Second Sunday of Lent (February 28th, 2021)

The Church’s first scripture for today is a startling passage from the first book of the Bible- The Book of Genesis.

In this text, the great patriarch Abraham is commanded by God to kill his beloved son. Abraham is to offer his son as a blood sacrifice to God.

One can only recoil in horror at this story and wonder as what it means.  For centuries much attention has been paid to this text as people sought to understand its meaning and grasp its lesson.  For what reason was this text included in the Bible? Why would God command such cruelty?  Why would Abraham comply?  What does this say about the God of biblical revelation? What does Abraham’s compliance say about us?

Like all the revelatory texts of the Bible, no one answer, no one meaning suffices as an answer or an explanation. For this reason, we should resist being glib or dismissive or reduce the meaning to a simplistic cliché.  A scripture like this excerpt from the Book of Genesis commands our attention because it is deeply mysterious and resists easy characterizations or answers.

One way of looking at this text is to consider it as an artifact of a culture that is seeking to understand itself.  In this regard the text is what is called an etiological tale- that is, a kind of origin story that explains why a culture does or does not do something of importance.

In this particular case it explains why the Israelites rejected the cults of human, particularly, child sacrifice, which were practiced by the cultures around them.  In this regard, the meaning of the story would be something like this: the purpose of this story is that God demonstrates to Abraham that he wants obedience, but he does not require the human or child sacrifices that were prevalent and practiced by other cultures.

This story, set in Israelite pre-history, explains why the sacrifices offered by the Israelites were different from other cultures.

 Another way of looking at it is that it provides an important observation about the nature of parenting in a world that is wrought with peril and uncertain outcomes.  In this regard the story is meant to provide us with insight.

Abraham is a stand in for all parents at all times and his beloved son Isaac is a stand in for all children.  The seemingly cruel command of God is signaling the danger and unpredictability of life, in which we receive children with love and gratitude, but we know that their lives are not simply our own to determine.

There are aspects to life, things in this world that are out of our control and try as we might these realities can overtake us, with the worst outcome being death.  Both parents and children must at some point face down the uncontrollability and unpredictable nature of human existence and all men and women must accept the gravity of what it means to bring a child into the world and that the love between a parent and a child necessarily entails great sacrifices and a confrontation with what we fear the most- the grief that comes when things do not go as we had hoped or expected.

Parents will not truly love their children if their central pre-occupation is simply to control them and insulate them from the raw facts of human existence.  A child that only knows the world through the narrowness of comforts, exemptions from difficulties, and remains insulated from the reality of loss and risk will never be fully themselves.

Thus, parents and children, must, like Abraham and Isaac make that journey to Moriah together, and it is a journey to understand that the challenges of life must be confronted forthrightly and directly; that love must be risked despite uncertain outcomes; and that loss and grief cannot be wished away.  Being parent and truly bringing a child to maturity means that both parents and children must come to terms with the full measure of what it means to be human.

Finally, this text is about the disclosure of a mystery that its original author did not fully understand.  In this respect, the story is really about Christ and his mission.  Christ is the beloved son of the Father, a child of the promise through whom God acts to bring into being a great nation called the Church. 

 Christ’s life will culminate in becoming a sacrifice, a sacrifice he makes of his own life so as to set right our relationship with God, a sacrifice that is necessary so that we can see that nothing escapes the power of God to redeem and to save- not even suffering, not even grief and loss, not even death.  Christ’s sacrifice is to accept these realities for himself.  He does not have to- he chooses this because this is what his Father asks of him.  Christ does this knowing that the benefit will not be to himself, but for us. 

In this respect, today’s scripture from the Book of Genesis, is meant to suggest to us the great and fundamental reality commemorated during Holy Week- that is, the sacrifice of Christ.

Just a few words on the holy Gospel. 

In today’s scripture from the Gospel of Mark, Christ’s disciples are witnesses to an extraordinary revelation- they see Christ for who he really and truly is.  Who is Jesus Christ?  He is the one, true God who has accepted a human nature and revealed himself to us as a man, he has come to meet us in Christ face to face.

The man they have come to know is ever much more than who he appears to be- he is God.  This is the point today’s Gospel is making and what we should consider as most important about the Gospel we have heard.

