March 9, 2025 - Pastor Message
March 14, 2025JUBILEE 2025
JUBILEE 2025
DEI VERBUM (cont.)
“Jesus said to his disciples: ‘I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now. But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth. He will not speak on his own, but he will speak what he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are coming. He will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:12-14).
Continuing our reflection on Vatican Council II’s Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, we discussed last week that God reveals himself and his will to us through his saving actions and words. This is a long term project that, in some ways, still goes on today, though, as mentioned last week, the content of public revelation officially ended with the New Testament. That revelation continues, however, in the sense that it is passed on faithfully through each generation, in every land and culture, just as it has been from the very beginning. We call the process of handing revelation on Sacred Tradition.
The interplay of God’s works and words through Sacred Tradition works like this - God interacts with human beings through saving actions, like, for example, the liberation of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt through the series of plagues and the parting of the Red Sea. People share that story with their children and their children’s children down through the ages. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, who works through the entire process of Sacred Tradition, people eventually commit that story to writing in the book of Exodus. Under the inspiration of that same Spirit, the book of Exodus becomes generally accepted by God’s People as authentic revelation and enters the collection of Sacred Scripture. Thus, God’s saving works and words become a foundational part of our faith right down to our own day.
But how do stories like that of Exodus become generally accepted as authentic revelation, and how does that get passed down and become relevant for each generation for the thousands of years since the actual event happened? Sacred Tradition accounts for this too. The same Holy Spirit, which Christ promised to his Church and said would lead us to all truth, led and guided the original author/s of the book of Exodus to record the story as God wished it to be recorded. As it was passed down through the ages, the same Spirit led the leaders of God’s People to include it in the Sacred Scripture of the Hebrew people, what we call the Old Testament. The Apostles, chosen and appointed by Christ and gifted with his Holy Spirit, were faithful Jews who saw in the Old Testament an authentic record of God’s revelation and, under the influence of the same Spirit, added to it the gospels and other texts of the New Testament. The Apostles appointed successors, whom we call bishops today, to carry out the apostolic ministry once they were gone, and laid hands on them, passing on the gift of the Holy Spirit that they themselves had received from Christ and ensuring that his revelation would continue to be preserved and faithfully transmitted for future generations. Bishops have continued to follow this apostolic practice, appointing further successors, and faithfully interpreting and passing down revelation as the official teachers of the Church we call the magisterium, the great stewards and messengers of God’s saving works and words within the flow of Sacred Tradition today.
Fr. Marc Stockton
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