“We don’t read scripture, scripture reads us and with unending call to greatness our Lord begs the question, “Who do you say that I am?”” (p 108 from the essay “Heroism Survives Secularism by Jared Zimmerer from “Man Up!”)

I read this quote several weeks ago and it has been part of my prayer for these past weeks as I asked the question: “What does this exactly mean?” To give a little context to the quote above, the author is speaking about heroism in the Christian sense of a call to the virtues which help us to be the man (person) God has created us to be and how choosing to live these virtues in the sacrificial love modeled perfectly in Jesus Christ and then lived out by countless saints in heroic self giving/sacrifice of their lives for others.
Once again we may ask, “What does this exactly mean?” As I prayed about this I went back to front with the question that Jesus poses to his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” (Lk 9:20) Because this is where it will all begin. If we can answer, as Peter did, “The Christ of God.” (Lk 9:20) then to quote the author once more, “the first steps of the adventure has been taken and in the words of Bilbo Baggins, “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of our door..You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.” (p 108) If our affirmative answer is we know Jesus to be the true Son of the living God then we begin an adventure that is a conversation of love and blessing.
We have all had these conversation of love and blessing where scripture reads us…we just need to pause and thinks about it for a second…and ask what does this look like. In conversations with friends or even stranger we are often struck with someone saying something out of the blue that just makes sense for the situation or problem in our lives. As a priest people will often say to me after Mass that what I said during my homily was exactly what they needed to hear. I made the mistake one time of asking what it was and when the woman told me I had a Holy Spirit moment because I never said what she heard and yet it was exactly what she needed to hear. Jesus, in the same way enters into these conversations with us through Sacred Scripture when we sit and listen and speak with him through the depth of our hearts.
Please don’t misunderstand me, I am not advocating that we each interpret scripture how we want to as to fit what we want to think. Just the opposite, as we sit with God, in the family of the Catholic Church, we are able to hear to authentic voice reading us and responding to our needs as we take time in prayer and study of the living word of God.
Because this is what we believe. When we sit with a good friend or family member who knows us well because we have been with them through good and bad, through joy and sorrow, through life and death, they read us, as the saying goes, like a book. They may ask, “What’s on your mind?” and when we respond, “Nothing.” They wait patiently to ask again reading us knowing the burden on our heart needs to be heard and healed. The word of grace spoken in love.
This is how “scripture reads us,” because Jesus who is the living word of God, reads us and offers us his word of grace spoken in love. When we know Him intimately through the conversations of prayer, scripture and sacrament He reads us and offers us words of healing and truth that bring us back into communion with God and each other. This is the great adventure that leads us to where God desires us to be: one family united in heroic love.
God Bless
Fr. Mark