Episcopal Commission for the Biblical Apostolate

Final Statement for the National Workshops

Lineamenta

What is Biblical Apostolate? 

The Full Understanding of the Biblical Apostolate

Correct Interpretation of the Biblical Text as an important Basis for the Biblical Apostolate

Final Message of Word of God Synod - "Let us approach the table of the Word of God

A. PREMISE: REVELATION

 "In the beginning was the Word . . . ." 

Word in place of silence. God did not remain in silence but chose to speak to communicate himself to his creatures , to Adam ("human being") who alone is able to respond to him in freedom and in love. We are able to know God because he chooses to reveal himself and to make known to us the hidden purpose of his will.

God reveals himself to us in created realities. The word/nature reflects to us "his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity" (Rom 1:20. If the word of God is his communication, every created reality is his word.

 God went further and manifested himself to our first parents. Even after their fall, he did not abandon the human race but ceaselessly kept them in his care, promising them salvation.

 At the appointed time, God called Abraham to make of him a great nation to begin "salvation history" with him. Through the patriarchs, and after them, Moses and the prophets, he taught this people, the children of Abraham, to acknowledge him as the one living and true God, to follow his will, and to wait for the Savior by him.

 After speaking in many and varies ways through the prophets, "now at last in these days God spoke to us in his Son" (Heb 1:1-2). For he sent his Son, the eternal Word, so that he might dwell among men and reveal to us the mystery of God. To see Jesus is to see the Father; Jesus is the final and perfect revelation of God.

 Jesus perfected the revelation of God through his words and deeds, his signs and wonders, and especially through his passion, death and glorious resurrection. He then sent the Holy Spirit to enlighten the disciples more deeply about his person and his teachings. The apostles and disciples afterwards went to the whole world to preach the good news of salvation accomplished in Jesus Christ.

God has seen to it that what he has revealed for the salvation of all nations would abide perpetually in its full integrity and handed down to all generations. God's revelation to the chosen people and their response to it were first handed down through oral tradition and committed to writing by sacred authors. They are true word of God contained in the books of the old Testament. Jesus, in turn, proclaimed the Gospel by word and deed, and later commissioned the apostles to preach it to all nations.

The apostles fulfilled this commission faithfully by their oral preaching by their example and by their observances. Apostolic men who, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, committed the message of the salvation to writing also fulfilled it. The writings are what we call the New Testaments. In the New Testaments, and in the whole Scripture itself, the four Gospel have special preeminence for they are the principal witness of Jesus, the incarnate Word.

With the Christian dispensation, the public revelation of God finds its fulfillment. We wait for no further new public revelation.

Scripture, as the word of God, does not only contain God’s revelation but also man’s response to it. And the word of God is perennially alive and active in the human heart. The word of God is at work even today as we discover his presence and his action in the concrete situation of our lives and as we respond to the word by “listening and acting on it” (cf. Lk 8:21)

B. BIBLICAL APOSTOLATE

 
Biblical apostolate is not merely providing people with translation of the Bible, although this is very important. The Bible must touch the lives of the people, must become the “book of life” in the sense that it conditions their attitudes and actions. We can consider Biblical Apostolate as the effective proclamation of the word of God in the world.

1.      The Ministry of the Word is exercised under its three classical forms:

Ø      Evangilization (kerygma)

Ø      Catechesis (didache)

          Ø      Homily 

2.      The process of effecting this involves three (3) stages:

a)      Stage 1:     Distribution of Bible

TRANSLATION

Ø      Version in the particular language or vernacular

Ø      Version in audio-visual forms

Ø      Version for the non-reader

INSTRUCTION

Ø      Bible seminars for priests, religious and lay people

Ø      Bible correspondence courses

Ø      Formation of Bible groups or association within the parish

Ø      Publication of the Bile aids, preferably in the vernacular

b)     Stage 2:     Effective proclamation of the Word

Ø      Well prepared, relevant homilies at Mass

Ø      Training of lay people to be lectors, prayer leaders, leaders in Bible sharing

Ø      Biblical catechesis

Ø      Promotion of the use of the Bible in popular forms of prayer and devotion, such us:

1.      Bible Enthronement

2.      Biblical Rosaries

3.      Novenas with Bible Reading

4.      Bible Services during various occasions

c)      Stage 3:     The Bible in the network of all pastoral activities

C. THE BIBLE IN THE LIFE AND MISSION OF THE CHURCH

1.      Liturgy

“Sacred scripture is of the greatest importance in the celebration of the liturgical” (SC n 24). “In sacred celebrations there is to be more reading from holy scripture, and it is to be more varied and suitable” (SC, 35.1). The New Lectionary for weekdays and Sundays open the treasures of the Bible with rich and varied fare, it brings the Bible to the whole people of God. The sign value of liturgical symbolism and language is often derived from the Bible. Thus, the initiation of people to the liturgical means, among other things, initiation to the Bible. 

The liturgy is a community celebration of a people; hence, the community becomes also the normal milieu of proclamation and interpretation of sacred scripture. Today, people clamor and yearn for experiential celebrations of the liturgy. Experience calls for an awareness and this awareness is also given by the word of God.

Furthermore, liturgy as a proclamation is also a prophetic interpretation of our life in the light of God’s word. The care of this interpretation and articulation is the homily, improvement of the homily is an important requisite for liturgical renewal. “The sermon … should draw its content mainly from scriptural and liturgical sources, and its character should be that of a proclamation of God’s wonderful works in the history of salvation, the mystery of Christ, ever made present and active within us, especially in the celebration of the liturgy” (SC, 35.2).

The biblical content of chants has improved a lot. Now the special translation of the psalms and music for liturgical purposes is being felt more and more. More biblical songs are being composed and popularized.

The basic structure of Christian Prayer is followed as a model: reading, interiorization and response (lectio, meditation, contemplation, oratio). The importance of the reading of the word, of silence and interiorization is being highlighted.

2.      Faith Formation and Training Program

The Bible is an essential part of the training program organized for the different sectors of the Church: bishops, priests, religious, laity, and catechists ect. Seminars, lectures, Bible celebration, meditations should be permeated by the word of God.

3.      Catechetics

In the composition of the new catechism of the Catholic Church, the human approach, or existential and experiential approach, is followed. Scripture is not something abstract, but a faith experience that enlightens and interprets out human experience today, giving meaning to the present and orientation to the future. Collaboration among catechetical experts and scriptures scholars becomes indispensable, possible and normal in such context.

4.      Evangelization

In the so-called “mission countries” in Asia, distribution of the Bible serves as a means of evangelization, especially on popular feast days and in pilgrimage centers. But the kerygma or announcement of the good news itself should be relevant to the basic human aspirations, situation and problems.

5.      Ecumenism

The Bible is a common heritage for all Christians. Its ecumenical significance is enormous. Catholics can learn a lot from the Protestants’ example and tradition in reading and praying the Bible.

6.      Inter-religious Dialogue

Dialogue is sharing and exchanging between two religious committed persons or group; hence, it is a challenge. The challenge is to be met not by apologetics nor organization, but by sharing religious experience-the God experience. The Christian should share his religious experience of the Gospel but should also listen to what the scriptures of other religious say.

7.      Liberation

Liberation presupposes socio-political analysis of the situation, of the reality of society. Afterwards, an analysis of the situation is called for in the light of the word of God, Scriptures is a powerful source of a theology of justice and liberation. Furthermore, people are more willing to accept the liberation theology based on the Bible than other source.

8.      Charismatic Movement

The charismatic renewal has contributed to the renewal of the Church and the appreciation of the word of God. Yet, one can have certain reservations. One reason is that Bible reading and interpretation often show a fundamentalistic character. The emotional, sentimental, spontaneous and personal approach to the prayer can also lead to superficiality in Bible study. A serious Bible study and search for correct interpretation should balance the more personalistic
approach.

D. METHODOLOGY

       The word of God often been used as a conveyor of ideas, while in reality, it is meant to be a communicator of         relationship

        The word of God was often used to prove statements rather than the change lives; hence, it had an abstract connotation which often became irrelevant to life .

        As a consequence, there was more analysis than listening, more reasoning than communication with persons.

        Vatican Council II has somehow changed the concept of Revelation. From truth it has become an act (DV I). We need to get into this methodology.

This requires:

1.      A better listening to the word, keeping in mind that the word of God does not come to us today in any other form than through the human word.

2.      A deeper awareness of the one who speaks – God, through prayer, and man, through involvement. Very often if happens, especially after Vatican II, that we tend to condemn error using your intellectual tools, while the people around us do not communicate only with the intellect, but with their whole person.

3.      A greater sensitivity towards the person to whom we speak. This is the method of Christ, We, too, have to do the same.

4.      We need to look the scriptures of other faiths in a slightly different manner than from how we have looked at them so far.

E. OBJECTIVE

The objective is only one – “so that they may have life and have it to the full” (Jn 10:10). Human life is differentiated from the rest in that it is an active relationship. The purpose of the word of God is to build up community. Keeping this in view, we must proclaim the word so that we may enter into deeper communication with other men and women.

