EWTN Live - 2012-09-12 - Lectio Divina - Fr Mitch Pacwa with Bishop Jan Liesen, S.S.D.

do you have a desire to grow closer to the Lord through the study of his word tonight we'll look at the wisdom of reading and studying Sacred Scripture so please stay with us welcome welcome my father Mitch Pacwa and welcome to EWTN live our chance to bring your guests from all over the world and we win a good distance for this guest tonight now to understand what he's going to talk about it's important for all Christians to read and study their Bible in order to grow closer to the Lord and our guest tonight has tried to help us do that by writing a study guide on the book of wisdom that is part of a larger Catholic Bible study series entitled come and see so please welcome from the Netherlands auxiliary bishop Yan Nissen so you all the way from the Netherlands where are you a bishop I am now an auxilary bishop in Saratoga and boss which many people know by then boss so we cut it short ourselves because the name is too long it's a diocese in the south of the Netherlands Netherlands is a small country but you always have a north and a south yes I'm a southerner I'm from the south well you feel riding over here well thank you there three dioceses in the south Vermont in the east Saratoga campus in the center and Breda to the west okay I was a priest for 27 years and the Diocese of Normand and then last year I was catapulted in the Diocese of Saratoga emboss and it became an auxiliary bishop there okay now your own background this is a scripture study where did you do some of your studies well actually I grew up in the Diocese of Breda I am I was raised on a farm with my brothers and sisters there there I did my secondary school and there I already studied Greek and Latin see this is one of the things that you know when I was in high school we also would study Latin and if you were in the high class you could study Greek but oh this was this was more normal this was normal we had it from like the age of 12 and onwards so I did five years of Latin and five years of Greek even before going to the seminary but I should tell you something about that you know I like the sciences I like mathematics and physics and chemistry and when it came when the time came that you had to decide which subjects you were going to follow I was ready to drop Greek but our dad told me no you better keep the Greek and drop the biology and he's a farmer yeah but that's the time you know when when your father said something like that you would take it very seriously she's always been there for us always did the best for us so we did that without any question and so I chose the Greek and the Latin and I did both the language is still the end and he really helped me you know he would he would get up early morning he was always awake very early before all the others and we would have a textbook in the middle on the table and I would read the Greek and the Latin and I would say what they meant and he would look on the other side see if it was correct he did that every single day did he : not a single word you could read the Dutch because read about what with the translation ought to be art exactly now I never questioned him at that point many years later and this is when I already was a priest for several years he had leukemia a very aggressive form of leukemia and he was in the hospital and my mother and my siblings we took turns we stayed with him day and night and in one of those days when I was with him he he confided something he told me something there really you know meant a lot to me he said when he was a young boy he always wanted to be a priest but he had no possibility he was the only Son and he had to work on the farm sure well I never knew that and he never pushed me in any direction at all he left me free right he left the Lord free to do his will which is exactly what parents need to do with vocations eggs act is not push them against a vocation to the priesthood but also push him into it exactly but when he told me that something fell into place I began to understand that that he prayed for that that he hoped for that and he had been doing that for a long time and then I understood why he would have wanted me to study Greek sure because if you want to become a priest and you know that is very helpful very handy if you have done those languages yes it is so at an early age long before thinking of studying the Bible this happened and I have my parents to thank for that but you were not for higher studies right even after you are attained yes higher studies in Scripture right so after secondary school I went to the Diocese of enrollment this is 1978 and there's only one Seminary in the entire country you need something incredible happened in our country many places in the world but also in our country in 68 all the seminaries were closed and you're speaking about 3035 seminaries they were closed five theological faculties were erected students were sent there there was no community life no prayer life no spiritual direction it was thought that it would sort itself out well numbers showed very quickly that this did not work out and then early 70s numbers went down oh yes in two years the number of ordinations dropped from say a hundred to zero in just two years Wow yeah was incredible and this is what we would call in the sciences a failed experiment right right but normally in Sciences you learn from these things it took a bit longer for us in the country to learn that that's the problem of non scientists doing experiments right exactly so Pope Paul the sixth appointed some new bishops in the 70s early 70s and one of these bishops started a new seminary and his idea was to implement Second Vatican Council and that was something that you know it was new but many people did not believe that he was going to do that they thought he was