Gazing upon their look of joyful, child-like wonder, one can’t help but be moved. My eyes quickly glanced to the Bible at my side, standing there, one book among many. How many times have I looked upon it? How many times have my hands grasped it? How many times have I drunk from its riches? Yet, how often do I treat it as just one book among many others?
Today, in seeing this video, the Lord blessed me with a moment to look at his Word with new eyes, to understand its deeper dimensions.
As Benedict XVI said, “The Word of God is like a stairway that we can climb and, with Christ, even descend into the depths of his love. It is a stairway to reach the Word in the words.” Indeed, the words that we found there are unlike any others. They lead us to the Word, the word which has a Face. They lead us– if we have eyes of the pure who are blessed–to the person of Christ.”
While certainly one isn’t to expect such an emotional response every time he or she grasps the Bible, it is important to progressively allow its importance to take root in our interior and in our daily lives. I think this brief text from one of Pope Francis’ discourses could be useful:
As we know, the Sacred Scriptures are the written testimony of the divine word, the canonical memorial that testifies to the event of Revelation. The Word of God therefore precedes and exceeds the Bible. This is why our faith is not only centred on a book but on a history of salvation and above all on a Person, Jesus Christ, the Word of God made flesh. Precisely because the horizon of the divine word embraces and extends beyond Scripture, to understand it adequately the constant presence of the Holy Spirit is necessary, who “will guide you into all the truth” (Jn 16:13). We must put ourselves in line with the great Tradition which, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and of the Magisterium, recognized the canonical writings as a word which God addressed to his People and never ceased to meditate on them and to discover their inexhaustible riches. The Second Vatican Council reasserted very clearly in the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum: “All that has been said about the manner of interpreting Scripture is ultimately subject to the judgment of the Church which exercises the divinely conferred commission and ministry of watching over and interpreting the Word of God” (n. 12)
