Already at a first sight and after a quick look at the index, the post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini, that the Holy Father Benedict XVI has sacked on 30th of September 2010, looks like a real "treaty" on the Word of God. If it is also true that with this document he sought to gather and revive the works of the XII Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, held in October 2008, is even more true that the end result goes far beyond this objective. We said that the impression that one gets is of finding himself in front of a "treaty" on the Word of God that brings together theology, spirituality, pastoral, missiology. Not by chance someone has mentioned a true "cathedral" about the Word of God.

The "cathedral" of the Word of God

Using just such a metaphor, we can then introduce ourselves to the structure of the document, indicating the three parts that make up it almost an altar, a large central nave and then a large and spacious churchyard.

At the heart of this cathedral there is precisely the altar, the Verbum Domini, the Word of God: the first part of the Exhortation, in fact returning to the conciliar text of Dei Verbum, focuses on the uniqueness of the Christian God who speaks with his people and accompanied him with the gift of the speech, to become himself, in Jesus, the Word of Life and Truth. All of this finds now a certification in the Holy Scripture, entrusted to the Church because, scrutinizing and updating the message, constantly she is renewing and continuing the dialogue between God and the man.

      The nave is given by the second part: Verbum in ecclesia, the Word in the Church. The Pope underlines that there is not an act of the Church, if there isn’t the presence and the celebration of the Word. Finally there is the large, and spacious churchyard. It is the third part of the document: Verbum mundo, the Word in the world where the entire route of the previous steps is completed. The community of believers is now called upon to leaves again from the Word of God, to put back more this Word to the center of his liturgical and sacramental life, of his vocational and training activities, in order to helping to leave again with more impulse the Church's mission in the world and especially in those countries "where the Gospel has been forgotten or meets with indifference as a result of widespread secularism" (No. 122).

Familiar Reading

The terms that now we meet more in this text are: God, dialogue, familiarity and, of course, Word. Really these concepts form the basic woof of the thought of Benedict XVI. The longer he remembers that the real problem of our time is the disappearance from  the horizon of meaning of men of references to God, to His love, to hope that he turns into their hearts and that actives a practice of humanity, characterized by peace and reconciliation. To do without God, today seems to be almost synonymous with healthy realism of attitude by mature men and fully emancipated.

But here is, in truth, the real challenge to and of the faith. The Pope writes so incisively at no. 10 of Verbum Domini: " The word of God makes us change our concept of realism: the realist is the one who recognizes in the word of God the foundation of all things. This realism is particularly needed in our own time, when many things in which we trust for building our lives, things in which we are tempted to put our hopes, prove ephemeral. Possessions, pleasure and power show themselves sooner or later to be incapable of fulfilling the deepest yearnings of the human heart. In building our lives we need solid foundations which will endure when human certainties fail."

Now the familiarity with the Word of God that would open us to a dialogue with God is what we lack most. And such familiarity goes, as we know, through reading and the meditation of the Holy Scripture, which is always less practiced.

Just some time before the opening of the Synod on the Word of God, that in April of 2008, the Biblical Commission has commissioned a survey  to the Eurisko about the widespread knowledge of the Holy Scripture and the results were and are very discouraging . Simply in Italy,  our country, the survey had recorded that the 86% of  the 88% of Italians, that said themselves as Catholic, ignores completely or almost the Bible. Not missing the text of the Bible in the homes of Italian Catholics, simply it does not open and read.

Theological Reading

 Another lemma that emerges frequently in the Exhortation is the adjective "theological", especially in reference to the reading of the Holy Scripture. While acknowledging the kindness of exegetical studies that in recent years have enriched biblical research, the Pope firmly and insistently emphasizes the need for a hermeneutics of the Scripture or theological hermeneutics of the faith. If this fails, the danger is that in her place came " a positivistic and secularized hermeneutic ultimately based on the conviction that the Divine does not intervene in human history." (No. 35). It must then sew again the tear that now exists between exegesis, theology, spirituality, because only this allows and supports a full and effective proclamation of the Word.

To make incisive this intuition, the text resorts to a chiasmatic structure, which seals well the urgency that is at the heart of the Pope: "“where exegesis is not theology, Scripture cannot be the soul of theology, and conversely, where theology is not essentially the interpretation of the Church’s Scripture, such a theology no longer has a foundation” (No.35).

Marian Reading

An important place is reserved, in turning points of the document, to the figure of Mary and to her faithful testimony of a woman of the Word. She is mentioned in the paragraph 27 as the one in which the reciprocity between the faith and the Word of God was perfectly fulfilled; she is still there at No. 88, where are mentioned and recommended the prayers with the Marian dispositions, all deeply inspired by Scripture. And finally, in the latest number of the text, No.124, the Pope, echoing the words that Jesus proclaims in the Gospel of Luke in the Chapter 11.28, states that the full magnitude of Mary was that of being rendered docile and active executrix of the Word. In this Maria is as a constant help for us, "making it possible for each of us to attain that blessedness which is born of the Word received and put into practice." (No. 124).

 
The witness of the consecrated life

       It is worth, finally, of special mention  the word of affection and gratitude that the Pope addressed to the forms of consecrated life. In those who undertake this journey, in the various forms of life that the Church knows, there is imprinted the centrality of the relationship between the believer and God's Word, and then ultimately with God himself: " the Church needs the witness of men and women resolved to ‘put nothing before the love of Christ’. (St. Benedict). The world today is often excessively caught up in outward activities and risks losing its bearings." (No. 83).

The consecrated life and especially the contemplative, -the Pope reminds us-  “shows today’s world what is most important, indeed, the one thing necessary: there is an ultimate reason which makes life worth living, and that is God and his inscrutable love”. (ibid.).

Here the main theme, the leitmotiv, of this pontificate returns: the love of God, to look for earlier and more than anything else, since this love is the only able to support the historical journey of the men and the women, routing to paths of Justice and Truth, the only one who can vouch for a hope that never disappoints and therefore allows a free exchange of love between us.

      This is the Christian realism which the Word of God makes us familiar, a Word to whom we owe with greater zeal and confidence to make ourselves more familiar.

Armando Matteo
Assistente Nazionale della FUCI
Via F. Marchetti Selvaggiani, 22
00165 Roma