This revelation should make the mysteries of Holy Week all the more strange and compelling, for what happens to the Lord Jesus is happening to God and through all that Christ experiences, God is revealing himself to us- who he really and truly is and what he asks us all to accept. 

God is not for us Christians merely a concept or emotion, but instead, God is a living, divine person who not only interacts with us, but has shared with us the experience of being human. Holy Week reveals the full extent of this experience.

To be a Christian in truth does not mean that we merely accept Christ as an important historical figure or a teacher of timeless truths, but as God. 

Peter, James and John caught a glimpse of this revelation on that high mountain, a revelation that was confirmed for them in Christ’s resurrection from the dead.

The lesson:

Christian spirituality is mostly about coming to terms with the divinity of Jesus Christ and learning to accept his divinity.  His divinity presented itself to the world in a form that was confounding and mysterious.  This mystery was not simply the dazzling light of the transfiguration, but the revelation of God in real flesh and blood- a real flesh and blood that we will be compelled to see in all its radiant intensity in the great mysteries of Holy Week.

Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe (November 24th, 2019)

Today the Church celebrates the great solemnity of Christ the King. This is a relatively new celebration, being established by Pope Pius XI in the early decades of the 20^th century. The reason for this celebration might be understood as a reminder to Christians that they live in a world in which there are rival claims to the authority of God in Christ- other worldly powers insist that they are owed the honor and obedience that should properly only belong to God in Christ. These rivals to Christ might be political powers, or economic interests, or allegiances to ideologies, or even the belief that in all matters of morality and religion, the will of the individual should prevail. For the Christian, all these things are properly positioned under the highest authority, which is not the state, the political party, the economy or my own will, but God in Christ. This is what is meant when Christians declare that Christ is the King. It is a statement of faith that has real world and real life implications. And what we Christians call spirituality is our often times stark confrontation with the demands of Christ’s kingship.

Will we serve Christ as our King or do we pay lip service to his authority? Christ is not a constitutional monarch with whom we have negotiated the terms of his authority. The Church is not a parliament that comes to Christ with a list of demands that he must approve in order to maintain his privileges. To be a Christian is to be someone who accepts the authority of Christ over one’s life and the proper reference point for understanding his authority is that he is our king.

The truth that God has rivals to his authority is one of the great themes that drives the grand narrative of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, from start to finish, from cover to cover.

In fact, the Bible identifies as the reason for the mess we creatures make of the world as the result of humanity’s rejection of the authority of God over our lives. God’s authority wills human flourishing, as his revelation indicates the means by which human flourishing is possible, but in our willfulness and arrogance, we prefer our way to his way and the result is the degradation of human flourishing. The Bible insists that the rejection of God’s authority provokes inescapable consequences. This rejection and these consequences is displayed with brutal realism in the Bible.

This reality is what the Church’s first scripture is about. We heard an excerpt from the Book of Samuel, which a recounting of the people and circumstances that led to the establishment of the monarchy of Israel. This kingdom was established because the Israelites wanted a king to “make them like other nations” (a desire which is telling). Prior to the monarchy God was the king who ruled through the Law by God given to Moses. And so the Israelite desire for a king is a rejection of his kingship. The Lord warns the Israelites through the prophet Samuel that their desire to be ruled by an earthly king will have consequences. And yet the people insist and so God gives the Israelites a king. The Book of Samuel and the subsequent historical and prophetic books of the Bible will reveal the consequences that the Israelites will endure because of their desire for a king.

The New Testament is about how God acts in Christ to rescue his people and with them the whole world from the consequences of the refusal to accept him as the one true and only king.

God does this in an extraordinary way by entering into the human condition himself in Christ and revealing himself as the only king who is worth our allegiance. This is the what the testimony of St. Paul is about in his letter to the Colossians. The apostle testifies that Christ is not merely a teacher of ethics or exemplar of morality or spiritual guru or whatever category cultural elites try to impose on Christ to make him palatable to our preferences and opinions.

Christ is, St. Paul testifies, the visible image of the invisible God- he is God. Not just a god, but the one, true God, who has revealed himself by accepting a human nature and living a real human life. God has done this to rescue us, to save us. To rescue us from what? To save us from what? From ourselves. From our inclination and proclivity to give authority to things that are not God and to let those things rule our lives and our world. These things can be worldly realities like wealth, pleasure, power and honors. We make idols of these things, they become our God and in doing so we subvert their true purpose and make them into forces of destruction. These false gods can also be things like our political ideologies, our economic theories, and even our cultural and ethnic identities. When these things become our ultimate concern, they become our kings and then we need to be rescued from them, we need to be saved from them!

