The Living Light

Winter 2001
Volume 38-Number 2

SPECIAL FEATURE -- Biblical Spirituality

	Contents The Psalms: Prayer of God's People, Alexander A. Di Lella Praying/Journaling the Gospel Narrative: The Centurion at the Crucifixion (Luke 23:24-49), Timothy A. Friedrichsen The Lord's Prayer, Francis Gignac Imitating Paul in Order to Follow Christ, Frank J. Matera Spirituality According to St. Paul, Raymond F. Collins WWJD? WIJD?: Living Jesus Today in a Lay Vocation, Katherine Yohe
	Articles Christian Scriptures on the Internet, Jason King Family Life in a Secular Culture, Susan Lang Abbott
	Editor's Foreword

Editor's Forward

Biblical Spirituality: Substance and Style
By Berard L. Marthaler

Present-day fascination with "spirituality" defies easy explanation. For many, spirituality represents a way (or ways) that people come to grips with the mysterious, the intangible, the ethereal, and establish a "relationship" with the universe. For some it is a substitute for religion; for others it is an expression of deeply held religious beliefs. There is New Age spirituality, the practical spirituality of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books, and imports and makeovers from Eastern religions. Catholic spirituality, grounded in the person of Jesus Christ, spins off into endless varieties: monastic and Ignatian spirituality, Franciscan and Carmelite spirituality, the spirituality of fourteenth-century Rhineland mystics, and the seventeenth-century French School. Even a short list such as this raises the question of whether the differences between these various religious traditions is a matter of style or substance.

The question is easier to answer when it pertains to biblical spirituality. The religion of Israel centered on faithfulness to the covenant— Yahweh's promises and Israel's response. The patriarchs and priests stood in awe and fear before the divine presence. The spirit of Israel is encapsulated in the Book of Psalms. They are ballads of how Yahweh guided his people, poetry celebrating God's power and might, prayers of praise and petition. The prophets call the people to observance of the Law; the counsels of the Wisdom literature are practical guides to daily life. Nothing in Jewish spirituality supports the dualism that sees the world of matter as a force of evil pitted against a force of good that is identified with the spirit. All the universe—the seen and unseen—is the creation of God.

Christians see themselves as a new Israel. In the New Testament both the term and the content of spirituality clearly focus on "spirit." In the Bible, spirit (Hebrew, ruah; Greek, pneuma) is the life force emanating from God personified in the Creed as "Lord and Giver of Life." With Pentecost, a new manifestation of the Spirit was experienced by Jesus' disciples, strengthening them in their faith and making them aware that the Church is a Spirit-filled community. Luke's gospel presents the Spirit as the presence of Christ establishing his Church. John's gospel stresses being born again in the Spirit—the spirit of truth and love. St. Paul identifies the exalted and glorified Lord with the Pneuma. To be joined to Christ in baptism is to enter into the realm of the Spirit one's body, which becomes "a temple of the holy Spirit" (1 Cor 6:19).

For St. Paul, the Spirit is the source of wisdom and power (cf. 1 Cor 2:4) freeing Christians from the Law and the works of the flesh. Paul presents a long list of behaviors that are irreconcilable with the life of the Spirit, the Christian style of life: "immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, . . . selfishness, dissensions, factions, envy, drinking bouts, orgies, and the like" (Gal 5:19-21). "If we live in the Spirit," he writes, "let us also follow the Spirit" (Gal 5:25). The fruits of the Spirit, in contrast with the cravings of the flesh, are "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control" (Gal 5:22-23).

The life of the Spirit, the substance of the Christian life, dictates the Christian's style of life. The spiritual person (pneumatikos) enjoys the gift of wisdom that enables God to reveal to him or her insights and truths that are beyond human ingenuity. Only individuals blessed with the Spirit of wisdom understand the things freely given by God, as Paul writes: "And we speak about them not with words taught by human wisdom, but with words taught by the Spirit, describing spiritual realities in spiritual terms" (1 Cor 2:13). In Paul's framework, biblical spirituality is identified with Christian existence. It offers a new mode of perception and understanding, and it provides images and language that enable Christians to proclaim the might and power of God.
It is also the Spirit of God that enables us to call God "Abba." This permission, given by Christ himself, is a quintessential characteristic of Christian spirituality, one that we pray in the Lord's prayer and that results in our becoming the "children of God" and "heirs of God" (cf. Rom 8:14-16; Gal 4:6).


The Psalms: Prayer of God's People

In the life of the Church, the psalms are a rich resource of theology, spirituality, history, and prayer for the individual pray-er and communion.

By Alexander A. Di Lella

If we lost the entire Bible except the Book of Psalms, we would still have enough material to reconstruct the essential lines of the biblical stories of salvation. In fact, we could call the 150 psalms a mini-theology of the Old Testament. Great moments and small can be found in the Psalter: the call of Abraham and Sarah, our father and mother in faith; the Exodus escape from the slavery of Egypt; the wanderings in the wilderness; the entry into the Promised Land; the Sinai covenant law given to Moses; the kingship of David; the preaching of the prophets and teaching of the priests; the words of the sages and the prayers of the poor; the cries of the oppressed and appeals for healing.

Divine Election
The primary revelation of the Old Testament is not that God is the almighty Creator of the universe and all that is in it, but rather that God chose Israel for his own special possession and had led the people out of Egypt into the Promised Land, so that they might ultimately reveal the truth about God to all other people. This is the doctrine of divine election, a doctrine recorded in the brief credal formula of Deuteronomy 26:5-9:

Then you shall declare before the Lord, your God, "My father was a wandering Aramean who went down to Egypt with a small household and lived there as an alien. But there he became a nation great, strong and numerous. When the Egyptians maltreated and oppressed us, imposing hard labor upon us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and he heard our cry and saw our affliction, our toil and our oppression. He brought us out of Egypt with his strong hand and outstretched arm, with terrifying power, with signs and wonders; and bringing us into this country, he gave us this land flowing with milk and honey."

Put differently, the Israelite creed would read: "I believe in Yahweh our God who brought us out of the land of Egypt to be his own special people."

Corporate Personality
The doctrine of election means, however, that the primary object of God's choice is the people of Israel, and not the individual Israelite. Individuals are chosen only insofar as they belong to Israel as a people. From this basic point it follows that the fundamental relationship expressed in the psalms is not between an individual and God, but between the community of Israel and Yahweh. Individuals cannot pray properly unless they first establish that they belong to Israel. Hence, the past history of Israel and its future hope are of paramount importance for each individual Israelite. To be cut off from Israel was to be destroyed; to remain part of that community made life certain and desirable. The primacy of the community over the individual is simply a given.

Now insisting on this doctrine of corporate personality does not have as its purpose to make good Israelites out of us all—not in the least. Christians need not force themselves to cultivate the Israelite mentality to use the psalms as their prayers.

"You are my king and my God, / who bestows victories on Jacob. / Through you we batter our foes; / through your name, trample our adversaries. / Not in my bow do I trust, / nor does my sword bring me victory. / You have brought us victory over our enemies, / shamed those who hate us. / In God we have boasted all the day long; / your name we will praise forever." In this prayer, the psalmist was never isolated from the community.

The Christian Use of the Psalms
We begin by emphasizing the truth that the Christian has a greater solidarity with the body of Christ than the Israelite had with the nation of Israel. St. Paul writes, "If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it; if one part is honored, all the parts share its joy. Now you are Christ's body, and individually parts of it" (1 Cor 12:26-27). This doctrine of the body of Christ provides the only solid foundation on which the Psalter can become our prayerbook, for Christians form indeed one body, depending on one another under the headship of Jesus Christ, whom the Father always hears (cf. Jn 11:42).

In using the psalms in our prayers we should not concentrate exclusively on our own personal anxieties and needs; rather, we should remind ourselves that we are part of the praying Church, which simultaneously suffers with the suffering Christ and triumphs joyfully with Christ risen from the dead and victorious over evil.

