Two Last Tips for Keeping Scripture Living and Active

In the last several posts, we have looked at ways to keep Scripture "living and active."  Here are a few last ideas.  Please feel free to share your own tips in the "Comments" section below!

Tip #3:  Pick out a word or phrase. 

A classic technique, used in some methods of Lectio Divina, is to read or listen to Scripture with your heart open to a particular sacred word or phrase.  The idea is that in a given reading, there may be one thing that really stands out and has a special meaning for you.  For example, in Psalm 23, perhaps the word “restores” catches your attention, or the phrase “darkest valley.”  Then ask yourself why this phrase means something to you in the context of the passage as a whole and in the context of your life.  Hopefully, this reflection will ignite a conversation between you and God.  This technique helps you pay attention to the scriptures you are reading or hearing because you are looking for or listening for that special word or phrase.  This is a nice technique to use when listening to the Scriptures at Mass when, let’s face it, our minds sometimes wander. 

Tip #4:  Take the time and energy to apply it to your life. 

We always listen to or read Scripture with the intention of applying it to our lives.  We know that if the message just sits on the pages of the Bible, or just rattles around in our brains, it doesn’t do us (or anyone else) much good.  But sometimes we don’t follow through – we don’t really give ourselves the time and the quiet to process what we’ve read or heard.  We don’t do the mental and spiritual exercise of making it real and meaningful.  This is the hard work that allows God’s Word to bear fruit.

In the parish where I used to work, we had a summer prayer series exploring different prayer methods.  One week we discussed praying with Scripture, and I encouraged the participants to try it at home during the week.  The next time we met, I asked how it went.  One parishioner shared a challenging experience.  She had decided to pray over the Mass readings of the day – an excellent idea.  The problem was that as she eagerly read the first reading, ready to ponder and pray, she quickly became discouraged.  The reading was about Moses killing the Egyptian (Ex. 2:11-15).  What to do with a Bible hero committing murder?  How to apply it to one’s life?  All I could say is that sometimes we have to get creative.  God’s Word is living and active all right – it is full of darkness and sin as well as light and love.  We talked about looking below the surface to consider the motivation behind Moses’ act – his love for his people that mirrored God’s own love.  While this did not necessarily justify what Moses did, it did provide a lot to pray about. There is also the fruitful notion that even Moses – arguably the greatest prophet of the Old Testament – could be a hot-head.  Some Scriptures are difficult to apply to our lives.  Doing so requires practice, patience, and sometimes, spiritual creativity!

I’m sure you all have your own ideas about how to keep Scripture living and active.  Please feel free to share them with others by leaving a comment below!

Another Tip for Keeping Scripture Living and Active

Continuing our mini-series on Scripture as a living encounter with God, here is another idea for keeping Scripture fresh as you read it:

Tip #2:  Translate it or paraphrase it.

If you speak another language, try translating a Scripture passage into that language (or from that language into English).  Write it down so you are carefully choosing each word.  As a grad student, I had to do my share of Latin translations.  My first Scripture translation was from Luke 1 – it was a short section introducing the birth of John the Baptist.  When I saw “Zechariah” and “Elizabeth”, I wondered why the professor had chosen this passage.  Why not something more exciting?  But it actually turned out to be very interesting – I learned things about Elizabeth and Zechariah that I never knew before, even though I had read Luke 1 many times.  Did you know Zechariah was of the priestly order of Abijah?  Did you know Elizabeth was a descendant of Aaron?  Of course we know they were righteous, but did you ever notice how Luke clearly states that they “lived blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord”?  I had never really noticed those things before.  I guess I had already decided that all I needed to know about Zechariah and Elizabeth was that they were righteous and barren.  That was pretty arrogant (and lazy) of me! 

If you don’t speak another language, try paraphrasing the passage into your own words.  Moving from “Bible-speak” to your own way of speaking is a type of translation that still requires you to slow down and think about each word or phrase.  Don’t worry about a “perfectly accurate” translation – the point is to think about the words and their meaning.

Speaking of John the Baptist, why not try it with Luke 3:7-14?

Tips for Keeping Scripture "Living and Active"

In the last post, we reflected on how easy it is to skim over or not give our full attention to Scriptures that we feel are familiar or maybe even boring.  But each time we do this, we give up an opportunity to encounter something “living and active” (Heb. 4:12) that can change our perspective and our relationship with God.  St. Jerome, a true lover of holy writ, insightfully pointed out that while the faithful are appalled when a crumb of the Eucharistic Bread falls to the floor, we frequently let God’s Word – which is also the body and blood of Christ – fall past our ears without even noticing.

In the next several posts, I’d like to share a few ideas for bringing Scripture to life each time you read or hear it.

 Tip #1:  Read out loud.

When we read the Bible to ourselves, it is all too easy to skim over words, phrases, or sentences – without even realizing it.  If you read out loud – slowly – you will probably notice things you never noticed before.  One day when my oldest daughter was about six, she decided she wanted to help me prepare for a lecture.  I was studying the symbolism of blood in the Old Testament and was about to read Exodus 24:1-8, so I asked her to read it out loud to me.  You can imagine that a six-year-old would have trouble with some of the biblical vocabulary.  As she read slowly, sounding out some words as best she could, I had no choice but to listen to every word and phrase in slow motion.  And I couldn’t believe the amazing details in the passage (I’ll never forget the “basins” of blood!).  You should check it out!  Slowly!

The Two-Edged Sword

Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart (Heb. 4:12).