St. Paul insists in this scripture from his letter to the Colossians that we are saved and rescued from false kings, rivals to Christ the King, by the cross. What does this mean?

We look to today’s Gospel for insights.

Christ crucified unmasks the power play of earthly rulers or worldly kings, who mask their cruelty and violence behind a subterfuge false claims and empty promises. They demand our allegiance, often insisting that our submission is to our benefit and will bring with it order and prosperity. And yet, all this is accomplished with the threat of potential violence- defy us and we who give you life will take your life. Notice the diabolical lie in this- worldly powers do not give us life and have no legitimate authority threaten and kill people so as to legitimate their desire for wealth, pleasure, power and honors.

This has been the reasoning for thousands of years for displays of brutalizing power like the cross- cross us and we will put you on a cross. Christ’s claims, his revelation of his divinity and his identity as the true and only king do precisely this- he undermines the claims of worldly powers over us. He subverts their claims to authority. He shows us the nature of their lies. He unmasks that their base of power is not benevolent promises that impart human flourishing, but instead it is the threat of death. They will manipulate us in our fears to get what they want. And if we resist- look at the cross and see what they can do!

In his cross he reveals the true nature of worldly power and how the rulers of this world have legitimated their authority. All this looks like the cross. They would even seek to torture and kill God to serve their purposes. And out of our own fear and lack of love we would let them do that.

That’s the power you serve, the power that will torture and kill the innocent, when you refuse Christ’s authority and his revelation as king.

The criminal hanging in agony with Christ sees this revelation and understands it before it is too late.

The question is will we.

Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time (October 20th, 2019)

The Bible is literally a book of battles.

Conflict and war are a persistent preoccupation of the biblical authors and the inspired authors even go so far as to assert that God, who is an active agent in all of human affairs and history, also concerns himself with our violence. God is not only present in the temple, but also on the field of battle.

This upsets many of us and has upset many believers in the Biblical revelation for centuries. In fact, centuries ago, a Christian by the name of Marcion was so upset that he advocated that the warlike texts of the Bible be excised from the canon of Church’s scripture and that the God of these battles and wars be understood, not as the true God, but as a false god, a pretender, a mistake, a fraud.

Marcion’s insistence was identified by the Church as heresy, false teaching.

The conflict and violence of the Bible gesture towards the truth of the human condition. We might be more comfortable with stories that excise the hard facts of what it means to be human, leaving only that which idealizes us and provides comforting emotional reassurance, but while these kinds of stories might delight us, they are dealing in half-truths, and as such, are deceptive.

The Bible intends to tell the truth and its unflinching presentation of our conflicts and violence is the telling of our truth.

I say all this to you because the first scripture for today, an excerpt from the Old Testament Book of Exodus presents a scene of conflict and violence- it is God’s revelation situated on the battlefield.

Moses, God’s chosen leader of the Israelites, presides over this battle, and the strength of his presence and charisma inspires those who fight to victory. Yet, as the strength of Moses falters, so also does the strength of the Israelites. And so Moses, God’s chosen one, is supported to the priest Aaron and the warlord Joshua. And thus, the victory of the Israelites is assured.

What does this mean?

Think of Moses as a symbol of the Church, a Church that battles all the time against all those dark powers in ourselves and in our world that place themselves in opposition to Christ. This battle is waged in our world, yes, but more importantly in ourselves.

In each of us there is a no to Christ, a preference to reject his presence and his power. This refusal (our refusal) is manifested in our opposition to do what he asks of us, a refusal to serve and honor his Lordship over our lives. Our stark confrontation against our refusals of Christ is the battle we all face. And the heat of that battle in all of us is lightning hot.

Within the heat of this battle we must be supported in our efforts or we will fail. Thus, we require the priests who give us the Sacraments and the saints who show us the right strategy. These are represented in today’s Scripture by Aaron and Joshua. Left on our own, the battle will be lost. Supported by the Sacraments and Saints, victory is made possible.