Psalms of Lament
A lamentation psalm has one or all of the following elements: (1) description of distress; (2) avowal of confidence in God's readiness to come to the rescue; and (3) a petition in general terms for that assistance. Examples are Psalms 69, 79, 88, and 102.

Psalms of Praise
Songs of praise are often called thanksgiving psalms. But as Claus Westermann has pointed out, "thanksgiving" is not accurate as a term for praise. To be sure, these two concepts are related, but praise is a wider concept than thanksgiving. The experience of children highlights the difference between the two notions. Children must be taught repeatedly to say "thank you," but praise comes spontaneously to them. If Mom gives them a gift, for instance, they immediately go around telling others about it. Only when a child's joyful praise receives from adults a cold shoulder does the child abandon praise for the de rigueur "thank you." In thanksgiving only two parties are needed: the benefactor and the person benefited. But in praise, at least three parties are needed: the benefactor, the one benefited, and the one(s) to be informed of the benefaction. The last party is not easy to find in our individualistic society that shows little concern about generosity to others. Hence, St. Paul's words—"If one part is honored, all the parts share its joy"—seem so otherworldly

If we recite the psalms with the intention of worshiping God "in Spirit and truth" (Jn 4:24), we will be dissatisfied with them only when we insist on a more prominent place for our own individual selves before the throne of God. The psalms are essentially community prayers, and they remain so whether we recite them with others or alone.

Alexander A. Di Lella, OFM, is the Andrews-Kelly-Ryan Distinguished Professor of Biblical Studies at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.


Praying/Journaling 1the Gospel Narrative: The Centurion at the Crucifixion (Luke 23:24-49)

Lectio Divina is an imaginative and exciting approach to spirituality that opens biblical texts like the centurion's story.

By Timothy A. Friedrichsen

Editors' Note: What follows is an example of praying with a gospel story. The reflection will be followed by commentary and instruction. We suggest reading Luke 23:24-49 with particular attention to the person of the centurion and then proceeding to read this article.

The Centurion's Story
Well, I lost my job. I had faithfully carried out and even gone beyond orders for years, and so I had moved up the ranks rather regularly. Recently I was commissioned to be the leader of one hundred troops—I had finally made centurion. I was proud of my work, proud of my part in protecting Roman interests in Jerusalem. But all that changed on the day I met Jesus.

We brought him in like a common criminal; to me he looked more like a rural man who worked with his hands than a threat to the Roman rule. I stood careful guard, heard the charges, watched him refuse to come to his own defense, and escorted him to his death sentence. All the while I realized that I felt something amiss. But I tried to ignore those feelings and instead concerned myself with the orders I received and with directing my troops to their jobs.

My feeling that Jesus was innocent grew stronger and stronger. Even Pilate and Herod seemed unable to convict Jesus, but neither of them really cared much about truth and justice—they certainly were not to be trusted. In the end, Pilate allowed the execution, and even formalized it with the inscription above Jesus' head: "This is the King of the Jews"—I don't recall when Rome had made that a crime. Jesus' innocence most impressed itself on me by the way he did not seem to worry about himself but instead worried about others. He healed the slave's ear; he was concerned about the fate of the Jerusalem women; he forgave all who were involved—even me—for what we were doing; and he promised Paradise to the repentant thief. But what really convinced me was his final, almost tranquil, breath: "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit."

It was then that I realized this man could not have been guilty. For some time, even before we had arrested him, Jesus must have placed his life in his Father's hands. Only an innocent man could have gone to his death the way he did. In such an awful situation, only an innocent man could be more concerned with others than with his own self. So when he breathed his last, I felt my own breath knocked out of me. What had I done?

As I look back on it now, it seems so ironic. The crowd didn't want Jesus released, they wanted to free Barabbas, who was guilty of the very charge of insurrectionism that the Romans trumped up against Jesus! And though some of his followers considered Jesus to be the Son of God, the crowd didn't want him released. They shouted for Barabbas, whose name means "Son of the Father!" How ironic! Why didn't I see it while it was happening? Why did it only sink in when I saw this innocent man draw his last breath? I felt horrible, and I wanted to get as far away as I could. Just then I heard myself saying, "This man was innocent beyond doubt."

For those words, I was dismissed from the Roman army; in the Roman army you don't last long if you question authority, even if you do so spontaneously or unintentionally. I'd like to say that I went gladly, without a glance back—but it had been my life, and I was certain I was doing what was right in carrying out Roman rule. I had worked hard to get my advances, and I looked forward to retiring with some hard-earned property and pension. I had managed to scratch my way up the social ladder; and upon my retirement, I would have enjoyed some prestige, position, and power that I had not previously had. But that is all gone—gone because I met that innocent man, Jesus.

As I look back, I still feel lots of anger. But also I can hardly imagine how I ever joined the Roman forces in the first place! Nevertheless, I was a good recruit. I had lots of talent; I was responsible; and I aimed to please. I followed orders faithfully—right up to the end. I went where I was told to go and lived where I was told to live. I learned quickly that my opinions didn't matter; only those in the highest positions were to do the thinking—they didn't want us to worry our little heads about anything. Many of us swallowed that completely.

What has helped me through the toughest times is that I carry in myself the powerful experience of a man who was able to give his life over into the hands of his Father. I also carry in myself the powerful experience of a man who could be more concerned about others than himself, because he was at peace with himself and with the Father. I also carry in myself the powerful experience of an innocent man, who suffered with dignity and honor, and in whom there was no shame.

Please, don't worry about me. I have gotten on with my life, because I have placed my life in my Father's hands. I also carry in myself a new power from the example of Jesus, who was concerned not about getting approval from others but instead about being true to himself and his mission. Sure, I lost prestige, position, and power—but even better, now, as a disciple of Jesus, I have new and more meaningful prestige, position, and power because I have placed my life, my spirit, into my Father's hands, into the power and presence of God.

Luke's Narrative of Jesus' Death
This narrative reflection from the point of view of the centurion is but one resulting in an imaginative, prayerful interaction between myself and the text, and thus it is only one of many possible reflections. Other persons' reflections might take on much different coloration and emphasis. Not everyone who wishes to employ this method of praying with or journaling on the Scriptures will have the time, resources, or even interest to engage in the type of study of a gospel (or some other biblical) narrative to which we will now turn. I would submit that such study is not a necessary prerequisite to this method of praying with scriptural narratives. Nevertheless, the more one knows about the text, the deeper and richer one's reflection can be. In the end, what is most important is for the pray-er to approach the biblical narrative with an open, honest, prayerful imagination, for that will lead one into richly personal journeys with any and all characters in the pray-er's chosen narrative.

The Bible as a Foundation for Prayer
It is fair to say that there is growing interest in the Sacred Scriptures. More people are reading the Bible on a regular, perhaps even daily, basis. Many of them use—or at least try to use—this reading as the foundation for their prayer. But as much as that might be true, many people who are attempting to read and pray with the Scriptures find it, at least at first, somewhat frustrating, because the meaning of the Scriptures can often seem quite evasive.

To bring this understanding of prayer and God to the desire to pray with, on, or from Scriptures is to respond to a particular call, to a particular type of prayer with its own challenges and rewards. This call to prayer invites us into the full sweep of salvation history, for to pray with the Scriptures is to enter into the centuries of reflection and prayer by believing men and women that constitute the Christian community and, of course, its normative texts of faith.

How to enter into such a daunting collection of texts? What preparation does one need? No doubt, as both LaVerdiere and Pennington point out, the more one understands the history, contexts, social settings, literary forms, various senses, and so forth, of the biblical texts and their authors, the richer one's experience of reading and praying with the Scriptures can be (LaVerdiere, 33). Because of that, I've taken some time to comment on the text on which our narrative reflection focused: namely, the crucifixion and the centurion's response in Luke 23:24-49. But the praying or journaling of the gospel narrative that I demonstrated and am encouraging—while it requires a willingness to be creative and personally involved in the biblical text—does not necessitate a great deal of prior study, however helpful that would be. This approach is a journey with characters, named or implied, in the biblical narrative; this approach, in my experience of using it for personal prayer, in retreat presentations, and occasionally in homilies, feels much like walking in the shoes of biblical characters and can result in a rich experiential encounter with the text and its characters.

