Journey: Lesson 6 - The Law

By Marcel Gervais

This is the sixth lesson in the Journey Bible Study Program. As the title suggest this is about the Law as found in the Torah especially in Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy. Chapter 1 describes teh Purposes and Characteristics of the Law. Chapter 2 describes the type of response that the Law demands.Chapter 3 describes the scope of the and the ideal of the Law. Chapter 4 moves to the rights of property and dignity of life. Chapter 5 deals with Chapter two of "Dei Verbum".

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marcel Gervais
• Release date: Jan 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9781927766095

Marcel Gervais

About the Author Archbishop Gervais was born in Elie Manitoba on September 21 1931. He is the ninth of fourteen children. His family came from Manitoba to the Sparta area near St. Thomas Ontario when he was just a teenager. He went to Sparta Continuation School and took his final year at Saint Joseph`s High School in St. Thomas. After high school he went to study for the priesthood at St. Peter’s Seminary in London , Ontario. He was ordained in 1958. He was sent to study in Rome. This was followed by studies at the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem. He returned to London to teach scripture to the seminarians at St. Peter’s Seminary. In 1974 he was asked by Bishop Emmett Carter to take over as director of the Divine Word International Centre of Religious Education. This Centre had been founded by Bishop Carter to provide a resource for adult education in the spirit of Vatican II. This Centre involved sessions of one or two weeks with many of the best scholars of the time. Students came not only from Canada and the United States but from all over the globe, Australia, Africa, Asia and Europe. By the time Father Gervais became the director Divine Word Centre was already a course dominated by the study of scripture to which he added social justice. This aspect of the course of studies was presented by people from every part of the “third world”; among which were Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez and Cardinal Dery of Ghana. In 1976 the Conference of Ontario Bishops along with the Canadian conference of Religious Women approached Father Gervais to provide a written course of studies in Sacred Scripture for the Church at large, but especially for priests and religious women. This is when Fr. Gervais began to write Journey, a set of forty lessons on the Bible. He was armed with a treasure of information from all the teachers and witnesses to the faith that had lectured at Devine Word. He was assisted by a large number of enthusiastic collaborators: all the people who had made presentations at Divine Word and provided materials and a team of great assistants, also at Divine Word Centre. The work was finished just as Father Gervais was ordained an auxiliary bishop of London (1980). He subsequently was made Bishop of Sault Saint Marie Diocese, and after four years, Archbishop of Ottawa (1989). He retired in 2007, and at the time of this writing, he is enjoying retirement.

Book preview

Journey-Lesson 6- The Law

by Marcel Gervais, Emeritus Archbishop of the diocese of Ottawa, Canada

Nihil Obstat: Michael T. Ryan, B.A., M.A., Ph.D.

Imprimatur: + John M. Sherlock, Bishop of London

London, March 31, 1980

This content of this book was first published in 1977 as part of the JOURNEY Series By Guided Study Programs in the Catholic Faith and is now being republished in Smashwords by Emmaus Publications, 99 Fifth Avenue, Suite 103, Ottawa,ON, K1S 5P5, Canada on Smashwords

Cover: ... The gate of a city where trials were held.

COPYRIGHT © Guided Study Programs ln the Catholic Faith, a division of The Divine Word International Centre of Religious Education 1977. Reproduction ln whole or ln part is Prohibited.

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CONTENTS

I Purposes and Characteristics of the Law

2 Love the Lord

3 And Your Neighbour

4 In the Land

5 On Chapter Two of Del Verbum

Appendix A

Appendix B

Answer key to practice questions

Self-test

Answer key to self-test

Recommendations for group meeting on Lesson Six

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Psalm 19

The firmament of heaven, where the sun moves by day and the moon and stars by night, proclaims the greatness of God. Since the sun was seen as having healing power in its rays, the psalmist can proceed to write of the Law which heals, gives new life. The order produced by the Law, like the orderly beauty of the heavens, proclaims the glory of God.

Lesson objective: To describe the Law as it directs the relationships of the People to God, to each other and to the earth.

Chapter 1 Purposes and Characteristics of the Law

Section objective: To describe the purposes and characteristics of the Law.

If the Exodus is the invitation to freedom and the Covenant the acceptance of freedom, then the Law is the Charter of freedom for the new society the Lord had in mind for his People.

These three realities together represent a new act of creation by God. He formed a Peo¬ple out of the soil of Egyptian society; he breathed his own life into them and placed them in the garden which was the Promised Land. He gave them a command, his Law, for their individual and collective good; in obedience to it they would find life and continued com¬munion with him.

"You shall be holy to me, because I, the Lord am holy, and will set you apart from all these people so that you may be mine" (Lev 20:26). God created his People to he images of himself, distinctive and unique among the nations as he himself is distinctive and unique among all the gods that the nations worshipped. The People are called to mir¬ror their God's love of justice, his compassion, his true freedom.

By means of the Law God wished to form a society where the dignity of people would he maintained, a society free from all that enslaves or demeans the human person. This Law was given to form them into the great nation which God had promised he