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Gospel Roots

We're still talking about our spiritual roots. Our roots must certainly have been nurtured out of the Old Testament. To understand the Old Testament, is a challenge to us. There is much we don't understand in it, and the reason we don't is because we are looking at it with our modern day mentality, whereas the writers were viewing it from their ancient, old world mentality.

     Yet, our roots are there in the Old Testament, in Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; in Moses and kings and the prophets, right down to the time the Jewish boy, Jesus, was born of a Jewish mother.

    That Jewish child, whose followers in adulthood were Jews, preached to and converted Jews, some of whom, undoubtedly, are our ancestors. Many of us here today may not be descended from gentile progenitors but from Jewish ones, and who is to say at this late date which of us came from which from away back where.

    Our modern day mentality is Jesus-centered. The Old Testament people were God centered — an awesome God who was unknown and feared.

     For us, Jesus bridges that unknown, that chasm that yawned between men and God, a chasm they were unable to cross until the coming of the God-man, Jesus. Jesus, who was a flesh and blood man like us who was born, lived among men; spoke to them, and who made the Father known to them and to us.

    Jesus said, “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.”[1]

    Jesus revealed the Father to us — Jesus, the God-man, opened His mouth and spoke and the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us.

    In the Old Testament, God's word came to man secondhand. The great unknown, feared God, spoke through men, patriarchs, prophets and angels. But now He was speaking through himself, His Second Person, Son of God, Savior and brother of man.

    Thus, truly, Jesus established our relationship with the Father, whom we can now approach as OUR Father. We now can cherish this relationship of Father to child; beloved and compassionate Father, to a loving and trusting child.

     If they, the Old Testament writers, pictured Him as stern-faced, heavy-browed, rod in hand; we happily look upon Him as benign, merciful and understanding; forgiving and so very, very loving. We have a tremendous advantage.

    We are looking back over centuries of Jesus-oriented thinking — the Beatitudes mentality; the Golden Rule; justice for all, low-born and high-born and brotherly love. It’s a far cry from the eye-for-an-eye and tooth-for-a-tooth outlook of the Old Testament.

    While we’re probing into the Scriptures, I'd like to give you one of St. Francis' Admonitions.

    As you know, Francis frowned upon anything that smacked of a showoff attitude, which certainly included knowledge of the Scriptures. This Admonition is entitled, “Good works must follow knowledge.”

    Francis says: “St. Paul tells us, ‘the letter brings death, but the Spirit gives life.’”[2] A man has been killed by the letter when he wants to know quotations only so that people will think he is very learned. A religious has been killed by the letter when he has no desire to follow the spirit of Sacred Scripture; but wants to know what it says only so that he can quote it to others. On the other hand, those who have received life from the spirit of sacred scripture and who, by their words and example, refer to the Most High God; do not allow their knowledge to become a source of self-complacency.

    I have, and I'm sure you have too, heard people speak with great admiration of someone, Catholic or non-Catholic, who can, off the top of his head, quote to you chapter and verse and a quotation, often taken out of context, to make their point.

    To know chapter and verse is not important. It is not Scripture knowledge. To quote copiously from Scripture is not necessarily Scripture knowledge. What is all-important is to know the MESSAGE — the overall message from which the quotation is taken, and still more important is, humbly and diligently, to put that message

into practice in our relationship with our brothers and sisters in the world.

   Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.”[3]  That’s the overall message in a nutshell.