The word of God has to recreate the world. Hence, it is necessary to question the unjust structures of society. It is here that the life of witnessing becomes a real martyrdom. Perhaps we have not done so sufficiently. We have left the structural injustice of our society untouched. The prophetic role of the word of God should become visible here. We have very few Christian prophets in Asia because ours is a Church that began as an institution. We have identified ourselves with the institution and the people around us as part of this institution. This misunderstanding has to be removed before we can become Christian witnesses (by Fr. Paul Puthanangady, SDB)

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NEED FOR A FULL UNDERSTANDING OF THE BIBLE APOSTOLATE

There is an incomplete understanding of the bible apostolate prevailing among the catholic faithful (priests, religious, laity). This apostolate is commonly understood as comprising activities that directly deal with the bible such as bible courses, bible seminars, bible sharing sessions, bible quizzes, bible drama, bible exhibits, bible Sundays, bible week, bible distributions etc. Often they are considered as “luxurious extras” that are nice things to do if time permits.

But a full understanding of the bible apostolate needs to be inculcated among our faithful. The bible is God’s word to His people. In the bible, “the Father who is heaven comes lovingly to meet His children, and talks with them” (DV, art.21). Thus the aim of the bible apostolate is to help people encounter God the Father in the Sacred Scriptures.  In DV art. 21 we read, “…such is the force and power of the word of God that can serve the Church as her support and vigor, and the children of the Church as strength for their faith, food for the soul, and a pure and lasting font of spiritual life”. This passage teaches that the Word of God must permeate and animate every dimension of the Church’s life: liturgical, catechetical, pastoral, moral and social. Seen in this way the biblical apostolate constitutes an integral part of the mission of the Church. Hence there can be no authentic ministry in the Church unless it is based on the word of God.

THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD MADE FLESH

Moreover God’s Word is not only expressed in human terms but is also made flesh. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is the Word of God made flesh. He is the perfect revelation of the Father so that anyone “who has seen Him has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9). His revelation of the Father came from the “truth” that he is: “I am the way, the truth and the life” (Jn 14:6). In the prologue of the Gospel of John we see the essence of Jesus’ mystery and ministry. His mystery is the Word of God made flesh. From his mystery stems His ministry, which the Father had given Him: To dwell in the midst of men and women to reveal the Father to all human beings. Jesus’ works and words constituted His entire ministry whereby He “glorified His Father on earth” (Jn 17,4) and “ manifested His Father’s name” (Jn 17,6)

When revealing His Father, Jesus exercised His ministry in a very concrete and tangible way. So concrete and tangible was His ministry that John in his first letter asserts “that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, that we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life” (I John 1,1). The climax of Jesus’ ministry is the paschal event, His death and resurrection, which shed light on the significance of Jesus’ entire mystery and ministry on earth.

THE IDENTITY OF THE MINISTRY OF JESUS AND HIS DISCIPLES

The risen Christ entrusted His own ministry to His disciples. The identity of Jesus’ mission and that of His disciples is expressed in John 20,21: “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you”. The mission of the disciples is but the continuation of Jesus’ ministry. He gave them the Spirit to empower them for this ministry. The apostles were sent forth to do the same thing as Jesus’ did: to reveal the Father and bring all human beings into friendship and unity. In His priestly prayer to the Father, Jesus asked: “that they may all be one even as Thou, Father, art in Me and I in Thee”. The object of Jesus’ prayer is KOINONIA, fellowship, that is a filial relationship between God as Father and all human beings as His children, and the relationship between all men and women as brothers and sisters of the same Father. Consequently the apostles established communities in different places, which express this fellowship or Koinonia.

THE WORD OF GOD IS ADDRESSED TO THE CHURCH

The Church, as the community of believers, is the fellowship resulting from Christ’s mission and that of the apostles and their successors. She is the Word of God “enfleshed” in a community of men and women who consider themselves the children of God. It is to the Church as a Koinonia of believers that the Bible, the written Word of God is first of all addressed. For the bible is primarily a written result of the primitive community’s experiencing, living and celebrating the Word of God proclaimed by the Word made Flesh, revealing the Father, and continued to be proclaimed by the apostles and their successors. That living tradition as time went on had to be fixed permanently in written words, the Sacred Scriptures, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Thus if the Church wants to remain as a Koinonia of believers resulting Christ’s mission and that of the apostles and their successors, then she has to continue to hear this living Word as fixed in the Sacred Scriptures, inspired by the Spirit, to experience its message and to live by it in the present situation. Without the living connection of the Word made Flesh, proclaimed in Sacred Scriptures, the Church cannot exist as Koinonia as intended by Christ and His disciples.

TRADITON PRECEDES THE WRITTEN WORD

Sacred Oral Tradition though more primitive and broader than Sacred Scriptures, is contained in Sacred Scriptures. In fact the main content of Sacred Scripture is Oral Tradition, which came first before the Word of God was put into writing and both together are fountains from which the Church today draws water for her living faith. Hence the bible occupies a fundamental place in the life of the Church. This being so, the Church has the duty to continuously hear the Word of God if it wishes to remain what Christ intends it to be, an authentic community or Koinonia of believers.

THE PRIMACY OF THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD

The primacy of the “Ministry of the Word” is clearly indicated in the Acts of the Apostles. As the primitive Church developed, many concerns came out from the growing communities, including the distribution of material goods collected for poor widows (Acts 6). So the disciples summoned the whole body of disciples and said, “It is not right that we should neglect the Word of God to serve at tables…As for us, we shall give ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word.” (Acts 6,2-4)

In the beginning that Word was the Kerygma, whose kernel is the proclamation of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus. As evident from the emergence of the Gospels, that kerygma of the Paschal Mystery (Passion and Resurrection Narratives) expanded into the proclamation of what Jesus did and said while He was with His disciples (Jesus’ Ministry, the main body of the gospels), and even how Jesus into the world as the son of God, the Son of David, the promised Messiah, born of the Virgin Mary as prophesied in the Old Covenant (Infancy Narratives). Since Jesus is fulfillment of the Old Covenant, the New Covenant cannot be fully understood without the Scriptures of Israel, God’s chosen people.

It is then very clear that evangelization or the proclamation of the good news of the Kingdom cannot be done without reading the complete bible, both the Old and the New Testaments, digesting it and being nourished by it. This ministry of the Word was such a central preoccupation of the apostles that no “activity” of the Church, be it liturgical, sacramental, social, moral, catechetical, pastoral can be done without basing it on their living experience of the Word of God. Thus one hears expressions like “the Sacred Scripture is the soul of all theology”, “the biblical apostolate is the umbrella of all other apostolates”. Indeed there can be no genuine ecclesial apostolate or ministry without rooting it in the Word of God, whose ministry is the heart of the Church’s mission. For this reason there can be no sacramental celebration without the liturgy of the Word, which precedes it and gives it meaning. In the Eucharist we find only one table of the Lord with two complementing menus: the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist. In John chapter six we are made to understand that the Eucharistic Body and Blood of Jesus can be true food and true drink only if we accept the Word of Jesus, for it is only by eating His Body and drink His Blood in faith, that is, accepting His Word can anyone receive life, which is life everlasting.

THE BIBLICAL APOSTOLATE, INTEGRAL PART OF THE CHURCH’S MISSION

This then the full meaning and impact of the “biblical apostolate or biblical pastoral ministry”. Being an integral part of the mission of the Church entrusted by Christ, it is not simply to be identified as a specific activity done in connection with the bible. The specific activities are by no means useless. They are very laudable projects that will help the people rediscover the Word of God. These activities provide pastoral workers an “easy access” to the Word of God among our people as desired by the Second Vatican Council. But they have to be understood in the proper perspective of the bible apostolate as composing the heart of the Church’s ministry for all men and women for all times and places. The bible apostolate, then, is not simply an optional but an obligatory task of the Church as the community of God’s Word.

By: +Arturo M. Bastes, SVD, Bishop of Sorsogon, Chairman of ECBA-CBCP

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I.                   INTRODUCTION: All responsible biblical must be aware that the correct interpretation of the meaning of the Biblical text is an important basis for proper approach of the biblical apostolate.

II.                READING TEXT: Understanding a text requires reading, but with ancient text such as the bible, understanding is made difficult because of time, language and culture.

A.     SCHOLARLY READING

-          Helps us overcome the difficulty of understanding biblical texts.

-          Gives us the most complete, systematic recording of the phenomenon of the texts

-          Makes one a competent reader:

1.      The reader makes observations about the text, to reach conclusions and have feelings about it.

2.      The competent reader has at his disposal authoritative sources for checking the correctness of reading – aids for scrutinizing the correctness of hi understanding.

B.     EXEGETICAL METHOD

-          tools which one must ascertain the meaning of the Biblical text

-          Tools in trying to do justice to peculiar difficulties of understanding the biblical text as a historical document.

-          Exogenesis must be both for our personal, uninhibited reading of the Word of God in our biblical pastoral ministry.