going backwards to pre conciliar times there was a lot of opposition I heard about that seminary and through a priest who I met in our parish he helped me to go and find my way there in that seminary there I became a priest in the Diocese of Rome on and I stayed there now in that seminary training we had excellent teachers for Scripture but what we also had is a very good spiritual director and this man fought a pit Benning DeVries he he taught us how to read and pray with the Scriptures so he would give us regularly conferences you know normally and retreats but he taught us that when you read scripture you're face to face with God he put us right before God nothing in between and that helped me actually to study what we studied also became material that you could pray with through him so I had there a very good preparation and after that I was an in a parish for a or two years and then all of a sudden I was sent to Rome we had this custom in our diocese that the bishop would visit every single priest during the year so the bishop would actually go around all parishes and visit everyone so his secretary would call and make an appointment and you make sure that you were there so I got a call from the secretary saying I still remember it was a Tuesday Tuesday 3 o'clock the bishop wants to see you I said okay I will be there at that time there was no housekeeper in the pet in the parish so I was going for a warm meal to the neighboring parish and I still remember saying to that priest I'm not in a hurry because the bishop comes at three o'clock and I'm not going to do anything before that so I took my time and I got home by two o'clock and then the phone was ringing and it was the secretary of the bishop and he was in a state of alarm and he said I'm glad I got you because I made a mistake Bishop is not coming you must come to see the bishop and then all kinds of alarm bells went off in my head because you see the custom was Bishop comes and speaks with you and you can say whatever you want sure but if you go to see the barrel you have to be careful because some changes will come sure well I you know I had only time to go there get in the car and reach the bishop just in time and as I entered his study he said you're going to Rome would you like tea or coffee so the question was tea our coffee but not whether you're going to Rome he wasn't like your natural father no it was very directive well and he ought to be because you know the bishop I had this vow of obedience so he could do that sure and I pleaded with him that I should not go I loved it in the parish but he said no you have to go his reasoning was now you have like 5,000 parishioners but if you study and you teach through those future priests you may reach 50 or 500,000 parishioners so you must go and study well he was right because with this show you're reaching even more than that Wow so he was prophetic he was prophetic right so that's how it started just going under the the wire there yeah exactly now you studied in Rome I didn't you got a doctorate in Scripture right Oh which where did you focus you see when you do the the licentiate that's the first part of the study you do not focus you take the entire scripture both all the New Testament it's after this is that it's at the Bethlehem right part of the Gregorian University it's a consortium well you know you have the Gregorian you have the Eastern in Institute and you have the biblical Institute they form a consortium so in the biblical I did the license and that was the entire scripture after that I focused on the Old Testament and in particular on the wisdom literature I had a reason for doing that because I had to go back and teach in the seminary and I needed a topic that was manageable in terms of in terms of research I needed something that I a topic where I would not have to go to a library every single day and wisdom literature was very well studied better were some books and in particular the Book of Jesus Sirach the wisdom of Jesus Ben C rock that was if you can say that in in in exegesis it was like virgin territory' some stuff was written on it but there's not a lot of not a whole lot it's it's coming up now in the last decades but at that time not that much one of the issues is that a lot of Scripture scholarship have been especially pushed by Protestants and the book of Sirach is not in the Protestant Bible that's right it's a Dutra canonical book as we call it right so it's not in Protestant Bibles that's correct and another factor too is that the Hebrew some Hebrew copies of the text were not found until the 1890s and in the 1900s so that there was the word not what they called the for logger they the Hebrew original was not as well known until the 20th century very correct is if the book was was written in Ebru and it's an exceptional book because we know for a fact who wrote it and where he wrote it in even one and when so we know the author we know the place and we know his time it was around 19 sorry 195 BC 195 195 BC in Jerusalem but Jesus Iraq in Hebrew in Biblical Hebrew we know that but it got translated it got translated in fact by his grandson 132 BC for the Jewish community outside Palestine and especially in Egypt right yeah a lot of people don't realize that there was a very large Jewish community in Alexandria Egypt right and that they wanted the Bible in Greek so it was the first religious book translated in its entirety from one language to another yeah and that is actually very important for us because what happened is that in the centuries to 2nd and 3rd century BC and the first century BC all of the Hebrew Bible got translated into Greek and in the times of the New Testament when more and more non-jewish people would enter into the church that Greek Old Testament was accessible to them so that became practically the Old Testament of the the Christians