Transcript

Edmund: Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Real+True Podcast. I’m one of your co-hosts, Edmund Mitchell. And as you know, on this podcast, we’re exploring in a deeper way our mission, which is to unlock the Catechism for the modern world. On this podcast, we interview guests and we share some of the behind the scenes of our mission and the project of unlocking the Catechism for the modern world. Today we have a special episode. This is gonna be a shorter episode and very practical, and I think you’ll really enjoy this. We’re gonna be talking about a way that you can use the Catechism and the Bible together in prayer to kind of bring light to each of them and to make it a little bit easier and more relevant for you to read and, and kind of have Jesus speak to you in both the Catechism and scripture. So that’s what we’re gonna be covering today. We’re gonna share kind of a method for using one feature of the Catechism that’s in the back called the Index of Citations, to kind of supplement the way we read scripture, the way we pray, and the way we hear God’s word in scripture, and also the deposit of faith, the divine, uh, revelation that is summarized in the Catechism. So that’s what we’ll be covering today. So if you want go grab your Catechism and your Bible and you can follow along. There will also be some summaries and, and resources in the show notes that you can find at realtrue.org on the podcast description for this episode. So let’s talk about some of the issues we can run into or the problems, challenges we can run into when we’re reading either the Catechism or scripture. So first of all, these are big books. 

This is a lot to just sit down and read through. So we wanna start with smaller chunks, both in the Bible and the Catechism. Often that can be really helpful, but particularly with the Catechism, sometimes even smaller chunks can be a lot to read through. Um, and then at times when we’re reading or praying with scripture, we can benefit from the Church’s interpretation of that passage. And when you’re just sitting down by yourself with scripture, we don’t often have the benefit of knowing how the Church views this passage. Now, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, this isn’t something that should stop us from reading scripture, but we can benefit greatly from adding the Church’s interpretation, the Church’s lens, and eyes on scripture to our prayerful reading of scripture. And then often when we’re reading the Catechism, we might sometimes lack relevance, like, what does this passage in the Catechism have to do with me or with Jesus? So we might sometimes sit down and go, you know, okay, I wanna read like a few paragraphs of the Catechism when we start reading it, and we’re not exactly sure how to relate, relate this to our life. We’re not exactly sure how this applies to the life of Jesus or the broader life of the Church. And so this technique or this way of approaching both the I’m gonna share with you today can really help. This could really help bring together a passage of scripture and, um, a passage from the Catechism in a way that can be really helpful. So the way we’re gonna be doing this is we’re gonna be using what’s called the index of citations. And I have my Catechism here. Um, lots of all different types of additions of the Catechism are gonna have in the very back what’s called the index of citations. And this is really cool because what this does is this gives you a cross-reference, but starting with the source or the citation and then telling you where in the Catechism that source or citation that source is cited. So for instance, you have, you know, the saints, you have Church documents, but what we’re gonna be focusing on is the, the part in the index of citations that specifically focuses on scripture. And so if you turn to the index of citations, you can see that it starts right with Genesis, Genesis 1:1, and then next to it’s gonna have numbers. And those numbers are gonna be where in the Catechism is this passage of scripture, Genesis 1:1, where is it cited? What paragraphs is it cited in? So the Church advises us, this is in Dei Verbum, paragraph 10. It says, this, “Sacred tradition, sacred scripture, and the teaching authority of the Church are so linked and joined together that one cannot stand without the others.”

