Pope Leo XIV affirmed Wednesday that Sacred Scripture has been entrusted to the Catholic Church — that she preserves and explains it, and supports its purpose of making Christ known to the world.
"The Church is the rightful home of Sacred Scripture," the pope said during the general audience on Feb. 11.
"With its efficacy and power [Sacred Scripture] sustains and invigorates the Christian community. All the faithful are called to drink from this wellspring, first and foremost in the celebration of the Eucharist and the other Sacraments," he added.
Addressing thousands of pilgrims in the Vatican's Paul VI Hall, Leo said, Scripture "finds the sphere in which to carry out its particular task and achieve its purpose: to make Christ known and to open dialogue with God" in the Church community.
The pontiff pointed to the 2008 Synod of Bishops on "The Word of God in the life and mission of the Church" as one of the Church's recent important reflections on Scripture.
He quoted from Pope Benedict XVI's post-synodal exhortation Verbum Domini. In that document, Pope Benedict affirmed that "The intrinsic link between the word and faith makes clear that authentic biblical hermeneutics can only be had within the faith of the Church, which has its paradigm in Mary's fiat… the primary setting for scriptural interpretation is the life of the Church."
The Purpose of Scripture
Pope Leo recalled the well-known phrase from St. Jerome that "ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ."
The expression reminds us, he said, "of the ultimate purpose of reading and meditating on the Scriptures: to get to know Christ and, through him, to enter into a relationship with God, a relationship that can be understood as a conversation, a dialogue."
"We live surrounded by so many words, but how many of these are empty!" the pontiff said.
"On the contrary, the Word of God responds to our thirst for meaning, for the truth about our life. It is the only Word that is always new: revealing the mystery of God to us, it is inexhaustible, it never ceases to offer its riches."
Leo said those who carry out the ministry of the Word — bishops, priests, deacons, and catechists — should be guided by love for the Sacred Scriptures and familiarity with them.
"The Church ardently desires that the Word of God may reach every one of her members and nurture their journey of faith. But the Word of God also propels the Church beyond herself; it opens her continually tothe mission towards everyone," he said.
Vatican II's Dei Verbum
The pope's catechesis at the general audience was part of a series on the documents of the Second Vatican Council.
The Holy Father explained that the sixth chapter of Dei Verbum, Vatican II's constitution on Divine Revelation, expresses a "profound and vital link that exists between the Word of God and the Church."
The document "presented the Revelation to us precisely as a dialogue, in which God speaks to humans as though to friends," he said.
Quoting the constitution, Pope Leo said "the Church has always venerated the divine Scriptures just as she venerates the body of the Lord, since especially in the sacred liturgy, she unceasingly receives and offers to the faithful the bread of life from the table both of God's word and of Christ's body."
Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes
Before the audience began, Pope Leo lit a candle in front of a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes present in the audience hall in honor of her Feb. 11 feast day.
He asked our Lady of Lourdes to accompany young people, newlyweds, and the sick, and to "intercede for before God, and obtain for you the graces that sustain you on your journey."
After the catechesis, the pope planned to visit the Vatican Gardens, where there is a replica of the grotto where Mary appeared to St. Bernadette Soubirous in Lourdes, France, in 1858.
At the grotto, Leo said he would light a candle in prayer for the sick. The World Day of the Sick, commemorated on Feb. 11, was instituted by St. Pope John Paul II in 1992, one year after his diagnosis with Parkinson's disease.