Specific to the meditation that I am encouraging is the imaginative act of placing ourselves within the narrative by identifying with one of the characters, an act whereby the character comes to life in a way that does not seem to happen, at least for me, without this creative engagement. Although he is not speaking of this particular engagement of the gospel narrative, LaVerdiere's observation is to the point: "A poor refuge for those who would escape life, the Bible comes to life for those who engage in life. As we learn to recognize ourselves in the struggles, efforts, failures and successes of the great and of the lesser [persons] of biblical history, the Bible's living word is transformed into our personal prayer" (ix). This creative, imaginative act of stepping into the shoes of a character of the narrative can be done in silent meditation, by speaking aloud, or by journaling. Stepping into the shoes of various characters in the narrative can also further enhance the richness of the narrative, and thus of one's Lectio Divina. Although the example I offered above is from the point of view of the centurion at the crucifixion in the Gospel according to Luke, a different prayer experience can be had by taking on the character of Pilate, the released Barabbas, Simon of Cyrene, a mourning woman from Jerusalem, a jeering ruler, either of the criminals being crucified with Jesus, or even one of the unnamed persons among the people witnessing the crucifixion. In turn, this type of meditation can lead one to orations of praise, thanksgiving, or petition, as well as to deeper ontemplation, thereby fitting in well with the entire scope of traditional Lectio Divina.

Timothy A. Friedrichsen is an assistant professor of New Testament in the Department of Religion and Religious Education, The Catholic University of America. Fr. Friedrichsen is a priest of the diocese of Sioux City, Iowa.

The Lord's Prayer

Jesus said, "This is how you are to pray."

By Francis Gignac

The Lord's Prayer, or the Our Father, is a typical Jewish prayer that first appears in the New Testament and early Christian literature toward the end of the first century. It comes down to us in three forms: in Luke, Matthew, and the Didache.

Luke 11:1-4
Luke incorporates into his travel account (9:51–19:27) an episode in which Jesus, at the request of his disciples, teaches them to pray. Prayer is the setting for all the major events of this gospel (at Jesus' baptism, at the choosing of the twelve, before Peter's confession and first prediction of the passion, at the transfiguration, at the Last Supper, in the garden, and on the cross). Luke depicts Jesus at prayer more often than any of the other gospel writers. For him, this is one of the most important ways for disciples to follow Jesus.

Alone among the gospel writers, Luke portrays the disciples as asking Jesus to teach them to pray. He puts it in the context of their seeing him praying and mentions that John the Baptist so taught his disciples. The prayer Luke incorporates here is from Q, the source of written sayings that was shared by the authors of the gospels according to Luke and Matthew along with their main source, the gospel according to Mark. In the Lucan version it runs as follows:

Father, sanctify your name. Your kingdom come. Give us our future bread daily. And forgive us our sins, for we too forgive everyone in debt to us. And do not put us to the final test.

Matthew 6:9-13
This is a later, more developed form of the Our Father. It is placed in the literary context of the Sermon on the Mount after the Beatitudes and the six antitheses as part of an exhortation on the three traditional Jewish virtues of almsgiving, prayer, and fasting. In the sense that it is not hypocritical or long-winded in prayer, it offers an example of good prayer:

Our heavenly Father, sanctify your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done both in heaven and on earth. Give us our future bread today. And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors. And do not put us to the final test, but deliver us from the evil one.

Didache (Teaching of the Twelve Apostles) 8:2
This later first-century version is almost certainly dependent on the Matthaean version:
Our heavenly Father, sanctify your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done both in heaven and on earth. Give us our future bread today. And forgive us our debt, as we too forgive our debtors. And do not put us to the final test, but deliver us from the evil one. For yours is the power and the glory forever.

The Individual Phrases
The more primitive version of the Lord's Prayer begins simply "Father." The later "Our Father, who art in heaven" is better translated "Our heavenly Father" because it is an attributive in Greek, not a relative clause. Jesus seems to have been the first Jew to address God simply as "Father." The people of Israel certainly referred to God as their Father, but in a corporate or covenantal sense. In all the records of Jewish prayers we have in the Hebrew Bible, in rabbinical writings, and in the Dead Sea Scrolls, God is nowhere addressed simply as "Father." There is always some qualifier, like "Almighty Father," "Everlasting Father," "Heavenly Father," or "Father" is used in apposition, as in late Wisdom literature: "O Lord, Father and Master of my life" (Sir 23:1). But addressing God simply as "Father" is attributed to Jesus by New Testament authors. Paul (Gal 4:6; Rom 8:15) and later Mark (14:36) even preserve the Aramaic "Abba," which they translate literally, ho pater, "O Father."

The Lord's Prayer in Aramaic
When I was a child, I memorized the Lord's Prayer in various languages, including French and German, and of course Latin and Greek. It was only later as an adult that I had access to the prayer inAramaic, the language that Jesus spoke. This reconstruction, based on a retro-version by Joseph Fitzmyer,3 is a reconstruction of what may have been the wording in the sayings document shared by the authors of Luke and Matthew:

‘Abb ', yitqaddaš š m k, t 'têh malkût k, lah mán ' dî limh ar hab lán h yôm ' d n h, ûš buq lán h h ôbayn ' k dî š báqn ' l h ayy bayn ', w 'al ta' linnán ' l nisyôn.

This can be translated as

Father! / May your name be sanctified! / May your kingdom come! / Give us this day our bread for subsistence. / Forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors. / And bring us not into temptation.

The Lord's Prayer has long stood as a necessary ingredient of the Church's spirituality and sacramentality. It is a beautiful personal prayer that blossoms in meaning within communal prayer. But we must come to know the words we pray. Understanding the Lord's Prayer is essential to teaching prayer effectively as well as to participating fully in the prayer of the community "in the words that Jesus taught us. . . ."

Francis Gignac, SJ, is the chairman of the Biblical Studies Department of The Catholic University of America. He has written books and numerous articles on learning biblical Greek and its importance to the study of the Scriptures.


Imitating Paul in Order to Follow Christ

Christian discipleship learns from the examples of Christ, Paul, and the Church's holy and righteous.

By Frank J. Matera

When thought of in terms of discipleship, the spiritual life is a process of taking up one's cross daily and following Jesus (see Lk 9:23). This understanding of the spiritual life is deeply rooted in the Gospels, especially the Synoptic Gospels, in which there are numerous examples of Jesus' calling people to follow him. Thus, at the beginning of all the Gospels, the evangelists narrate stories in which Jesus calls disciples to leave everything and follow him (Mt 4:18-22; Mk 1:16-20; Lk 5:1-11; Jn 1:35-51).

The Greek word for disciple (mathetes) means "learner" or "pupil." When Jesus called people to follow him, he was inviting them to learn from what he said and did. Thus the disciples followed Jesus in order to hear and see what he said and did, to learn how he reacted and responded, and to see how he lived. By following Jesus, then, they were constantly learning from him, even when he did not explicitly teach them.

Although the language of discipleship is found in the Gospels, it all but disappears from the rest of the New Testament, including the Pauline epistles. Instead of summoning people to follow Jesus or become disciples of the Risen Lord, Paul exhorts his converts to imitate him; for example, in 1 Corinthians he writes, "I urge you, be imitators of me" (4:16). A little later in the same epistle he writes, "Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ" (11:1). And, in what is the most striking of all passages, he writes, "Join with others in being imitators of me, brothers, and observe those who thus conduct themselves according to the model you have in us" (Phil 3:17).

The point I make in the rest of this article (and the answer to the questions raised above) can be summarized in this way: Paul's exhortation to imitate him is his way of summoning people to discipleship by providing them with a concrete model of what it means to live a cruciform existence—a life patterned on the death and resurrection of Christ. Put another way, in summoning people to imitate him, Paul is saying, "I have so conformed myself to the pattern of Christ's death and resurrection that if you imitate me you will imitate Christ."

