Pope Leo XIV affirmed yesterday that Sacred Scripture has been entrusted to the Catholic Church – that she preserves and explains it, and supports its purpose of making Christ known to the world. Source: EWTN News.
“The Church is the rightful home of Sacred Scripture,” the pope said during the general audience.
“With its efficacy and power [Sacred Scripture] sustains and invigorates the Christian community. All the faithful are called to drink from this wellspring, first and foremost in the celebration of the Eucharist and the other Sacraments,” he added.
Addressing thousands of pilgrims in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall, Leo said, Scripture “finds the sphere in which to carry out its particular task and achieve its purpose: to make Christ known and to open dialogue with God” in the Church community.
The Pontiff pointed to the 2008 Synod of Bishops on “The Word of God in the life and mission of the Church” as one of the Church’s recent important reflections on Scripture.
He quoted from Pope Benedict XVI’s post-synodal exhortation Verbum Domini.
In that document, Pope Benedict affirmed that “The intrinsic link between the word and faith makes clear that authentic biblical hermeneutics can only be had within the faith of the Church, which has its paradigm in Mary’s fiat … the primary setting for scriptural interpretation is the life of the Church”.
Pope Leo recalled the well-known phrase from St Jerome that “ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ”.
The expression reminds us, he said, “of the ultimate purpose of reading and meditating on the Scriptures: to get to know Christ and, through him, to enter into a relationship with God, a relationship that can be understood as a conversation, a dialogue”.
“We live surrounded by so many words, but how many of these are empty!” Pope Leo said.
“On the contrary, the Word of God responds to our thirst for meaning, for the truth about our life. It is the only Word that is always new: revealing the mystery of God to us, it is inexhaustible, it never ceases to offer its riches.”
Leo said those who carry out the ministry of the Word — bishops, priests, deacons, and catechists — should be guided by love for the Sacred Scriptures and familiarity with them.
FULL STORY
Pope Leo XIV: ‘The Church is the rightful home of Sacred Scripture’ (By Hannah Brockhaus, EWTN News)
