Oddly enough, when I wrote this, we were living in Colorado and Dana was looking for work. Today, we are living Iowa and once again, Dana is looking for work. I wonder sometimes what lesson God is trying to teach us and if we are just missing the point, but maybe it's just an exercise in wrestling with the right things.
Dear Sisters,
I pray this finds each of you doing well. I appreciate your prayers for Yvonne and I on this book endeavor. It has been too long coming. I wanted to also ask you for prayers that my husband will secure a job quickly. He has been out of work since November and life is getting difficult.
This article might seem a little different from our usual Little Way posts but I pray you will see the relevance and the importance of Scripture in each of our lives.
I think I have shared with you that I am a student in the Denver Catholic Biblical College. This summer we have had some options to do some shorter classes, without the homework (praise God!), on some relevant topics. My husband, oldest daughter and I are taking one that is called unlocking the parables. It's basically how to think like a Jew in Jesus’ time, so we can understand who Jesus was teaching and why His messages were received the way they were in that time. It has been great and we still have 3 more weeks.
The other class I did was just a one day one called Scripture and the Struggle of Prayer. I wanted to share with you a reflection on this topic that actually ties into a homily from a year ago. The one thing I want to make clear to you is that I am not a Scripture scholar. The more I learn, the more I realize how little I know but I am blessed to have such a resource at my fingertips and so, I pray my thoughts will inspire your own journey in Sacred Scripture.
Last year, at Charlene’s First Holy Communion our beloved pastor gave a homily based on a book by Avery Dulles. In his homily, Fr. Ed compared Catholics to blood thirsty lions gnawing at the Flesh of Christ. If you are horrified by that image, good! Being Catholic is messy! Think for a few moments what it is saying, we do eat the Body and drink the Blood of Jesus and by ingesting these Sacred Elements, we are transformed and nourished. Put simply, you are what you eat! The image is meant to teach us what it means to be passionate about something, in this case passionate about the Body and Blood of Christ.
Why the image of the lion? Think about a lion eating it’s pray. The lion becomes so consumed in what it is doing that nothing else distracts it. It shoves its face into it and for that time, it forgets everything around it. I growls and grunts and groans with sheer delight over its feast.
I didn’t get that image last year, even though I had read Dulles’s book and have had the homily Fr. Ed gave on CD ever since. It could be where I was at spiritually or it could be that we had 3 pews of friends to celebrate with us that were Mormon, Unitarian, Baptist and no religion at all and I was really worried what the conversations were going to be like at the party afterwards.
Fast forward a little over a year to my retreat/class: Scripture and the Struggle of prayer.
What is the struggle of prayer? Sometimes it is a struggle to pray because we don’t know how. Other times we struggle to make prayer a priority in our lives. But at all times, we need to struggle with what God is saying to us through the Holy Spirit in Scripture! The Sacred Scripture is the ONLY book we have that is completely written by God. Imagine that, sitting at our fingertips, we have access to God’s Word and His plan for us! All we have to do is open the pages!
The Hebrew word “hagah” is used in several ways throughout the Old Testament. In Psalm 1 and 2, it is translated as meditate and plot. In other places, it is translated as recite, grown, sigh, growl, cry or sing. Whenever it is translated, there is always some sort of vocalization that arises from the deep emotion of “hagah”. I want to talk about another use of the word in Isaiah 31:4 where it is translated as “growl”. The image Isaiah gives us is that of a young lion growling while gnawing on his prey and savoring it with great passion.
This image is where I started to make the connection between last years homily and what we are called to do with Scripture. Father Ed was talking about “hagah-ing” the Flesh of Christ and now I see how we need to “hagah” the Word of God. The body of His only Beloved Son nourishes our physical being. The Word, written by the Holy Spirit nourishes our minds and souls. Our bodies cannot function without the mind and likewise the mind cannot function without the body.
“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was made Flesh and dwelt among us” John 1. To know the Son, we must know the Word because the Son is the Word. There is an inter-personal relationship that is unavoidable. The more we receive Holy Communion and participate in the Sacraments, the more we are aware of the Sacrifice that was made for us and the more it should compel us to understand who God is, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The best way to understand this Triune God is to meditate, chew or “hagah’ on the words written by Him.
“I have put my words in your mouth” Jeremiah 1:9. God has placed His words in my mouth and I have 2 choices: 1) Gnaw on it and let it become part of my very being or 2) Spit it out with all of the other excrement from my body.
1) We are what we eat, plain and simple. If we feast on God’s Words and Sacraments and let nothing distract us from Him, we start to be transformed by Him.
2) God’s word is spewed from our bodies whenever we speak hastily or uncharitably. We throw out the good right along with the bad and of course, the bad is all that is seen and heard.
This doesn’t mean we don’t have to share Gods’ word. On the contrary, we need to be careful that what I share IS God’s word and not rubbish when we have let evil reign. The Hebrew word for sin is “hatta.” The choice becomes very simple, “Hagah or Hatta,” Chew on Gods Words and Gods Sacraments or sin!
Sisters in the Trinity,
Marion
PS 19:14 “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in the sight, O LORD, my rock and redeemer.”