so as a matter of fact when the New Testament quotes the Old Testament the vast majority of quotes are from their Greek translation that's correct yeah sometimes like Matthew will quote from the Hebrew text and he does it with a purpose right but most of the time and the Greek text is quoted and even Matthew quotes from the Greek text he doesn't sometimes he does both he does both right yeah or even you know I was just reading the quote from Isaiah 42 that he gives in Matthew chapter 12 and he did a combination oh yeah you know they do it almost like the Hebrew part of it is exactly from the subsequent yeah because you know that is there their text they know it they live it so when the New Testament writers began to pen down their witness of Jesus these texts flowed in naturally they knew that exactly so we are not that familiar with it but for them it was a natural process right so it flows together but for the wisdom books that book of Ben Sira got translated into Greek now what happened is that was a time in in Palestine when many things were moving many ideas were coming up after life life after death is one of them and just so that people understand it was not all that common for Jews to talk about life after death not at all not at all you can still see that in the Acts of the Apostles you see when Paul is brought before the Sanhedrin he realizes there are Sadducees and Pharisees so the Pharisees believe in life after death in the resurrection and the Sadducees do not so he says I stand here as a witness to the resurrection to life after death and then they as he knew would fight together so that was still going on in the first century but it began already a couple of centuries before that so it was not all that common you read the book of Job if you read a book of Job also a wisdom book there is no idea of an afterlife job begs God to come and help him because after death there's nothing to look forward to right and in fact the book finishes when everything is being resolved in his lifetime he describes the place of the dead as a prison as something that is outside the domain of God where God has no entrance and I think actually he's you know he has a scheme of his own job as many people have when they speak with God he has this plan that he wants God to come and help him and as soon as possible so he begins to describe the underworld the netherworld as a place where he would love to be finally rest but in the back of his mind he has this idea God you better come soon because if I die you will be too late and you have some things to settle right see but his understanding is it has to happen now because there is nothing after death right there's no sense that there's going to be a reward exactly it's if anything it's just punishment and see what is interesting in the book of Ben Sira when he wrote it in Hebrew there's nothing of that afterlife but the book continued so after he wrote it there are things happening in society there's the Maccabean revolt and you read the book of the Maccabees there's clearly this idea of reward after death and praying for the dead so the book was slowly being rewritten adapted both in Hebrew and in Greek so when we go back now to the textual evidence that we have of the book you have various stages of the book it's not just one manuscript you have several and you can see through the history of the manuscripts what happened and that makes it very interesting yes it does ya know and you know besides understanding how some of the very basic ideas like at life after death began to change there is a great value in the wisdom of Sirach because he writes about things that other biblical authors don't really cover very much for instance friendship he talks about friendship and marriage in some more detailed ways than any other writer the Old Testament he says beautiful things about friendship and you know what we got to know the book of Ben Sira in the church by a different name it is known as ecclesiasticus and that really means Lieber ecclesiasticus the book of the church so this particular book was read by Christians right from the beginning and quoted a lot because there's so much good teaching in it for instance on marriage and friendship he says wonderful things about that as matter fact another thing that's very striking he is the only Old Testament book to actually mention doctors and he has a small section yeah about the role of doctors imperfectly because in the old times it was all home medicine right by his time the Greeks had introduced the concept of the medical doctor right and so he deals with that and incorporates it he says honor your doctor and pray to God something that I do every time I go to the hospital to visit people who are sick pray for the doctor and you show the respect all right so so you did your doctorate in Zurich and but you studied some of the other wisdom literature as well this is something that has led you to be invited to do strig Ute to a series of Bible studies right this is for a lot of Catholics relatively new territory to have Catholic Bible studies tell us a little bit about this Bible study program okay there's a small introduction that I have to tell you first okay when I came back from Rome and started to teach in the seminary at some point I was asked to give a retreat and I had never done that before so I felt very hesitant to do that but there was a need and nobody could be found on a short term so yeah I'd better go so I went and that was a very good experience for me because what happened there is that all the knowledge that I had been given in all that study of the Bible suddenly became fruitful in an entirely different way that I had not experienced before see when you teach you impart knowledge and students have to get it and to write it down and get an exam and get a good great but of course the Bible was not