Gleaning Wisdom from the Bible

Friday, May. 01, 2020

First a confession: Up until recently, I never read the Bible. To me, Scripture was something I heard from the pulpit, not something to read on my own, because I wasn’t smart enough to interpret it.

All that changed when I started taking my faith seriously. I’m still not smart enough to understand Scripture without a translator, but the Church has had 2,000 years to expound on the texts, and some of the commentary is as fascinating as the text itself. From the Church Fathers like Ambrose to Doctors of the Church like Teresa of Avila, saints throughout the century have passed on their insights into the Scriptures.

In my studies over the past few years I’ve occasionally come across such commentary, but I discovered a trove of it this Lent, when I committed to reading one chapter a day from the Gospels. Lent was just long enough for me to get through the first two books of the New Testament: Matthew and Mark.

To guide me through these Gospels, I chose “The Navarre Bible New Testament.” This volume has commentary compiled by members of the theology faculty of the University of Navarre in Pamplona, Spain. They don’t limit themselves to their own interpretation, but bring in dozens of saints, some of whom I recognize, some I don’t. Here’s St. Leo the Great on the temptation of Christ: “He overcame the mortal enemy of men as man, not as God. He fought in that way to show us how we should fight. He overcame the enemy so that we too may overcome the enemy by following his example.”

On the Lord’s Prayer, we have St. John Chrysostom: “The Lord taught us to pray together with and for all our brothers. He did not say, ‘My Father, who art in heaven;’ he said, ‘Our Father.’ Our prayer should be the prayer of one heart and one soul, to build up the one body of the Church.”

 Regarding some of the parables in Matthew 7, Fray Luis de Granada (a 16th-century Dominican friar whose name I had never heard before) comments, “Notice that to be a good Christian it is not enough just to pray and fast and hear Mass; God must find you faithful, like another Job or Abraham, in times of tribulation.”

This, from a man living in the 1500s. St. John Chrysostom died in 407, Leo the Great a couple of decades later, yet their wisdom applies just as much today as it did then.

The commentary doesn’t limit itself to ancient sources. Here’s John Paul II: “The images of salt, light and leaven taken from the Gospel, although indiscriminately applicable to all Jesus’ disciples, are specifically applied to the lay faithful. They are particularly meaningful images because they speak not only of the deep involvement and the full participation of the lay faithful in the affairs of the earth, the world and the human community, but also and above all, they tell of the radical newness and unique character of an involvement and participation which has as its purpose the spreading of the Gospel that brings salvation.”

The wisdom of women saints isn’t ignored in this volume. Although quoted less frequently than their male counterparts (and I acknowledge that there are fewer sources to draw from), the Navarre Bible includes commentary by Teresa of Avila, Bernadine of Siena and Clare of Assisi, among others. Nor are the documents of the Church and the popes overlooked as sources.

With all of this interpretation, my Lenten reading proved intellectually enlightening. What it did not do, however, was teach me how to be better taking heed of the warning from St. John Vianney. The patron saint of parish priests wrote, “There is no doubt about it: a person who loves pleasure, who seeks comfort, who flies from anything that might spell suffering, who is over-anxious, who complains, who blames and who becomes impatient at the least little thing which does not go his way – a person like that is a Christian only in name; he is only a dishonor to his religion, for Jesus Christ has said so: Anyone who wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross every day of his life, and follow me.”

So here I sit, encouraged by the wisdom of the saints to live my faith, but knowing that only I can take that first step of picking up my cross and begin following Christ.