More precious than gold
July 28, 2023 - Friday, 16th Week in Ordinary Time
Psalm 19:8-11
The part of Psalm 19 that we hear today focuses on the Torah, the teaching of the Lord given to His people. But the refrain that accompanies our psalm is taken from the Gospel of John where Jesus states that His words spoken to us are “spirit and life”. The entire Bible is God’s gift to us and it is more precious than a heap of purest gold (Ps 19:11).
In 1911, J.P. Morgan, a prominent American financier and collector of art and rare books, purchased the Gutenberg Bible, one of the first printed books in history, for a reported price of $1.5 million. More than one hundred years later, in 2016, a rare 17th-century King James Bible known as the "She" Bible was sold at an auction in London for £314,500 (over $400,000). But, the value of the Bible does not depend on its rarity. After all, none of us have to spend a fortune to get a copy of the Bible. It is available in the bookstores of any free country for a fraction of money and available for free on the net. The value of the Bible and its uniqueness is in its message.
The psalmist tells us that the law of the Lord refreshes the soul, gives wisdom to the simple, rejoices the heart, and enlightens the eye. In 1928 in the Netherlands, a boy was born who became one the greatest smugglers of the 20th century. What did he smuggle? The Bibles. Brother Andrew felt called by God to share the Gospel with believers living under oppressive regimes who denied their people access to the Word of God. He influenced many others and thanks to their efforts God’s teaching could reach and transform the life of millions of people. What I consider even more remarkable is the fact that one of those smuggled Bibles found its way to me.
The first prime minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, called the Bible “the eternal Book of Books”. I am sure that those who engaged in propagating the Bible would agree. From the ancient writers and editors of the biblical books to the ancient copyists, who painstakingly produced the manuscripts of all of them, from the translators and publishers to the smugglers and propagators of this book, all those people sacrificed their lives for that book. It is believed that St. Jerome needed around 23 years to come out with the Latin translation of the Bible. The translation of my smuggled Bible from English to Polish took 25 years. And Eugene Peterson needed ten years to complete his work on “The Message”, the acclaimed contemporary paraphrase of the Bible into English.
When William Tyndale was being led to execution for alleged heresy because of his work of translating the Bible into English, he prayed: “Lord, open the King of England's eyes." The Lord heard his prayer. Although martyred for his work on the English Bible, he laid the foundation for future translations, including the influential King James Version. May the Lord open the eyes of each one of us and help us to realise that the Bible is indeed “more precious than gold, than a heap of purest gold” (Ps 19:11).