Sustain Your Sanity
For in fact we have received the Good News just as our ancestors did. But the word that they heard did not profit them, for they were not united in faith with those who listened. (Hebrew 4:2)
The Catechism of the Catholic Church instructs us, “The Christian faith is not a ‘religion of the book.’ Christianity is the religion of the ‘Word’ of God, a word which is ‘not a written and mute word, but the Word is incarnate and living’. If the Scriptures are not to remain a dead letter, Christ, the eternal Word of the living God, must, through the Holy Spirit, ‘open [our] minds to understand the Scriptures.’” (CCC, 108) There is no doubt that the faith of our time has been weakened, watered down. We have become careless or ignorant to the Word of God. We have made too many accommodations/compromises with the culture and customs of our time, and, as consequence, we have lost our sense of sacredness of life and of what truly sustain us in difficult time. We are called today to return to the Lord and to renewed our relationship with Christ and His living Words because His words, as stated in the Sacred Scripture, are “spirit and life.” (John 6:63b) When Howard Rutledge's plane was shot down over Vietnam, he parachuted into a little village and was immediately attacked, stripped naked, and imprisoned. For the next seven years he endured brutal treatment. His food was little more than a bowl of rotting soup with a glob of pig fat—skin, hair, and all. Rats the size of cats and spiders as big as fists scurried around him. He was frequently cold, alone, and tortured. He was sometimes shackled in excruciating positions and left for days in his own waste with carnivorous insects boring through his oozing sores. How did he keep his sanity? In his book, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, Rutledge gives a powerful testimony as to the importance of Sacred Scripture. Some excerpts follow: "Now the sights and sounds and smells of death were all around me. My hunger for spiritual food soon outdid my hunger for a steak. Now I wanted to know about that part of me that will never die. Now I wanted to talk about God and Christ and the church. But in heartbreak solitary confinement there was no pastor, no Sunday-school teacher, no Bible, no hymnbook, no community of believers to guide and sustain me. I had completely neglected the spiritual dimension of my life. It took prison to show me how empty life is without God, and so I had to go back in my memory to those Sunday-school days…snatches of Scripture, sermons…” Now, use your imagination and try to put yourself in Howard’s shoe, his solitary prison cell, what is your reaction? How many Bible verses are you able to recall helping you focus on what’s really matter? How do you keep your sanity?
What are your top 3 Bible verses? Why?
I invite you reflect on it throughout your day and share it with those around you. You might start out the conversation by asking “Do you have your favorite Bible verse?” "What is your favorite prayer?"
“What makes you choose that particular verse/prayers?”
Lord, inspire me to read your Scriptures and to meditate upon them day and night. I beg you to give me real understanding of what I read, that I in turn may put its precepts into practice. Yet, I know that understanding and good intentions are worthless, unless rooted in your graceful love. So I ask that the words of Scripture may also be not just signs on a page, but channels of grace into my heart. Amen. (Prayer Before Reading Scripture by Origen, 184-253 AD)
O Blessed Virgin Mary, you are the Bearer of the Word made flesh, help me listen to the voice of your Son in the Sacred Scripture. Please ask your Son to give me the fortitude to believe what I read, teach what I believe and practice what I teach. Hail Mary full of grace…
Peace in Christ,
Father Vincent-Vuong Nguyen