In the General Audience held this Tuesday, February 4, in the Paul VI Hall, Pope Leo XIV continued the cycle of catechesis dedicated to the Documents of the Second Vatican Council, centering his reflection on the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum and, in particular, on the nature of Sacred Scripture as the Word of God expressed in human words.
Before pilgrims and faithful from Italy and various parts of the world, the Pontiff emphasized that the Bible, always read in the living Tradition of the Church, is the privileged place where God continues to speak today to men and women of every time. In his catechesis, Leo XIV insisted on the double dimension—divine and human—of Scripture, recalling that ignoring either one leads to partial interpretations: both to fundamentalism, which absolutizes the letter without attending to its historical and literary context, and to reductionism, which empties the Word of its supernatural origin and turns it into a mere text from the past.
The Pope also highlighted that the authentic interpretation of Scripture requires being carried out under the guidance of the Holy Spirit who inspired it, especially when it is proclaimed in the liturgy, where the Word is not only studied, but interpels the concrete life of the believer, illuminates their decisions, and nourishes charity. Finally, he warned against the temptation to reduce the Gospel to a purely social or philanthropic message, recalling that its core is the announcement of full and eternal life offered by God in Jesus Christ.
We leave below the complete catechesis of Leo XIV:
Dear brothers and sisters, good morning and welcome!
The conciliar Constitution Dei Verbum, on which we are reflecting in these weeks, indicates in Sacred Scripture, read in the living Tradition of the Church, a privileged space of encounter in which God continues to speak to men and women of all times, so that, by listening to him, they may know and love him. The biblical texts, however, were not written in a heavenly or superhuman language. As everyday reality also teaches us, in fact, two people who speak different languages do not understand each other, cannot enter into dialogue, cannot establish a relationship. In some cases, making oneself understood by the other is a first act of love. For this reason, God chooses to speak using human languages and, thus, different authors, inspired by the Holy Spirit, have drafted the texts of Sacred Scripture. As the conciliar document recalls, “the words of God, expressed in human language, have become like human speech, just as in another time the Word of the Eternal Father, taking on the flesh of human weakness, became like men” (DV, 13). Therefore, not only in its contents, but also in the language, Scripture reveals God’s merciful condescension toward men and his desire to draw near to them.
Throughout the history of the Church, the relationship that occurs between the divine Author and the human authors of the sacred texts has been studied. For many centuries, many theologians have been concerned with defending the divine inspiration of Sacred Scripture, almost considering the human authors only as passive instruments of the Holy Spirit. In more recent times, reflection has revalued the contribution of the hagiographers in drafting the sacred texts, to the point that the conciliar document speaks of God as the “principal” author of Sacred Scripture, but also calls the hagiographers “true authors” of the sacred books (cf. DV, 11). As a sharp exegete from the last century observed, “to reduce the human operation to that of a mere scribe is not to glorify the divine operation.” [1] God never mortifies the human being and their potentialities!
Therefore, if Scripture is the word of God in human words, any approach to it that neglects or denies one of these two dimensions is partial. From this it follows that a correct interpretation of the sacred texts cannot dispense with the historical setting in which they matured and the literary forms used; moreover, renouncing the study of the human words that God used runs the risk of giving rise to fundamentalist or spiritualistic readings of Scripture that betray its meaning. This principle also applies to the proclamation of the Word of God: if it loses contact with reality, with the hopes and sufferings of men, if it uses incomprehensible, little communicative, or anachronistic language, it becomes ineffective. In every age the Church is called to propose the Word of God anew with a language capable of incarnating itself in history and reaching hearts. As Pope Francis recalled, “whenever we attempt to return to the source and recover the original freshness of the Gospel, new paths spring up, creative methods, other forms of expression, more eloquent signs, words laden with renewed meaning for the present world.” [2]
Equally reductive, on the other hand, is a reading of Scripture that neglects its divine origin and ends up understanding it as a mere human teaching, as something that must simply be studied from a technical point of view or as only “a text from the past.” [3] Rather, especially when it is proclaimed in the context of the liturgy, Scripture intends to speak to today’s believers, to touch their present life with its problems, to illuminate the steps to follow and the decisions they must make. This is only possible when the believer reads and interprets the sacred texts under the guidance of the same Spirit who inspired them (cf. DV, 12).
In this sense, Scripture serves to nourish the life and charity of believers, as St. Augustine reminds us: “He who judges that he has understood the divine scriptures […], and with this understanding does not build up this double love of God and neighbor, has not yet understood them.” [4] The divine origin of Scripture also reminds us that the Gospel, entrusted to the witness of the baptized, even embracing all dimensions of life and reality, transcends them: it cannot be reduced to a mere philanthropic or social message, but is the joyful announcement of full and eternal life, which God has given us in Jesus.
Dear brothers and sisters, let us give thanks to the Lord because, in his goodness, he does not allow the essential nourishment of his Word to be lacking in our lives, and let us pray that our words, and even more our lives, may not obscure the love of God that is narrated in them.
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[1] L. Alonso Schökel, La parola ispirata. La Bibbia alla luce della scienza del linguaggio, Brescia 1987, 70. (The Inspired Word. The Bible in the Light of the Science of Language).
[2] Francis, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium (November 24, 2013), 11.
[3] Benedict XVI, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini (September 30, 2010), 35.
[4] St. Augustine, De doctrina christiana I, 36, 40.