HOW TO READ THE BIBLE AND WHY by Saint Justin Popovich

The Bible is in a sense a biography of God in this world. In it the Indescribable One has in a sense described Himself.

The Holy Scriptures of the New Testament are a biog­raphy of the incarnate God in this world. In them it is related how God, in order to reveal Himself to men, sent God the Logos, who took on flesh and became man--and as a man told men everything that God is, everything that God wants from this world and the people in it.

God the Logos revealed God's plan for the world and God's love for the world. God the Word spoke to men about God with the help of words, insofar as human words can con­tain the uncontainable God.

All that is necessary for this world and the people in it--the Lord has stated in the Bible. In it He has given the answers to all questions. There is no question which can torment the human soul, and not find its answer, either directly or in­directly in the Bible.

Men cannot devise more questions than there are answers in the Bible. If you fail to find the answer to any of your questions in the Bible, it means that you have either posed a sense-less question or did not know how to read the Bible and did not finish reading the answer in it.

In the Bible God has made known:

Saint Gregory the Great- On Turning Talents to Profit

Saint Gregory the Great(The Dialogist)

 

For even as a man going into a far country called his servants and delivered to them his goods; and to one he gave five talents, and to another two, and to another one, to every one according to his proper ability... (Matt. 24:14-30)

The reading of this Gospel, dearly beloved, would have us consider that those of us who receive more gifts than others in this world, will be judged more strictly by its Creator. For, according as the gifts increase, the account demanded will be more exacting; therefore a man should be more humble and use his gift more diligently in God's service, the more heavily he sees himself indebted.. Here, then, is  a man about to set out on a journey. He calls his servants and distributes some talents among them, so that they may trade with them. After a long time he returns to ask those servants for an account of their doings. He rewards those who have worked well and gained profit but he condemns the slothful for ever.

Who is this man who sets out on a journey but our Redeemer, Who ascended into heaven in that same flesh which He had assumed? the earth is the proper home of the flesh, but it travels, as it were, to foreign lands, when our Redeemer ascends with it to heaven. This man, on the eve of his journey, entrusted his goods to his servants because he left spiritual gifts to the faithful who believed in him. To one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another only one. There are five senses of the body: sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell: so the five talents represent the gift of the five senses: that is to say, external knowledge. the gifts of understanding and action are signified by the two talents, and the single talent represents the understanding alone. But he who received the five talents gained another five, for there are some people who, although they cannot understand interior and mystical things, nevertheless, by their desire for their heavenly home, teach sound doctrine to all whom they meet, doctrine concerning those exterior matters which they can understand. As they themselves refrain from the caprices of the flesh, they are freed from the fetters of earthly things and from the desire of visible delights, and by their counsel, they free others also.

Contemplation on the Man Bearing the Pitcher of Water

Saint Maximos the Confessor 

Question: In the Gospel, who is the man in the city bearing a pitcher of water? Why water, and why are the disciples told that they’ll meet him and are to follow him? Who’s the master of the house? Why don’t the Gospel writers mention his name? What is the large upper room where a table’s been laid and in which the dread mystery of the Last Supper takes place?

Answer:  It’s not only the name of the man to whom the two disciples were sent to prepare the Passover which isn’t mentioned in Scripture, but the name of the city, too. So, an initial attempt at interpretation might be that the city denotes the perceptible world and the man symbolizes the human race in general, to whom the disciples of God the Word are being sent. The law of the Old Testament and the law of the New are sent as precursors to prepare His mystical feast with the human race. The former, through asceticism, cleanses our nature of every stain; whereas the latter, through the mystagogy of contemplation, elevates the mind, with its cognitive power, away from the corporeal and towards visions related to what is spiritually intelligble.

An indication of this is that the disciples who were sent were Peter and John. Because Peter is a symbol of action, John of contemplation. This is why it’s appropriate that they’re met first by the man bearing the pitcher of water, who symbolizes all those who, passing through the stage of practical philosophy, bear upon their shoulders the virtues, just as, within the pitcher, and with the mortification of the earthly members of their body, they also bear the grace of the Holy Spirit which, through their faith, cleanses them of every taint.

After him, they encounter the master of the house who shows them to the upper room, where a table has been spread. He, again, symbolizes all those who, being in the stage of contemplation, have embellished their pure and elevated intellect with sublime concepts of knowledge and with dogmas, just as the upper room had been prepared, in order to welcome the great Word in a godly manner.

Finally, the house itself is permanent residence in godliness, to which the practical mind in pursuit of virtue is progressing. The lord of this permanent godliness, which is now its natural possession, is the intellect illumined by the divine light of mystical knowledge. This is why, together with the practical, the supernatural presence of the Word the Saviour is required at the feast.

The word ‘man’ is used only once in the narrative, even though it refers to two persons: the one who’s described as bearing a pitcher of water and the other who’s the master of the house. As I say, it’s used once to refer to two person, perhaps because the one nature which they have in common is divided into the practical and the contemplative, as far as godliness is concerned. The Word, Who unites them spiritually, takes them and manifests them as one.

Again, if we want to attribute what’s been said to each person individually, we won’t have strayed from the truth. Because the city is the soul of each of us, to which words concerning virtue and knowledge are constantly being sent, as were the disciples of the Word. The man bearing the pitcher of water is the patient manner and thought that keeps high on the shoulders of self-restraint the unaltered grace of faith which was granted at baptism. And the house is that state of the permanent acquisition of the virtues which has been constructed as it were from many and varied stones, that is unshakeable and bold thoughts and habits.

The upper room is the broad and spacious mind and the intellect’s ability for cognitive power, which has been bedecked with divine visions of mystical and arcane dogmas. And the master of the house is the intellect which opens wide and is adorned with the trappings of the house, which means virtue, with the height, beauty and breadth of spiritual knowledge, too. And it is to this that the Word offers Himself at a repast, having first sent His disciples, that is, the initial spiritual notions concerning nature and time.

Easter, then, is truly the coming of the Word to our human intellect, when He Who comes, in mystic manner, the Word of God, grants fulfilment to all those worthy of it, through the offer of participation in His own good things.

Σταυρός και Ανάσταση, Akritas Publications, pp. 84-7

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