Day 19: Summary of Sacred Scripture (2025)

Discovering our identity in God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. It is day nineteen, and we're reading paragraphs one thirty-four to one forty-one. That is the in brief that we have summed up here. This section one, Divine Revelation, is still going because we have next tomorrow in the next couple of days our response to Divine Revelation, which is faith. But today we're ending that chapter two here in section one.

The revelation and that the revelation of God to us. And so we have the in brief. We just have a couple paragraphs today. If you want to know, I'm reading from the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the foundations of faith approach. You can follow along in any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can also follow along with our reading plan by going to AscensionPress.com slash CIY

Lastly, you can click follow or subscribe or whatever the button is that indicates that you are part of this community. In the fact that you even just are listening right now, that you fact that you press play on day 19, that indicates you're part of the community. But if you want to make it easier for yourself,

Click follow or subscribe in your podcast for daily notifications. As I was just trying to say, it is the in brief day. And what do we know about the in brief day? In brief day is nugget day. These are just I think how many is this? This is we have

Five plus three, that's eight. We have eight little nuggets at the end of this chapter two, rev the revelation. And what we've been looking, reading through, what we've been walking through for the last bunch of days here on the revelation of God to us. Has been just so powerful. It's so beautiful. And so we have this. We know that uh all scripture, even though there's 73 books. is one book, right? Because that book is Jesus. That's what we're gonna hear about. We're gonna be reminded of this.

reminded that that we're not a religion of the book. We're a religion of the word. That and that word is a person. It's not a not a dead letter. It is a person, the word of God who who took on human flesh, became one of us and dwelt among us, right? That's what we're gonna hear about. We're gonna be reminded of this.

that we've been listening to for the last few days. Also, we know that all the scripture, even though there are human authors, there's also a divine author. And that's not that's not a contradiction. That is a paradox. that seems dissimilar, but it's actually not dissimilar. It seems to be a contradiction. It's actually not a contradiction. It is a in so many ways, a complementarity, but even deeper, it's not even that. It's a mystery of how that is the case. We we're reminded of that today.

And also we're reminded of the fact that we are called to venerate, honor, and just like be nourished by the divine scriptures uh in the same way that we venerate and are nourished by the very body of our Lord in the Eucharist. So that's what we're gonna we're gonna be reminded of today. And so let's say a prayer as we begin this day nineteen, Nugget Day, um here in the catechism in a year.

Uh Father in Heaven, we thank you. Thank you for bringing us through another chapter. Thank you for bringing us through this chapter. This revelation of you, the revelation of who you are, the revelation of your heart, and the revelation of how you've come to us in time, in in in reality, in history. Lord God, we know that our times are not easy to live in. But there are no easy times in which to live.

We know that our own personal histories are not clean and not perfect, but there are no hurs histories that are are clean and perfect. And so Just as you have entered into time, just as you have entered into history, we ask you to enter into this moment in our time. We ask you to enter into this part of our story in our own history.

And do what you will, and help us to do your will. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. As I said, it is day nineteen, we're reading paragraphs one thirty-four to one forty-one. In brief. All sacred scripture is but one book, and this one book is Christ, because all divine scripture speaks of Christ, and all divine scripture is fulfilled in Christ.

Dave Erbum stated, The sacred scriptures contain the Word of God, and because they are inspired, they are truly the Word of God. God is the author of sacred scripture, because he inspired its human authors. He acts in them and by means of them. He thus gives assurance that their writings teach without error his saving truth.

Interpretation of the inspired scripture must be attentive above all to what God wants to reveal to the sacred authors for our salvation. What comes from the Spirit is not fully understood except by the Spirit's action. The church accepts and venerates as inspired the forty six books of the Old Testament and the twenty-seven books of the new. The four Gospels occupy a central place because Christ Jesus is their center.