-          With basically only one truth, the truth of the personal and uninhibited reading of the bible must not be alien or to the objective truth of the Bible must not alien or contrary to the objective truth of the Bible ascertained in scholarly reading and literally intended by both the human and divine authors.

 

III.             THE TWO METHODS OF READING THE BIBLICAL TEXT:

A.     HISTORICO- CRITICAL METHOD

-          Components

1.      Textual criticism – the reconstruction of the original text of the Bible

2.      Literacy criticism – determining the written sources of the present given biblical text

3.      Tradition criticism and the history of traditions – collection and editing of the material.

4.      Redaction criticism history – collection and editing of the material.

-          Read the text primarily under its DIACHRONIC aspects: with a view of the genesis of the text, above all in:

1.      Reconstructing its historical origin

2.      Tracing the sources and development of the present given text.

-          These were the first exegetical methods used in the scientific study of the bible during the last 100 years.

-          These methods were and have become classical methods without which there can also be no objective understanding of the Word of God.   

B.     SYNCHRONIC METHOD

-          Many insights of modern linguistic (textual linguistics, structuralism, semantics and pragmatics) supplemented the 4 classic diachronic methods.

-          “Synchronic”  in the Greek means “simultaneous”

-          It explores a system of language in the form that it has at a definite point in time, for example the tagalog  language of today or the tagalog language during the time of Francisco Balagtas

-          In synchronic analysis of a NT test is explored in the form that it has at a specific point in its history, mainly as it is presented in the given form handed to us.

C.     DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE TWO METHODS

D.    CONNECTION OF THE TWO METHODS

-          The full meaning of a biblical text can be ascertained if we do both synchronic and diachronic analysis.

-          The use of just one method will result in a lopsided interpretation of the biblical text.

-          We should not overlook the unity of the biblical text while observing its many aspects through a variety of methods both diachronic and synchronic.

-          The connection between the two methods.

IV.              THE BIBLICAL TEXT

A.                 DEFINITION OF THE TERM “TEXT”

·        Derived from the Latin TEXTUS, which means a structure or web?

·        The term expresses the idea that the reveals a correlation of elements.

·        If the words and sentences of certain statement are related to one another, the statement is to be qualified as one/ unified single text.

·        If the connection between the elements or with meaningless sequences of words.

B.                 THE ORIGINAL TEXT OF THE BIBLE AND TEXTUAL CRITICISM – The original text of the Bible, both of the Old and New Testament, is no longer available; we have only copies in several different manuscripts with variant readings.

-         The Diachronic method of TEXTUAL CRITICIZM attempts to reconstruct the original biblical text.

1.      There are many existing variants among the present manuscripts, e.g. the New Testaments.

2.      Variants come about from that texts are incorrectly copied, or else corrections are deliberate entered.

-         The method of textual criticism is a complicated science reserved to scholars.

-         We are simply enjoying today the results of textual critical studies done by many scholars in the past and present.

-         For the reconstruction of the original text, there are 3 external criteria and 4 internal criteria (to the text), which we need not discuss here.

-         The GREEK NEW TESTAMENT published by the United Bible Societies is the best example of a critical edition of a biblical text.

C.                 TRANSLATION

-         Necessity of Translation

1.      For us to understand the original biblical text, translation of the text to a specific target language is done.

2.      This is the second task of diachronic exegesis – the transferring of the ancient language to a contemporary language do that God’s message is properly understood.

3.      And for the great majority of persons, who cannot read the biblical text in the original language, a translation of biblical text to a specific target language is indispensable.

4.      This is an integral part of the BIBLICAL APOSTOLATE – to make the original text of God’s Word accessible to all by translating it into a language people can understand.

-         What is translation?

1.      Translation is the written reproduction of the original biblical text in a specific target language.

2.      A good translation presupposes exegetical knowledge of the text to be translated as well as knowledge of the language and the audience.

3.      Translation is the objectification of the understanding of the Text Acquired by the interpreter.

 

Two types of translation:

 

1.      FORMAL TRANSLATION

                           i.       Has the goal to translate the biblical text- word- for- word from the original to a new language

                          ii.      Aims to make the audience familiar with the message of the bible through verbal and syntactic imitation of the original

                          iii.      Supposed to preserved fidelity to the original

                          iv.      Strongly author – oriented, striving to attain an equivalent reproduction of a message’s form and content

                           v.      Values of formal translation consist primarily in the fact that they serve as a vehicle for a biblical framed language, supplying and theological terminology (such as GRACE, KINGDOM OF GOD etc.)

                          vi.      This is. The, Formal translation of the bible are formal such as King James Version, New King James Version and the New American standard Bible.

2.      DYNAMICALLY EQUIVALENT TRANSLATION

                           i.      This is based on the idea that a translation should exercise the same influence on today’s readers as the original text on its audience back then.

                          ii.      The value of dynamic equivalent translation lies in its approach, which is strongly oriented towards the reader and reception.

                          iii.      An example of this is the CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH VERSION.

                          iv.      This theory ranks as the one that has been most intensely reflected in the field of international bible translation today.

                            v.      Reception- oriented approach (will merit more attention in the future)

                           vi.      The disadvantage of this translation is the distance from the text (written by the original author) to which such translation lead, and the many exegetical decisions preceding the actual translation.

                                       vii.      For the “conservatives” the new way of translating the bible seems to be departing from the original text because new and modern expressions are used instead of the usual and familiar ones.

                                      viii.      Formal translation avoid this heavy input of exegetical decisions into translation and simply reproduce the familiar words and words and phrases dear to many readers.

            Two aspects to measure the quality of the translation:

1.      Fidelity to the original author of the text: In the past the sole criterion of a good translation is fidelity to the original, together with expressiveness in the target language.

2.      Degree of orientation to the present and the contemporary reader: today .a translation is considered good if it is attention to the present reader, to the reader’s cultural presuppositions and capacity for the understanding the translated text.

Important concern in the Biblical Apostolate: when we translate, we have to keep in mind our readers, not only the original author, so that the message of the author can have these impacts on our present readers.

V.                 METHODICAL STEPS ATEPS IN USING THE SYNCHRONIC METHOD OF READING TRHE BIBLICAL TEXT:  this modern sees and analyzes the biblical text, already in its finished form, as structure a coherent quantity and totally, embedded in a larger process of communication; the elements of the test are interrelated, and out of these relationships, there emerges a unity of form.

A.                 LINGUISTIC-SYNTACTIC ANALYSIS

·        Starting point for all further work

·        This analysis is shaped by a LEXICON of linguistic signs (a dictionary or aggregate of words and sentences) and GRAMMAR that regulates the connection between the elements.

·        The exegete examines the vocabulary (lexicon), the kind and forms of the words (grammar), the links between the words and sentences, stylistic factor as well as the structure and organization of the text.

·        Linguistic analysis is constituted by list derived from basic grammatical concepts, by simple statistical methods and by comparison with other texts.

·        For this enterprise one is expected to have a good knowledge of the vocabulary, grammar and syntax of the biblical languages such as Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.

B.                 SEMANTIC ANALYSIS

·        Searches for the meaning and significance or sense of the biblical text

·        Semantics is the study of the meaning of linguistic signs sequences.

C.                 NARRATIVE ANALYSIS

·        Investigates text with an eye to

1.      action and their consequences

2.      the action- bearers and

3.      the relation between them

·        “Narrative is a text whose elements include actions and action –bearers.

·        Narrative take place in many everyday conversation; many aspects of life cannot be communicated except through stories, which help us find our way in the world, enabling us to behave in appropriate ways.

·        The church understands itself as a “narrative community” in which the words and deeds of Jesus continue to be recounted.

D.                PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS

·        Concerned with the peculiar nature of linguistic statement and texts insofar as the aim to influence the listeners or readers; deals with the dynamic function of texts with the process of directing action and guiding the reader through texts.

      1. The author of the text or the speaker is interested in moving the reader                           or listener with the message to engage in behavior appropriate to the                           situation – whoever sends someone a message or speaks with someone,       wants to influence that reader or listener, by urging him certain notions,            to get him to in an opinion already held, to move him to share certain                 feelings, or to lead him to certain ways of behaving.

      2. The reader or listener is supposed to react to the text; the written piece                          is expected to produce RESULTS in the reader or listener

      3. Since results can be achieved through speaking or writing are                                         themselves understood as ACTION. They produce, influence, and alter                            attitudes feelings and behavior.

·        Pragmatic analysis of written texts seeks to answer why a piece of writing was composed and to what end.

      1. Starts off with the observation that linguistic statements must not be                    viewed exclusively from the standpoint of their CONTENTS but also                          from that of their INTEBDED PURPOSE.

      2. Distinguishes between the contents (proposition), purpose (function                           and effect of the text.

·        For example, the statement “It is raining” can in one context be the answer to a question about the weather; in another context it can be a way of saying there can be no ball game outside, or it may be a refusal to receive an invitation.

