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| Spirituality
of Sacred Scripture The expression, "Spirituality of Sacred Scripture," can have many meanings. It will be useful in this article to examine some of these meanings, and then concentrate on the one meaning in which we use this term in the present volume. |
| The Spiritual Teachings of Christ: The Parables The teaching of Christ is literally the teaching of God or, better, it is God Himself teaching His creatures. The attributes of Christ as God were made manifest in the words and actions of Christ as man. Everything He said and everything He did were so many self-revelations of the mind and will of Yahweh. |
| The Psalms The spiritual riches of the Psalms are proved from experience, which now spans some three thousand years of religious history. The Psalms were the principal prayers of the Chosen People by which they expressed their faith and hope, their joys and their sorrows to Yahweh, and through which they mainly prayed as a believing community. |
| The Visitation of the Magi St. Matthew is the only evangelist who gives us the full details of the visit of the Magi to the Christ child. Once again, the full quotation is lengthy but it is worth giving in full. There are so many implications for our faith and spiritual life that we should hear all the twelve verses of the evangelist describing the Magi’s visit to Bethlehem. |
| The Virginal Birth of Jesus We are in the habit of addressing Our Lady as the Blessed Virgin Mary. But we seldom ask ourselves "What do we mean?" By the title the Blessed Virgin Mary we mean that Jesus had no natural human father. We mean that Mary was truly married to Joseph but She was a virgin before conceiving Jesus, in conceiving Him, and after conceiving and giving birth to Christ. In other words, Mary was always a virgin. |
| Lessons of Bethlehem If there is one event that changed the course of history it is the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem. In the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, the meditation on Bethlehem is called, not a meditation but a contemplation on the Nativity. This means that the focus of this contemplation is on the persons and events which took place at Bethlehem. While the purpose of these reflections is not just to reflect or think about what happened but rather to apply the revealed meaning of the events of Bethlehem to our own spiritual lives. That is why we are calling this conference, "the Lessons of Bethlehem." And by lessons of Bethlehem we mean, the mind being enlightened in order that the will might be inspired here, inspired to follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ. What I will do in sequence is give a capsule title to each section of our contemplation as we go along. |
| Baptism of Jesus - Outline With this meditation, we begin the public life of Jesus Christ. We call it the public life to distinguish the 30 years of Christ’s hidden life at Nazareth. We also call it the public life because it represents Christ’s reaching out to the world publicly. |
| The Spiritual Life in the Bible First of all because Sacred Scripture is co-equal with Sacred Tradition as the source of divine revelation. In other words, unlike any other kind of writing the Bible has as its principal author God Himself. Surely we want to know what God tells us about the spiritual life. Moreover, and very practically, our spiritual life will be only as strong as our faith and our faith is faith in God’s revealed words found co-equally in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. Every insight, every increase of understanding that we get of those revealed biblical words strengthens and deepens our foundation for the spiritual life. |
| Our Love of Others It is Christ Himself who used the expression "The New Commandment". As you know, He gave His long discourse at the Last Supper. So important is this term "New Commandment" that on its proper understanding depends in large measure a true appreciation of the New Testament. |
| Biblical Spirituality The expression, "Biblical Spirituality," can have many meanings. It will be useful in this opening chapter to examine some of these meanings, and then concentrate on the one meaning in which we use this term in the present volume. Biblical spirituality can mean a study of the spiritual life based on the Bible. Other sources of insight, like revealed Tradition, are not questioned or ignored, but the almost exclusive emphasis is on Sacred Scripture. |
| The Covenant in Revelation In the Old Testament, people made covenants which served the purpose of a spoken agreement summarized by a ritual ceremony that took the place of a written agreement. A covenant is also a Sacred Agreement into which people entered and it was sealed by a sacred rite. Social covenants were made quite often in the Old Testament. |
| The Jefferson Bible However, there is another side to Jefferson’s character which is not so well known as the negative one of his antipathy to organized religion. Whatever else may be said in his favor, it must be admitted that he had a reverence and respect for the person and teachings of Jesus Christ which according to his limited vision he tried to put into practice. The purpose of this study will not be to prove that Jefferson was a Christian, or that he was not a deist. It will only be to present a piece of historical evidence which should indicate that the full Jefferson portrait has not yet been painted, at least on the side of his religious beliefs. There is no need to point out how important is a just estimate of Jefferson in this matter, since much of the present-day controversy in America over the relations of Church and State revolves around the pivotal question of what our Founding Fathers intended to legislate on the subject of religion; and their intention, it is safe to say, was an expression of their own religious convictions. |
| The Jefferson Bible (Catholic Encyclopedia) About nine years before his death, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) compiled a folio booklet of 83 leaves which he entitled The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, Extracted Textually from the Gospels in Greek, Latin, French, and English. The booklet, which has come to be known as the Jefferson Bible, expresses the religious principles of the author of the Declaration of Independence and the third president of the United States. |
| Capital Punishment - New Testament Teaching Nowhere in the New Testament is capital punishment outlawed. On the contrary, the New Testament not only recognizes the right of the State to exercise authority in the name of God, but enjoins obedience to the State in applying the laws of God to its citizens.…But Sacred Scripture needs to be explained. As we reread the early Church's interpretation of the rights of civil authority, we find a remarkable thing. From the beginning there were two variant interpretations of State authority relating to war and capital punishment. One interpretation was openly pacifist, and the other was non-pacifist. |
| The Catholic Understanding of the Bible (PDF: 164 pages / 533 Kbytes) It must seem strange to write a book on The Catholic Understanding of the Bible. But, it will not be strange once we realize two things: that every major religion in the world has what it calls its Bible, and that among Christians, the Bible is variously understood. Not to speak of the Catholic understanding of the Bible would be confusing, to say the least, and even misleading. The Bible is not just the Bible. It is the foundation for Christianity. Everything depends on three things: what books form the contents of the Bible, how the Bible is translated, and most importantly, how the Bible is interpreted. |
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