The unity of the two testaments proceeds from the unity of God's plan and his revelation. The Old Testament prepares for the new and the New Testament fulfills the Old. The two shed light on each other. Both are true Word of God. De Verbum states The Church has always venerated the divine scriptures as she venerated the body of the Lord. Both nourish and govern the whole Christian life. As Psalm one hundred nineteen says, Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

Okay, there it is. That was there's night day 19, nugget day. Here we are. And we get reminded of what? We're reminded of this fact that. Everything in God's revelation is about revealing who He is, his very heart. And it is true. Like sacred the what we're saying is the sacred scriptures are true. So so important. Paragraph one thirty six. God is the author of sacred scripture because he inspired its human authors.

He acts in them and by means of them, and there's this big line. He thus gives assurance that their writings teach without error his saving truth. This is so important. We know that the Bible is inerrant, right? The Bible is true, right? We know that there are such things as spiritual truths. There are such things as ontological truths. There are such things as biological or chemical truths, right? There's historical truths. And so what we need to do is paragraph one thirty seven.

Interpretation of the inspired scripture must be attentive above all to what God wants to reveal through the sacred authors for our salvation. Again, that's so important. We have to all always, you know, we have the literal sense and the spiritual sense. Remember that's how we look at the scriptures. In the spiritual it's always based off the literal. And that part of that literal sense is What did the human authors intend to communicate? What were they trying to say?

Because again, we can do this thing called isegesis where we read in our own stuff into the scripture. We're tempted to do that, but I do not recommend that. But what we're supposed to do is exegesis, right? We read out of scripture. Exo is like taking out of scripture what the scripture is trying to tell us. Isegesis, we're reading ourselves into scripture. Again, not advisable. Exegesis is taking that scripture and and bringing it out of itself, right? And applying it to ourselves.

That is vastly different. And the way we need to read scripture again is what was the human author's original intent? What was the divine author's intent? We need to pay attention to those things above everything else. One thing I want to highlight is The Church accepts and venerates, this is paragraph one thirty eight, the inspired book of the

Forty six books of the Old Testament, twenty-seven books of the New. That adds up to seventy-three. Now, the only reason why I'm getting hung up on numbers right now is because I don't know how many people I've talked to. Who don't necessarily know how many books there are in the Bible. They know there's a bunch, and they know maybe they might know 73. But here is the pop quiz. I challenge all of us in this little community on this nugget day

to remember that there are forty six books in the Old Testament and twenty seven books in the New. I'm not sure your mnemonic device that you're gonna use for that, but forty six in the old, twenty seven in the new. Why? I don't know why. I don't know why I'm asking you to remember these things, but maybe it's because sometimes we get a little more credibility when we know, Oh yeah, no, there's forty six books in the old testament, there's twenty seven then new, seventy three total.

That's all I'm asking for. One of the things we want to remember and never ever forget is paragraph one hundred forty. Two more things quick. Paragraph one forty. The unity of the two testaments. Remember that challenge we've been talking about for the last couple of days that people want to neglect, they want to ignore, they want to maybe even reject.

the Old Testament. But there is a unity of those two Testaments, and they proceed from the what? From the unity of God's plan and his revelation. That they're so, so important. Both are true Word of God, And lastly, lastly, as we've said a couple times now,

The church has always venerated the divine scriptures as she venerated the body of the Lord. Now, if you are like me and you love the Eucharist, They absolutely love Jesus in the Eucharist, how he gives himself to us, how he comes close to us, how we just treat him with such awe and reverence. This is a powerful word.

a powerful reminder of how we have to get we draw near and and venerate the words of scripture. And that's just it's so powerful. One of my favorite lines in Psalm one nineteen. Psalm one one nineteen is the longest Psalm in the book of Psalms and right there in Psalm one nineteen, right in the middle, verse one oh five.

are the words, Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. Way back in the day, Amy Grant had a song called Thy Word, and I was just like, I remember when I f reel realized, wait a second, this is from the Bible. This is actually Psalm one nineteen. This is amazing. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

Gosh, it's so good. It's so such a gift to be able to to know that at any given moment, right even maybe even right now, as we conclude today's nugget day, today's podcast. You could pick up your scripture. You could press play on the Bible in the air and just kind of just allow the Lord to speak to you. Allow him to reveal his heart to you. That's what he wants.

That's and that's what I want for you too. That's why I'm praying for you. Please please pray for me. My name's Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you. God bless.