·        The following are possible functions of a statement (good illustration are found in the letters of St. Paul

1.             Expensive or emotive

2.            directive or co native

3.            Referential or Informative

4.            Contextual

5.            Poetic

6.            Contact or pathic

7.      Metal linguistic

·        This type of analysis is very interesting for the Biblical apostolate, biblical apostles should try to master this type of linguistic analysis which is really pragmatic, (i.e. practical) for our biblical pastoral ministry, especially when we teach people how to do bible sharing, whose purpose is action or someone result in the hearer or in the participants of the bible sharing group.

VI.              USING THE TWO METHODS OF READING THE BIBLICAL TEXT

A.                 Synchronic analysis opens the way to the meaning of the text by showing the structures present in the text itself.

B.                 Diachronic analysis opens an access to the text by shredding light on its inner textual prehistory

C.                 We have to do both synchronic and diachronic analysis because there is a dialect relation between textual phenomena and the sources of the text.\

·        By doing both analyses we come to a deeper understanding of the text.

·        Also gives us a glimpse of the religious life both the people of the Old and New Testament and their efforts to interpret the meaning of the Word of God for New situations.

·        By studying the history of the biblical text (diachronic analysis) we will also learn the history of the people who live the Word of God in a certain period of their history, either in the Old or New Testament (synchronic analysis).

VII.            METHODOLOGICAL STEPS OF THE DIACHRONIC ANALYSIS: the goal of diachronic analysis is the reconstruction of the historical course along which the texts reached their definite forms.

A.                 TECTUAL CRITICISM – (already discussed above, Part IVB)

B.                 LITERACY CRITICISM

·        Investigates the text with a view to the establishment of literacy (written) sources

1.      Whether written sources we used for their composition

2.      Whether the text has made it is business to reconstruct these source materials as well as to illuminate their theological emphasis and Sitz im Leben.

·        Research lists those criteria that permit us to determine the presence of earlier sources:

-                                 Interruption of the community of a text

-                                 Doubling and repetitions

-                                 Tensions and contradictions

C.      TRADITION CRITICISM

-Tries to search for the prehistory of the biblical text

-Attempts to comprehend the changes that the texts, which originally circulated in isolation, have undergone in the course of oral tradition, as well as the groups responsible for the changed

·                    For example, observations about the Gospels suggest that prior to their written composition various isolated pieces of different kinds e.g. narratives about Jesus, Jesus “sayings” – first circulated by WORD OF MOUTH.

·        The task of tradition – critical analysis is the following:

1.            The reconstruct the individual periscopes and brief texts, which originally circulated in isolation, in their oldest form and in the alternations they have undergone in the course of transmission;

2.            To describe the character and generic features of this texts in their different phases;

3.            To portray the life and community situation in which the text were used during the various stages.

4.            To describe the regular patterns according to which such texts are shaped and altered.

C.                 REDUCTION CRITICISM

1.                                                                        The task of reduction criticism is to determine in particular

1.      How the test has acquired is to determine in particular

2.      What materials were available to the editor/redactor

3.      From what standpoint he chose this particular material, revised, and organized it

4.      What elements he contributed

5.      Which audience he was aiming at

6.      What means he used for guiding the reader

7.      And, in general, what factors influenced him in his editing/ redacting.

·        We have to keep in mind that the text in its final form, which is the ultimate business of redaction criticism, is the object of synchronic analysis.

·        The method of reduction criticism consist of INFERENTIAL PROCEDURE – inferences about the:

1.Editor and his method of work – can be made by the synchronic method: though linguistic-stylistic, semantic and pragmatic analysis of the peculiarities of a book (like for example, the Gospel of Luke as studied by Conzelmann)

2.      Addresses or the community for which he edited the book

3.      Place and time of composition.

VIII.        HERMENEUTICS

A.                 COMPLETION STEP FOR A CORRECT READING OF THE BIBLICAL TEXT

1.      Present the biblical texts in the historically bound form, given to us  through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit

2.      Lead us to a deeper understanding of the word of God and thereby mae us grasp the theological message of the bible, or original meaning of the bible as intended by the original author and by God himself

·        HERMENEUTICS helps us clarify what it means to understand the biblical text and to grasp its meaning for us FOR TODAY

1.            Hermeneutical reflection is indispensable for a correct understanding of                       Sacred Scriptures.

2.            This is another important concern to be related to our biblical apostolate.

                     The understanding of the biblical texts has to reckon with a double

·        The understanding  of the biblical texts has to reckon with a double peculiarity:

1. The biblical text comes from a distant past: different language, different                 logic, strange culture and history.

Ø      The reader of today has a distance context of understanding from the original readers or addresses

Ø      This cultural and temporal distance, negatively, is an obstacle to understanding.

Ø      Positively, this distance in time and culture is a help in acquiring the full sense and significance or certain texts.

   2.  We Christians consider the texts of Holy Spirit as having normative                     validity as the “Word of God”. On account of this reading the scriptures          presupposes:

Ø      Faith in revelation

Ø      And the readiness to accept this Word as guidance for the interpretation and shaping of one’s own life.

§         Because of this double problematic situation, hermeneutics also has a double task:

1.      Exposition / Interpretation

Ø      Ascertains the meaning which the text had in its ORIGINAL environment, in other words, what the author wished to say to his contemporary audience.

Ø      This task initially undertaken by two methods described above, Synchronic and Diachronic.

2.            Actualization

Ø      Presents the meaning which the text of the past and as the Word of God in Today’s concrete social, ecclesiastical, and personal setting.

Ø      This is one of the SPECIFIC CONCERNS of our biblical apostolate.

Ø      This sort of “bringing the message home” can take place in many ways as we do in our biblical pastoral ministry.

Ø      But must be govern by certain criteria so that the practical actualization of the word of God will not be too far away from the original message of the sacred authors.

Ø      The biblical apostolate falls under the task of “meditation” in scholarly parlance: the presentation of the meaning of the text in homilies, catechetic Bibliodrama, lectio divina and other practices done in the biblical ministry

2. ACCOMPLISHING THE FIRST TASK OF HERMENEUTICS:

      EXPOSITION / INTERPRETATION

2. • The task of exposition / interpretation in Hermeneutics aims to ascertain the meaning which the text had in its original situation
   • An appropriate understanding of the text is arrived at only when the exposition. Interpretation caught sight of the “subject matter” which the author and his first audience has been concerned with.
   • Thus in dealing with the biblical text the final issue is not “understanding the text” but “understanding the subject matter by means of Biblical texts”
   • Interpretation / exposition is understood as objectification of the understanding of the text that has been arrived at though analysis (synchronic and Diachronic)
   • This objection, however, is open to new understanding.

1.      In synchronic and Diachronic analysis many paths were paved through the text.

2.      In interpretation and exposition the results of taking these paths are gathered.

2. • The Interpretation is the SUMMARY of the insights of the text which the interpreter/ exegete was capable of at a giving point in time by using the presenting to them

a)      What happened then

b)      What “message” the author sent through the text to the addresses.

c)       To what kind of thinking the author wished to lead them.

2.  
   • Interpretation means presenting the meaning available in a community event from the past as a meaning available to men and women of our time.

3. DOING HERMENEUTICS’ SECOND TASK: ACTUALIZATION
   • Their aim is that we attain an existential understanding of Sacred Scriptures, that is, when Sacred Scriptures have become for us the “Word of God” and the “source of spiritual life”.
   • This is a thin line exist between the concern of biblical scholarship and that of the biblical apostolate.

1.      A biblical text is no longer read with a coldness or distance peculiar to readings any old historical book.

2.      Instead, the biblical text is read as an “up-to-date” text that makes its claim on readers /listeners by.

3.  
   • Giving them orientation, direction, and impulses for our time.
   • Helping them to interrupt their own lives and their own, mission in the present time.

3.        This is exactly the heart of the biblical apostolate aims and concern: to make the Word of God alive in men and women, who listens to each message today.

4.        With the hermeneutics of actualization, the biblical text which comes from the past is heard by a reader who is moved by a question of our time and who seeks in the bible an answer to the question of the life and direction of conduct.

3.  
   • Actualization takes place in preaching, catechetic, instruction, personal reading, lectio devina, bible group sharing.
   • Hermeneutical reflection is especially apt for cultural reading of the bible that is, adapting our understanding of the biblical text to the culture of the people.

1.      There ahs been attempts, for example, to read the bible in an ASIAN way.

2.      We Filipinos can and must also have our way of reading the biblical texts when we do hermeneutic actualization according to our own cultural patterns of thinking and feeling.

3.  
   • However, we are not dispensed from doing the hard work of first undergoing the two classic methodologies, which are called synchronic and diachronic analysis of the biblical texts before attempting a hermeneutical actualization of the Word of God.
   • There should be no gap between academic analysis of Sacred Scriptures and the everyday concerns and problems in our life and mission as Christians.

IX. CONCLUSION

A.     We Christians acknowledge the biblical text as the normative Word of God.

3. • Scholarly work must continue in the direction of s “translation” of the declaration of the faith and their implicit into speech and the mental world of our time.
   • The biblical text can become the course of guidance for the existence and action for our time.

