We must be the Sacred Vessels of the Word.
God created man in His image and likeness. Male and female, He created them. After the Fall, families expanded into nations, and nations participated in familial duties as vessels of the Word. Yet peoples fell into the horrors of evil and false worship.
God identified the Chosen People—the Twelve Tribes of Israel—as His vessel to carry the Word in history. God chose the Israelites—the most insignificant of all peoples—as the vessel of His Word to show forth His might.
Jerusalem became the seedbed for the Word of God in the fullness of time. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth” (Jn. 1:14). Jesus is the Word, true God and true man.
The Gospels reveal the three years of the public ministry of the Word. The Sacred Vessel of Jesus brought the Old Testament to fulfillment. The vessel of the Word is the Church, born of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.
God guides the Church in her duties as the vessel of His Word through history. He respects our freedom. He allows us to make mistakes, but He repeatedly directs our attention to the Deposit of Faith we have received from the Apostles. The Deposit of Faith organically grows but cannot change (cf. Dei Verbum, Vatican II). God promises that His Church is the unfailing vessel of the Word.
The Church is the guardian and ultimate interpreter of the Scriptures. Bishops and priests under the guidance of the Vicar of Christ, the pope, help navigate history: “the Boat of Peter” as the vessel of the Word. Jesus offers His Divine guarantee against a definitive shipwreck. “You are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my Church, and the [gates of hell] shall not prevail against it” (Mt. 16:18). Like the sacred vessels at Mass, the Church’s teaching authority is merely a guardian and a vessel, never a master of the Word, much less the Word itself.
The Church is the vessel for the study of doctrine and theology. The raw material of theology includes the dictionary of God’s Word: Scriptures (above all the Gospels), the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Sacraments. Like a game of Scrabble that helps expand our vocabulary, theological studies under the guidance of the Church develop our understanding of the Faith.
Church councils and synods play the continuing game of theological Scrabble throughout history. The vocabulary of God’s Revelation is rooted in Tradition and Scriptures. But the Scrabble of Faith does not allow changes that misspell or give a different meaning to the words of Revelation. Ordinary Catholics help redirect the path of the Word by holding fast to the Faith.
Through faithful and holy lives cooperating with His grace, His Word will “accomplish His purposes and prosper in the thing for which He sent it.”
Fragment By Fr. Jerry Pokorsky
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