Living Biblically, an introduction to understanding the Bible, is now in its second edition. But why is that important?
Living Biblically
By Archbishop Barry Hickey
RRP $19.95 (inc.GST) + postage
Available from The Record Bookshop and Catholic booksellers
Reviewed by Jaroslav Balsarini
The publication of the second edition of Archbishop Barry Hickey’s Living Biblically shows how hungry ordinary people everywhere are for Bishops to teach as shepherds rather than to lapse into the role of being largely bureaucratic and financial administrators – hungry, because the first edition, which sold out of an initial print run of five thousand copies, was not enough to satisfy demand.
But this revised second edition also refocuses us on the importance of Catholics picking up the Bible again – and reading it. It is heartening to see many Catholics finally behaving as if the written word of God is actually of vital importance to their lives.
This is not an obscure point. The figure of (usually American) Protestant televangelists striding confidently back and forth across stages at public gatherings or before enthralled worshippers in their churches has become in recent decades either a potent or ridiculous image – depending on your perspective.
Catholics – and many others – have often looked at such scenes with something approaching amusement or dismissal. After all, Catholics have assumed, however well meaning such figures may be and correct their arguments for Christianity, they also appear to lack a certain… well, sophistication or depth.
The Church, they assume, clearly possesses in institutions such as the papacy or in places embodying millennia of clearly-Catholic history and identity such as Rome an authority which surpasses the often amusing shenanigans that American televangelists often seem to embody.
The Catholic consciousness is, in part, defined by a certain psychological or emotional feeling that whatever the faults or sins of its members it is this Church that clearly has serious intellectual weight behind it when it comes to talking religion.
But Catholics must face up to one simple truth: when it comes to knowledge of Scripture and giving it primacy in one’s life, it is precisely the televangelists and their congregations that beat their Catholic brothers and sisters hands down. In fact, to borrow a metaphor, they ‘whoop’ us when it comes to knowing and reading God’s Word.
This is clearly a contradiction in Catholic life. The Bible, after all, is almost certainly the oldest continuously written and read book in the history of the world and the greatest work of religious literature ever assembled. Written over a millennium or more as far as can be known, read and pondered continuously for two millennia since the Gospels and the various other works of the New Testament were completed, the Church believes the Bible to be the inspired word of God, containing the essential elements of fact, history and belief necessary for every Christian life.
That Catholics as a whole clearly do not read it regularly and treat it with the reverence and authority it deserves (and have not for generations) is clearly a situation that needs rectifying.
The second edition of Archbishop Hickey’s Living Biblically is therefore an extremely important contribution to righting an historical imbalance in Catholic life that has helped seriously undermine among generations of Catholics the primary Christian vocation to intimacy, discussion and friendship with God that is called holiness.
Interestingly, the proceeds from sales will go towards the establishment of the BJ Hickey Biblical Foundation, a new scholarship set up by Archbishop Hickey to enable students from Perth to carry out studies in Scripture at leading pontifical and biblical universities and institutes in Rome and around the world. By channelling proceeds to this worthy objective, the author is not only talking the talk of the Bible, but walking the walk.
Meanwhile, in an age where religious belief, most spectacularly Christianity, appears to be on the retreat globally, Living Biblically is its author’s personal invitation to readers everywhere to begin the process of finding the answers to the deepest questions of their lives, answers which can only be found in the Bible.
Among the considerable advantages of this book is its brevity. At just 96 pages in length, divided into 10 chapters and two historical appendices, Living Biblically is aimed not at the erudite scholar, much less the exegete, but at the average man, woman and young person in the suburbs of Australia.
Briefly, but with the authority of someone who has spent 50 years as a priest and the last 25 as a leading Australian Bishop, the author sketches out the face and figure of Christ. By the end of the fourth chapter readers will have encountered Jesus as the faithful Jew who is also the fulfilment of all the prophecies found in the Old Testament foretelling the looming figure of the Messiah. They will accompany him in His final confrontation with the Jewish authorities that lead to His crucifixion and resurrection.
But Archbishop Hickey, with a lifetime of experience working with Catholic families from all walks of life, also wants to offer practical guidance to how we, the readers, can begin our journey.
Chapter five sets out a simple six step guide so that reading the Bible is neither a daunting nor an incomprehensible experience.
Chapter six shows readers how to live out Christ’s law of love in a vital area too often ignored by Catholics these days, in their marriages and family lives. Reading the Bible will help Catholics and Christians rediscover the true significance of their own vocation. One of the most important chapters is Chapter seven, simply entitled Living in the Spirit. In fact, the author admits, it is what he says in this chapter that is the reason for the book’s title. No Christian can live without reference to the Holy Spirit, who is also God.
“The central thesis of this small book is to point out that we are still living in the age of the Holy Spirit, and that the extraordinary is still commonplace, and that the forces that would try to crush or render Christ’s church ineffectual today cannot succeed. We need to be as conscious of the action of the Holy Spirit today as the early Christians were in their day,” he writes.
Living Biblically is not only for Catholics. It is well worth considering as a gift for non-Catholic or non-believing friends. Young people from their early teenage years will have no problem picking it up and immersing themselves in its simple but profound message. With an increasing variety of resources available to parents and families to help them give reading and reflecting on Scripture a new primacy in their lives Catholics can also increasingly hold their heads high in the face of the charge that they are not Bible-based Christians.
On the contrary, recent years and events, such as 2008’s Synod on the Word of God held by Pope Benedict XVI and the world’s Bishops in Rome, have seen a renewed impulse within the Catholic Church towards helping average Catholics rediscover the biblical roots of their faith and their importance. Archbishop Hickey’s book is so far a little-noticed (outside Western Australia) but refreshing example of a new emphasis on familiarising ourselves with God’s word to us in Scripture.
His book may yet come to be regarded as a classic re-introduction for Catholics everywhere to a friend they have for too long treated as only to be consulted when they are in need.