By Randall Smith.

Although I grew up Protestant, I can't say I've ever been much of a "Bible guy." I like Aquinas. And Augustine. And the Church Fathers.

If someone asks me what brought me into the Church, I'm afraid I can't honestly say, "the Bible." I usually say: "the Holy Spirit." But if we're talking about books, it was more Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero than Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah. I am cheered somewhat by the fact that even the great St. Augustine did not find the Scriptures especially inspiring when he was younger. He preferred Virgil. When he got older, things changed. Let's just say, the Scriptures started to sing to him, and he began to hear their music.

I have had the pleasure this year of teaching our "Scripture and Salvation History Course." When you get the privilege of teaching a course like that, all those voices in the different Biblical books that sounded so odd and discordant earlier in life start to sound together like the various instruments in a magnificent symphony. You may have experienced this yourself if you've gone to the Easter Triduum Masses and paid attention to the readings. These are some of the best examples of St. Augustine's dictum that the New Testament lies hidden in the Old, and the Old is made manifest in the New.

On Good Friday, we get that poignant reading from one of the Suffering Servant Songs of Isaiah:

Yet it was our infirmities that he bore,

our sufferings that he endured,

while we thought of him as stricken,

as one smitten by God and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our offenses,

crushed for our sins;

upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole,

by his stripes we were healed.

And then we hear in the High Priestly Prayer from the Letter to the Hebrews of the "high priest who has passed through the heavens," but who can "sympathize with our weaknesses," because he has been "tested in every way, yet without sin."

Then we come to the Easter Vigil Mass and hear the Genesis Creation account, so we will remember that the God who created us is the God who re-creates us. The one who died on the Cross is the Word through Whom all things came to be. And then we hear again from Isaiah, who tells us that "the One who has become your husband is your Maker" - your Creator.

This marriage imagery was likely inspired by the prophet Hosea, who had written poignantly about God's love for His people in relation to his own deep love for his adulterous wife. His is a love, writes Fr. Louis Bouyer, "that has no tendency to close his eyes to the weakness of his beloved."

So too with God; He "does not wait for us to be just in order to love us." As St. Paul says: "It is in this that God has shown the greatness of His love for us: that His Son died for us while we were still sinners." This love is so great and so powerful, it can transform the beloved. This is a merciful justice that makes us just. It can do the seemingly impossible: create a new heart in us.

So too, at Mass, we hear from the prophet Ezekiel God's promise that

I will sprinkle clean water upon you

to cleanse you from all your impurities,

and from all your idols I will cleanse you.

I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you,

taking from your bodies your stony hearts

and giving you natural hearts.

This should put us in mind of a similar promise from the prophet Jeremiah that God would make "a new covenant. . .not like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them."

There's that marriage imagery again. In this "new covenant," says the Lord:

I will put my law in their minds

and write it on their hearts.

Some of these readings can be omitted, but the one that should never be omitted is the reading from Exodus about the Passover. This reminds us of what Christ did at the Last Supper when he transformed the bread and wine of the Passover celebration (the "pasch") into His own Body and Blood. He is, as John...