written to make exams about it's written for something else and when I started to give retreats that changed the thing for me a little bit quite a bit actually and I have been doing these retreats year after year for the last oh I would say 15 years or so and in one point it happened that I got an invitation to come to the United States it was 2005 to give a retreat Franciscan Sisters in Alton Illinois martes or sisters Franciscans sisters of the martyr st. George says their fullness oh yes now while that was on disappointment some other sisters heard about it in Germany who have also an American province the adoration sisters the pink sisters there sometimes yes yes they were founded by an audience in the Diocese of Rome on Twitter so I knew them all so sure so they invited me also to come to them so the program in 2005 grew and not just to their house in st. Louis but to all their houses Philadelphia Corpus Christi Lincoln Nebraska so I went to all those houses and then what happened when I look back now it's Providence I have no other word for it an old friend of mine a priest from the diocese in former diocese in Montana father Joseph Vanessa we studied together in Rome he was in Europe with a friend of his and they were preparing Bible studies summer school here in the United States this other person was mrs. Lori mannhart and they invited me since I was coming to the States also to come to their Bible School so I got to know this initiative for groups in parishes for for lay persons for people alone for for teenagers for mums with young children to study the Bible I didn't know it but I got to know it since 2005 and I really liked it it was something that not in the same format but that I've been doing in the seminary also so during day time I was giving classes to the seminarians and at night every other week there was time for the lay people from the vicinity to come and to read the Bible together this Bible study that was going on here in the United States 2005 I discovered was something like that but it was even better because they had this particular format that they would first study a certain text of the Bible like four or five pages of text and then there were questions good questions really questions that make you think about what you had read and you needed both the Bible and the Catechism to go through that so there I I discovered a very good connection that filled in a blank because I do not know about the United States but I do know about our country that catechism stops after primary school right people do not know their faith very well right is a problem here - well this Bible study I discovered made people go to the Catechism and directed by the text they went through the Catechism they needed to go through to answer those questions and I love I like that very much so it's it's a very good thing actually yeah yeah one of the things that you did is you composed one of the Bible studies on the book of wisdom one of the wisdom books right that's in the it's the rest of literature but it's also a book of wisdom and it's one of the deuterocanonical books called the book of wisdom right that's true that's in that so this is trip wisdom here triple-s okay but you did one of these Bible studies on the book of wisdom and you know this is a great thing that you know is going on there are a number of these Bible studies around exactly that this Bible studies actually covers the entire Bible there are now 10 volumes out and our 5 main authors who have contributed to these studies I mentioned already father Joseph Panetta from Randolph Montana there is Monsignor young mayor Nick who is from Slovakia as myself and there is father andreas Herc who was formerly from the Diocese of Cologne but now the Archdiocese of Denver and Monsignor Charles pysanky here from the United States so these five authors together with mrs. Lori mannhart have written these books as I say ten volumes are out for adults two more volumes have to come out and then the entire Bible is covered there are also some books out for preschool children for that age yeah you know with drawings and things that children can do at suitable to their age sure so it really tries to bring the Bible home great all right we need to take a little break okay but we're gonna come back in just a couple of minutes and talk a little bit more about the book of wisdom itself it's the folks who get this book get a chance to do a Bible study but we're gonna do a little bit of that tonight so please stay with us thank you and welcome back we're with Bishop Yan Neeson from the Netherlands and we're talking about this new Bible study called to come and see Catholic Bible study now this is available so ewtn religious catalogue you can call one 800 850 four six three one six that's 1-800-869-3557 one two nine six six or go to the website WWE wtae.com and they'll give you information on where you can stay scheduling for the masses the programs tours of the network information on how to get up to Hanceville to see the sisters and join them for for mass and a day of prayer so please come on down here we'd love to have you join us now to get back to you bishop um I was incorrect when I saw that the title of the book was wisdom I assumed it was about the book of wisdom but this is about all the wisdom literature in the Bible yeah you see these studies are introductory level okay so it's not a very detailed scientific knowledge about the Bible okay this is more to get to know the Bible get to know the Word of God and to through that to come to know God better of course all right and it's written in such a way that you can do that so it is the study is set up in this way first you you read a section of the Bible and then you can do either one of two things you can first look at the 12 to 50 minute clip on the DVD or you can talk together about it in your group