GARCIA-LUENSE: A relationship with sacred Scripture

A crucifix and Bible are pictured on a cloth. (OSV News photo/Bob Roller, Reuters)“My relationship with the Bible is not a romance, but a marriage… The Bible is not an object for me; it is a partner whose presence blesses me, challenges me, and affects everything that I do.” These are the reflections of the Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor in her memoir The Preaching Life. 

Of all the images that describe how we as Catholic Christians are called to be in relationship to the Scriptures, this one seems the richest and comes closest to the mark.   The Scriptures are not a thing that I can possess, handle, study or even fully understand. Rather, they are a partner that needs to be engaged and an invitation to relationship. The Church is clear in its teaching of the centrality and importance of Scripture in our theology and pastoral praxis. 

After a half-century of being read Bible stories, hearing the Scriptures proclaimed in Liturgy, reading and studying the Scriptures in both academic settings and on my own, and teaching the Scriptures to others, I know in my head and feel in my heart that the Scriptures have a reality and power beyond me. They sit in this relationship as Another, with their own identity and purpose that I cannot control. And because there is power beyond my ability to control, there is real danger. 
 
Like the Aslan of C.S. Lewis, the Bible is neither tame nor safe. “It [has] sharp edges to it. It [is] capable of cutting deep, and those who reach out their hand to grasp it had best be prepared to bleed.”  

But even amid this reality, there is the realization that it is not a relationship of domination either. The Scriptures themselves do not completely determine the relationship any more than a single partner can determine fully the course of a human relationship. I am invited to bring myself to the Scriptures. I cannot be detached and read the Bible and hope to have any sense of what it is really about. I need to be fully and completely engaged. I need to risk allowing myself to find in those pages my own hopes, fears, doubts and desires. I need to risk letting my experiences rub up against the sacred stories as together they make new meaning. 

And as terrifying as this encounter can be, and as much as I approach it in fear and trembling, I also find that there is nothing else in the world that is as attractive or satisfying. The Scriptures are not safe, but they are good, and with them I find I can make a home. 
When I began my formal academic theological studies, it was my Scripture classes that I was most excited to attend and about which I wanted to talk and share. And so, by the end of my first year, it was clear that Scripture was to be my major.

Only later did I come to understand why this was so. In my initial academic study of the Bible, I was being introduced to this Other and sensed the invitation to relationship. It was this attractiveness that captivated and held me then and holds me now. 

In concluding a reflection on the kind of relationship we are called as Catholic Christians to have with the Scriptures, it bears remembering that the Scriptures themselves are a faithful witness to the Word of God. The Word of God is not letters in a book, but a person, indeed, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity. In entering into a living relationship with the Scriptures, we enter into a relationship with the living God through Jesus Christ.
 
Brian Garcia-Luense is an associate director with the Office of Evangelization and Catechesis.