First Thessalonians
First Thessalonians was written to a community of Gentiles whom Paul had recently converted to faith in Christ. As a consequence of their new faith, they were now suffering, or about to suffer, persecution and social ostracism. Accordingly, Paul writes to strengthen and encourage the community, reminding them that they have been incorporated into God's elect. In doing so, Paul congratulates the Thessalonians because they have imitated him and the Lord to such an extent that they have become a pattern to follow for other believers throughout Macedonia and Achaia (Greece). In effect, then, they have become a link in a chain of imitation: Christ to Paul, to themselves, to others.

The implication of this passage is clear: the Thessalonians ought to learn from Paul's behavior. If they do, they will live in accord with the Gospel.

Second Thessalonians
In 2 Thessalonians, Paul must deal with another problem. Some members of the community have become unruly and disorderly in their conduct. Some have even stopped working; and instead of supporting themselves, they now depend upon the labors of others for their livelihood.

First Corinthians
I have already quoted the two texts in 1 Corinthians in which Paul exhorts his Corinthian converts to imitate him (4:16; 11:1). We must now put these texts into a context.

Apostolic Suffering
The first text (4:16) is the culmination of a section (chapters 1-4) in which Paul has been dealing with a problem of factions and divisions within the community. These divisions occurred because the Corinthians misunderstood the true nature of wisdom and apostolic ministry. For the Corinthians, wisdom was a matter of power and strength. They especially esteemed those ministers of the Gospel whose ministry reflected such strength and power. Moreover, the Corinthians foolishly viewed themselves as already being wise and as having already been brought into God's eschatological rule (see Paul's sarcastic remark in 1 Cor 4:8).

The Weak and the Strong
In chapters 8-10 Paul must deal with a serious problem between two factions at Corinth. One faction is characterized as "weak" because of its delicate conscience about participating in cultic banquets and eating food that has been sacrificed to idols. The other faction is characterized as "strong" because its members have a robust conscience. They know that there is no such thing as an idol, and they mistakenly believe that they can do whatever they want—even participate in cultic banquets where sacrifices are made to idols. The problem is that in the exercise of their newfound freedom, the strong are in danger of scandalizing the weaker members of the community. Because Paul wants to build up the entire community, he calls upon the strong to sacrifice some of their freedom for the sake of the entire community.

Second Corinthians
Second Corinthians is the most personal of Paul's letters. Paul is under attack from the very community he has founded and from intruding missionaries who have criticized his ministerial style. Among the criticisms are the following: Paul does not accept support from the community as do other apostles; and while his letters are strong, his speech is contemptible (see the accusation in 10:10). The most serious charge, however, concerns Paul himself: he is a weak and pitiable character, afflicted and sick. By contrast the intruding missionaries, whom Paul sarcastically calls "super apostles" (see 11:5; 12:11), are powerful and attractive preachers of the Gospel.

Philippians
In Philippians, Paul makes the bold statement: Join with others in being imitators of me (4:9). As with 2 Corinthians, one could say that the whole of this letter is a call to imitate Paul. For example, at the beginning of the letter, the imprisoned Paul presents himself as a model of patient suffering for the sake of the Gospel and of the Philippians, showing them that his imprisonment has paradoxically resulted in the advancement of the Gospel rather than being a hindrance to it (1:12-26). At the end of the letter, when Paul thanks the Philippians for their gift of support, he says that he has learned to be self-sufficient in whatever situation he finds himself. For he now knows how to live in humble circumstances as well as in abundance (4:11-12). Thus, the imprisoned Paul becomes a model for the community to imitate.

Modeling the Faith
If it is true that we cannot follow Christ in the way his first disciples did, it is also true that we can no longer imitate Paul as his first converts did. For just as we no longer see Christ in the flesh, so we no longer see Paul. However, the theme of imitation continues to have value because Paul viewed himself as the beginning of a chain of imitation rooted in Christ. Paul imitated Christ's cruciform life and taught others to do the same. And ever since that has been a kind of apostolic succession of imitation from one generation to the next.

Although we may not be able to imitate Paul in the same way that his first converts did, we can imitate others whose lives have been conformed to the cross of Christ. Most importantly, each generation must become an example for the next of what it means to follow Christ by living a cruciform existence. Like Paul, each generation must be willing to say, "join others in imitating me."

Frank J. Matera, a frequent contributor to The Living Light, is a professor in the Department of Theology at The Catholic University of America. Dr. Matera's two most recent books are New Testament Christology and New Testament Ethics, both published by Westminster John Knox Press.


Spirituality According to St. Paul

The challenge of St. Paul's complex yet beautiful spirituality can enliven the Church today.

By Raymond F. Collins

Spirituality is essentially the working of the Spirit in our lives and our response to the Spirit's dynamic presence. The oldest piece of Christian literature about spirituality is Paul's First Letter to the Thessalonians. Paul raised the topic of spirituality at the end of a short discourse on holiness (1 Thes 4:3-8).1 He wrote, "This is the will of God, your holiness" (1 Thes 4:3). He then proceeded to tell the neophyte Christians of Thessalonica that God has called us in holiness (1 Thes 4:7). His exhortation on holiness was brought to a close with a reminder that God gives his Holy Spirit to us (1 Thes 4:8).

Do Not Quench the Spirit" (1 Thes 5:19)
Paul wrote about holiness as a way to explain to the Thessalonians how they were to live and please God (1 Thes 4:1). "This is the will of God, your holiness" was his opening phrase. These words introduce a short and tightly knit literary unit that concludes with the reminder that God gives his Holy Spirit to us. By using the same key terms—God, us, and holiness—at the beginning and at the end of the passage, Paul constructed 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8 as a single literary unit whose topic is holiness. To reinforce his point, Paul reminded the Thessalonians that they were to act in a holy manner (1 Thes 4:4) because they had been called in holiness (1 Thes 4:7).

The basic idea of holiness is that someone or something belongs to God; he, she, or it is God's own possession. The Greek words that are translated as "holy" signify that something or someone has been removed from the public domain, the ordinary or profane world, and fully set aside for the service of God, sanctified and declared holy. The Christians of Thessalonica were called to be God's holy people. They were called in holiness and were to act in a way that responded to that call. They were not to act like Gentiles, people who had no real experience of God or who really did not know him (1 Thes 4:5).

Phenomena that might be attributed to the Spirit might not really come from the Spirit, no matter what claims are made for them. Not everything that even the inspirited person does comes from the Spirit. That is why testing—the discernment of spirits—is so necessary. The good, God's gift, must be distinguished from the evil that does not proceed from the Spirit. Even the words of the prophets must be weighed and tested. The inspirited person, the truly spiritual person, must respond to words spoken in the Spirit—but discernment, "testing," remains essential. Not everything that a prophet says is really prophetic, truly God's message. Discernment marks the road of the spiritual journey.

"No One Can Say, ‘Jesus is Lord,' Except by the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor 12:3)
The ideas about which Paul had only begun to hint at the end of his Letter to the Thessalonians were clarified a few years later when he wrote to the church of God at Corinth. That church was beset by a number of issues that threatened to tear it apart. These issues tended to destroy the church as a communion of those who are "sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints" (RSV: 1 Cor 1:2). In the opening of his letter, Paul reminds the Corinthians—not once, but twice— that as the church of God they are called God's holy people—that they are sanctified. "Called saints" means that they have been declared "saints," God's holy people by God himself, on the one hand.3 On the other hand, "called saints" means that they have been called to be saints; that is, holiness is their vocation.

The title "Lord" holds more than mere retrospective confession of past reality. In the confessional acclamation that Jesus is Lord there is also the prospective hope of future reality. To acclaim that Jesus is Lord is to confess one's hope that Jesus will come again as Lord at the Parousia. In the end, his Lordship will be fully manifest and all things will be subject to him. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the first fruits of the resurrection of the dead. The Christian hope summarized in the simple acclamation "Jesus is Lord" is the deep conviction that God who raised Jesus from among the dead will likewise raise those who belong to him from among the dead (see 1 Thes 4:14; 1 Cor 15:20, 22-23).
To say "Jesus is Lord" is to embody the acclamation in one's life. It is to act in such a way that the Lord Jesus is the ultimate and proximate frame of reference for all that one does. It is to acknowledge the authority of Jesus as Lord not only in the far off Parousia, when the Lordship of Jesus will be fully manifest, but in the day-to-day reality of ordinary life. It is to live with Jesus as the directing force of one's life, the norm of one's every action. The speaking words "Jesus is Lord" simply mean that we are servants of the one whom we call Lord and that we live accordingly.

