From the Pastor’s Desk:
Over the weekend I had a number of people comment on my homily. They all mentioned that the way I put historical background into much of my homilies helps people to understand the scriptures better. Perhaps that is the 17 years of teacher in me. The scriptures are not the easiest “read”, and I am not claiming to be any great scholar. I do believe if you have the historical understanding of the time in which the scripture was written, it helps to understand the lesson better. The books of the Bible are as much as 3,000 years old and many of the lessons contain words and phrases that do not translate well into today’s English. And when they do translate they sometimes make no sense. For example in last Sunday’s gospel, where it sounded like Jesus was calling a woman a dog.
As I was taught in my scripture courses, to understand the books of the Bible: 1) you needed to know when it was written, 2) who wrote the book, 3) why was it written and 3) to whom was it written. It is also helpful to know what language it might have been originally written in.
The Catholic Church gave the world the Bible. The Bible is not a historical record of events, but it is a book of FAITH. The New Testament is the most reliable of ancient texts. The earliest copies date to the early 200’s. The originals of the Gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke and John have not survived, but their copies have survived. Copies written from texts less than a hundred years old. If the four Gospels were written from 50-110 AD as most scholars and theologians believe, then the copies of the manuscripts that exist today are very close to their sources. How reliable are they since they are copies, we may ask? The ancient Christians were copying the New Testament, seeing and believing it to have been inspired by God. They also used the books for study and in worship. Were they really sloppy and careless? I do not believe so. They understood it to be a sacred task, not something to be taken lightly.
Within the New Testament there are found four Gospels, but more were written. How were the four Gospels chosen, if there were more? The early Church Fathers referenced and talked about the other gospels when they compiled the New Testament, but they used a fourfold criteria to choose which gospels they placed in the New Testament. 1) The gospel needed to be rooted in an Apostle, or a follower of an Apostle, thus Apostolic tradition, 2) The gospel needed to have widespread acceptance and usage in the early Christian communities, 3) The gospel needed to be known for its orthodoxy, fitting with other books, not having strange ideas, and 4) The gospel needed to be used in liturgy in different communities.
GOLD Cards, a fundraiser for the school system, will be available after all masses this weekend!