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TheWord
together with the Sacrament is a determining element in every form of
spirituality, which, starting from Christ, is called “Christian”. In
fact, the Christian spiritual doctrine is born from the Biblical Word,
not only because the faith experience itself (fides ex auditu),
leading to the new baptismal birth, has its origin from the acceptance
of the kerigma,
but also because the Word, together with the Eucharistic Bread, is an
indispensable nourishment for the growth of the Church and of her single
members until the fullness of maturity in Christ.
However, the Biblical
Word bears fruit only if it is sown “in good soil, the best one”, ready
to wait serenely and trustfully for the ripe fruit of the Word, as it
happened in Mary, the Mother of Jesus, thanks to the action of the Holy
Spirit.
The
“archetype” parable
The Gospel parable of
the sower in Luke is an appropriate paradigm of all this. Other pages of
the New Testament would equally be it, particularly some very precise
indications in the Acts of the Apostles. However, keeping in view the
space given to us, for the time being we think it is sufficient to try a
brief deepening of the parable, in the edition of Luke. This will be
done in the perspective suggested by the hermeneutical approach to the
Fathers of the Church, which we like to define as method of Lectio
Divina.
In Luke 8, 1-21, the
text containing the parable and its explanation does not speak only of a
“huge crowd” which gathered and surrounded Jesus from every city (v.4),
but also of some women who had been healed from sickness or evil
spirits, with many others “who assisted Jesus and his disciples with
their goods” (vv. 2-3).
We can put this
particular note at the conclusion of the passage near that of “the
mother and brothers” of Jesus defined as such –against the common
opinion that it was about the bonds of blood- since they are those who
listen to the Word of God and practise it (in Greek: poiountes)»
(v. 21). This feminine inclusion is very mysterious because it joins
various fundamental experiences of human nature in a common belonging to
the discipleship of Jesus of Nazareth, experiences such as friendship,
motherhood and fraternity, all of them made possible because “the sower
went out to sow his seed” (Luke: 8, 5).
In fact, at the
beginning there is a parenthood allusion, which simply leads back to the
source of everything, to the Father, in whom all men and women recognise
themselves not only as friends and disciples, but also as brothers and
sisters of the Lord. However, there is a very mysterious additional
thing: in fact, it mentions also the possibility, for those who listen
to and practise the Word, to recognise themselves as mother of
the Word of God (tou theou), because they allow It to be
“delivered” by being put into practice with their life.
Exigency
of spousal reality
All this seems to
consider out of discussion the presence of a certain privilege of the
feminine dimension, as well as a kind of parental context in which the
clear primacy of God’s word is consumed. In 8, 11, the evangelist Luke
explains that the seed is the Word of God (ho logos tou theou)».Isn’t
it obvious for the believer in the New Testament to identify ho theòs
simply with ho patèr, the Father?
The Fathers of the
Church, here I refer particularly to St. John Chrisostomus, would
attract the attention on the presence of a mysterious collaboration (synergeia),
of spousal nature, equally indispensable, so that the received seed may
not only germinate, but may also reach the needful fullness, leading it
to be ripe first for the conception and then for the delivery of a new
creature.
The insistence on the
synergeia is anyhow underlined in the Gospel text. Luke himself so
evidently links the fructification to the collaboration between the seed
and the soil as to consider these two elements like a one, with a clear
symbolic reference of nuptial type. In v. 15, in fact, he writes, “As
for the part in rich soil, this is people with a noble and generous
heart who have heard the word, take it to themselves and yield a harvest
through their perseverance”. In reality, the parabolic language allows
us to imagine such an identification between the seed and the soil as to
refer the fructification simultaneously to both of them!
It is the presence of
this mystery in the relation between the believer and the Word of God
that has caused the incarnation of the Fathers of the Church,
particularly the Christian monks, in their daily dedication to the
lectio divina.
The
“admirable commercium»
In reality, what happens
in the lectio divina? The lectio leads to an extraordinary
exchange of intimacy between the divine person and the human person, an
exchange of loving words –as Origin would say- through the inspired
Scripture. The reader and the text are so much involved in each other,
respecting their otherness reciprocally, as we can tranquilly speak of a
specific nuptial experience. Moreover, the Fathers consider as
legitimate to speak, also in this case, of a communicatio idiomatum
very much analogous to what theology had taught to recognise in the
contemplation of the mystery of the Word made flesh. The admirabile
commercium, of this mystery, in fact, is realised also mysteriously
between the one who listens to the Word and the Word Himself.