So when we read the Catechism and the Bible together like this, this is really powerful. This is a amazing way that we can read with the Church and also can help us in prayer. And I’ve found that when I take a small passage of scripture and just supplement a few of these paragraphs from the Catechism, it really enriches the prayer time that I’m spending with scripture. So today, real quick to highlight this, we’re gonna start with the story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19:1-10. So if you don’t remember this story, um, Zacchaeus is a tax collector and he hears that Jesus is coming to Jericho and he’s a short man. I always imagine him for some reason, as like Danny DeVito, like a Danny DeVito looking character. And there’s this big crowd, and Zacchaeus wants to see Jesus. So he climbs up this tree so he can get a better view. And as Jesus passes by, Jesus stops and looks up at him, and he calls out to him and says, “Zacchaeus, today I want to dine with you in your home.” And so Zacchaeus comes running down the tree, and then he kind of makes this big repentance speech. Um, he, it says he comes down quickly and receives him a joy and this tax collector vows to give half of all of his possessions to the poor and to repay any that he’s wronged four times over. And then Jesus says this, “Today, salvation has come to this house because this man too is a descendant of Abraham, for the Son of Man has come to seek and save what was lost.” So reading this passage, if you open this up and you read this short passage and you wanna pray with this scripture, we’re gonna be asking ourselves like, what does Jesus wanna say to us in this passage? But there also might come some other questions that come to mind. So one is, what does it mean for Zacchaeus that Jesus wants to stay at his house? Obviously something’s happening here, here, Jesus says this, and it means something really powerful to Zacchaeus. Also is why does Zacchaeus have such a strong reaction? Like this strong reaction is very curious too. He says, I want to, I wanna pay people four times over what’s going on with that? So what we do is we turn to the index of citations and look up this passage. We look up Luke 19: 1-10, and we’ll find that there’s a few Catechism paragraphs that use this passage, um, as citations, as references. The three that we’re gonna focus on are paragraph 2712, 1443 and 2412. Now, one reference, one of the citations references all of Luke 19: 1-10. So it references this whole story. So we’ll start with that paragraph before moving on to the other two, but the other two, uh, the other two paragraphs and the Catechism cite particular lines from this story. So first, let’s start with paragraphs 2712. It says this, “Contemplative prayer…” Interesting, right? Already from the beginning, I never, I would not have thought to think of prayer when I’m thinking of this story. This guy in a tree, he comes down and he responds to Jesus. I wouldn’t have thought of prayer. Let’s see what it says. “Contemplative prayer is the prayer of the child of God, the forgiven sinner who agrees to welcome the love by which he is loved and who wants to respond to it by loving even more.” And then in paragraphs, Luke 19:1- 10, the but he knows that the love he is returning is poured out by the spirit in his heart. For everything is grace from God. Contemplative prayer is the poor and humble surrender to the loving will of the Father and even deeper union with his beloved Son.” Okay, contemplative prayer. What’s going on here? Well, confusion means we don’t understand something, which means we could be staring at an opportunity to learn. So if we experience in scripture or our reading of the Catechism, something that’s confusing, that should be a good sign. Like there’s something here that we can learn. There’s new learning that can happen, something that Jesus wants to reveal. So how does the Catechism help us understand this story better? Let’s look to the next couple lines. But first, you know, it’s probably a little obvious to you that maybe the forgiven sinner who agrees to welcome the love by which he is loved is Zacchaeus. So the Church is seeing Zacchaeus as this sign of a forgiven sinner who’s welcoming the love by which he is loved. Jesus is loving Zacchaeus, and, and Zacchaeus is returning that love. But let’s look at the other two paragraphs in the Catechism. So in 1443, it explains that Jesus not only forgave sins, but also made plain the effect of his forgiveness. He reintegrated forgiven sinners into the community of the people of God, from which sin has alienated or even excluded them. So we can start thinking here. Well, okay, well this passage is citing the story of Zacchaeus, and he’s being reintegrated. So it wasn’t just that he’s a sinner, it wasn’t just implied that he’s maybe doing some nefarious things as a tax collector. But what also is implied here is that he hasn’t, he’s feeling excluded from the community of the people of God. And the forgiveness that Jesus brings is not just, um, this personal forgiveness, but this forgiveness on behalf of the community as well. So in a way, what’s going on here, as we’re like reflecting on this, Jesus wants to reintegrate Zacchaeus into the community of the people of God. And Zacchaeus is sensing this by Jesus saying he wants to dine with him, he’s sensing that he wants to restore him to community. And that’s an invitation that’s very exciting for him. So he is probably someone alienated from the community because of these sins that he’s committed. But how is staying at someone’s house a great act of love on Jesus’s part? Well, we can continue reading to find the answer. So Jesus’ offering Zacchaeus this act of reconciliation by not just staying with him, but dining with him. It says, Jesus receives sinners at his table, a gesture that expresses in an astonishing way, both God’s forgiveness and a return to the bosom of, to the bosom of the people of God. So this paragraph here is telling us that Jesus receives sinners at his table. That’s an intimate act. So Jesus doesn’t want to just forgive us of sin or just reintegrate us in into the community, but he also wants to be intimate with us. He wants to have this personal relationship, a closeness with us. And so we can even see this in Zacchaeus strong reaction. And his strong reaction is a just action. If we also read in paragraph 2412, it says this, “Jesus blesses Zacchaeus for his pledge. ‘If I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold’. And then it goes on to say, “Those who directly or indirectly have taken possession of the goods of another are obliged to make restitution of them or to return the equivalent in kind or money.” So Zacchaeus is seeing this act of love. He’s responding to it, and the just thing is to respond equally. But he goes above and beyond that. So out of this like overabundance of Jesus’s gift of himself and forgiveness and, and this restitution Zacchaeus response by this overabundance. So we go back, let’s go back to the first paragraph we mentioned, 2712, “The forgiven sinner who agrees to welcome the love by which he is loved and wants to respond to it by loving even more.” That’s contemplative prayer. The Catechism is telling us it’s the prayer of the child of God who responds and welcomes the love by which he was loved and who wants to respond by loving even more. And so we see this, this beautiful image. I mean, it’s, it’s not that hard to put yourself in the place of Zacchaeus. You know, maybe you feel like you’re really struggling to get a glimpse of Jesus. Maybe you really feel like you’re struggling in prayer to see him. And then if we can recognize this great gift that Jesus gives us, it should elicit in us this, this huge response like we wanna love even more than Jesus loves us. Then there’s this back and forth of Jesus and us like loving one another. This like outpouring of love at the gift that we’re receiving. Okay, so let’s wrap this up. So we, we sit down with this scripture passage. We read it once through, then we go and supplement a few Catechism paragraphs, just reading them real quickly just to get them in our minds. We go back to scripture and we can see that Jesus gives Zacchaeus an opportunity to be reconciled with God, with his community. And Zacchaeus is not just showboating when he vows to give money back, you know, fourfold. He’s responding to this offering of love by, by this great desire to love even more.

