(ANS – Hua Hin) – From 2-6 June, Fr Frank Moloney, conducted seminars at Don Bosco Retreat Centre, Hua Hin, Thailand. This is the fourth such seminar that Fr Moloney has directed in Thailand. Over the past 8 years he has presented all four Gospels. Although many participants are Salesians, more than 100 people from various parts of Thailand, Priests, Religious and Lay People, were in attendance.

The seminar focused initially on the principles of interpretation that must be understood for a contemporary, critical, but faith-directed reading of the Sacred Text. For most Catholics, even though these principles have been part of the teaching of the Church for many decades, they are not understood.

Once that is in place, Fr Moloney, currently the Director of the Program for Biblical Studies and Early Christian Literature in the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry at Australian Catholic University, took the participants through the way Luke tells the story of Jesus: the infancy stories and the remaining “prologue” to the Gospel (Luke 1:1-4:13), the Galilean Ministry (4:14-9:50), the Journey to Jerusalem (9:51-19:44), and the events at Jerusalem (19:45-24:53), with a special focus upon the passion narrative and the resurrection narrative (22:1-24:53).  Fr Moloney’s recent writing has focused upon this aspect of all four Gospels in his “The Resurrection of the Messiah. A Narrative Commentary on the Resurrection Accounts in the Four Gospels” (New York: Paulist Press, 2013). 

The purpose of these seminars, run regularly by the Thai Province, is to provide guidance at this time in the history of the Catholic Church when the Council (especially Sacrosanctum Concilium [Liturgy] and Dei Verbum [Revelation]), the 2011 Synod of Bishops, the Pope (Evangelii Gaudium), and the Congregation, are asking Salesians to use the Word of God as the major source for spiritual and apostolic lives. As St Jerome once wrote: “Not to know the Scriptures is not to know of Christ.”

Published 10/06/2014