Commenting the Song of
songs 2, 8, St. Gregory of Nissa wrote, “I hear my love. See how he
comes leaping on the mountains, bounding over the hills”. What is
foreshadowed in these words? Perhaps what is revealed in the Gospel: the
plan about the manifestation of the Word of God, previously announced by
the prophets and then realised with the apparition of the Lord in our
flesh”. The text goes on saying, “See where he stands behind our wall.
He looks in at the window, he peers through the openings”. Gregory
comments, “The word joins our human nature with God, after enlightening
it through the prophets and the Law. Thus we see the prophets
overshadowed in the windows. They open the way to light, while in the
openings we recognise the precepts of the Law all together. The
splendour of the true light enters through both of them. The light
became full when the true light appeared to those who where in the
darkness and the shadow of death, because of its union with the human
nature”.
Thus Gregory concludes,
“First the rays of the prophetic visions, coming to the soul and
welcomed into the mind through the windows and the openings, infuse in
us the desire of seeing the sun in the open sky, but soon after the
object of desire becomes reality. In fact, it is written, “Come, my
beloved, my lovely one, come”. Here we can see the Word who attracts the
bride to himself, from virtue to virtue, just as up the steps of a
staircase” 1 .
A living
library
Analogously to what
happens when we approach the Eucharist, we can say that, by approaching
the Word of the Lord we become the one whom we receive or, better, the
one whom we listen to, allowing him to make us partakers of his divine
nature (See: 2 peter: 1. 4). The old Fathers were so much convinced of
this as, when St. Athanasius of Alexandria spoke, say, of St. Anthony,
the famous Egyptian monk, not only stated that he had become a living
library, but added also that one could refer to him simply as to the
word of God (logos theou).
Therefore, St. Gregory
the Great, in the West, referring to those who were in the same
condition as St. Anthony, could serenely conclude “viva lectio est
vita bonorum” 2, in other words: the
life of good persons can be compared to a text, which becomes a
legitimate object of lectio divina not less than a Biblical
text. In fact, the just men of Holy Scripture are called books, as it is
written: “the books lay open. And another book was opened, which is
the book of life, and the dead were judged from what was written in
those books”. (Apocalypse: 20, 12). They say that the books were
opened so that the life of the just ones may come to be known, since the
divine commandments are imprinted in their deeds. 3
This is how the
conviction was diffused that the Bible could be read in the biography of
the saints, thus inaugurating a precious praxis, mainly for those who
had not received an adequate cultural formation, enabling them to read
and interpret the divine Scriptures appropriately.
Unavoidably, the need of
referring always to the original Biblical archetype remained. This
caused the effort to memorise the Bible, to transcribe it constantly,
figuring it in the codes and on the walls of churches and monasteries,
carrying it with oneself in the icons, which constitute a real miniature
of the Bible. It caused, above all, to seek its full sense in personal
encounters, lived in more intense prayer, with the Risen Jesus. It
caused even the attentive research to refer each personality or Biblical
text to a concrete step on which the believer, in his progress towards
an ever higher intimacy with the Lord, puts his steps day after day. In
fact, the following verse was undisputable true for everybody, “Your
word is a lamp for my feet” Psalm 119,105), and it was obvious to
individuate the precise Biblical text that could be of help in each
single phase of one’s own itinerarium mentis in Deum.
The
praxis of the “theory”
Very soon our Old
Fathers established also some criteria of Biblical reading to indicate
what to read out of the text as well as to teach how to read
it. For instance, about the Old testament, it became traditional the
criterion of indicating the books that could be read in the single
phases of the spiritual growth. For example, taking as areference point
the Biblical collection of the Wisdon Books attributed to Solomon :
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs, it was advised to read
them according to a precise order, which distinguished the body of the
believers into beginners, proficient and perfect. It was
insistently reminded the inopportunity of passing on to the successive
book before the previous one had become one with life. The book of
Psalms, instead, being considered as indispensable bread for every
food and synthesis par excellance out of all Biblical Books, covered
the entire arch of the spiritual journey, becoming, for someone, the
unique reference text for every moment of daily life. The middle age
saying remained famous a via in Psalmis, namely the high road
needful for all is that of the Psaltery. The Psalms were usually sung in
common, mainly in the liturgical prayer, but they were also chanted in
private vocally or with the memory of the heart (par Coeur).
