both the priest and the sacrificial victim. Nor is this merely a symbolic act, but rather the Church has taught from antiquity, in fact, from the words of Christ himself in the Gospels “this is my body given up for you”, and in the Gospel of John Jesus tells us “my flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink” (Jn 6:55) “unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you have no life within in you”  (Jn 6:53). 

So, really, when we refer to the Old Testament and the New Testament, we are not so much referring to a collective title of a group of books, as the group of books which come before the New Covenant (Testament) and after the New Covenant, with the Gospels (the first four books of the New Testament) being of preeminent importance because they are the chronicles of God’s second person, made flesh, who dwelled among us, Jesus’ words and deeds. Think on that reality. It is in the Gospels where Jesus, God’s second person, most fully reveals the nature of God. Therein we see how much God loves us, that in his second person, he gives his life for us, who for the large part, are ungrateful, skeptical, disbelieving, and otherwise completely unworthy to receive his wondrous love. Not only that, but he willingly gave his life over to ignorant, hateful people for the salvation of all.

The Two Types of Gospels

The three Gospels written by Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called the Synoptic Gospels. The word synoptic meaning with the “same eye” or same perspective because they are written in a similar way, meaning more or less chronologically, with a view towards providing a straight chronicle of the life and deeds of Jesus of Nazareth. Nonetheless, each Gospel still has its own unique qualities and point of view with each evangelist (the gospel writer) writing to a specific audience. 

The Gospel of John, on the other hand, is unique because John writes in such a way that he is more interested in weaving together the events of Christ’s life as a theological narrative, pointing out theological truths about Jesus as well as showing the reality of the Sacraments in the words and deeds of Jesus. Additionally, John’s gospel is not chronologically consistent with the synoptics. The specific events and details John points out about the life and deeds of Jesus are all done with the purpose of illustrating deeper truths of the faith. For instance, in the pericope (a complete story of itself) of the Woman at the Well, (John 4),  John uses what we can presume was a historical event in the life of Christ and weaves a story filled with sacramental symbolism, allegory, and theological teaching which touches on baptism, the nature of marriage, true faith, the nature of God, and much more. Furthermore, you will notice that the Gospel of John is the only Gospel that does not tell us the words of consecration at the Last Supper. Scholars suggest a number of possible reasons for this, including the fact John’s gospel is written perhaps as late as 20 years after the synoptics, the sacramental life of the Church had been well-established. So, by then, the words were so sacred, that they were not to be revealed to the enemies of the Christ. At another level, John’s Gospel is structured in such a way that chapter six, the chapter in which we find Christ’s teaching on the Eucharist, is at the top of a pyramid of the traditional twelve teaching points of the Apostles’ creed laced through the 21 chapters of that gospel. 

Lastly, the Gospels are the culmination of Salvation History which is the coming Jesus Christ as God’s son to dwell among us and restore our original harmony with God. While the effects of Original Sin remain (sickness, disorderedness, sin, death, and all the world’s problems), Christ opened the door to salvation by redeeming us. So, while we are still free to reject God or live in his love, the ability to enter Heaven has been opened by Christ’s death through the sign of his resurrection. The restoration of our relationship with God is called redemption, while the working out of holiness through God’s offer of grace (Phil 2:12) is such that we can enter Heaven is called salvation.

In this lesson, we learned about the relationship between Scripture and Tradition. We learned that the Word of God and Divine Revelation in Catholic teaching does not lie in the Scriptures alone, but consists of Scripture and Tradition which are both guided by the Holy Spirit through the apostolic authority of the Magisterium established by Christ. We learned about the necessity of reading and studying Scriptures to grow in our relationship and union with God and to know him and his will for our lives, the preeminence of the Gospels as the fullest revelation of God through Jesus Christ his divine Son, interpreting the Old Testament in light of the Gospels and the teachings in the epistles of the New Testament, the use of the Scriptures in the Eucharistic Liturgy of the Church, and the nature of the two types of Gospels. .  

All Content for "The Way", Learn, is original content and copyright of the Diocese of Kalamazoo and may not be copied, reproduced, or used without prior written consent of the Diocese of Kalamazoo. 2020