A Picture and a Thousand Words

When my wife and I were dating, and things started to get serious, I took her home to meet my family. They wasted no time in breaking out the family photo albums and began to dissect my life picture by picture. There were the cute baby pictures, pictures of the major accomplishments, and more embarrassing photos than I knew existed. One by one my wife got little glimpses into the life of the man she was growing deeper in love with.

Each picture had a story behind it, containing details one could never learn from the picture itself. My family spent hours reminiscing, sharing their memories of good times and bad. By the end of the day my wife had gotten a good look at the person I was and how I grew into the person I currently am. The photos, however good, were not enough to do this. It was only with my family’s memories of the events that a proper understanding could be obtained.

The bible is the photo album of salvation history. The words on the page create the images in the mind that the stories are meant to convey. The album begins with creation itself and follows the journey of mankind through the fall to its salvation and redemption. As with my family, God’s family has reminisced about these stories throughout time. The Jewish oral tradition has meticulously passed down the stories of the Old Testament from one generation to the next. Likewise, the Catholic Church has done the same with both the Old and New Testaments through her Sacred Oral Tradition. Holy Scripture and Sacred Oral Tradition make up the deposit of faith that defines what Catholics believe and why. It is only through the written word and the Sacred Oral Tradition that a complete and accurate understanding of salvation history can be obtained. The story is incomplete and misunderstood if either is missing.

Catholic oral tradition was successfully used to combat the Luther heresies. When Luther decided to cast aside 1500 years of Church teaching to begin his own ecclesial community based upon his personal opinion he did away with Sacred Tradition. He kept only the photo album which he could explain in any way he saw fit to support his opinions. He made the claim that anyone, inspired by the Holy Spirit, could come to the correct understanding of Holy Scripture. That, after all, is what the Jews believed about the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament.

Two things would have happened if what Luther claimed were true. The first is that everyone, divinely inspired, would come to the same understanding as what was taught by the Church for 1500 years. Holy Scripture itself says this in 1 Timothy 3:15 –

“…the church (through her magisterium) is the pillar and bulwark of the truth.”

Second, if everyone can come to the correct understanding of Holy Scripture for themselves, we would not have, at last count, over 70,000 different versions of the truth proclaimed by the various denominational and nondenominational Christian churches throughout the world. We all would share the same truth and have the same understanding of what the photos in the photo album mean.

Luther was dubbed the father of the reformation. Revolution would be a more accurate word. If we were to call Luther for what he is truly the father of it would be Christian moral relativism. When he taught that every person could define what the bible means for themselves, he opened the doors for everyone to define what is right and wrong for themselves. The Church ceased to be the pillar and bulwark of the truth, as the bible says, and truth became a matter of person opinion. Now the tens of thousands of churches that exist throughout the world cannot even agree on something as simple and straightforward as the Ten Commandments.

The Church is the pillar and bulwark of the truth, as scripture says it is. It is not just any church or every church but the Church that Jesus himself began. As the creed says that Church is, “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.” It is not just anyone or everyone in that Church, but it is those to whom the authority has been given to lead the Church. That is the Magisterium. The Magisterium is the Pope in union with the bishops and they have been given the duty and responsibility to pass on to us the unchanged teachings of Jesus. When someone disagrees with the Church, they don’t disagree with just the Church, but they disagree with Christ himself.

The bible is a photo album and as such it does not contain everything that has come to pass. Scripture itself tells us this in John 21:25 –

“But there are also many other things which Jesus did, which, if they were written in detail, I expect that even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written.”

Scripture contains everything we need to know about salvation but scripture alone it not enough to properly understand it. We need both Holy Scripture and Sacred Oral Tradition to get a complete understanding of who Jesus is and the relationship he has with his Church.

God's Great Puzzle

Leaving Mass this weekend I found a white envelope sitting under the windshield wiper on my car. I knew without looking what it was. It was a letter from someone concerned for the salvation of my soul.

The letter begins –

“My Catholic friend; I’m writing you today concerning Roman Catholicism. I have studied the Holy Bible for over 34 years now. I feel compelled to share my findings here with you in a letter.”