No wonder Paul could write, "No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,' except by the holy Spirit!" Saying "Jesus is Lord" sums up the essence of Christian spirituality. It is faith and it is hope. It is a lifestyle that acknowledges the Lordship of Jesus in one's life. It professes all of this in prayer, be it ever so simple as "Jesus is Lord."

Only when the Christians of Corinth had begun to understand that "no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,' except by the holy Spirit!" could they begin to understand what spirituality is and how the Spirit manifests itself in our lives. Taking their cue from the ecstatic experiences that occurred in pagan cults, some Corinthians had thought that the power of the Spirit was manifest in extraordinary phenomenon. They yearned for such phenomena, the "spiritual gifts" that distinguish the elite from the have-nots within the community.

For Paul, this desire for the extraordinary was misplaced. In an exercise of theological critique, he rejected the expression "spiritual gifts," in particular the spiritual word pneumatika used by the divisive and self-inflated Corinthians. He coined a new word to put in its stead. That word was "charism" (charisma), the "gifts" about which he writes in 1 Corinthians 13:4. For Paul it was far more important to focus on the Giver of the gift and on the gift that is given than it is to be fascinated by the magnificence and extraordinary quality of a particular gift.

Corollaries
First Corinthians 12-14 is the seminal essay on Christian spirituality. Any theological understanding of spirituality must take into account what Paul has written in those three chapters. Much of what Paul wrote is as timely today as when it was first written. From the many lessons that can be drawn from Paul's teaching and several different corollaries, let me give three examples.

First, all baptized persons have received the gift of the Spirit and are therefore charismatic. Every baptized person has the Spirit dwelling and active within her or him. The person who seeks an authentic spirituality must discern his or her own charism and put it to work in the service of

Those Who Are Led by the Spirit of God Are Children of God" (Rom 8:14)
Prayer is a topic to which Paul returns in an epistle that is sometimes considered to be his opusculum magnum. In the Letter to the Romans he writes, "Those who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God" (Rom 8:14). This is a powerful affirmation, one so important that in Paul's own view it needed some explanation. So, explain Paul did: "For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption, through which we cry, ‘Abba! Father!' The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God" (Rom 8:15-16). Paul later said virtually the same thing to the Galatians: "As proof that you are children, God sent the spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying out, ‘Abba, Father!'" (Gal 4:6).

So it is with Christian spirituality. We use the formulas of our common prayer when we pray together. Otherwise, our common prayer would be a cacophony (see 1 Cor 14:23). When we pray the child's prayer, prompted by the Spirit and rising from the heart, we pray to the Father with simplicity and directness. Rote prayer is hardly a sign of spirituality; it is principally a sign of togetherness, a sign of a desire to share with a community. Paul wrote, "We do not know how to pray as we ought" (Rom 8:26)! Sometimes silence and sighs too deep to be expressed in words are the most meaningful forms of communication between humans. Sometimes silence and sighs too deep for words are the forms of prayer that are truly inspired by the Spirit (Rom 8:26-27).

The Spirit that moves a spiritual person to pray "Abba, Father!" and utter sighs too deep for words is, as Paul reminds us, not the spirit of slavery that leads us into fear but the spirit of adoption that leads us with courage (Rom 8:15). In the words of Second Timothy, "God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control" (2 Tm 1:7). The child's simple prayer and the lover's inarticulate groans are signs that attest to the presence of the Spirit. So, too, are the courage and boldness that arise from the confidence of an inspirited person's conviction that he or she is a child of God. Fear and anxiety are not signs of spirituality; they are lacking in the conviction that one is truly a child of God. In Paul's understanding, cowardice is not a sign of spirituality. Confidence, boldness, and freedom are the product of authentic spirituality.

In Retrospect
Within the New Testament the Apostle Paul has the most to say about spirituality. Spirituality has everything to do with holiness because the power of the Spirit is what makes believers of God's holy people. The spiritual life has everything to do with ordinary day-to-day life because the Spirit of God is not a sometime visitor but a permanent resident and powerful force. Spirituality is expressed in prayer that need not be wordy. "Jesus is Lord" and "Abba, Father!" say it all and so well. Spirituality is not a part of the life of the believer; it is the life of the believer. It includes the past, the present, and the future. It is service to others and concern for the environment that God has created. Spirituality is ever so simple . . . and ever so challenging.

Raymond F. Collins is professor of New Testament in the Department of Theology of The Catholic University of America. Fr. Collins' books include Preaching the Epistles, The Birth of the New Testament, and Divorce in the New Testament.


WWJD? WIJD? Living Jesus Today in a Lay Vocation

Faith calls Christians to recognize the work of Jesus Christ and his Spirit in their daily lives.

By Katherine Yohe

One night when Blessed Peter Pettinaio of the Third Order was praying in the Cathedral of Sienna, he saw Our Lord Jesus Christ enter the church, followed by a great throng of saints. And each time Christ raised His foot, the form of his foot remained imprinted on the ground. And all the saints tried as hard as they could to place their feet in the traces of His footsteps, but none of them was able to do so perfectly. Then St. Francis came in and set his feet right in the footsteps of Jesus Christ.

This vision exemplifies one way of speaking about Christian perfection: following in the footsteps of Jesus Christ. Because it sees Francis of Assisi as the only one who can do this perfectly, the vision also seems to teach that this following is a matter of imitating as closely as possible the earthly life of Jesus of Nazareth. Francis truly is stellar from this perspective: he left his home and family to become an itinerant preacher, traveling the countryside with a small band of disciples, working miracles, and preaching to the poor. Francis, like his model, embraced poverty and lived celibately.

The modern WWJD movement (the acronym stands for "What would Jesus do?") has a similar approach to Christian spirituality and is based on Charles Sheldon's 1896 book In His Steps.² The initials are most commonly seen on bracelets but also appear on everything from t-shirts to Bible covers. Like Francis' imitation of Christ, WWJD looks to Jesus' life in Palestine as a model and tries to pattern present life on his example. A slight difference is that the question "What would Jesus do?" more readily grants that Jesus may never have been in the exact same situation.

Great things have been done by those devoted to this type of spirituality. Nonetheless, WWJD, like its classic counterpart "the imitation of Christ," becomes harder to apply when the situations we face are far removed from anything Jesus of Nazareth encountered. What if the situation is how much money to put away for retirement? How many children to have and how to discipline them? How to decorate the house? How to be reconciled to a spouse after a nasty argument? What to major in at college when one's SAT scores are more than 1400 and one loves both math and music? How to create the best marketing campaign for the company's new line of lawn mowers? Jesus' life in the gospel accounts does not provide a clear road map for such daily details of the secular life. Indeed the details of whatever Jesus did do in his secular life before he began his public ministry are shrouded in silence.

Yet the laity need to be able to see such details as part and parcel of their spiritual life—the very stuff through which their union with God and their sanctification occur. I suspect that the failure of the laity to understand and embrace fully their unique secular vocation may be due, in part, to thinking too much of spiritual perfection in terms of the imitation of Christ and its modern counterpart WWJD. So many of the secular aspects of the lay life do not readily fit into the pattern of Jesus' life portrayed in the Gospels, and for this reason they can easily be seen as either less spiritual or as irrelevant to the spiritual life.

