Seven years ago my spiritual director suggested I read a chapter of the Bible every morning, and I’ve been doing that. Six months ago, however, I finished the Bible (for the third time!) and began reading other things in the morning. I read a spiritual biography of St. John of the Cross, and a commentary on St. John’s Gospel—all good spiritual reading, but there is nothing to compare with the Good Book itself. So last week I opened the large Bible that I keep open on my mantlepiece. I had purchased this Bible in 1983 from the Daughters of St. Paul when they had a store on Geary at Market, just down from Macy’s. I bought it for ten dollars, and I’ve read it cover to cover four times now. After purchasing it, I would pour through the words, chapter by chapter, every day after work. I would read every footnote and make my own marginal notes, I would study the introductions to each of its 63 books, and I took delight in gazing over the colored maps in the appendix, dreaming of one day exploring the Holy Land myself. I’ve taken this Bible with me to Oxford, Rome, and New York as a student of theology. I’ve carried it with me to every one of my seven priestly assignments, from Stockton to Los Angeles to San Francisco and had it rebound twice with leather reinforcements. When I first began reading it at age 22, I felt like I was falling in love. I declared: “I am going to marry the Bible!” This Bible and I have been with each other for 41 years now, and I’ve just returned to my daily morning reading, a chapter a day. There is no reading like the Scriptures, truly our “daily bread.”
Last week I began again with Genesis, Chapter One. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth….” Those words declare the fullness of our joy, our faith, our wonderous beauty. We did not make ourselves, and we do not have to save ourselves. We have been fearfully, wonderfully made, and we are saved at every moment by a loving God who dwells beyond the heavens. There have been many attempts at atheism over the centuries. The Chinese Communist Party, for example, is attempting to build a society on absolute “faith” in the Chinese Communist Party. Russia tried to build a society on a similar “atheism,” and when the first Soviet cosmonaut rocketed past earth’s atmosphere into outer space, he reported (apparently seriously) that he had gone to heaven and did not see God there. Our country is tending toward a similar kind of mentality, wanting to expunge “in God we trust” from our dollar bills in favor of “in the government we trust” or “in technology we trust.” It’s hard to say where American society will be in fifty years, but one thing is historically certain: every society that has traded faith in God for faith in anything less has ended badly.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, but He Himself dwells beyond the heavens. He created the heavens and the earth in six days (so to speak) and on the seventh day he rested. He declared the seventh day “holy,” a day to gaze on all the good that He had created and to “rest.” That Seventh Day is heaven itself, to which Sunday points. All our political unrest, and our personal anxieties, will someday come to an end, either by the end of the World or by our own death, whichever comes sooner. In this holy month of November, we think on the death of this world, and we fix our sights on the Seventh Day, now the “Eighth Day,” when the dead shall rise, and we will enter into that perfect rest with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Fr. Joseph Illo
Last week I began again with Genesis, Chapter One. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth….” Those words declare the fullness of our joy, our faith, our wonderous beauty. We did not make ourselves, and we do not have to save ourselves. We have been fearfully, wonderfully made, and we are saved at every moment by a loving God who dwells beyond the heavens. There have been many attempts at atheism over the centuries. The Chinese Communist Party, for example, is attempting to build a society on absolute “faith” in the Chinese Communist Party. Russia tried to build a society on a similar “atheism,” and when the first Soviet cosmonaut rocketed past earth’s atmosphere into outer space, he reported (apparently seriously) that he had gone to heaven and did not see God there. Our country is tending toward a similar kind of mentality, wanting to expunge “in God we trust” from our dollar bills in favor of “in the government we trust” or “in technology we trust.” It’s hard to say where American society will be in fifty years, but one thing is historically certain: every society that has traded faith in God for faith in anything less has ended badly.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, but He Himself dwells beyond the heavens. He created the heavens and the earth in six days (so to speak) and on the seventh day he rested. He declared the seventh day “holy,” a day to gaze on all the good that He had created and to “rest.” That Seventh Day is heaven itself, to which Sunday points. All our political unrest, and our personal anxieties, will someday come to an end, either by the end of the World or by our own death, whichever comes sooner. In this holy month of November, we think on the death of this world, and we fix our sights on the Seventh Day, now the “Eighth Day,” when the dead shall rise, and we will enter into that perfect rest with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Fr. Joseph Illo
Our parish All Souls Altar this month, with pictures of our forebears in the faith
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