1.      We, are engage in the biblical ministry should have a good knowledge of the biblical texts through the scholarly means discussed above.

2.      Since biblical knowledge is not enough, we biblical apostles must be aware of “hermeneutical: situation by also reflecting on.

                  - Today’s men and women

                  - Our own culture and situation

* Only by seeing aware of the message of God’s Word and of what is going on around us, can we be successful in transmitting the message of God to our fellowmen and women; and hopefully in so doing, we can move them to be genuine Disciples of Christ

B.     To be effective biblical apostles, we are challenged to do on-going formation in biblical hermeneutics.

·        Biblical hermeneutics cannot be properly done by practicing or at least knowing in principle the two methodologies for biblical studies: synchronic and diachronic.

·        Biblical ministries should grasp little by little these principles through periodic biblical institutes so that they may be enabled to communicate the true, objective message of God’s word enshrined in the biblical text.

C.     My personal experience is positive in giving biblical institutes using the scientific method, such as the ones I gave to may places in Mindanao.

·        Even people of today are very eager to know the results of modern exegesis.

·        Knowing the biblical message is very rewarding to them because they have the capability of actualization the correct biblical message into their lives.

·        A deep understanding of the bible helps then to become more committed Christians and to fulfill their missions to spread the Good News of the Kingdom.

For the 3^rd ECBA NATIONAL CONSULTATION

Magnificat Center, Villa Del Mar

Romblon, Romblon

June 11- 13, 2002

+Arturo M. Bastes, SVD, DD

Bishop of Romblon, ECBA Chairman

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"LET US APPROACH THE TABLE OF THE WORD OF GOD”

Final Message of Word of God Synod

VATICAN CITY, OCT. 24, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Here is the concluding message of the 12th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which was approved today at the 21st general congregation.  The theme of the assembly was "The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church."

Brothers and sisters,

"May God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ grant peace, love and faith to all the brothers. May grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ, in life imperishable". With this intense and passionate greeting, Saint Paul concluded his letter to the Christians of Ephesus (6:23-24). With these same words we, the Synod Fathers, gathered in Rome for the XII Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, under the guidance of the Holy Father Benedict XVI, open our message addressed to the vast horizon of all those who, in the various regions of the world, follow Christ as disciples, and continue to love him with an imperishable love.

We will again propose to them the voice and the light of the word of God, repeating the ancient call: "the word is very near to you, it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to put into practice" (Dt 30:14). And God himself will say to each one: "Son of man, take to heart everything I say to you, listen carefully" (Ezk 3:10). We are about to propose a spiritual journey consisting of four phases and that will carry us from all eternity and the infinite nature of God to our homes and the streets of our cities.

I. THE VOICE OF THE WORD: THE REVELATION

1. "Then the Lord spoke to you from the heart of the fire; you heard the sound of words but saw no shape; there was only a voice!" (Dt 4:12). It is Moses who speaks, evoking the experience lived by Israel in the bitter solitude of the Sinai desert. The Lord presented himself not as an image or an effigy or a statue similar to a golden calf, but with "a voice of words". It is a voice which entered the scene at the very beginning of creation, when it tore through the silence of nothingness: "In the beginning...God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light...In the beginning was the Word: the Word was with God and the Word was God...Through him all things came into being, not one thing came into being except through him" (Gn 1:1.3; Jn 1:1.3).

Creation is not born of a battle of divinities, as taught by ancient Mesopotamian myths, but of a word which defeats nothingness and creates being. The Psalmist sings: "By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, by the breath of his mouth all their array...for, the moment he spoke, it was so, no sooner had he commanded, than there it stood" (Ps 33:6.9). And Saint Paul will repeat: God "brings the dead to life and calls into existence what does not yet exist" (Rm 4:17). Thus, a first "cosmic" revelation is found which makes creation similar to an immense page opened up before all of humanity, in which a message from the Creator can be read : "The heavens declare the glory of God, the vault of heaven proclaims his handiwork, day unto day makes known his message; night unto night hands on the knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their message goes out into all the earth" (Ps 19:2-5).

2. The divine word is, however, also at the origin of human history. Man and woman, whom God created "in the image of himself" (Gn 1:27), and who bear within themselves the divine imprint, can enter into dialogue with their Creator or can wander far from him and reject him away by sinning. The word of God, then, saves and judges, penetrating the woven fabric of history with its tales and events: "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying ... I am well aware of their sufferings. And I have come down to rescue them from the clutches of the Egyptians and bring them up out of that country, to a country rich and broad" (Ex 3:7-8). The divine is therefore present in human events which, through the action of the Lord of history, are inserted in the greater plan of salvation for "everyone to be saved and reach full knowledge of the truth" (1 Tm 2:4).

3. Consequently, the effective, creative and salvific divine word is source of being and of history, of creation and redemption. The Lord encounters humanity declaring: "I, the Lord, have spoken and done this" (Ezk 37:14). The voice of God then passes into the written word, the Graphé or the Graphaí, the Sacred Scriptures, as it is said in the New Testament. Moses had already descended from the mount of Sinai, "with the two tablets of the commandments in his hands, tablets inscribed on both sides, inscribed on the front and on the back. The tablets were the work of God, and the writing on them was God's writing" (Ex 32:15-16). Moses himself obliged Israel to preserve and rewrite these "tablets of the commandments": "On these stones you must write all the words of this Law very plainly" (Dt 27:8).

The Sacred Scriptures "bear witness" to the divine word in written form. They memorialize the creative and saving event of revelation by way of canonical, historical and literary means. Therefore, the word of God precedes and goes beyond the Bible which itself is "inspired by God" and contains the efficacious divine word (cf. 2 Tm 3:16). This is why our faith is not only centered on a book, but on a history of salvation and, as we will see, on a person, Jesus Christ, the Word of God made flesh, man and history. Precisely because the capacity of the divine word embraces and extends beyond the Scripture, the constant presence of the Holy Spirit that "will lead you to the complete truth" (Jn 16:13) is necessary for those who read the Bible. This is the great Tradition: the effective presence of the "Spirit of truth" in the Church, guardian of Sacred Scripture, which are authentically interpreted by the Church's Magisterium. This Tradition enables the Church to understand, interpret, communicate and bear witness to the word of God. Saint Paul himself, proclaiming the first Christian creed, will recognize the need to "transmit" what he "had received" from Tradition (1 Cor
15:3-5).

II. THE FACE OF THE WORD: JESUS CHRIST

4. In the original Greek, there are only three fundamental words: Lógos sarx eghéneto, "the Word was made flesh". And yet, this is the summit not only of that poetic and theological jewel which is the prologue to John's Gospel (Jn 1:14), but it is the actual heart of the Christian faith. The eternal and divine Word enters into space and time and takes on a human face and identity, so much so that it is possible to approach him directly asking, as did the group of Greeks present in Jerusalem: "We should like to see Jesus" (Jn 12:20-21). Words without a face are not perfect, they do not fully complete the encounter, as Job recalled, reaching the end of his dramatic itinerary of searching: "Before, I knew you only by hearsay but now"... I have "seen you with my own eyes" (Jb 42:5).

Christ is "the Word [that] was with God and the Word was God" (Jn 1:1). "He is the image of the unseen God, the first-born of all creation" (Col 1:15); but he is also Jesus of Nazareth who walks the roads of a marginal province of the Roman Empire, who speaks the local language, who reveals the traits of a people, the Jews, and its culture. Therefore the real Jesus Christ is fragile and mortal flesh; he is history and humanity, but he is also glory, divinity, mystery: he who revealed God to us, the God no one has ever seen (cf. Jn 1:18). The Son of God continues to be so even in the dead body placed in the sepulcher and the resurrection is the living and clear proof to this fact.

5. Christian tradition has often placed the Divine Word made flesh on a parallel with the same word made book. This is what emerges already in the creed when one professes that the Son of God "was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man", but also a profession of faith in the same "Holy Spirit, who spoke through the Prophets". The Second Vatican Council gathers this ancient tradition according to which "the body of the Son is the Scripture transmitted to us" - as Saint Ambrose affirms (In Lucam VI, 33) - and clearly declares: "For the words of God, expressed in human language, have been made like human discourse, just as the Word of the eternal Father, when he took to himself the flesh of human weakness, was in every way made like men" (DV 13).

Indeed, the Bible is also "flesh", "letter"; it expresses itself in particular languages, in literary and historical forms, in concepts tied to an ancient culture, it preserves the memories of events, often tragic; its pages not infrequently are marked by blood and violence, within it resounds the laughter of humanity and the flowing tears, as well as the cry of the distressed and the joy of those in love. For this, its "bodily" dimension requires an historical and literary analysis, which occurs through various methods and approaches offered by Biblical exegesis. Every reader of Sacred Scripture, even the most simple, must have a proportionate knowledge of the sacred text, recalling that the word is enveloped in concrete words, which is shaped and adapted to make it heard and understood by all of humanity.

