To Know Christ 

   “Ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ.” (St. Jerome) 

   I can never come to know and follow my Lord if I fail to study scripture.  In scripture, the inspired word of God, is where I will find Him and come to better know and love Him.

   Both the old and the new testaments proclaim Christ; the old in prophecy and the new in the reality of His presence among us.  The first prophecy of Jesus appears in the first book of the Bible, “I will make you enemies of each other: you and the woman, your offspring and her offspring.  It will crush your head and you will strike at its heel.”  (Gen 3: 15).  This was the prophecy given to Satan after he had tempted Eve and Adam and they had eaten of the forbidden fruit.

   The ”woman” is not Eve, but the new Eve, the Blessed Virgin Mary, mother of God.  It is Mary who will reverse the disobedience of Eve with complete obedience to the will of God.  The offspring spoken of is not the offspring of Eve but of Mary, Jesus Christ.  This was the first but by far not the only prophecy of the Messiah in the Old Testament.

   If I wish to follow Christ I must know enough about Him to know where He is leading.  The gospels of the New Testament give me that knowledge.  They tell of His life and all that He did when He walked among us.  His desire to obey the will of the Father in all things is the desire that must also have.  The Acts of the Apostles and the rest of the New Testament writings show me the example of the first Christians, how they devoted themselves to worship and the spreading of the word.

   If I am to know Christ I must know scripture.  If I am to follow Jesus, I must follow the path He followed and only in the scripture will I find the way to God’s heavenly kingdom.