and do the questions together so the order in which you do that is not really important there are groups who like to finish with a wrap up lecture and and read it see the DVD and there are others who like to start with it you know to get a jump start and get off well but that's that's up to yourself but the level of study is such that you can do it on your own it's better to do it in a group it's not too difficult and it's faithful to the teaching of the church every book has its imprimatur and it's a good way to come closer to the Lord one of the things that I want to help people understand is that since this is about wisdom literature what books do you cover in this text on the wisdom literature so well you already mentioned that there are deuterocanonical books so if I may take it sure you will see that in this book there is and that's in every book of this series it is 22 chapters so that it can run the whole year you know starting in the fall till the next summer and it's also the same numbers the Hebrew alphabet exactly and that is not a coincidence I thought you would so in this book we cover the book of Job we cover the Book of Psalms the book of Proverbs the book of Ecclesiastes qohelet is vodka Hallett yeah the Song of Solomon the book of wisdom and the book of Sirach so all of those books forum together a portion of the Old Testament that we call wisdom literature what is it that makes something wisdom literature okay that's a very good question and maybe the best way to understand it is first to see what are the other two sections of the Old Testament you have the section of the law and you have the section of the prophets and by the prophets they include books like Joshua judges and Samuel and kings yes they would call that in the Hebrew tradition the early prophets right because they describe the history seen through the eyes of God prophecy is that you get to know the perspective of God the Prophet tells you how God looks on things normally that concerns the present and sometimes the future and in these early prophets Samuel Kings it concerns the past how God looks back on the past so it's a prophetic view review of the past so that is included there with the prophets but when you come to wisdom literature these books are special in the sense that they are actually not about Israel they're not about the Covenant they are not about the law they're not about Moses they're not about the temple all of those things will be mentioned now and then where they're they are not that's not the focus wisdom literature tries to understand the world and everything in it from the perspective of God how can I say this you see well let me let me give one a couple clues one of the things about the wisdom literature is that it uses human reason to reflect on life's experiences that's correct so the experience the everyday life experience that you have is reflected upon and in all of that vast multitude of experiences of daily life wisdom tries to detect a pattern and to see order especially the order that God has put in creation because that is underneath all of it that this world was created by God and reflects God so if you look at daily life experience and you think about it some people actually compare the wisdom literature to what we would call philosophy thinking about the world about ourselves about God that type of thinking is also in the wisdom books so it tries to understand the whole of reality in light of God and it's not focused on Israel because Israel is historic and historic reality but what is very strong in wisdom literature is to go back to the beginning when God created everything the order that God has created is itself not a historical thing so in order to understand the world to have this wisdom perspective you do not focus on history you learn your lessons from history from all the experiences but you try to deduce from that lessons for life and that is the wisdom I oftentimes describe it as wisdom literature is like making whiskey I have no experience in this field I cannot tell you let me explain to you what you do is you start off with a mash you take some grain put it in water let it soak right put in some sugar and some yeast and it turns into a beer and it bubbles up and that's what life is like it's all this bubbling up of lots of experiences and then afterwards you cook it and you distill from it the alcohol and the alcohol cools in a tube and you have to you know you then you get the pure grain alcohol okay and then you let it sit in the barrel and it gets its flavor and flavor from the barrels and so it's this process of reflecting unlife six periences in distilling the essence of the alcohol out of it or in this case the essence of the wisdom right that's an interesting image I will remember it thank you if you ever need any help with that image go over to the Jack Daniel's distillery in Tennessee and they'll show you how they make whiskey you understand it great thank you so they won't give you any whiskey no they don't have to no they don't they don't give me any whiskey because it's a dry County solid so I'm not talking about drinking I just talk about how they make it yeah but the image is good wisdom is itself not an experience but it comes out of daily life experience and all of these books start with very simple experiences daily life experiences observation of nature observation of patterns in nature family life family life and from that slowly is deduced or arises as you will call it wisdom and that is handed down from generation to generation and it gets refined even more that's like sitting in the barrel that's like sitting in the barrel one of the other things too about wisdom literature is that it'll make an observation on life especially like the book of Proverbs and in Proverbs 10 through the end it rarely tells you what to do it's just that this is the