“Jesus said: If you make my word your home you will indeed be my disciples; you will come to know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32).
In our Creed, we profess, we believe in God the Father maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus, the Word of God, through him all things were made. By the power of the Holy Spirit, the Word became man and lived among us. He went everywhere doing good to set us free from sin and to teach us the good way of living as children of God within the Church. As a visible sign of Christ’s presence today, the Church has the noble task to carry on Jesus’s mission of salvation. This mission is to be carried out by all Christians incorporated in Christ through baptism and the anointing of the Holy Spirit.
To succeed, it requires, among others, studying God’s Word consistently and applying it to our lives in order to mature in Christ. “My child, be attentive to my words; incline your ear to my sayings. Do not let them escape from your sight; keep them within your heart. For they are life to those who find them, and healing to all their flesh”, says the Lord in Proverbs 4:20-22. May God who calls us to be members of Christ’s Body inspire us to be attentive to His word through the reading of the Holy Scriptures. That is what we are going to do in our Bible study.
When we attend Mass, we do not have the opportunity to ask questions and have discussion after the homily. We are invited to profess our faith, instead. This class will offer us the opportunity to ask questions and to engage in discussions. We will read, learn together, and share our own experience about the Holy Scriptures, especially the way they impact our everyday life.
The class will focus on the Gospel of John. The relationship of John’s Gospel to the Synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke is the first step before studying the fourth Gospel in itself or its four sections: prologue, book of signs, book of glory, and epilogue. We are going to study how Jesus of Nazareth is revealed in the Gospel of John as the Word, the Living, creative Second Person of the Holy Trinity. As the promised Messiah,
Jesus revealed us the Father. Though his sacrifice and death on the cross, and through his resurrection he established the New Covenant that transforms human’s relationship with the Father through the gift of the redemption and salvation of the entire humanity.
We are all welcome to study the life and actions of Jesus as they are recorded in the Gospel of John so that we may strengthen our faith or we “may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing this” we “may have life through his name” (John 20:31).
This Bible Study class will be held on the following Tuesday evenings, August 13, 20 & 27 from 7 – 9pm in the St. Mary conference room. I am excited to be teaching the Holy Scrip-
tures in a classroom structure for understanding and open discussions.