What follows is no less than eight pages of scripture passages, single spaced in 8 font, telling me how the Catholic Church got it all wrong. Of course, the letter is anonymous. There is no return address and no means offered if I wanted to learn more. The person claimed to have a wealth of information gleaned from decades of study but didn’t want to talk to me directly about it

. I am reminded of a scene from the Rodney Dangerfield movie, “Back to School.” Thornton Melon had an assignment to do a book report on Kurt Vonnegut. Thornton didn’t understand the book so he hired Kurt Vonnegut himself to write the report on what the book was about. He received a failing grade on the paper because, as the teacher put it, “Whoever wrote the paper didn’t know the first thing about Kurt Vonnegut.”

The New Testament of the bible was written by those in the Catholic Church. The Catholic bible, from which all non-Catholic bibles have their source, was compiled by the Catholic Church. The Church has read, preached, and taught on the scriptures for the last two-thousand years. To say that it is the authority on what it wrote, compiled, and taught on for two millennia should go unquestioned. But, if we need to quote scripture about who has the authority we need to look no further than 1 Timothy 3:15 –

“…but in case I am delayed, I write so that you will know how one should act in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth.”

The Church is the pillar and support of the truth, not scripture. I will always take two-thousand years of authority stemming from the very beginning over a thirty-four-year independent study any day.

The bible is God’s great puzzle. Each verse of scripture is a piece in that puzzle. The pieces fit together only one way. One must look at all of the pieces in relation to the whole to see the complete picture portrayed. Looking at pieces individually or in small groups can easily lead one astray as to what the pieces truly mean.

The devil is one of the greatest scripture scholars. He was there when most of it took place. He is very cunning in getting people to look at an individual piece of the puzzle or a group of pieces and see in them something other than their true intended meaning. You can find a scripture verse to support just about any ideology. Scripture has been used and continues to be used to justify great evils.

A common non-Catholic Christian believe is that a person can read the bible and be inspired and guided to it’s true meaning by the spirit. If this were true, we would not have over forty-thousand different understandings of the bible. The statement is partially true, however. A person can read the bible and be guided by a spirit. That does not mean it is the Holy Spirit doing the guiding. The person who wrote me the letter most certainly has been led astray by a spirit other than the Holy Spirit.

Despite popular belief, Catholics are encouraged to read their bibles. They are encouraged to meditate on what they read. We even have a special way of doing this called Lexio Divina. Catholics are encouraged to study the bible alone and in groups. They are read the bible and have the Gospel proclaimed to them at every Mass, along with practical instruction from the clergy on how what was read applies to our lives today.

What a Catholic should not do is to try and interpret the bible for themselves, as the letter writer did. We have the Magisterium whose duty it is to give us the authoritative interpretation of what scripture means. Authority given to the Church by Jesus himself. It is ok to be inspired by scripture as long as the inspiration does not contradict official Church teaching. Where a contradiction occurs, we are to always accept what the Church teaches over personal opinion.

The bible is God’s great puzzle. It’s true beauty can only be seen by looking at it as a whole and not microfocus on any individual piece.

I Hold the Whole World in my Hands

There is one God.

With three distinct and individual persons; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Father begot the Son and the Holy Spirit precedes from the Father and the Son.

All existence resides within God. Heaven, hell, purgatory, and the entire timeline of existence exists fully within God. For God, every moment of existence is now. Every place in existence is here.

All creation was created for Jesus. All was created through Jesus. He is before all else that is.

The Eucharist is Jesus. It is his body, blood, soul, and divinity. The Eucharist is true presence of Christ. Jesus, being God, has the fullness of all existence within him. Everything that has ever been created, exists now, or will come into creation, every person who has lived, lives now, or will live in the future, and every moment of time from the beginning until the end all exists within Jesus Christ.

When I hold the Eucharist, I literally hold all of existence in my hands. I hold every moment of time, every person, and everything that has or will be created, including myself. When I consume the Eucharist I am taking into my finite body the infinite.

Too great a mystery for my feeble mind to fully comprehend, yet all things are possible for God.

And my sorrow deeps for those who snatch the Eucharist from my hands as if it were nothing more than a Ritz cracker.