This is a necessary commitment. If it is excluded, one could fall into fundamentalism which in practice denies the Incarnation of the divine Word in history, does not recognize that this word expresses itself in the Bible according to a human language, that must be decoded, studied and understood. Such an attitude ignores that divine inspiration did not erase the historical identities and personalities of its human authors. The Bible, however, is also the eternal and divine Word and for this reason requires another understanding, given by the Holy Spirit who unveils the transcendent dimension of the divine word, present in human words.

6. Here, thus, lies the necessity of the "living Tradition of all the Church" (DV 12) and of the faith to understand Sacred Scripture in a full and unified way. Should one focus only on the "letter", the Bible is only a solemn document of the past, a noble, ethical and cultural witness. If, however, the Incarnation is excluded, it could fall into a fundamentalist equivocation or a vague spiritualism or pop-psychology. Exegetical knowledge must, therefore, weave itself indissolubly with spiritual and theological tradition so that the divine and human unity of Jesus Christ and Scripture is not broken.

In this rediscovered harmony, the face of Christ will shine in its fullness and will help us to discover another unity, that profound and intimate unity of Sacred Scriptures. There are, indeed, 73 books, but they form only one "Canon", in one dialogue between God and humanity, in one plan of salvation. "At many moments in the past and by many means, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets; but in our time, the final days, he has spoken to us in the person of his Son" (Hb 1:1-2). Christ thus retrospectively sheds his light on the entire development of salvation history and reveals its coherence, meaning, and direction.

He is the seal, "the Alpha and the Omega" (Rev 1:8) of a dialogue between God and his creatures distributed over time and attested to in the Bible. It is in the light of this final seal that the words of Moses and the prophets acquire their "full sense". Jesus himself had indicated this on that spring afternoon, while he made his way from Jerusalem to the town of Emmaus, dialoguing with Cleopas and his friend, explaining "to them the passages in the Scriptures that were about himself" (Lk 24:27).

That the divine Word has put on a face is at the center of Revelation. That is precisely why the ultimate finality of biblical knowledge is "not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction" (Deus caritas est, 1).

III. THE HOUSE OF THE WORD: THE CHURCH

Just as divine wisdom in the Old Testament made her house in the cities of men and women, supporting it with seven pillars (cf. Pr 9:1), thus also the word of God made its house in the New Testament. The Church has as her model the mother community of Jerusalem. The Church is founded on Peter and the apostles and today, through the bishops in communion with the Successor of Peter, continues to keep, announce and interpret the word of God (cf. LG 13). In the Acts of the Apostles (2:42), Luke traces its architecture based on four ideal pillars which today are still witnessed to by the different forms of ecclesial communities: "These remained faithful to the teaching of the apostles, to the brotherhood, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers".

7. Here, first of all, is the apostolic didaché, that is to say the preaching of the word of God. The Apostle Paul, in fact, warns us that "faith comes from hearing, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ" (Rm 10:17). The voice of the herald comes from the Church, which proposes kérygma, that is to say, the primary and fundamental announcement that Jesus himself had proclaimed at the beginning of his public ministry: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent and believe the gospel" (Mk 1:15). The apostles, proclaiming the death and resurrection of Christ, announce the unveiling of the kingdom of God, that is to say, the decisive divine intervention in the history of man: "Only in him is there salvation; for of all the names in the world given to men, this is the only one by which we can be saved" (Ac 4:12). The Christian bears witness to this hope "with courtesy and respect and with a clear conscience", ready, however, to be involved and, perhaps, to be overwhelmed by the storms of refusal and persecution, knowing that "it is better to suffer doing right then for doing wrong" (1 P 3:16-17).

The catechesis, then, resounds in the Church: this is destined to deepen in the Christian "the understanding of the mystery of Christ in the light of God's word, so that the whole of a person's humanity is impregnated by that word" in Christianity (John Paul II, Catechesi tradendae, 20). But the high point of preaching is in the homily which, for many Christians, is still today the central moment of encounter with the word of God. In this act, the minister should be transformed into a prophet as well. He, in fact, with a clear, incisive and substantial language must not only proclaim with authority "God's wonderful works in the history of salvation" (SC 35) - offered first by a clear and vivid reading of the biblical text proposed in the liturgy - but he must also act upon it in the times and moments lived by the hearers and make the question of conversion and vital commitment blossom in their hearts: "What are we to do, brothers?" (Ac 2:37).

Preaching, catechesis and the homily therefore presuppose a reading and understanding, an explaining and interpreting, an involvement of the mind and of the heart. Thus in preaching a dual movement is achieved. With the first, one goes back to the roots of the sacred texts, the events, the first words of the history of salvation, to understand them in their meaning and in their message. With the second movement, one returns to the present, to the today lived by those who hear and read, always with Christ in mind, who is the guiding light destined to unite the Scriptures. This is what Jesus himself did - as has already been said - in his journey to Jerusalem in Emmaus with two of his disciples. This is what the deacon Phillip would do on the way from Jerusalem to Gaza, when he spoke this emblematic dialogue with the Ethiopian official: "Do you understand what you are reading? ... How could I, unless I have someone to guide me?" (Ac 8:30-31). And the finality will be the full encounter with Christ in the sacrament. This is how the second pillar that supports the Church, the house of the divine word, presents itself.

8. It is the breaking of the bread. The scene at Emmaus (cf. Lk 24:13-35) is once again exemplary, and reproduces what happens every day in our churches: the homily by Jesus about Moses and the prophets gives way to the breaking of the Eucharistic Bread at the table. This is the moment of God's personal dialogue with His people. It is the act of the new covenant sealed in the blood of Christ (cf. Lk 22:20). It is the supreme work of the Word who offers himself as food in his immolated body, it is the source and summit of the life and mission of the Church. The Gospel account of the Last Supper, the memorial of Christ's sacrifice, when proclaimed in the eucharistic celebration, through the invocation of the Holy Spirit, becomes event and sacrament. This is why the Second Vatican Council, in a very intense passage, declared: "The Church has always venerated the divine Scriptures just as she venerates the body of the Lord, since, especially in the sacred liturgy, she unceasingly receives and offers to the faithful the bread of life from the table both of God's word and of Christ's body" (DV 21). Therefore, "the liturgy of the word and the eucharistic liturgy, are so closely connected with each other that they form but one single act of worship" (SC 56), and this must be brought back to the center of Christian life.

9. The third pillar of the spiritual building of the Church, the house of the word, is made up of prayers, woven from - as recalled by Saint Paul - "psalms and hymns and inspired songs" (Col 3: 16). A privileged place is naturally taken by the Liturgy of the Hours, the prayer of the Church par excellence, destined to give rhythm to the days and times of the Christian year, offering, above all with the Psalmody, the daily spiritual food of the faithful. Alongside this and the community celebrations of the word, tradition has introduced the practice of Lectio divina, the prayerful reading in the Holy Spirit that is able to open to the faithful the treasure of the word of God, and also to create the encounter with Christ, the living divine Word.

This begins with the reading (lectio) of the text, which provokes the question of true knowledge of its real content: what does the biblical text say in itself? Then follows meditation (meditatio) where the question is: what does the Biblical text say to us? In this manner, one arrives at prayer (oratio), which presupposes this other question: what do we say to the Lord in answer to his word? And one ends with contemplation (contemplatio) during which we assume, as God's gift, the same gaze in judging reality and ask ourselves: what conversion of the mind, the heart and life does the Lord ask of us?

Before the prayerful reader of the word of God rises ideally the figure of Mary, the Mother of the Lord, who "treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart" (Lk 2:19; cf. 2:51), that is - as the original Greek says - finding the profound knot that unites apparently distinct events, acts and things in the great divine plan. The attitude of Mary, the sister of Martha can also be proposed to the faithful, when they read the Bible, because she sits at the feet of the Lord listening to his word, not allowing external concerns to absorb her soul completely, allowing even the free time for "the better part" which must not be taken away (cf. Lk 10:38-42).

10. Finally, we reach the last pillar that supports the Church, the house of the word: the koinonía, brotherly love, another name for the agápe, that is to say, Christian love. As Jesus mentioned, to become his brothers and his sisters one must be like "those who hear the word of God and put it into practice" (Lk 8:21). Authentic hearing is obeying and acting. It means making justice and love blossom in life. It is offering, in life and in society, a witness like the call of the prophets, which continuously united the word of God and life, faith and rectitude, worship and social commitment. This is what Jesus stated many times, beginning with the famous warning in the Sermon on the Mount: "It is not anyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord', who will enter the kingdom of Heaven, but the person who does the will of my Father in heaven" (Mt 7:21). This phrase seems to echo the divine word proposed by Isaiah: "this people approaches me only in words, honors me only with lip-service, while their hearts are far from me" (29:13). These warnings also concern the churches when they are not faithful to the obedient hearing of the word of God.