Remember, the battle here is not simply external- it is a battle within ourselves, in our desires, in our choices and in our decisions. The conflict happens because of our refusals of Christ. All else is a distraction. The field of battle external to ourselves is secondary to the conflict that rages within and the external battle is lost if we fail to accept this truth. If the Church is losing the external battle with a culture that holds us with contempt or indifference, it is because we Christians are failing to fight against the refusals of Christ in our own hearts and minds. We have made the Church weak through our refusals, our qualifications, our equivocations.

The great enemy is not just the world, or the flesh, or the devil- it is ourselves.

The enemy is our own refusals of Christ. The means toward victory have been given to us in the Sacraments and in the Saints, but will we call upon their power and accept their help? The answer to this question for far too many Christians is no. But what is your answer? Your own “yes” or “no” to Christ can turn the tide towards victory or towards defeat.

Our second scripture for today is an excerpt from St. Paul’s second letter to Timothy. In this text the apostle Paul insists that we look to the Bible, to the Scriptures for wisdom and that the wisdom that we receive from the Bible is not merely human insight, but it is the revelation of God. St. Paul further insists that this divine revelation, this holy wisdom from the Scriptures must be interpreted by the Church, and that our interest in the Bible must be “persistent, whether it is convenient or inconvenient”.

For most Catholics and for many Christians, their experience of the revelation of God in the Scriptures is limited to the liturgy, to a formal worship service. The experience of the Scriptures in this context is appropriate and good, but it is meant to be foundational, not the whole structure. What good is a foundation without walls and a roof? In other words, we should desire more and seek opportunities to receive the wisdom of God’s revelation in the Bible outside of Mass and worship. And further, within the Mass and worship we should want more than brevity and clichés in the preaching and teaching of the Church’s ministers. The Bible is not a children’s storybook and it places a demand on us to listen, to think, and to pray. If we expect the wisdom of God reduced to sound bites for our convenience, it is not the wisdom of God that we will receive.

Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ. One day we will all come face to face with Christ, and we all have to ask ourselves right now whether we will meet in him a stranger or a friend. Christ wants to be our friend, but for many Christians, this offer of friendship is refused. You cannot truly be friends with someone you do not know and the opportunity for getting to know Christ is there for you in Holy Scriptures.

Finally, in his Gospel, the Lord Jesus presents a parable to us, a story in which a woman’s persistence wins over an unjust judge so that he settles a case in her favor.

Many preachers present the meaning of this parable as the woman representing us in our persistent appeals and petitions to God and God as the judge.

This is one way of looking at the story, but another is to see the woman as God and ourselves as the unjust judge.

God in Christ is persistent in his overtures to us, unrelenting in his insistence that we accept the gifts he wants to offer. Most often he is met with our refusals, but even in the face of our refusals, he persists and his persistence is such that he can utterly wear us down until he gets what he wants.

This is reason for us to have hope. God can do for us what we cannot or will not do for ourselves. Our will is not the absolute obstacle we often make it out to be- our will is not more powerful than God. We often fall under the devilish delusions that our refusals of Christ are the final word. But ours is never the final word, the last word belongs to God in Christ. And God in Christ reveals his final word to us in the revelation of his cross.

God in Christ demonstrates that not even the cross or even death are insurmountable obstacles to his persistent willingness to love us and to save us. He will always keep trying and even run ahead of us into the horrific limits of godforsakeness so that he can get what he wants- our salvation. He will not coerce us to receive this gift, but he has the unlimited capacity to overcome our refusals through his persistent, unyielding, utterly relentless offer of grace.

 

Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time (March 3rd, 2019)

The Bible is a collection of books, a library so to speak. The literature of the Bible includes all manner of literary forms- histories, poetry, essays, prophecies (just to name a few examples). While the Bible is the word of God, the word of God in the Bible is delivered to us in the words of men- distinctly human words. These human words and their authors are inspired by God, meaning that God is in a true sense the author of the scriptures, for he is the reason for which the sacred texts of the Bible have been written. God did not inspire the authors of the Biblical texts to write so that he could have a book for himself. The Bible is for us and God intends for the Bible to be for us, so that we might come to know him through the Bible, and knowing him, come to learn what he asks us to do.

Thus, when the Church presents the Bible to us, the intention is not to provide us with a course in ancient literature or to provide us with a kind of divinely inspired self-help manual or to provide the preacher with platform for his personal anecdotes or stories, but to help us to come to know God so that we can live the kind of lives that God reveals will lead to our flourishing.

