Scripture Moments: Acts 4:1-32

This week we pray with the pericope of Acts 4:1-32. The early church knows how to preach and spread the good news. What was her secret? More at our Lectio Divina page

Defeating Goliaths: Wednesday, 2nd week

Few stories are more Hollywood-like than the story of David and Goliath. The story not only appeals to some historical facts, but mainly to a strong desire of our hearts, the desire to defeat powerful enemies.

David embodies the genuineness and innocence. Goliath incarnates the powerful, scornful evil ready to destroy. David was inexperienced, young, inspired and ingenious. Goliath was trained to kill, strong and mean. We all want to believe that this story is true because we want our own “Goliaths” to be defeated. We need to believe that victory is on the side of the innocent even if he is less powerful. That belief that ingenuity is more powerful than brute force, is also celebrated in the famous story of the Trojan horse.

However, we are used to hearing these stories from the point of view of the winners, you know, those who write history. There has been a real event that tells the same story from the “other” side. September 11 was in a way a remake of the David-Goliath story. This time also, ingenuity defeated the powerful. The forehead of Goliath was wounded by three airplanes directed to the main vital organs of the giant. The giant was not dead, but was certainly wounded. How did it feel to be on the side of the Philistines when Goliath fell on his face? Perhaps for the first time, the world has the answer.

Now that we know, the question still remains where we should aim the sling? The awakened “mighty giant” is now looking for its own Goliath. Goliath is now depicted as hiding in the desert, or lurking in the main cities’ suburbs, living with us, quietly and stealthily like a deadly virus, surfacing sneakily on the Internet, omnipresent, almost omniscient and ready to jump.

The Bible does tell how David, in turn, became a little Goliath, a kind of little emperor of his land. And that story continues to be true. Jesus was not a David nor a Goliath. The son of David had a unique way to be a king, without throne, sword and also without sling. The Goliath he tried to defeat was not a human brother, but the perennial desire of looking for Goliaths. Where is really our Goliath today?

Scripture Moments

“Understand now what the four stages of this ladder are, each in turn. Reading, Lesson, is busily looking on Holy Scripture with all one’s will and wit. Meditation is a studious insearching with the mind to know what was before concealed through desiring proper skill. Prayer is a devout desiring of the heart to get what is good and avoid what is evil. Contemplation is the lifting up of the heart to God tasting somewhat of the heavenly sweetness and savour. Reading seeks, meditation finds, prayer asks, contemplation feels.”

Guigo II, Letter to Br. Gervase, “The Ladder of Contemplation”