17 December 2019
Tuesday of the Third Week of Advent
You are familiar with the Bible, by now, I presume. Be careful, though, because familiarity breeds contempt. You go to church enough and it starts to get boring. You hang out with the same person and she starts to get boring. You read the same sacred scripture enough and it starts to get boring. This is all a very dangerous psychological reality, because if you get bored with Church then you might stop going, God forbid. If you get bored with your spouse then you might look for another, God forbid. If you get bored with the Bible, then you might look for other, more energizing writings, God forbid. This Advent is a good time to look this psychological reality in the face. Familiarity breeds contempt, so is your familiarity with sacred scripture breeding contempt? If you don’t invest time in scripture, then make no mistake: you’ve got contempt for it.
Maybe you are really not as familiar with scripture as you think you are. Will you be so bold as to declare that you are familiar with all the riches of scripture? Here’s an exercise: pick a passage from scripture that you think is boring. Pray with it for 10 minutes and don’t quit. For example, today’s gospel: Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus. The scripture highlights that there were fourteen generations from Abraham to David, and fourteen generations from David to the Babylonian exile, and fourteen generations from the Babylonian exile to Christ. Why does it do that?