Living Jesus Today in a Lay Vocation: Asking WIJD?
In the Second Vatican Council's Decree on the Apostolate of Lay People (Apostolicam actuositatem), under the section on the spirituality of lay people, the following is noted: "Only the light of faith and meditation on the word of God can enable us to find everywhere and always the God ‘in whom we live and exist' (Acts 17:28); only thus can we seek his will in everything, see Christ in everyone, acquaintance or stranger, make sound judgments on the true meaning and value of temporal realities both in themselves and in relation to our final end." Returning to the Word of God and meditating on these living texts can enable lay persons to find God everywhere and always, to see Christ in all persons, and to understand the true meaning and value of the secular world and secular tasks in which the laity are immersed. However, "How can I best imitate Jesus?" or "What would Jesus do?" are not the right questions for the laity to be asking of the text. Let me posit another question that creates a different framework for meditating on the Scriptures: "What is Jesus doing?" (WIJD). While the former questions focus on the example of the life of the Incarnate Word in Palestine two thousand years ago, the latter focuses on God's living presence, through his spirit in different persons and situations throughout history, including the modern secular world. For the question WIJD to be fruitful, it must be seen in a Trinitarian context. To understand what Jesus is doing today, one has to know not only the gospel accounts of the activities of Jesus, but also what his promised Spirit did after being poured out upon the early Christians. Likewise, one has to study the activities of the Father, the Word, and the Spirit in the time before the Incarnation. For the remainder of this article, I will highlight some Scripture passages from the New and Old Testament that can familiarize the laity with the work that God has been doing in the past, so that they can more readily recognize and participate in the work of God today.

Finding Christ in Everyone
What answers arise if one looks at the Book of Acts, asking "What is Jesus doing?" Peter's explanation of the phenomena of Pentecost is that "Jesus," whom God has raised and is now exalted at God's right hand, having himself received the promised Holy Spirit from the Father, is now pouring the Spirit on them (Acts 2:32-33). WIJD? Jesus is filling thousands with the Spirit. As one continues to read Acts, it is clear that not only is Jesus sitting at the right hand of the Father, pouring down the Spirit from above, but he is also with the Christians living in the world. Note the words addressed to Saul: "I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting." If Jesus is the one being persecuted, then it seems we could also say that Jesus is selling his property, donating the proceeds to take care of the needs of others. He is being baptized, together with his whole family and household. He is with his spouse, hosting other Christians in their home. He is making tents and garments. In a few of his members, he is traveling to preach. But in most of his members, he is staying in the town or countryside in which he was raised, committed to family and friends, spending time working and caring for the children he bore and the parents who bore him. It's worth reading Acts and the epistles to note how many of the early Christians were what today we would call "laity."

Shortly after the birth of my son, Gabriel, I drew great comfort from Matthew 25. My normal routines of prayer and spiritual reading disappeared into the tiring rounds of caring for a newborn. I certainly was not living anything close to the life of St. Francis. Yet this passage helped me see how I was intimately loving and serving Jesus. What newborn is not hungry and thirsty, needing to be tended by Mom? Are they not also naked, needing to be clothed? Strangers in a new world needing to be welcomed? Perhaps one could even say imprisoned, crying to be lifted out of their crib after a nap.

What Jesus Intends to Do in His Lay Members
What can meditating on the Word of God teach us about what a lay person should be doing to grow into the fullness of the stature of Christ? What is it that Jesus Christ intends to do through his Spirit in his lay members today? For the purposes of this article, I will focus on what Jesus intends on doing in our relationship with the whole temporal order: the realm of "things" and possessions. One could also analyze Scripture by looking for what Jesus intends on doing in the realm of family life, friendships, the civic community, or other topics related to the lay life.

From these passages it is clear that God's plan goes beyond the salvation of souls. The whole world, "everything," is to be sanctified, is to be reunited to the Father, until God be all and all. Practically, though, what does this mean? How are things sanctified? How does God become "all in all" in a maple tree? In a morning dove? In the stones that make up the Washington monument? In my toyota? In the chair you are sitting on? In your cellular phone?

While not intending to detract from the devotion and good fruit of the WWJD movement, then, I believe WIJD is a better question for the laity to ask. What is Jesus doing? This question can more readily be asked of any situation and calls us to focus on Jesus' living presence, now. To get a framework for answering it in our daily circumstances, we can first ask it of the varied times, places, and persons in Scripture, looking for what the Father is doing, through the Son in the Spirit. Asking this question, we can see that God is present in all persons. We can also see God's deep love for the whole created order, the plan to unite all things in Christ, and the plan to subject all through the Son to the Father, until God be all in all. In meditating on WIJD throughout the Scriptures, I am further struck by the vastness and diversity of God's activity. God always loves, yes, but this love does different things at different times through different persons. God did different things through Jeremiah, Isaiah, Moses, Ruth, David, Solomon, Rahab, Paul, Peter, John, Stephen, Mary, Martha, and Ananias—and I should thus expect Jesus to be doing different things in different people today. Perhaps it would help to think of Christ's Spirit as the air and each of us as different inflatables: all sorts of shapes and sizes of rubber rafts, floating toys, balloons, blow-up pools, water wings. The same Spirit fills each—but when filled, each looks different and has a different mission of love.

Katherine Yohe is currently a visiting assistant professor for The Religion and Religious Education Department of The Catholic University of America. Dr. Yohe has spoked widely on the topics of friendship and the role of the laity in the world.


ARTICLE
Christian Scriptures on the Internet

Biblical resources found on the World Wide Web are extensive. Responsible surfing requires knowledge and patience.

By Jason King

More than twenty-five years ago, The Living Light published an article entitled "Reaching Adults Through Cable TV," which examined the new resources then available to religious educators.1 Today, with the emergence of the Internet, the number of resources available can be frightening, overwhelming, and confusing. Yet with some guidance, the Internet can aid and support the work of religious educators as well as provide spiritual insight and pedagogical tools. For many Catholics, online resources that make the Scriptures more accessible and understandable are a necessary and welcome tool.

One proof of the value of these sites is that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' (USCCB) website (www.usccb.org) has received a strong response to the posting of the lectionary's daily readings. The site averages upwards of 2,000 visits per day, and each Sunday reading averages about 10,000 visits alone. Moreover, the conference has had requests to post the readings farther in advance (currently they are posted on a monthly basis) and to have them available in Spanish (which is in the works). The site is used for teaching purposes, homily preparation, pastoral needs, and personal meditations.⁴

On one level, these numbers indicate a strong interest in the Christian Scriptures among Catholics. On a second level, they signify a whole new way of learning and, consequently, teaching about these Scriptures. How has catechetical ministry responded to this new reality? How well are instructors and catechists meeting this demand for online scriptural resources? What are the strengths and weaknesses of their approaches? What needs still must be met?
In what follows, I have compiled an annotated bibliography of websites to help answer these questions. After visiting hundreds of sites, I organized them into five categories: Bibles, search engines, Bible studies, Catholic documents on Scripture, and directories. I further limited what I included by two selection criteria: those sites that (1) receive a high number of hits5 and (2) would be useful to religious educators.

Bibles
The largest category of scriptural resources on the Internet comprises sites that post translations of the Bible. These sites, however, suffer from two limitations. First, most contemporary translations of the Bible (e.g., the New Revised Standard Version, the Jerusalem Bible, and the New American Bible) are under copyright protection and hence are not in the public domain. The New American Bible, for example, can be found only at www.usccb.org/nab/bible/index.htm on the USCCB website. The result is that most translations available in the public domain are somewhat dated. Second, many of these online Bibles are embedded in websites that reflect a particular approach to Christianity—fundamentalism being the most common. Hence, while the translations are useful, educators must be cognizant of the perspectives of the accompanying links and paraphernalia. Finally, not all of the sites contain search capabilities.

Of the available English translations, the King James Version appears most frequently on the Internet. It can be found on a number of sites including www.bartleby.com/108/, www.hti.umich.edu/k/kjv/, and www.king jamesversionofthebible.com/. Other online versions include the Revised Standard Version at etext.virginia.edu/rsv.browse.html and www.hti.umich.edu/r/rsv/ and the New International Version at www.gospelcom.net/ibs/niv/.

