No, I mean having a bible study led by a qualified teacher or encouraging people to at least read the early church fathers’ interpretation of scripture. It seems the Church has never trained anyone to do that because they don’t want to do that. What happens then is people go to a Protestant bible study or they develop little groups and start their own churches. How is it a Catholic book if Catholics don’t read it?
I think this may be the crux of the problem in terms of where is the bible in the home. If we look back at biblical history before the institution of the levitate caste, we would see the a father leads a household, a mother keeps it together and in love, and the firstborn son presides over the family in ceremony as the household priest. In this context, we see a father as the overseer (bishop role), the mother as the heart of the family (church role), and the firstborn son as the the one performing the sacrifice (priest role). In this context, we have a family temple ritual in the home and the sacrifice is a lamb or other animal while the teachings are form the old testament scriptures.
Take that image and think about the larger Church family and the individual families we are in. Notice the parallel. However, in the small bible study groups, we can have some elemental of that but lose the full liturgy that has its roots in a thousand year of Jewish History before the Incarnation. Yes it is a good idea to have bible studies, social gatherings, and movie nights in the parish to *augment *the parishioners
as needed pastorally. However, all should be done with the Church in mind.
What you said, I’ll re-quote: “What happens then is people go to a Protestant bible study or they develop little groups and start their own churches.” And so it has happened and happened and happened. Luther looked at what scriptures he has learned and instead of going back to his abbot to discuss it, he went off to start his own little church. Same with Calvin who was unwilling to look back to the Church for guidance. Same with the thousands of protestant groups. It is a dangerous practice if not done with the Heart of the Church.
Yet for 2000 thousand years, the Church has been doing this. Each time we go to Mass, we get the full liturgy. In this context, the priests who are “qualified teacher
” are leading the people in a “bible study” each Liturgy of the Word. It’s done the same way as in the Apostle Days. However, this “bible study” leads to something much greater. We take all our concerns, all the thoughts we have both from our lives and from the scriptural readings, and we share it with God when we bring up the offertory. God is physically joining us in our bible study and making it into a true sacrifice in the Liturgy of the Eucharist. Personally, that’s the best bible study ever! And it is the best family gathering ever! And it is the best teaching ever! And so on.
They devoted themselves to the teachings of the apostles and to communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers…Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple area and to breaking bread in their homes. They ate their meals with exultation and sincerity of the heart, praising God." (Acts 2:24, 46-47a)
Let me take the quote above from the scriptures itself and reemphasize my point. Every day they “devoted themselves to meeting together” and there was the breaking of the word which are the teachings of the apostles. The apostles did not spoke randomly, they spoke what Jesus taught and what the Scriptures foretold of Jesus. They also re-teach the people their heritage and what God has been doing over the last thousand years for them. And what God is doing now. Looking over time this 2000 year old tradition of scriptural study is the Liturgy of the Word at Mass.
In this context, does it not seem that Jerome’s statement “Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ” take on a whole new meaning? What happens when we intentionally ignore the readings at Church? What happens when we decide we are going to arrive at Church late because the only time we have to participate is going up for communion. These deliberate actions merits St. Jerome’s direct condemnation. We must be active participants in this 2000 year old tradition of scriptural studies.
However, their day does not finish with just the teachings and the scriptures. Because they could not break bread at the temple, they went as a community to the wealthiest Jewish Christian home (because only these homes had enough room for the community) and broke bread. Here we see that every scriptural and teaching studies end with the Liturgy of the Eucharist. This was not just some party. It was definitely the second half of the Mass. The phrase “breaking of the bread” is the first term to describe the Eucharistic offering and meal. We can obviously see why the Eucharist is important in itself. But it does not exists in itself ordinarily. It is what completes the Liturgy of the Word in one sense. Without the Liturgy of the Word, we are missing the history that leads up to our salvation. Without the Liturgy of the Eucharist, our scriptural study is fragmented like the hearts of the Israel nation and the world before Christ’s Incarnation. The scriptural study is completed by the Liturgy of the Eucharist.
[continued on next post]