Therefore this must already be visible and legible on the face and in the hands of the faithful, as suggested by Saint Gregory the Great who saw in Saint Benedict, and in other great men of God, witnesses of communion with God and with the sisters and brothers, the word of God come to life. The just and faithful man not only "explains" the Scriptures, but also "unfolds" them before all as a living and practiced reality. This is why viva lectio, vita bonorum, the life of the good is a living lecture/lesson of the word of God. Saint John Chrysostom had already observed that the apostles came down from the mount in Galilee, where they had met the risen Lord, without any written stone tablets as Moses had: their lives would become the living gospel, from that moment on.

In the house of the word we also encounter brothers and sisters from other Churches and ecclesial communities who, even with the still existing separations, find themselves with us in the veneration and love for the word of God, the principle and source of a first and real unity, even if not a full unity. This bond must always be reinforced through the common biblical translations, the spreading of the sacred text, ecumenical biblical prayer, exegetical dialogue, the study and the comparison between the various interpretations of the Holy Scriptures, the exchange of values inherent in the various spiritual traditions and the announcement and the common witness of the word of God in a secularized world.

IV. THE ROADS OF THE WORD: THE MISSION

"For the Law will go forth from Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem" (Is 2:3). The embodied Word of God "issues from" his house, the temple, and walks along the roads of the world to encounter the great pilgrimage that the people of earth have taken up in search of truth, justice and peace. In fact, even in the modern secularized city, in its squares and in its streets - where disbelief and indifference seem to reign, where evil seems to prevail over good, creating the impression of a victory of Babylon over Jerusalem - one can find a hidden yearning, a germinating hope, a quiver of expectation. As can be read in the book of the prophet Amos, "The days are coming, declares the Lord God, when I shall send a famine on the country: not hunger for food, not thirst for water, but famine for hearing the word of the Lord" (8:11). The evangelizing mission of the Church wants to answer this hunger.

Even the risen Christ makes an appeal to the hesitant apostles, to go forth from their protected horizon: "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations…and teach them to observe the commands I gave you" (Mt 28:19-20). The Bible is fraught with appeals "not to be silent", to "speak out", to "proclaim the word at the right and at the wrong time", to be the sentinels that tear away the silence of indifference. The roads that open before us are not only the ones upon which Saint Paul and the first evangelizers traveled but are also the ones of all the missionaries who, after them, go towards the people in faraway lands.

11. Communication now casts a network that envelops the entire globe and the call of Christ gains a new meaning: "What I say to you in the dark, tell in the daylight, what you hear in whispers, proclaim from the housetops" (Mt 10:27). Of course, the sacred word must have its primary transparency and diffusion through the printed text, with translations made according to the multiplicity of languages on our planet. But the voice of the divine word must echo even through the radio, the information highway of the internet, the channels of "on line" virtual circulation, CDs, DVDs, podcasts, etc. It must appear on all television and movie screens, in the press, and in cultural and social events.

This new communication, in relationship to the traditional one, has created its own specific and expressive grammar and, therefore, makes it necessary not only to be technically prepared, but also culturally prepared for this task. In an age dominated by images put forward, in particular, by hegemonic means of communication such as television, the privileged model of Christ is still meaningful and evocative today. He would turn to the sign, the story, the example, the daily experience, the parable: "He told them many things in parables ... indeed, he would never speak to them except in parables" (Mt 13:3.34). In proclaiming the kingdom of God, Jesus never spoke over the heads of the people with a vague, abstract or ethereal language. Rather, he would conquer them by starting there where their feet were placed, in order to lead them, through daily events, to the revelation of the kingdom of heaven. Thus, the scene evoked by John becomes significant: "Some wanted to arrest him, but no one actually laid a hand on him. The guards went back to the chief priests and Pharisees who said to them, 'Why haven't you brought him?' The guards replied, 'No one has ever spoken like this man'"(7:44-46).

12. Christ proceeds along the streets of our cities and stops at the doorstep of our homes: "Look, I am standing at the door, knocking. If one of you hears me calling and opens the door, I will come in to share a meal at that person's side" (Rev 3:20). The family, enclosed between the domestic walls with its joys and sufferings, is a fundamental space where the word of God is to be allowed to enter. The Bible is full of small and great family stories, and the Psalmist depicts with liveliness the serene picture of a father sitting at the table, surrounded by his wife, like a fruitful vine, and by his children, "shoots of an olive tree" (Ps 128). In the same way, Christianity itself, from its origins, celebrated the liturgy in the daily home life, just as Israel entrusted the Passover celebration to the family (cf. Ex 12:21-27). The spreading of the word of God is passed on through the generations so that parents become "the first preachers of the faith" (LG 11). Once more the Psalmist recalled that: "What we have heard and know, what our ancestors have told us, we shall not conceal from their descendants, but will tell to a generation still to come: the praises of the Lord, his power, the wonderful deeds he has done ... They should be sure to tell their own children" (Ps 78:3-4.6).

Therefore, every home should have its own Bible and safeguard it in a visible and dignified way, to read it and to pray with it, while, at the same time, the family should propose forms and models of a prayerful, catechetical and didactic education on how to use the Scriptures, so that "young men and women, old people and children together" (Ps 148:12) may hear, understand, glorify and live the word of God. In particular, the new generations, children and youth, should be the ones receiving an appropriate and specific pedagogy that leads them to experience the fascination of the figure of Christ, opening the door of their mind and their heart, as well as through the encounter with and authentic witness of adults, the positive influence of friends and the great company of the ecclesial community.

13. Jesus, in his parable of the sower, reminds us that there are arid lands, full of rocks, choked by thorns (cf. Mt 13:3-7). He who goes forth into the streets of the world also discovers the slums where suffering and poverty, humiliation and oppression, marginalization and misery, physical and psychological ills and loneliness can be found. Often the stones on the road are bloody because of wars and violence; in the palaces of power, corruption meets injustice. The voices of the persecuted rise on behalf of faithfulness to their conscience and fidelity to their faith.

There is the one who is swept away by the crises of life, or whose soul is devoid of any meaning that would give sense and value to life itself. Like "phantoms who go their way, mere vapor their pursuits" (Ps 39:7), many feel the silence of God, his apparent absence and indifference, hanging over them: "How long, Lord, will you forget me? For ever? How long will you turn away your face from me?" (Ps 13:1). And, in the end, there arises for everyone, the mystery of death.

This immense sigh of suffering that rises from the earth to heaven is continuously represented by the Bible, which proposes an historical and incarnated faith. It is enough to think only of the pages marked by violence and oppression, of the harsh and continuous cry of Job, of the vehement pleas of the Psalms, of the subtle internal crisis that passes through the soul of Qoheleth, of the vigorous prophetic denunciations against social injustice. Without extenuating circumstances, then, is the sentence of the radical sin that appears in all its devastating force, from the beginning of humanity in a fundamental text of the Genesis (chapter 3). In fact, the "mystery of iniquity" is present and acts in history, but it is revealed by the word of God that assures the victory of good over evil, in Christ.

But above all in the Scriptures, the figure of Christ, who begins his public ministry with a proclamation of hope for the last persons of the earth, dominates: "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring the good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim a year of favour from the Lord" (Lk 4:18-19). He repeatedly places his hands on ill and diseased flesh. His words proclaim justice, instill courage to the disheartened and offer forgiveness to sinners. Finally, he himself approaches the lowest level, "he emptied himself" of his glory , "taking the form of a slave, becoming as human beings are; and being in every way like a human being, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross" (Phil 2:7-8).

In this way he feels the fear of death ("‛Father', he said, ‛if you are willing, take this cup away from me'"), He experiences loneliness because of the abandonment and betrayal by friends, he penetrates the darkness of the cruelest physical pain through his crucifixion and even the darkness of the Father's silence ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?") (Mk 15:34) and reaches the last abyss of any man, that of death ("he gave a loud cry and breathed his last"). To him, the definition that Isaiah gave to the servant of the Lord truly can be applied: "the lowest of men, a man of sorrows" (53:3).

Even so, he also in that extreme moment, does not cease being the Son of God: in his solidarity of love and with the sacrifice of himself, He sows a seed of divinity in the limit and frailty of humanity, in other words, a principle of freedom and salvation. With his offering of himself to us he pours out redemption on pain and death, assumed and lived by him, and also opens to us the dawn of resurrection. Therefore the Christian has the mission to announce this divine word of hope, by sharing with the poor and the suffering, through the witness of his faith in the kingdom of truth and life, of holiness and grace, of justice, of love and peace, through the loving closeness that neither judges nor condemns, but that sustains, illuminates, comforts and forgives, following the words of Christ: "Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened, and I will give you rest" (Mt 11:28).

14. Along the roads of the world, the divine word generates for us Christians an equally intense encounter with the Jewish people, who are intimately bound through the common recognition and love for the Scripture of the Old Testament and because from Israel "so far as physical descent is concerned, came Christ" (Rm 9:5). Every page of the Jewish Scriptures enlighten the mystery of God and of man. They are treasures of reflection and morality, an outline of the long itinerary of the history of salvation to its integral fulfillment, and illustrate with vigor the incarnation of the divine word in human events. They allow us to fully understand the figure of Christ, who declared "Do not imagine that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill them" (Mt 5:17).