Search Engines
In addition to providing texts, many websites have search engines for perusing the Bible—one of the unique advantages of online resources. These search engines facilitate the study of biblical texts by enabling people to access particular verses, themes, keywords, and phrases almost instantaneously. These capabilities are helpful to educators who need to locate scriptural passages to accompany their lesson plans. The effectiveness of these searches is somewhat diminished, however, because they are only found in conjunction with translations that are in the public domain (e.g., King James Version, New International Version, and Revised Standard Version); however, one can purchase search engines that contain copyrighted translations at most large bookstores.

Almost all of the biblical sites listed above include a chapter-and-verse search, but several sites are primarily devoted to just searching. A Catholic version of these search engines can be found at www.catholic.net/RCC/Catechism/Catechism.html. This site, of particular interest to catechists, does a word-and-verse search of the Bible as well as providing links to the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Code of Canon Law. If the technology is available in a parish or diocesan office, this service could allow for interactive classes. The website www.scripture.net permits online searches of the Bible by topic (although the menu is a pull-down window with predetermined categories). The website bible.gospelcom.net is a comprehensive search page that locates particular words in different translations and languages (English, French, Germany, Italian, Latin, Norse, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, and Danish) of the Bible. In English, the search page covers such versions as the New International Version, New American Standard Bible, King James Version, and the Revised Standard Version. The site www.unboundbible.org performs the same searches as above except only in French, Spanish, and English. Finally, www.blueletter bible.org provides links from particular verses in English translations to Greek, Hebrew, and Latin texts.

Bible Studies
In addition to the search engines, the Internet also contains numerous sites that provide studies on verses, chapters, and books of the Bible. Not all of these utilities, however, are reliable. Many posit highly idiosyncratic beliefs (e.g., www.believer.com and www.stromthight.com). Others represent specific groups of Christians with certain problematic beliefs for Roman Catholics (e.g., www.examiningthescriptures.com is a fundamentalist site with an anti-Catholic bias). Still others offer questionable prophecies about the end-time (e.g., www.whatsaiththescripture.com and www.ichthys.com). The problem is exacerbated by the fact that to locate sites valuable to religious educators, one must sort through thousands of sites whose usefulness is limited.

Catholic Documents On Scriptures
While almost all papal pronouncements, conciliar documents, and assorted congregations' statements are available through the Vatican's website (www.vatican.va), three documents of particular value to those interested in the Scriptures stand out. The first is Pius XII's On Promoting Biblical Studies (Divino Afflante Spiritu) (1943), located at www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_30091943_divino-afflante-spiritu_en.html, which is important because it was the first document supporting Catholic scholars' use of the historical critical method. The next text is the Second Vatican Council's document on Scripture, entitled Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum), found at www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ ii_vatican_council/ documents/vat-ii_const_19651118_dei-verbum_en.html. It lends the full support of an ecumenical council to the themes of Divino Afflante Spiritu. Further, Dei Verbum views the Scriptures within a sophisticated understanding of revelation and gives a holistic view of Scripture as a collection of divinely inspired documents and part of the economy of salvation. The third noteworthy document is the Pontifical Biblical Commission's text The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church (1994) found at www.ewtn.com/library/curia/pbcinter.htm. This document affirms the acceptability—albeit while carefully noting the limitations—of not only the historical critical method but also alternative modes of criticisms.

The Catholic Biblical Association (CBA) is an organization that supports the academic study of Scriptures from within the Catholic tradition. Found at cba.cua.edu, CBA has a history of supporting academics in their studies, offering scholarly perspective on current issues, ensuring the quality of biblical exegesis within the Catholic community, and operating as a consultative body for lectionaries and Bibles. This site can be of great value to those interested in academic discussions of biblical issues.

Directories
Perhaps the most important scriptural resources on the Internet are the website directories. In this article, I have focused on a sampling of sites with the intent of giving people an idea of what is available, but directories go beyond this article by offering thousands more sites similar to the ones mentioned here. The other advantage of these directories is that they often have links to many aspects of the Christian faith other than the Scriptures.

Conclusion
This article presents a broad spectrum of the Christian scriptural resources available online; while there are thousands more, the sites chosen give a sense of what is available. But I must return to the questions posed at the beginning of this article. How well are educators addressing the interest in Christian Scripture on the Internet? I conclude that the initial response to the growing demand for online scriptural resources is being met. People are free to access Bibles, search engines, church documents, essays, and directories, and they can do so in the privacy of their home—on their own time and by themselves.

The Internet has made traditional Christian texts easily and quickly accessible to all. To be really useful, however, two major concerns have to be addressed. The first has to do with trustworthiness, the second with modern translations. As noted repeatedly in this article, there are many sites that beat the drum for their own brand of Christianity. Unless one is confident in the provider of a site, "caveat emptor" should be the watch word. For the online data to be useful they first must be properly evaluated and analyzed. The more reliable translations of the Bible only have a limited availability, and many scholarly and meditative essays are inaccessible due to copyright requirements. Such requirements, while necessary, limit the availability of free, online scriptural resources.

In closing, I propose three things that, if done, would prove beneficial to catechetics. First, as knowledge of the Bible expands, web technology develops, and users become more savvy, educators must keep their sites abreast of the changes both in form and content. Even now, for example, sites could be improved by linking particular biblical verses to other sites; related works of art; archeological discoveries; ancient, medieval, and modern commentaries; or even parallels with Scriptures from different religions. Regardless, if no development in the form or content of the sites is made, people who have seen the site once will not return, dismissing it either as dated or as proffering no new information.

Second, because the statistics from CARA indicate that the Internet is most likely to be used for religious purposes by teenagers, Christian educators should focus some of their online labors on this group. Rarely did I come across a biblical site that gears its information toward them. Only a few sites (see Catholic Relief Services' site www.catholicrelief.org) have recognized the importance of reaching youth through the Internet. While the Internet is no replacement for Christian education, it is a forum where teens can freely investigate their spirituality. Hence, Christian website developers need to be cognizant of the number and preferences of online teenagers and construct websites that foster and develop their curiosity.

Finally, and I believe most importantly, educational programs need to teach people how to evaluate websites and analyze the information they provide. This skill is more important than any particular online resource. The Internet offers only data, and large portions of this data are skewed or erroneous. If people do not know how to think about or determine if the information is correct, they will squander the opportunities afforded by quality online scriptural resources. They will become mired in information because they will be unable to determine its relevance and veracity. Hence, the best way that Christian educators can make use of the Internet is to teach people how to become responsible users of it.

Jason King is an assistant professor of theology at Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia. Dr. King is a frequent contributor to The Living Light.


ARTICLE
Family Life in a Secular Culture

Recent church documents focus Catholic family life around prayer, love, and community.

By Susan Lang Abbott

Family life in a secular culture": Is this an oxymoron? Can there be stable, nurturing, family life in a secular culture? How does one define "family life"? How does one describe "secular culture"? Agreement on answers to these questions may be an unattainable goal, but there is great value in raising the questions and keeping the issues in front of those involved in religious education and pastoral work. This article has a twofold purpose: first, to raise the questions that catechetical leaders, pastoral ministers, and diocesan offices grapple with daily; and second, to encourage a renewed look at a church document that may lead us to some answers.

Any attempt to answer these questions moves us first to examine the Catholic vision of family. We are fortunate to have excellent resources to help us navigate the sometimes turbulent waters of family life. In 1987 the Catholic bishops' Ad Hoc Committee on Marriage and Family Life released A Family Perspective in Church and Society. This document was a mix of theology, social science, Catholic tradition, and public policy. While looking at the state of family life, the report also proposed a plan for pastoral action. A Family Perspective had a positive impact on pastoral leaders and was reissued in 1998 in a tenth anniversary edition with updated statistics. The report is a tremendous source of inspiration, sound pastoral ideas, and good sociological insight into family life.

Family Life in Context
From the perspective of religious educators and pastoral ministers, examining family life means looking at it through the lens of faith. However, before examining the Catholic vision of family we need to take a step back: we must first look at the Catholic theology of marriage. For this we turn briefly to our lectionary, our liturgy, and our law.

