Study Day on the Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini

Jointly organised by the Centre for Catholic Formation and Education for Parish Service

29 March 2012

To begin the Day, Bishop Patrick Lynch ss.cc led us in a prayer.

Fr. John Deehan then gave an introductory paper, detailing the background to Verbum Domini from Newman’s complaint to the management of Cadbury Chocolate factory that reading the Bible was not part of the Catholic tradition through the Catholic reaction to Modernism to the ground-breaking Constitution Dei Verbum. It was because of the slow pace of renewal in the revisions that flowed from Dei Verbum that Pope Benedict published Verbum Domini. The purpose of the exhortation is to offer further reflection on Dei Verbum, which he says, represented a milestone in the Church’s history.

Pope Benedict refers to the performative character of Scripture when it is read in Church. Whenever God speaks, something happens. John compared the care with which we safeguard the consecrated elements of the Eucharist with a more casual attitude to the presence of Christ in the Word, when words are allowed to fall to the ground unheard.

Molly Styant invited us to talk together about what we had heard. She then led a plenary discussion. One of the many interesting questions to come out of this was whether the readings in Church should be ‘read’, or ‘proclaimed’. ‘Proclamation’ was felt to be the more appropriate, in spite of the introductory words, ‘A Reading from...’

The presentation by Tarcisius Mukuka drew on his as yet unpublished paper: ‘Reception of Dei Verbum in the Church: Hearig the Logos from the Four Worlds of the Text in the Light of Verbum Domini’. He began by pointing out the inadequacies of ‘Word’ for the translation of ‘Logos’, and went on to describe how an inadequate Christology can lead to a partial reception of the Logos.

Tarcisius then explained how he understood the four worlds of the biblical text: the world behind the text; the world in the text; the world in front of the text; the world beyond the text. He pointed out that sometimes the Word can be so spiritualised that it is robbed of its efficacy.

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Rebekah O’Keeffe then led us all in Lectio Divina using the Gospel Reading for the Fith Sunday of Lent: John 12.20-33

The final paper was given by Anne Inman who focussed on three paragraphs in Part I of Verbum Domini. § 26 considers sin as ‘a refusal to hear the word of God’, and this paragraph is followed by two paragraphs on Mary. Mary’s life of faithful obedience is presented as the opposite of refusal. Her obedience and her docility make her a role-model for the life of faith. Yet the meaning of ‘obedience’ and ‘docility’ have been distorted to present Mary as a passive figure, quite at odds with what we know about her life.

The meanings of ‘obedience’ and ‘docility’ were explored in terms of ‘going along with’.

Anne argued that Mary’s ‘pondering’ would have been no serene other-worldly pondering, but more a lying awake at night, terrified at what might happen to her son, both as a baby and as a grown man. All three synoptic Gospels report the tensions between Jesus and his mother and wider family. Mary was clearly concerned about the path that Jesus was taking, and wanted to take control of him. Picking up on Tarcisius’ point about the importance of an adequate Christology, Anne pointed out that a less than fully human Mary would call into question the full humanithy of Jesus.

During the discussion which followed, we continued to consider obey in terms of ‘going along with’, and notions of ‘accompaniment’. It was pointed out that in Maltese, the word for obey/listen is the same word: isma’.

The Day concluded with a prayer and blessing from Fr. David Gibbons, the Director of the Centre for Catholic Formation.