way life really is so you either become wise and follow the pattern of life or you become a fool then it doesn't tell you what to do just says this is the reality of life right but a distinction between what is wisdom and what is folly is quite clear yes and what is also typical of these wisdom books is that it's like the sound that comes from two sides stereo so wisdom is looking at an object or a reality from several angles because it's too rich to get in one view so wisdom books will circle around a certain topic and give you different angles on it right and it is not given a definition that is more our Western type of thinking and in the beginning it can put you a little bit off you know you start reading and all these Proverbs and sayings one after the other and you think what is it what is it it's all of that because they circle around it and then give you the full image and you have to get used to it as I say but once you get through there you really begin to appreciate the fullness and as I say in the end although you're not pushed in one or the other direction you will understand what is folly and what is wisdom what is wise to do so yeah that is there and then if you want to be a wise person you'll do what's wise exactly if you want to be a fool you'll suffer the consequences of folly but you're the one who chooses right right that's that's very typical especially the book of wisdom right yeah you know sometimes Sirach - it'll be very common in suruc yeah well yeah that's true in sirak there is something new that he adds to that a new ingredient in his book and it is that he's very personally involved in the teaching yes and and and when you read the book you will encounter the first person singular I Ben Sira have done this and this and this and and I now tell you about it and he describes his own way his own search for wisdom and finding it and that is what what is appealing because you see this person the how he came to believe and to trust in God through all the experiences that he had and that is a way that you can follow you can follow in his footsteps you do not find that in other wisdom books so strong but in his own book it is there he is very personal and that is something that fits well with our age we like that yeah now one book that does have more personal recommendations is the book of ecclesiastes or qohelet but he tends to be fairly cynical yeah what do you try to communicate about Ecclesiastes in your Bible study see the book of Ecclesiastes is often viewed as very cynical that there is nothing worthwhile in life and everything comes to nothing yeah he has a great line heavily heavily mihalko level everything is vanity vapor level for people to know is the breath that comes out of your mouth so I like to translate it hello ptosis of halitosis everything is halitosis life stinks okay well that's the impression that you get when you read this book but I think that he is not that pessimistic at all though that cynical at all but he has seen through life and knows that there is it's easy to do to to be misled and to get hung up in a certain domain of life so there he is very careful he warns you for all of that but the presumption that he has is that God has created this world and there are good things to enjoy and if you do that and if you do not let yourself be PBB dragged down by some bad experiences or encounters that you have that is the best that is wisdom that is where you you make a wise choice and what is also very strong in this book is that there's a kind of you might call it a kind of democracy because this affects both the simple farmer and the king as in this respect there is no difference between King Solomon and the poorest of workers both go through the same experience of life and he's very good on that and I find that actually hopeful wisdom is not something that is reserved for the elite no not at all there's wisdom in every domain of life and it's accessible to everyone and he's good in that he makes that clear we say that he gives you an experience of that but it is true that he he warns you for the vanity of everything that is true yeah he tried to become very it became very rich and saw that no matter how much wealth you might get you may end up leaving your wealth to a fool of a son and therefore his vanity of vanities yeah you know so even even becoming really wealthy that's my mother Angelica used to say all the time when you're getting ready to write your will put EWTN in the will because all the kids are gonna do is fight over it anyway she's right she's right there no another book that you cover is the Book of Psalms right this is a very important book it's included in the wisdom literature and many Psalms our wisdom Psalms but some are not their historical Psalms and laments and pray yeah what did you write about the Psalms what I tried to convey about the Psalms is that their prayers they are prayers and they are to be prayed that's the first thing and second the best perspective on the Psalms probably is to read them not only in their Old Testament context but in the context of the entire scripture that means seen through the lens of the New Testament Jesus prayed the Psalms and you will find in the New Testament phrases that reflect that allude to some verses and you will see how those Psalms were lived by Jesus by his disciples by the evangelists and so on would I find that the best way to study them of course every some is a pearl of beautiful literature in itself and you can do that but that is that is historical criticism that is necessary it is good but it's not enough I once had a teacher who said and I think we can apply it to the study of the Psalms he said actually Jesus is hard work you sweat and you sweat a lot but what you want to communicate is not the sweat but the fruits of your work right so if you study the Bible and you're