Bible Study

Knowledge of Scripture is Knowledge of  God.  When you read scripture you learn about God.  When you study scripture  you learn to know and love God. God speaks to us through His words in the Bible, therefore to know the scriptures is to know what God expects of us, His children.  We need to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  How would we do that without knowing scripture?

On May 23, 2008 eight people decided that they wanted to know more  about Christ and His Church.  They started a  Bible Study Group on  Tuesday  evenings at St. Nicholas Church in the St. George Cultural Center.  They chose to study the Book of Ephesians and a History book of the Catholic Church.

In this study, we see how the Church relates to Christ, how the Church relates to the entire universe that the Father has redeemed through  the Son, and how the Church relates to the  glorious plan of  God that will be consummated at  the end  of  time.  In Ephesians, Paul's meditation upon the mystery of Christ as it is lived out in the body  of Christ, we are led into the most profound depths, not only of Christology, (the study of Christ himself), but of cosmology (the study of  the Cosmos), and eschatology (the study of the  Last  Things).  For this is Paul's perspective in approaching the mystery of Christ in Ephesians.  His goal is to  open the minds of ordinary believers to contemplation of the extraordinary and beautiful reality that Christ has  established, and then  show what practical differences these glorious truths can make in our homes, friendships, work, and everything else  we do.  He means to lead us into the awareness that everything we do is charged with divine power because we are now cells in the living body of Christ.

With our  study of scripture we also studied "People of God – The History of Catholic Christianity" by Anthony E. Gilles.  In this study we watch the Church grow and mature.  We see that the Church has had many trials but with God's help has survived for two thousand years.  It gives us hope in our present trials, knowing that we have been  through similar trials before and usually come out stronger for them.  In Spiritus Paraclitus IV, 3, Pope Benedict XV declared if an individual desires to comprehend Sacred Scripture he must understand its relation to Tradition and the Magisterium. 

We are going to start this study with an overview of the Bible, and then go through it book by book chronologically.  God's written  word is supported by and grew out of Catholic Oral Tradition.  Every Biblical passage must compliment and confirm to Catholic doctrine as passed on to us orally from Jesus to the  Apostles, to their disciples the first Bishops of the Church and down through the past 2,000 years to the Magisterium of  the Universal Church.

Joanne Angeletti, SFO