The New Testament was
synonym of personal encounter with the Risen Lord. The Gospel had always
its primacy and there was the conviction that it was the key not only to
every hidden sense of the Bible, but also to the specific content.
The Acts of the Apostles and the Apostolic Letters were read as a
logical continuation of the Gospel, considered to be life, but the
Letters of Paul were evidently held as more solid and therefore
reserved for those who were more advanced and mature in their journey of
faith.
The piety of our Old
Fathers paid attention also to the Historical Books and the Books of
the Prophets. The Monks, but also other practicing men and women,
sought in them the antonomasia models of each single Christian vocation
within the common belonging to the people of God: Patriarchs, Kings,
Prophets and the Sages of Israel, to which the Prophets and
Apostles of the New Testament were added; they became the figures
(types), but also the models, constantly asking to be re-proposed, along
the entire arch of history, by the members of the new people of God
identified with the Church.
The
initiation of the “spiritual sense”
To learn how to read the
Holy Scriptures, they had to attend absolutely the school of the New
Testament and of the Holy Fathers. Thus the spiritual initiation began.
Its fundamental objective was to learn the passage from the letter to
the spirit in reading the Biblical page. We take for granted that it
was not the matter of a pure technique, but a true communication or
transmission of life experience from person to person. The fundamental
passage was the one obtained from utilising the key of faith,
which allowed to overcome the threshold of the written form to move
further into the mystery hidden behind that door.
The content of the
Biblical mystery could not be different from the one revealed in and by
Jesus of Nazareth who, on the eighth day of his resurrection, “opened
their minds to understand the Scriptures” (Luke: 24,45) – as Luke
writes- and, “starting with Moses and going through all the Prophets, he
explained to them the passages throughout the Scriptures that were about
himself” (Luke: 24, 27). The Risen Jesus then went on to fulfil his
spiritual exegesis –and this was the common conviction- in the multiform
manuductio guaranteed by the constant care of the Church.
The help offered by the
Church in her pastors, her catechists and her spiritual fathers (pneumatikoi),
created such a particular spiritual refinery as to allow not only to
read the presence of a particular aspect in the mystery of Jesus, but
also to reproduce his very features in one’s own life. In fact, there
was the conviction that Jesus had not only become one with the men of
God (viri Dei) of the past, but continued to identify himself
presently with the poor, the sick, the prisoners, the thirsty, the
hungry in every sense and, above all with the persecuted because of
justice, in which the Letter to the Hebrews had taught to see in
the New testament the repetition of the prophesies about him, as seen
in the viri Dei whom the Inspired Scriptures of the O. T. speak
about.
The mystical
openness
The vocation of the
Christian whose first worry was that of following Christ, at this point
became a constant commitment to re-propose in his life, though partially
if compared with the fullness of Christ, one of those just mentioned
viri Dei, surrendering himself to the Spirit, in order to become
another “sacred page” or “Biblical page”, in which all could recognise
the reproduction of the unique salvation History still in act and in
constant progress, until the fulfilment on the day of the Lord waited
for at the end of times.
All this was lived in a
highly dynamic way. In this new context, it still recurred the
distinction between those in the phase of beginners and those who
experienced already a progress that placed them ever nearer to the
fulfilment. However, the Fathers of the Church insisted on the
supposed conviction that, along that itinerary, there was a kind of
lawful feed back according to which every reached goal became
also a starting point of further progress.
St. Gregory the Great
said, «Divina eloquia cum legente crescunt»4
and St. Gregory of Nissa wrote, even deeper pages about this. For
instance, following his fifth Homily on Ct 2,8, that we have
already quoted, this great mystic and doctor of the Church wrote about
His word, «First he sends to her a ray of his light through the windows
and the openings, that is the precepts of the Law, and invites her to go
near the light that makes her as beautiful as a luminous dove. Once she
has welcomed in herself all the beauty she is capable of, once again,
just as if he had not communicated to her any good so far, he attracts
her to a higher participation, Thus this reached stage kindles her
desire further and, because of the splendid beauty she sees in herself,
she experiences the sensation of being just at the beginning of her
ascent to God. 5
A monk –Benedict Calati-
to whom I am very much affectionate and on whom the Dehoniane Edition is
going to publish a doctoral work, Uomo di Dio amico degli uomini.
L’insegnamento spirituale di Benedetto Calati, by Sr. Grace Paris,
a Dorotea of the Cemmo, proposed the same concepts, quoting another
famous mystic and Father of the Church, Saint Bernardo of Chiaravalle.