Preaching, if it is authentic and truly biblical, should not stand in way of the revelation of God but direct our attention to God. When in our great creed that we profess at Mass we testify to Christ who is the fulfillment of the Scriptures, we are signaling what we believe the Bible is all about and what we need to hear from the Church in terms of preaching. Great Christian preachers are not entertaining us, they are speaking to us of the reality of God, a reality that the Bible directs our attention towards and a reality that Jesus Christ reveals in all its fullness. The great Christian preacher speaks of God, and not just any god, but the God who makes himself known through the great story that he communicates through the Bible. It is from the many books of the Bible that this story emerges and we see this story culminate in not the revelation of a book, but in the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ.

For the Bible, the word of God revealed in the words of men, is not the last and final word- the word of God in its fulfillment is Eternal Word that God speaks to us in the human voice of Jesus Christ. Because of this, the culmination of great Christian preaching is not how the preacher uses rhetoric or theatrics to inspire us to listen to him, but how the preacher inspires us to listen to Word of God, a Word that speaks to us in Jesus Christ.

Our first scripture for today’s Mass is from the Old Testament Book of Sirach. The Book of Sirach is from a section of the Bible called “Wisdom Literature”, which means that it includes advice for us that is both profound and practical. The wisdom literature of Bible is about insight, how to best to negotiate our place in the world and the often conflictual and perplexing reality of human relationships.

Thus, today’s excerpt from the Book of Sirach is about how our words to one another impact our relationships and reveal our character. Our words have power, power to express affection and concern, but also have the power to express our darkest desires and wreak havoc in the lives of others. Therefore, the Book of Sirach advises that our speech will reveal much about who we are, and will reveal the hidden motives and desires that we often labor so intensely to conceal.

Language does not just shape our reality, it creates our reality, and indeed can destroy our own lives and the lives of others. Through our speech, our words, we reveal who we really and truly are.

The Church’s second scripture for today’s Mass is from the New Testament, from St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians.

The apostle Paul speaks about a controversial topic- our mortality, the fact that each and every one of us will die and while we can defer ever thinking about this fact in the interest of maintaining “positive emotions” we cannot evade death’s inevitability. St. Paul also boldly associates death with sin, meaning that death is something that God opposes. God’s opposition to death and sin reveals the great truth about his love for us- he does not want either death or sin to be the last word about human existence and will intervene radically so as to defeat their power over us.

This is what God’s revelation in Christ is about, wherein the cross of Jesus he demonstrates his willingness to forgive what seems to be unforgiveable and in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead proves that his power over death is absolute. God offers us in Christ possibilities that can overcome the sin that afflicts us and the death that we fear. Christians are meant to be the bearers or these God-given possibilities into the world. This is St. Paul’s message and lesson for us today- reminding us what we have received from God in Christ, and further reminding us, that the possibilities we have received as Christians from God in Christ are meant for others and we are the means by which God in Christ wants to deliver them.

It is not the purpose of the Church to be a faith-based clubhouse that supports our religious themed interests or provides us with faith-based entertainment. The Church is meant to be Christ’s way of offering to the world a chance, a second chance, a new possibility for our lives that is greater than sin and death. This is the “work of the Lord” that the apostle Paul references in the scripture for today. This is the work of the Church. Is it truly our work? The work of this parish? Or have we become enamored and preoccupied with projects and plans that rarely, if ever, are genuinely the work of the Lord- inviting others to know that God in Christ offers us a power, a possibility, greater than that of our sin and greater than that of our death.

Finally, in his Gospel, the Lord Jesus speaks to the reality of our own hypocrisy, the tendency to call out others for their lack, their sin, while never attending to our own. If we are to speak the truth, we should only do so out of charity and with a willingness to name our own sin. If we do not do this, we are perpetrating a hoax and using the truths of our faith as an obfuscation, a distraction from what we ourselves have done and failed to do.

Christ reminds us that “no disciple is superior to his teacher and that the fully trained disciple will be like his teacher”. This means that we should not aspire to sit in the judgement seat of Christ, appropriating his authority for ourselves for our own purposes and agendas. The appearance of Christ, having his power, is not the goal, our relationship with the Lord is not meant to be about appearances, but about reality. Appearing to be a Christian fuels our tendency towards hypocrisy, for at hypocrisy is really appearing to be someone that we are not and leveraging this lie to further our own ego driven purposes.