There are stories and passages in Scripture that are so familiar to us that we tend to categorize them in the “been there done that” file in our minds.  When we hear them at Mass, we tune out with a mental note to “check back in” when we hear the concluding words, “The Word of the Lord.”  If we come across these passages when reading on our own, we’re tempted to skim over them, or give them a meaningless, cursory read.  We want something to give us new insight; those familiar passages seem “worn out.”

But occasionally we get blindsided by familiar things.  I love it when a passage I think I’ve read or heard or studied a hundred times divulges something completely new.  It takes me down a notch, and I realize that I’ve taken for granted something that is living and active, something that has the ability to pierce, to divide joints from marrow, and soul from spirit (Heb. 4:12).  Something I thought was lifeless for me actually re-animates me in some way.

You know that amazing feeling you get when you find out something new about your spouse or an old friend?  I’ll never forget how delighted I was to hear the story of how a sweet, even-tempered friend of mine was so determined not to go to school on her first day of Kindergarten that she gripped the doorframes of her home and made her mom pry her fingers away and carry her to the car kicking and screaming.  I certainly saw my friend in a different light after hearing that story.  “Sweet and even-tempered” became “sweet and even-tempered with a seriously stubborn side.”  And every time I find out something new about my husband (which is about once a week), I realize that the people we think we know best will always – always – have more to reveal.  We sell them short when we think we have them “figured out.”  We run the same risk when we dismiss the familiar Words of God.

Karl Rahner described our experience of God as one of “inexhaustible intelligibility.”  Whether here or in eternity, there is always more to know about God.  And when we learn new things about God, we change, our relationship with him changes – just as my relationship with my friend shifts ever-so-slightly each time I learn something new about her.  Scripture is a part of this “inexhaustible” process of knowing God and of being changed by him, of moving closer to him and him to us, close enough to pierce the “joints and marrow”, the very fibers of our being.

So next time your mind glazes over as you hear or read a familiar Bible text, ask God to show you something new.  It is his Word after all, and it is alive.

Agony in the Garden

The Agony in the Garden is a remarkable piece of the Passion of Christ.  It is poised between his life and his death – between the Last Supper and the Way of the Cross.  Here we have a story that sends a chill down our spines when we read it – first, because the suffering of Christ touches us.  But we are also disturbed by the passage because it touches something very close to home for each one of us.  The agony of Christ is a familiar struggle – between life and death, between his will and the will of the Father, between the past and the future.

Only Luke uses the word “agony” (sometimes translated “anguish”) in his account of the scene at Gethsemane:  “In his anguish, he prayed more earnestly” (Lk. 22:44; NRSV).  The Greek word here is agonia – its original meaning carried the connotation of the athlete’s struggle, conjuring images of a determined runner on his last legs, or the physical and mental pressures faced by a competitive wrestler.  Reflecting this meaning, one Lukan scholar gives a literal translation of the passage as:  “Entering the struggle, he continued to pray even more eagerly” (Luke Timothy Johnson, Sacra Pagina).  Does this athlete struggle up a sweat?  Yes, he does – “and his sweat became like great drops of blood, falling on the ground” (22:44).

The agonia of Christ in the Garden offers us a meditation on all kinds of human struggles.  Jesus was not only experiencing the very human dread of suffering and death.  He also faced the “sleepiness” of friends in the midst of his anxiety, the betrayal of one close to him, and the impending desertion of the rest.  Thus he was not only facing death but utter loneliness.  And certainly, in expectation of his death, he naturally looked back at his life – an exercise that in all of its humanity must have included questions and conflict (we know, for example, that Jesus felt conflicted about leaving his followers behind; see Jn. 17:12-15).  Finally, Jesus was clearly being crushed in the all-too-familiar crucible of discernment between his own will in that moment and the eternal will of the Father. 

The command of Christ – “Follow me!” – includes walking with him to Gethsemane.  It is a place we go before every Golgotha of our lives.  It is the place of inner turmoil and agonia.  Here we struggle with him, and we watch him, to see what he does and imitate him.  We see him throw himself to the ground and lie in the dirt of the Garden.  Isolated by the sleepiness of his friends, he turns all the more earnestly to the Father.  He prays fervently and honestly.  And the Father, who never deserts his children, does not change the past nor does he remove the trajectory of suffering from his Son’s life.  But he sends an angel to minister to him, and he gives to his Son a resolute spirit.  Here in the Garden, Jesus is strengthened to do what he is called to do, to go where he is called to go, to drink from the cup the Father has given him.   We see him arise from prayer ready to face the hour at hand.  He awakens his friends with a renewed calm and a serene acceptance of his situation:  “My betrayer is at hand.”

Our own betrayers are probably not human foes.  We are more likely to simply feel betrayed by the natural circumstances of life – illness, loneliness, failed relationships, financial distress, the death of a loved one, anxiety over our children, the burden of old wounds that won’t heal.  When we carry these burdens, we really have no choice but to follow the Master to the Garden and allow the agonia to play out.  And if we follow him closely, we throw ourselves to the ground and pray honestly.  We accept the quiet comfort the Father offers, rise with a resolute spirit, and drink deeply from the cups that do not pass.

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For my full article on The Garden as a Place of Agony written for The Bible Today, click here.

 The account of Jesus’ struggle at Gethsemane/Mount of Olives is found in Mt. 26:36-46, Mk. 14:32-42, and Lk. 22:39-46.  John’s Gospel refers to Jesus’ presence in the garden at the time of his arrest but does not narrate Jesus’ anguish (though at his arrest he uses similar language, saying to Peter, “Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?” Jn. 18:11).