During the month of September, the Church reminds its faithful and all Christians of the great treasure that is THE HOLY BIBLE. It is in the words of Sacred Scripture that God reveals His love for us.
The Bible is an essential part of the Eucharistic liturgy, and is part of every Sacramental celebration. All Church teaching is illuminated and illustrated by its truths.
Important as the Bible is to the Catholic Church, the (CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH) teaches us that ” the Christian faith is not a ‘ religion of the book.’ Christianity is the religion of the ‘Word’ of God, a word which is ‘not a written and mute word, but the Word which is incarnate and living'”.
Our faith is placed in what the words of Sacred Scripture reveals about God , our Father and His relationship with us. And what does God reveal of this relationship. prayerful reading of the Scriptures, reveals a God of incomprehensible love. A God that ‘mercies’ us no matter how often we reject Him or turn away from Him. His mercy is unrelenting and in inexhaustible.
First pages
From the very first pages of The Bible we encounter God’s mercy. When our first parents rejected His love by their disobedience, God promises a redeemer(Gn: 3: 16)
On from the descendants of Adam an Eve on through the great prophets, time and time again, story after story tells of mankind’s wilfulness and our choice of idols instead of being faithful to the Living God of love. Yet God shows us His Mercy.
The mercy of God is epitomized in the sending of His beloved son, Jesus Christ. It is Jesus, the Word of God who puts a human face on the Mercy of God.
But what are we referring to when we speak of God’s mercy? Mercy is how God acts. He turns towards the suffering, the despondent, the poor, the oppressed and enhances us in all our poverty. Even the poverty of death.
Pope Francis in his Angelus exhortation of 9th June 2013 says that mercy is a ‘force which gives life, which raises a dead man. God’s mercy gives life to man , it raises him from the dead.’
Mercy, the attitude of God
This Mercy which is the attitude of God, we see revealed in the Scriptures, in the person of Jesus Christ in His encounters with the sick, (Lk:6:19) ‘power came out of him that cured them all’, the sinner (Lk 7: 36-50) the possessed (Lk: 8:26 -39) and those who would reject His Father’s love and how the Father would respond (Lk 15: 11-32), the pardoning and restoration of Peter head of the church (Jn. 21:15-19) and His forgiveness of us all (Lk: 23: 33,34). H
The Holy Bible is an untold treasure for coming face to face with God’s mercy. Let us resolve each day to spend some time encountering Our God of Mercy by contemplating His love in the pages of Sacred Scripture.
MORE ABOUT THE BIBLE
Source: Diocese of Bridgetowm
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