Work work work

Yesterday's 1st reading from the prophet Jeremiah was very interesting. It talks about God bringing peoples from the world over to come to Jerusalem where he will console them. "Some are from afar; others from the north and west, others from the land of Sinim". Some scholars think "Sinim" refers to China (cf "sino - ", though this interpretation is not generally accepted. I remember many years ago when I was living here in jerusalem, I went to visit the Last Supper Room. In there was a Jewish couple and when they saw me, they started singing "halleluia" and I wondered what was all that about. They grabbed my hands and welcomed me - me still in a state of utter confusion. Then the guy opened up Jeremiah 49 and read this passage and said God's word is fulfilled because the Chinese have come to Jerusalem. OK so he was a little carried away - but it does show two things - one, we should really take seriously the prophecies and its fulfilment especially in Jesus Christ; secondly God wills that everyone including far away China be part of his plan of salvation. So that's a consolation for us who live in the Far East - we aren't left out in the cold.

And yesterday was another crazy day (and it wasn't even Friday). Worked non-stop on my analysis of the text. Then the guys came to upgrade my Internet bandwidth to 2/2 (that's the highest we can go here in the Old City - the wires are just too old and incapable of higher bandwidths). But the monthly cost is going to rise like triple! So I'm going to need you guys to help me out if our VC classes are going to continue!

The weather is also warming up alot but I'm locking myself in my room - nothing has to disturb my work now - serious! Not going out for anything! Unless the house burns down! I've put up a print out of Fr Allegra's motto on my wall (in italian of course) "Want little - but want it at all cost". What I want now is to finish my paper.

After dinner I wanted to get back to work but Massimo Carlino caught me at the roof terrace and we chatted till 10pm. Hmmmmm must avoid that in future - not that it's a waste of time - but I must get my priorities right - work first, there'll be time to chat in between.

So here goes .... am working on my paper even as I'm writing this.

Today's Gospel from John says "You place your hopes in Moses and Moses will be your accuser; if you really believe in him, you should believe in me too, since it is I whom he was writing about; if you do not believe in what Moses wrote, how can you believe what i say?" - Jesus was talking to the Judeans (Jews in most translations). Well here is an interesting concept of understanding the Old Testament - interpreting it in the light of Jesus Christ (what we call a Christological exegesis). It was used by most of the early Church Fathers but slowly lost ground when modern historical and literary analyses of the bible became widely used. But I think for our own spiritual growth, it is a good method - reading the Old Testament and understanding it in view of our faith in Jesus Christ. It's a little of what I said at the beginning of this blog - to understand the prophecies as fulfilled in jesus Christ. of course we shouldn't force everything Old Testament passage to fit into the Christ event, but neither should we abandon it totally. After all we are christians, and we should read the bible in the light of our Christian faith. So when you are studying the bible, don't get carried away by too much explanations, that though are interesting but leave out Jesus; if so, there is the risk of the Bible as simply being treated as any other ancient literature book. As a book of faith, we should allow our christian faith to be involved in our understanding of the Sacred Scriptures called the Old Testament. End of lecture. Now start reading the Bible!