Mastery in the Christian life does not means that my own ego driven desires and motivations supplant the will and purposes of Christ. Being a Christian is not merely a matter of appearances but of truth. And the truth of our Christianity is so often revealed in the manner that we speak of others, especially others who seem to us to fall short of our expectations.

Mastery of the Christian life means a death to self through which we become ever more like Christ. This is what the Lord intends for us to understand in his insight that the disciple must become like his teacher. It is this “Christ-likeness” that we see in the saints and it is aspiring to be like Christ that has the power to deliver us from our own hypocrisy.

The Christian way of life is an invitation for us to become less like ourselves and ever more like Christ.

 

Saturday of the Third Week of Advent (December 19th, 2015)

 

For many, the Bible is read and studied from its beginning in the Book of Genesis to the end with the Book of Revelation. God’s revelation is positioned historically and chronologically in a succession of events that occur in time beginning with the creation of the world with everything coming to its fulfillment with the end of the world. This method of reading and studying is not incorrect, but it can also be limiting and can often miss the peculiar and interesting way the Church reads and studies the Bible, which is not simply from beginning to end, but really, from the end backwards to the beginning, with the “end” not being, as some think, the destruction of the planet, but the revelation of God in Christ coming to its absolute fulfillment.

In order to understand the Bible one must have the means by which the Bible can be understood and this means is the means that God gives to us and the means is the revelation of God in Christ, and without this revelation of God in Christ in mind the Bible will not yield up its purpose or its meaning.

Thus it is knowing Christ that we come to know the Bible- it is the end of the Bible that makes sense of its beginning, and indeed, everything that is in between.

I know this might sound perplexing, but consider, for example, the manner in which the Church reads and interprets the Old Testament, which she considers, not just to be a history book which recounts events from long ago, but a kind of description of Christ and the Church.

The Church understands the Old Testament as presenting types and forms that help us to understand Christ and his Church. Today’s reading from the Old Testament is an example. The Church presents to us the story of Samson, the legendary hero, strongman and defender of the Israelites. The description of the circumstances of Samson’s birth are interesting and the story of his life that follows is one of the most memorable in the Bible, but its significance for the Church is that Samson prefigures or foreshadows a man integral to the revelation of God in Christ- John the Baptist.

In a sense, Samson prepares the way for John the Baptist as John would prepare the way for Christ.

Both Samson and John, consecrated to God from even before their birth, were men of strength and action who would live and die in opposition to the enemies of the Israelites. God created in Samson an outline and then in John he filled in that outline with all the details.

Thus the Church recalls the story of Samson, not just because it’s a compelling story, but also because it directs our attention to the story of John the Baptist, who directs our attention to Christ.

For the Christian, the Bible is not just an interesting historical and literary text of important cultural significance, it is the story of the Lord Jesus, a story that begins with creation, that is expressed in the story of the Israelites, and continues in the Church. All the great persons of the Bible- Adam, Abraham, Moses, David, and all the great events described in the Bible, the creation, the exodus from Egypt, the story of the temple and the kingdom, are all parts of the story of the Lord Jesus and the Church recalls all this so that we can better understand him.

Christ who is revealed at the end of the Bible is the means by which to understand the beginning of the Bible and everything in between.

Many Christians don’t get this. Impatient to find meaning in the Bible that is first and foremost directly related to their own particular concerns, the Bible becomes tiresome and irrelevant. Sadly, they do not accept that in terms of the Bible, first and foremost, you must discover how the Bible is directly related to Christ, and then and only then, will you come to understand how what the Bible has to tell you about Christ is directly related to you.

The season of Advent is rapidly drawing to its conclusion. The prayers and scriptural readings of Advent have all in their own unique ways been about the Lord Jesus.  Christ desires a relationship with us, but this relationship will not be what Christ intends for it to be if we know little or nothing about him.

Advent is intended to prepare the faithful for the revelation of God in Christ, so that when Christ comes to us we will know him as he wants to be known through the means which he gives to us and the Bible is a privileged means that the Church has for coming to know Christ.

If we turn our attention away from ourselves and towards his revelation and come to know Christ as the fulfillment of the scriptures then we can know him as his disciples and he will know us as his friends.