We’re almost through Lent now, and we’re down towards the end of the Nicene Creed.
It was a toss-up this week for me between “In accordance with the scriptures” and “who has spoken through the prophets.”
But you will see that they are both really about the same thing: the action of the Holy Spirit in the church and in the scriptures, both then and now.
One of the first things Jesus did when he met his disciples after his resurrection was to give them some serious Bible classes.
The first was on the road to Emmaus, where he explained to the two disciples everything in the Hebrew scriptures that had foretold him (Luke 24:24).
The effect was to make their hearts burn within them—which is often a sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit.
He then appeared to the 11 in Jerusalem. This time, he opened their minds to understand the scriptures so that they would realise he was the fulfilment of everything that was promised (Luke 24:45).
Why did Jesus do this? Because to Jews, the scriptures really mattered.
They were written by God himself using human beings. They were a precious collection of God’s love letters, contracts, promises, warnings, and prophecies for his chosen people.
We can see how clearly they spoke of the coming of Jesus because we have the benefit of the Holy Spirit and a couple of thousand years of explanations.
But the disciples didn’t. They’d been told for a long time that the prophecies meant something else; a different kind of messiah.
They also didn’t know which bits of scripture were literally true, and which bits were symbolic or had already been fulfilled.
So Jesus opened their minds. The living Word of God upended and rearranged itself in their interior landscape like a kaleidoscope.
Imagine what that was like. Has anything this ever happened to you when you read the scriptures in lectio divina?
Many of us get the odd breakthrough. But what happened to the 11 was nothing short of a complete revolution.
Jesus wasn’t just doing this for their individual benefit. He was doing it for ours.
On Pentecost Sunday when they all burst out of the house and into the street, Peter preached on the scriptural proofs that Jesus was the messiah.
The church has done so faithfully ever since. That’s because what we call the Old Testament is eternally wedded to the New Testament.
We can’t just write the Old Testament off as Jewish stuff and ignore it. Instead, the church doubles down and claims the whole body of scripture for its own.
The church has the power and authority to collect and share those same scriptures. It gets to decide what’s “canonical” and what isn’t (thank you St Irenaeus, second-century man on the spot).
The church existed before “the Bible” as we know it: as the prophetic people of Israel, the great synagogue, the congregation of the people of God.
It has fought long and hard to preserve the full message of the Gospel in the scriptures, in the face of “reformers” of all kinds who enjoy taking a pair of scissors to the bits they don’t like.
The Holy Spirit has a voice of his own. He speaks, but he uses human beings’ pens and voices.
And “the prophets” through whom the Holy Spirit spoke are all those ones in the canonical scriptures. We say out loud every Sunday that we believe this.
There have always been people in the church who fancy themselves as “prophetic voices” and insist that we listen to them because after all, it must be the Holy Spirit at work in them.
But they forget that almost all real prophets lead hard lives and meet sticky ends. Prophecy is a risky business.
All God’s prophecy is conditional on our behaviour—if this changes, sometimes the predicted bad things don’t happen.
But it’s also a risky business because prophets have a way of being punished and even killed by the people they are prophesying to.
It’s the original case of “shoot the messenger.” It’s not a job for someone planning to live a quiet, comfortable middle-class lifestyle and die in their own bed.
The scriptures matter. They should matter personally to you.
As Catholics, we are exposed to them regularly at Mass and in the Liturgy of the Hours. But we can always do more.
So next time you say, “in accordance with the scriptures” and “who has spoken through the prophets”, pray for the grace to get to know the scriptures better.
You won’t regret it.