2019

On assuming the Chair of Peter, Pope Saint John Paul II chose to devote his weekly general audiences for some five years (1979– 1984) to a catechesis on the human person, the body, and sexuality that has come to be known as the “Theology of the Body.” Almost every Wednesday (except when he was recovering from an attempted assassination in 1981), he gave an address to a gathering of pilgrims either in Saint Peter’s Square or in an audience hall.

The topic of Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, caught many by surprise. Moral relativism, secularization, abortion, liturgy—these are some of the themes people expected him to address.
But instead, this new pope—known for his intellect, scholarship, and courage to tackle controversial issues—chose to write on a topic quite simple, timeless, and appealing to all: the mystery of love.

Lent is less than a month away, and this year, we’re preparing our hearts to enter into the greatest story ever told. It’s a whirlwind of emotions, going from Genesis to Jesus in Sacred Scripture. We know how the story ends, but are we prepared for the long road to get there?

The first two verses of Genesis tell us that God brought the entire world into existence at the dawn of history. But he not only creates the world, he forges a covenant with the world. We hear of this in later passages such as Jeremiah 33:25, where the prophet speaks of the Lord’s “covenant with day and night.” God did not create the human family because he was lonely. God himself, being Father, Son, and Spirit, is already a family. He created us in order to draw us into his divine family.

This Lent at the St. Paul Center, we’re going back to the foundations of what it means to be Catholic, of what it means to be an adopted son or daughter of God. And we’re doing it using the tools God has given us—Sacred Scripture and Tradition.

We live in a strange world today. Some people are beginning to call it a post-Christian world, in spite of the fact that Catholics are more numerous than any other single group on earth.

Whenever we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we acknowledge God’s name as “[h]allowed” (Matt 6:9)—that is, as holy or sanctified. But what do we mean by this? Do we mean what Jesus meant?

Understanding the Bible requires an understanding of its “plot.” And the Bible’s plot is the story of salvation history. It is the story of human salvation unfolding in history according to God’s plan. You and I need to read the Bible from the heart of the Church if we are to make sense of the Scriptures and apply them to our lives as Catholics. This includes an understanding of why we should read them and how we should read them.