Scripture claims that the intimate union of man and woman that we know as marriage was part of God's plan from the beginning. In Genesis, God creates a partner for the first man, declaring, "It is not good for man to be alone." Throughout the Hebrew scriptures are stories of God's intervention that brings man and woman together. In several places in the New Testament, Jesus lifts up marriage, giving proof of its significance in the divine plan. Perhaps most familiar is the story in which Jesus chose a wedding feast at Cana as the place to perform his first public miracle. The importance of a wedding feast in the ancient world was so great that Jesus could not allow the newly married couple to be embarrassed by running out of wine. Hearing the entreaty of his mother, he changes water into wine.

Indeed, Catholic parents participate in the teaching office of the Church. From the prayers at an infant's baptism through the many documents on religious education, the Church makes clear that parents are the first educators in faith. The General Directory for Catechesis says simply and clearly, "Parents are the primary educators in the faith" (no. 255). Forming and educating our children in the faith can contribute to our own holiness. As we teach by example we become more aware of our own behavior. A secular example of this is the heightened attention to traffic safety that most of us adopt when we have a teenage passenger riding with us: we stop at stop signs, we obey the speed limit, we are courteous to pedestrians. Imagine what is taught about faith by the way we participate at liturgy, speak—or refrain from speaking—about our spiritual life, and handle the ups and downs of life.

Finally, the Church raises matrimony to the dignity of sacrament. We describe a sacrament as an outward sign, instituted by Christ, to give grace. The union of woman and man (the outward sign), raised up by Jesus in Scripture (instituted by Christ), leads to their sanctification (gives grace). Or—in a more modern definition—a sacrament causes what it signifies. Marriage signifies the union of two people, and the consent—the promises made at the time of the marriage—causes that union to be.

Marriage and Reality
The vision of marriage we see in Scripture, worship, and canon law is beautiful. We realize of course that in this not-so-perfect world, vision and reality can sometimes collide. Looking at the growing practice of couples' living together before marriage and the number of marriages that end in civil divorce, one can be easily discouraged. The Church calls on all members of the community to pray for and give example to married couples. Cardinal Bernard Law writes, "The obligations of the community to assist the couple do not cease on the wedding day . . . every member of the Church is to lend support to married persons" (35).

In supporting married couples, we support families. It is often not long before the family of two becomes the family of three. The family is the domestic church; family life is meant to be a means of holiness for all members. Can this happen if the environment beyond the front door of the home presents a different picture of life?

In 1980, as planners were preparing for a White House conference on the family, some representatives insisted that the word "families," plural, should be used instead of "family," singular, to acknowledge the vast diversity of American family types. Preparations ceased and the conference did not take place—all over the definition of family. That was twenty-one years ago!

It appears that the average woman and man in the street has a difficult time defining or describing family. There is no surprise, then, that "experts" will come up with different views too. Social scientists look at what is around them and view family as it is; their view is descriptive. Theologians—coming from a faith perspective, aware of the workings of God's grace, and informed by the teaching of the Church—say how family ought to be. They prepare a Christian vision of family life; their view is normative for religious education.

Catholic tradition sees that family proceeds from marriage. Therefore, family life is built on an intimate partnership that bonds husband and wife in a faithful, committed relationship. The Church's definition is meant to be normative and recognizes that this approach is not shared by all. However, the Church's definition is not a narrow one. It does not confine the family to two generations, parents and child, living in the same household, like the television families of the 1950s. It suggests a broader view: there can be several branches of a family living together; there can be households of adult siblings; there can be grandparent, single parent, and child—all under one roof, all one family. The Christian vision of family recognizes that people can be involved in several families at the same time, such as when couples care for elderly parents as well as young children. This scenario, while adding to the complications of family life, can also be a source of support. Multigenerational families provide a richness to family life even with the increased demands inherent in them. Adoptive families, especially in cases of adoption that cross racial and ethnic lines, add a different view of family. We must also make an effort to include single persons who are involved in the lives of their family members in our definition and view of family. The diverse configurations also indicate other covenantal relationships in the family besides marriage: between parents and children, among siblings, with grandparents (cf. A Family Perspective, 17). To paraphrase the memorable television character Murphy Brown: Whether by choice or circumstance, families come in all shapes and sizes.

A Family Perspective in Church and Society
Benjamin Disraeli once said (as quoted by Mark Twain), "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." Where, amidst all of these statistics and reports, will our children find and develop a moral center? On the Internet? On MTV? In the home? Mark Twain is credited with saying that when a child reaches the age of twelve, the child should be put in a barrel, a cover nailed on, and the child fed through a hole in the cover—and that when the child turns fifteen, one should close the hole. While Twain was suggesting that we protect the world from children, we might also see this technique as a reasonable way to protect our children from a world not in sync with our values—but it is probably not feasible. In my work I see parents who desperately want to be the source of moral direction for their children. Religious educators and pastoral ministers have an obligation to assist them in this challenge. And we have available to us a well-written, well-researched document that will help us be more sensitive to families, their particular circumstances, and their particular needs.

Borrowing from the social sciences, A Family Perspective in Church and Society encourages pastoral and catechetical leaders in the Church to view the family as a system. The family is made up of individuals—but it is not simply a collection of individuals. It is a living, developing, changing system whose members are interconnected. It is more than the sum of its parts. The image I like to use is that of a mobile or wind chimes: when one piece is blown, affected by the environment, the other pieces are affected too. In a family, the crisis, opportunity, joy, or sorrow of one impacts the whole. If we are going to advocate for and support families, we need to understand the dynamics that exist in the family system. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Marriage and Family presents five dynamics of a family system:

1. Family strengths
   
2. Family health
   
3. Family of origin
   
4. Family life cycle
   
5. Family change

It will come as no surprise to find the following family characteristics commonly viewed as family strengths:

1. Members appreciate and respect each other.
   
2. They spend both quality and quantity of time together.
   
3. Members develop communications skills—especially for problem solving and resolving differences.
   
4. Members develop a commitment to stay together during times of transition, difficulty, or crisis.
   
5. They possess a solid core of moral and spiritual beliefs.
   
6. They rely on other resources (family, friends, community, church—not a closed system) (A Family Perspective, 24ff).

One of the biggest challenges we have in family ministry in the Church is convincing families that they already have many of these strengths. We must help families see the holiness that is present in their everyday lives right now. There are sacrifices of love that parents and children make daily. Because these sacrifices are so much a part of family life, the family does not recognize them as sacred. We need to listen to our families as they talk about their lives and help them see where God is already at work. We need to help parents discover and articulate the spiritual beliefs that keep them going, and we need to give parents the vocabulary and confidence to speak about those beliefs.

Our task as communities of faith is to look at our families as changing systems buffeted by both cruel and gentle winds. A Family Perspective provides us with a good map and many imperatives: we need to find ways of strengthening the ties within the family, as well as between the family and the community of faith that supports it. We have to be people of prayer and of action. We have to ask God to bless and strengthen our families, and we have to advocate in the public arena for family-friendly policies. We have to keep asking questions at staff meetings, parish council meetings, commission and committee meetings, and community meetings. We have to include families—in all shapes and sizes—in the discussion.

In the Catholic Church we complain a great deal about who is not at Sunday liturgy. We need to re-focus our attention. How are we helping those who are at Mass become better pray-ers, come closer to God, and find strength in their faith? And what are we doing to invite and encourage those who aren't with us? Do we know who needs a ride to church, who needs respite care for a live-in elderly relative, who would come if there was babysitting available?

There is a temptation to wallow in nostalgia—wishing for a return of the "good old days." Well, the "good old days" were not always that good. The Wordsworth passage quoted above was published in 1807! We cannot be blind to the wonderful benefits of being a family in the twenty-first century. We should, we must, celebrate the work of our hands and the fruits of our intellect here in 2001. The advances of today should give glory to God and be in service to the fundamental unit of our society—the family. If God's work is our work, surely we can have solid families of faith living in an increasingly secular culture.

Susan Lang Abbott is the assistant director of religious education for the Archdiocese of Boston.