Father Calati says as a
premise that the perfect Christian, understood as the ultimate
realisation of the nuptial covenant with God, because of this very fact
has ascended one after the other all the steps which have identified him
with the bride described in the Song of Songs. Thus, by paraphrasing
Bernard, he explains, “By renouncing to the world the Christian ascends
the first step of wisdom erected by the intelligence of the Proverbs,
the first bread. By changing his customs, he ascends the second
step, since he has treasured up the teaching of the Ecclesiastes,
second bread offered by the friends’ good hospitality, Finally, by
accepting to taste the third bread, the most tasty one contained
in the Song of Songs, the very apex of the magnalia Dei
worked during the history of salvation, he ascends the third and last
step, reserved uniquely for the perfect ones” 6.
This criterion for
discerning the spiritual life –Fr. Calati explains- has a very high
objective value, but it supposes always, in every phase of the spiritual
growth, a faithful and attentive listening to the Word that makes of
himself the fulfilment he proposes. In continuity with the Fathers who
lived during the first millennium of the Church, Father Calati
concludes, that Bernard “puts the spiritual progress and intelligence of
the sense of the Scriptures in his triple degree of historical, moral
and mystical sense”.
Influenced by
enthusiasm, the Camaldolenses Monk willingly becomes a disciple of the
mystical Cistercian when with his he repeats that the intelligence of
the historical sense of the Biblical text introduces the bride
into the garden of the bridegroom (in hortum); the moral sense
invites her to more intimate places (in cellarium); finally
the mystical sense admits her into the inaccessible mysteries of the
nuptial room (in cubiculum) 7
In the
womb of the Church
What we have written in
these few lines is only a stimulus to reflect more seriously on the
determining role that the Word of God exercises in our journey of faith.
However, I cannot conclude without recalling the attention on what, in
line with the teaching of Origen, I have learned to recognise as the
three fundamental forms assumed by the Word of God to manifest himself
to the world. They are: the Holy Scriptures, the incarnate Word and the
Church that flow and culminate in the Eucharist. These three forms
obviously include other ways of presence of the word of God that the
Holy Fathers discovered, for instance, in the heavens, “narrating the
glory of God” (cosmic manifestation); in the present and past history of
peoples (historical manifestation), which unavoidably are part of the
global project of Salvation History; in the essay of all human cultures
(philosophical and artistic manifestation), and in very different
religious forms (religious manifestations). Each of these presences were
perceived by the Christian Fathers as sparks and seeds of the Word of
God scattered everywhere. However he who, as Verbum adbreviatum,
contains in himself and verifies all the other presences, is and remains
the Word made flesh in Jesus of Nazareth, according to the
Scriptures, Crucified and buried, according to the Scriptures,
risen according to the Scriptures and announced by the Church
according to the Scriptures.
The Church that welcomes
him in faith and is also his constant presence in history, becomes she
who lives the harmony of the three presences: sedes apostolica et
universa legit et tenet Ecclesia.8 In
fact, it is the Church that, having received the gift of the Verbum
adbreviatum, safeguards him with care and faithfulness,
communicating Him to the whole world with love and fidelity.
Innocenzo
Gargano
Oriental Institute - Roma
Piazza San Gregorio al Celio, 1 – 00184 Roma
1.
Gregorio di Nissa,
Omelie sul Cantico dei Cantici. Omelia 5 su Ct 2,8-17, in
Unione Monastica Italiana per la Liturgia, L’Ora dell’ascolto,
Piemme, Casale Monferrato 1997, 195-197.
2.
Moralia in Iob,
V, cap.
XXIV, 16,PL 76, 295B.
3.
Gregorio Magno,
Commento
morale a Giobbel/
3, Città Nuova, Roma
1997, 355.
4.
Gregorio Magno,
Homiliarum in Ezechielem,
1,
Homelia
VII, 7: PL 76, 843D.
5.
Vedi nota 1.
6.
Cf.
Sermones in cantica,
Sermo I,
1, PL 183, 785B-786°.
7.
Cf G. Paris,
Uomo di Dio amico
degli uomini. L’insegnamento spirituale di Benedetto Calati,
Istituto Teologico
sulla Vita Consacrata «Claretianum», Roma 2006, 272-273 (pro
manuscripto):
8.
Ugo di Rouen,
Dialogorum Libri, V, 12, PL CXCII, 1206D.
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