Reading and the Word of God
On the significance of the Word of God in the lives of Christians, Don Bosco draws a simple analogy: as “a body without food gets sick and dies… the same thing happens to our soul if we do not give it its food. The Word of God is food, nourishment for the soul, meaning sermons, explanations of the Gospel, and the catechism,” as well as spiritual books like The Imitation of Christ and St. Francis de Sales’ Introduction to the Devout Life.
The Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation also refers to the Word of God as “food of the soul,” by which it specifically means the Sacred Scripture, which is supplemented by the teachings of the Church Fathers and sacred liturgies, and transmitted through the preaching of informed clergy and publications of theologians. The council affirms that “easy access to Sacred Scripture should be provided for all the Christian faithful,” its study being “as it were, the soul of sacred theology,” so that the “treasure of revelation, entrusted to the Church, may more and more fill the hearts of the faithful” and promote “a new stimulus for the life of the Spirit.”
It is a clear theological principal that hearing the Word of God (specifically the inspired Word as recorded in the Bible) is as necessary for the spiritual life of Christians as food is to their physical life. In contemporary society, it is presumed that there would be as many people capable of obtaining food and feeding themselves as those capable of obtaining a Bible and reading it, that is, most people. As the extent to which food gives life to the body is the extent to which it is digested and absorbed into the body, so the extent to which reading the Bible gives life to the spirit is the extent to which the reader can understand its teachings and assimilate them into their life. As such, a most pressing need for all Christians today, the young in particular, is to have access to explanations of the Sacred Scripture which are both comprehensible and relevant to their lives.
Don Bosco suggests that this task is a particular responsibility of each individual’s parish priest; today, the unparalleled potential of the Internet as a means of transmitting instruction to the young increases the scope of the priest’s responsibility to make whatever use of this medium as is within his capacity, and extends this responsibility to lay faithful working in social communications. What is more, the Council recognises that, in a geographically and technologically expanding world, the lives of most people today do not revolve around a particular parish, and that “no priest, therefore, can on his own accomplish his mission in a satisfactory way. He can do so only by joining forces with other priests under the direction of the Church authorities.”