going to write something on it you're going to give the good stuff not the hard work that you put into it that's for you you people do not need to know that just like a farmer and you grew up on the right farmer doesn't bring a sweat to market it brings us fruit exactly same with exit Jesus we don't want to sweat no you don't want it it doesn't taste good whisky is probably better but we want the fruit of the this result exactly so when you study the Psalms don't get bucked up in historical reflections on how they came into being and what was the original setting in which they served but see how they function as preyus in the entire Old Testament and in the entire New Testament so you I think studying the SAMS means going a little bit outside the Book of Psalms as well and that's actually what Pope Benedict emphasizes so many times that you need this canonical approach to Scripture you cannot just read one book and then block off blot out all the rest you have to see it as a part of the whole and studying the Psalms is studying the whole of Scripture and there are many Psalms that are reflected in the New Testament many many many you know to see you know the each book only in itself without seeing the whole context it's like a doctor saying you are your appendix right and saying that once I know your appendix I know you know that's a part that's a marked exact and you need to get the whole context right in order to understand a person exactly this is the same thing with the scriptures exactly yeah exactly yeah and you also covered did you cover song of songs yeah I love the rabbinic comment that God gave us the song of songs in the Book of Psalms it's a cover the two commandments to love God with your whole heart mind and soul with the Psalms and to love your neighbor as yourself with the song of songs I have another rabbinic or quote from Rabi Akiva who said if all of Scripture would have been destroyed yes and just a book of some of songs left over that would have been enough yes that's right he called it the holy of holies the holy of holies because it's about the relationship between God and us the bridegroom and the bride is guarding us that's the imagery and it's true I think that's true so a lot of people you know you can read it on two levels it's love poetry Oh from different periods of Israel's history but then it's also this other experience where the love poetry becomes a symbol of the relationship with God knows I'll give you just one example of how rich it can be I think we all we no need to read it the text of John chapter 20 the resurrection Mary of Magdala is in the garden searching for Jesus and you know how it go see searches everywhere and she doesn't find him and then she sees him Jesus he's standing there but she thinks he's the gardener so she asks him where did you put him and then she turns away and then he calls her name and she turns again and he says Sarah bunny and she holds on to him she doesn't want to let him go that scene that John writes for writes up for us there in the 20th chapter of his gospel it's taken directly out of the Song of Songs chapter three right there the bride is looking for the bridegroom and the motions that Mary of Magdala goes through are exactly the same motions that are described in the Song of Songs the bride is looking for the groom not finding him she goes out to search at night and in the chapter 20 of John it is still dark she sees the Guardians and asks where have you seen him without telling his name same as Mary of Magdala does so it follows directly but only in the end there is a little shift the bride says when she finds him I hold on to him and I bring him to the house of my mother to the one who gave me life and of course that is changed in the gospel Jesus says do not hold on to me because I go to the house of my father he is risen his life comes from the Father so you see but if you know the sum of songs and you see what happens there in the garden you see that we the believers are to search for Jesus as the bright searches for the bridegroom and by seeing not only the comparison between what's in the psalmist Song of Songs and John 20 but also seeing the differences also exactly the differences help to highlight exactly a very important point about Jesus going to the Father and there's not a quote it's just an illusion right so there you can never say it is quoted but it is there and this is how the New Testament many times was written right I want to give people more information about to come and see series of Bible studies again these are books and DVDs you can also go to their website which is w dot Catholic Bible study dotnet and you can get more information about all the DVDs and all the books that they have available as well as any new ones that they're going to be have coming along so that'll be a great thing too for you to have bishop listen thank you very much for being with us it was a pleasure and if you would join me in giving a blessing to our audience no mighty god bless you and keep you the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit amen you know we can bring your guests like Bishop Heelan Leeson and all the other guests who come from the United States or from other countries because you bring this network to you you make it possible for us to have these programs so we ask you please to keep us in between your gas bill your electric bill in your cable bill and we'll use that to pay all of our bills and running this network it's a great work of God that's a great way for us to bring you more about Scripture so please help us in this ministry god bless you and thank you you

Channel: EWTN

Views: 7,324

Rating: 4.8857141 out of 5

Keywords: Holland, Pacwa, Liesen, Catholic prayer, life, God, Catholic

Id: 2rWlOnftyv0

Length: 56min 30sec (3390 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 13 2012