Summer Reading

I am confident that God – at least occasionally – speaks to me in a very direct way, just as he speaks to all of his creation.  More frequently, God also speaks to me through other people.  I may not always hear his words, and sometimes I may hear but not listen, but God speaks nonetheless.  God speaks that I may draw closer to him, for his desire for me, as is his desire for every person on earth, is to be one with him.

That’s the good news.  The bad news is that the devil also knows how to speak to me, both directly and through other people.  And his purposes are truly nefarious, for he wishes me to forget about God, to put absolute faith in my own ability, to limit my sight to what can be gained – and lost – in this world, filling my mind with wants which are always just out of reach and fears that seem ever so dire and imminent.

I am like the boy with an angel sitting on one shoulder and the devil on the other, but they are both invisible, so how do I discern whose words I am hearing?  Today’s readings give us a couple clues.

Jesus uses the metaphor of trees bearing fruits (Mt 7:15-20) – you can’t get good fruit from bad trees or bad fruit from good trees.  Therefore, listen to those people (or words) which bear good fruit.  By their fruit you shall know them.  This is logical advice.  We walk through an orchard in the winter and cannot tell what trees we are looking at, but walk through in the fall and the answer is obvious.

Jesus, St. Paul, and St. Peter all use this metaphor.  Jesus tells us that we bear good fruit when we remain connected to him, the life-giving vine (Jn 15:5).  Perhaps, most famously, St. Paul tells us that when we are led by the Spirit, we bear its fruits, principal among them love, joy, and peace.  (Gal 5:22)  So look for the good fruits, and we will be attuned to the good words.

Our first reading (2 Kgs 22:8-13) tells of “a book of the law” that was discovered in the temple during the reign of King Josiah.  On hearing the book read to him, the King realizes the wayward way of the people and institutes a great reform to bring the people back to Yahweh.  As a result, Josiah is rightly considered one of Judah’s greatest kings.  So what was this book that so inspired him?  Scholars agree that it was a version of the book we now call Deuteronomy.

This book is written as a series of discourses by Moses to the people as they are about to enter the Promised Land, describing for them the history of their reception of the law on Mt. Sinai – we hear again, as we heard in Exodus, the Ten Commandments.  But Moses goes on to fill in some of the blanks in the law, explaining the rationale and importance of following the law to the people.

What we learn from this is that if we are to discern God’s words from the devil’s, an important resource is the God’s words as we have them in the Holy Book.  We must be familiar with the Bible.  And it seems to me that the best way to become familiar with a book is to read it.

A few days ago, a friend of mine on Facebook posted a request for summer reading suggestions.  She received lots of suggestions and I learned of some of my favorite authors who have written new books.  But it also prompted me to think of Bible reading for the summer.

Now, the Bible is a bit much to handle for a summer, eh?  But, I’m thinking I – and you – can handle the Gospels this summer.  This would not require a marathon of reading.  Just reading two chapters a day – ten minutes at most of reading with another ten or fifteen minutes to reflect on the reading – it would take a week to do Mark, and about two weeks for each of the other three – Matthew, Luke and John.  That’s seven weeks!  Sounds like a summer to me.

And at the end of the summer, my guess is you might be at least a little bit better at discerning God’s words from those of the devil, for you will be much more intimate with the Jesus, who always bears the best of fruits.