On the Written Word of God

I have a confession to make:  I'm an information pak-rat.  My computer is bulging with stuff I'm afraid I'll lose.  When I find a website I like, I actually download the entire site and save it on my computer so I'll be sure it's there when I want to read it or reference to it.  I back all of this up on a second hard drive that I keep lying around in case my first hard drive goes bad.  And every now and then, I put it all on blank DVDs just for good measure.

As I read this passage and got ready to write about it, something struck me.  It was like a bolt of lightening jolting through me.  You know how you might be going through life just fine, thinking you understand something perfectly well?  And then in a split second everything get's turned around?  Or staring at a sentence upside down, not making any sense of it, and then turning the paper around to discover what's been right in front of you all along?

I looked through all my files and all the amazing information I had gathered, and realized how futile it was.  I mean it's nice, yes, to have the information on hand.  When I'm writing an article or working on a book, it's nice to be able to just do a quick search and be quote what I need.  But really, how else does it help me as a writer?  Is it really worth the obsession I have for it?

I don't have time to read even a small portion of everything I have saved.  Let alone think about it and really understand it.  The Summa is a great work, but I'll never read the whole thing.  There's a wealth of information lurking in the all the old documents of the Church, but I would have to read nonstop for the rest of my life before I could even scratch the surface.

And what's more, all of this information is useless unless I'm able to comprehend it.  As a writer, even my own comprehension is useless unless I'm able to talk about it, explain it, or expand on it on paper.

In practice, I've become like some of our Protestant bothers.  Making sure to study and memorize each verse in scripture, obsessing over the preservation of information.  But what good is the information without the guidance of God?  What good is any bible verse when it lies in darkness.

God sheds light on the scripture, and makes it alive.  And God works through the Church to do this.  Without the Church's help in interpreting the Bible, it can become as useless as all the files on my hard drive.  Yes, it's nice to know they're there, and I can call upon them if I need them, but they won't help me achieve God's will.

And such is part of the relationship between the Written Word and the Oral Tradition of the Catholic Church.