These are a way of dialogue with the chosen people, "who were adopted as children, the glory was theirs and the covenants; to them were given the Law and the worship of God and the promises" (Rm 9:4), and they allow us to enrich our interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures with the fruitful resources of the Hebrew exegetical tradition.

"Blessed be my people Egypt, Assyria my creation, and Israel my heritage" (Is 19:25). The Lord, then, spreads the protective mantle of his blessing all over the peoples of the earth: "he wants everyone to be saved and reach full knowledge of the truth" (1 Tm 2:4). We, also as Christians are invited, along the roads of the world - without falling into a syncretism that confuses and humiliates our own spiritual identity, to enter into dialogue with respect towards men and women of the other religions, who faithfully hear and practice the directives of their sacred books, starting with Islam, which welcomes many biblical figures, symbols and themes in its tradition, and which offers the witness of sincere faith in the One, compassionate and merciful God, the Creator of all beings and Judge of humanity.
The Christian also finds common harmony with the great religious traditions of the Orient that teach us, in their Scriptures, respect for life, contemplation, silence, simplicity, renunciation, as occurs in Buddhism. Or, like in Hinduism, they exalt the sense of the sacred, sacrifice, pilgrimage, fasting, and sacred symbols. Or, as in Confucianism, they teach wisdom and family and social values. Even to the traditional religions with their spiritual values expressed in the rites and oral cultures, we would like to pay our cordial attention and engage in a respectful dialogue with them. Also to those who do not believe in God but who endeavour to "do what is right, to love goodness and to walk humbly" (Mi 6:8), we must work with them for a more just and peaceful world, and offer in dialogue our genuine witness to the Word of God that can reveal to them new and higher horizons of truth and love.

15. In his Letter to the Artists (1999), John Paul II recalled that "Sacred Scripture has thus become a sort of ‛immense vocabulary' (Paul Claudel) and ‛iconographic atlas' (Marc Chagall), from which both Christian culture and art have drawn" (No. 5). Goethe was convinced that the Gospel was the "mother tongue of Europe". The Bible, as it is commonly said, is "the great code" of universal culture: artists ideally dipped their paintbrush in that alphabet coloured by stories, symbols, and figures which are the biblical pages. Musicians composed their harmonies around the sacred texts, especially the Psalms. For centuries authors went back to those old stories that became existential parables; poets asked themselves about the mystery of the spirit, infinity, evil, love, death and life, frequently collecting poetical quivers that enlivened the biblical pages. Thinkers, men of learning and society itself frequently used the spiritual and ethical concepts (for example the Decalogue) of the word of God as a reference, even if merely in contrast. Even when the figure or the idea present in the Scriptures was deformed, it was recognized as being an essential and constitutive element of our civilization.
Because of this, the Bible - which teaches us also the via pulchritudinis, that is to say, the path of beauty to understand and reach God (as Ps 47:7 invites us: "learn the music, let it sound for God!") - is necessary not only for the believer, but for all to rediscover the authentic meanings of various cultural expressions and above all to find our historical, civil, human and spiritual identity once again. This is the origin of our greatness and through it we can present ourselves with our noble heritage to other civilizations and cultures, without any inferiority complex. The Bible should, therefore, be known and studied by all, under this extraordinary profile of beauty and human and cultural fruitfulness.

Nevertheless, the word of God - using a meaningful Pauline image – "cannot be chained up" (2 Tm 2:9) to a culture; on the contrary, it aspires to cross borders and the Apostle himself was an exceptional craftsman of inculturation of the biblical message into new cultural references. This is what the Church is called upon to perform even today through a delicate but necessary process, which received a strong impulse from the Magisterium of Pope Benedict XVI. She should make the word of God penetrate into the many cultures and express it according to their languages, their concepts, their symbols and their religious traditions. But she should always be able to maintain the genuine substance of its contents, watching over and controlling the risks of degeneration.

Therefore the Church must make the values that the word of God offers to all cultures shine, so they may be purified and fruitful. As John Paul II said to the Bishops of Kenya during his trip to Africa in 1980, "inculturation will truly be a reflection of the Incarnation of the Word, when a culture, transformed and regenerated by the gospel, brings forth from its own living tradition original expressions of Christian life, celebration and thought".

CONCLUSION

"Then I heard the voice I had heard from heaven speaking to me again. ‛Go', it said, ‛and take that open scroll from the hand of the angel standing on sea and land'. I went to the angel and asked him to give me the small scroll, and he said, ‛Take it and eat it; it will turn your stomach sour, but it will taste as sweet as honey'. So I took it out of the angel's hand, and I ate it and it tasted sweet as honey, but when I had eaten it my stomach turned sour" (Rev 10:8-11).

Brothers and sisters of the whole world, let us receive this invitation; let us approach the table of the word of God, so as to be nourished and live "not on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God" (Dt 8:3; Mt 4:4). Sacred Scripture - as affirmed by a great figure of the Christian culture – "has provided passages of consolation and of warning for all conditions" (B. Pascal, Pensées, no. 532 ed. Brunschvicg).

The word of God, in fact, is "sweeter than honey, that drips from the comb" (Ps 19:10), "Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path" (Ps 119:105), but is also: "like fire, says the Lord, like a hammer shattering a rock" (Jer 23:29). It is like the rain that irrigates the earth, fertilizes it and makes it spring forth, and in doing this he makes the aridity of our spiritual deserts flourish (cf. Is 55:10-11). But it is also: "something alive and active: it cuts more incisively than any two-edged sword: it can seek out the place where soul is divided from spirit, or joints from marrow; it can pass judgment on secret emotions and thoughts" (Heb 4:12).

Our gaze is turned lovingly towards all those engaged in study, catechists and the other servants of the word of God to express our most intense and cordial gratitude for their precious and important ministry. We also address our persecuted brothers and sisters or those who are put to death because of the word of God and because of the witness they render to the Lord Jesus (cf. Rev 6:9): as witnesses and martyrs they tell us of "the power of the word" (Rm 1:16), origin of their faith, of their hope and of their love for God and for men.
Let us now remain silent, to hear the word of God with effectiveness and let us maintain this silence after hearing, so that it may continue to dwell in us, to live in us, and to speak to us. Let it resonate at the beginning of our day so that God has the first word and let it echo in us in the evening so that God has the last word.
Dear brothers and sisters, "All those who are with me send their greetings. Greetings to those who love us in the faith. Grace be with you all!" (Tt 3:15).

[Original text: Italian]

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            In 1980, recognizing the great value of Sacred Scriptures as arranged in the Church’s Liturgy (Lectionary and the Liturgy of Hours) as a tool of formation, I designed and mimeographed 10,000 copies of the Bible Guide to served that purpose for our people at Sta, Cruz Church in Manila.

            In 0980, the General Secretary of the Philippines Bible Society approach me and offered to print 400,000 copies of this Bible Guide to be given free to our Catholic Bishops for their people. Thereupon, I made a personal visit to Cardinal Sin and related to him the Proposal of PBS. He was pleased with the proposal and after a brief discussion on the subject of ecumenical cooperation, he agreed that it should be joined project between CBCP & PBS each sharing half the cost. He then instructed met o contact Bishop Lat, Secretary General of CBCP at the time, so that it could be put on the agenda.

            At their January 1983 Annual Meeting in Baguio the Bishops gave approval & support for the yearly publication of the Catholic Daily Reading Guide with the conditions stated above, and it was to be given free to our Catholic Laity through their respective Bishop. The presumption was that Blessed Sacrament Congregation would prepare, facilitate & coordinate its production.

            The 2001 Bible Guide will represent 20 years of service to our catholic Laity, Averaging well over 2 Million copies per year. Financially we have managed to break about even yearly. In early years we were able to secure the help of MISSIO, but when after 5 years in1998 they dropped their subsidy we turned to the AMRSP & CLP to help us by controlling about 30,000 pesos each yearly to defray the cost of paper more than doubled, we cut down on the size of the Bible Guide thus making it less expensive to produce and that the same time we turned to the newly founded Catholic Bible Society to also give us 30,000 pesos per year and they have gladly done so ever since. At one point when we were experiencing difficulty, it was suggested by Archbishop Legaspi, CBCP President at that time, that we apply abroad for Mass intensions in Dollars to defray the Cost of Production and distribution. The Bishops takes two ($5) Mass intentions per Box of 5,000 copies. This approach has served us well up still this time. However now, we are encountering increasing difficulty securing these Mass intentions so that a new way of funding may have devised sooner or later.

            Lately PBS and I have put the Guide on Page maker Computer of Facilitate its yearly production. Throughout these many years of working closely with PBS in production and distribution of the Bible Guide I can describe our relationship as having been Cordial and cooperative, I am. (Fr. Norman L. Martin SSS, Sta Cruz Church Mla)

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