A word about The Word

God by His infinite and perfect nature far surpasses our finite human understanding.  Through human reason, we are able to come to a very limited knowledge of God, by understanding what He is not.  But God, in His great love, desired us to know Him and to enter into relationship with Him.  In order to reveal Himself to us, God in His goodness spoke to us in human words in Sacred Scripture.  However through all the words of Scripture, God expresses only one Word, through which He communicates Himself completely to us, The Word Incarnate, Jesus Christ.  Thus in Sacred Scripture, we find truly present Christ in His fullness, who comes to us in love to meet and speak with us.

God is the author of Scripture.  The texts were written by human authors under the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  To compose the sacred books, God chose certain men who, all the while he employed them in this task, made full use of their own faculties and powers so that, though he acted in them and by them, it was as true authors that they consigned to writing whatever he wanted written, and no more.  Therefore Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teaches that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures.

To understand and interpret Scripture correctly, we must be mindful of several guiding principles.

1.       In order to discover the sacred authors' intention, the reader must take into account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary genres in use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking and narrating then current. For the fact is that truth is differently presented and expressed in the various types of historical writing, in prophetical and poetical texts, and in other forms of literary expression.

2.       Be especially attentive "to the content and unity of the whole Scripture". Different as the books which compose it may be, Scripture is a unity by reason of the unity of God's plan, of which Christ Jesus is the center and heart, open since his Passover.

3.       Read the Scripture within "the living Tradition of the whole Church". According to a saying of the Fathers, Sacred Scripture is written principally in the Church's heart rather than in documents and records, for the Church carries in her Tradition the living memorial of God's Word, and it is the Holy Spirit who gives her the spiritual interpretation of the Scripture.

4.       Be attentive to the analogy of faith.⁸² By "analogy of faith" we mean the coherence of the truths of faith among themselves and within the whole plan of Revelation.

According to an ancient tradition, one can distinguish between two senses of Scripture: the literal and the spiritual, the latter being subdivided into the allegorical, moral and anagogical senses. The profound concordance of the four senses guarantees all its richness to the living reading of Scripture in the Church.

1.       The literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation: "All other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal.

2.       The spiritual sense. Thanks to the unity of God's plan, not only the text of Scripture but also the realities and events about which it speaks can be signs.

a.        The allegorical sense. We can acquire a more profound understanding of events by recognizing their significance in Christ; thus the crossing of the Red Sea is a sign or type of Christ's victory and also of Christian Baptism.

b.       The moral sense. The events reported in Scripture ought to lead us to act justly. As St. Paul says, they were written "for our instruction".

c.        The anagogical sense (Greek: anagoge, "leading"). We can view realities and events in terms of their eternal significance, leading us toward our true homeland: thus the Church on earth is a sign of the heavenly Jerusalem.

As we explore Mary in Sacred Scripture, we will avail ourselves of these guidelines.


Summary of Part 1 Section 1 Article 3 of The Catechism of the Catholic Church