He’s so overwhelmed, um, that he wants to lay down more of his life so that he can receive more of this from Jesus and from the community. So not only is the case given an opportunity to be reconciled with those he’s wronged. He goes above and beyond the demands of justice, and he pledges to repay his debtors fourfold. And we really see this like completion of this whole act that the Catechism is also telling us is a model of prayer. So when I first read this passage with scripture, it really unlocked a lot of things I hadn’t thought about before. I hadn’t thought about the fact that we’re like, when I go to confession, for instance, and I receive forgiveness from Jesus. It’s not just forgiveness, personal forgiveness between me and Jesus, it’s also Jesus welcoming me back into the Church and saying, I want you to be reconciled back with the community.

It’s also Jesus saying, I don’t want to just stay with you. I want to dine with you. I want to be intimate and close in communion with you. So it’s this welcoming back to the Eucharistic table for us to receive him in the Eucharist. And then finally, there’s this desire to respond to Jesus’ love, with love, to be like Zacchaeus, who’s so overwhelmed with this gift that he wants to pour out, you know, more of himself back to Jesus. And so we can see, like when we read scripture in the Catechism together like this, there’s this insight into this life of prayer and relationship with God and this image of the chaos rushing down from this tree that he’s so painfully, you know, tried to climb up to get a glimpse of Jesus, um, that was rewarded by Jesus, noticing him and this surge of the heart. And that really stuck with me for, for about a month after I read this passage of scripture and the Catechism together. So a few practical things that you can do, right? So just take a Catechism and passage of scripture, take a short passage of scripture, turn to the back of the Catechism in the index of citations, and look up this passage. Then find a few paragraphs. Could be two or one, and just read them after you’ve read the passage of scripture, read these passages of the Catechism, then return back to passage of scripture. Then just sit in prayer. Ask God to reveal himself to you, to teach you if there’s any, if there’s anything in those, uh, paragraphs from Catechism, from the Catechism that seem weird, like why would the Church combine these two things? That’s a great sign. That’s a sign that there’s something here that we can learn. And then finally, at the end of prayer, we can really respond in an act of faith to what God has revealed to us. Oftentimes, I find that when I’m reading a passage of scripture and then with the Catechism, I’m seeing, uh, something that maybe I’ve forgotten about in Church teaching and I’m wanting to respond in faith like, yes Lord, like I believe this. I really believe this and I believe that this is, um, the plan of loving goodness that you have for me. So some passages that I want to give you at the end here, and we’ll include this in the show notes, some passages that would be a great place to start are John 6:54. There’s a few really great, um, Catechism verses there. Also Luke 1: 37. Jeremiah 31:31-34. Genesis 3:15 is a really great one. Luke 3:21 and Isaiah 43:1-7. And a few final thoughts on this, this way of reading and praying with the Catechism of scripture. This is really great to do on your own. This is also amazing to do with other people. Um, there are times where you could read short passage from scripture, maybe the Gospel reading for that day, and then go to the index of citations. Just read one or two paragraphs from the Catechism and then with others, just kind of what, what do you make of this combination? Why is the Church viewing scripture in this way? Why is the Church making these connections? What can we learn from this? Um, and that’s another, that’s another great point for this or another great suggestion is to follow along in the lectionary. So the Gospel readings first and second readings, um, to turn just to the Catechism, maybe before or after Mass. And just read one or two of those Catechism paragraphs and you’ll find that there’s this huge, this new relevance that you’re getting as you’re reading the Catechism. And it’s really great to just try to read the Catechism straight through, but sometimes that’s not enough for us to really be engaged. So this way of reading the Catechism and scripture together, especially in conjunction with the Sunday readings or the daily Mass readings, really help make the scripture and Catechism come alive. I’ve also found that this is really helpful as a way to prepare for Mass and to go into Mass kind of listening for the way that the Church wants to teach us and reveal, um, God’s plan for us. So if you found this helpful, please let us know in the comments, I would love to hear from you guys some passages that you kind of look through and, and pray through, both in scripture and the Catechism and combining them any insights that you find or that the Lord reveals.  You could find all the show notes on our website and we encourage you to join us. Our mission at Real+True is to unlock the truth and beauty of the Catechism for the modern world and to help people encounter the pulsating heart of the Catechism, which is Jesus Christ. As always, you can visit realtrue.org to watch or listen to the podcast or you can listen or watch, you can watch on YouTube or you can listen on any of the podcast platforms. And we thank you so much. We ask that you subscribe and continue to follow along. And thank you so much for supporting us and Real+True, and we look forward to hearing you guys, seeing you guys on the next episode of the Real+True Podcast.