Literally

Jesus said to his disciples: "Amen, amen, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you. Until now you have not asked anything in my name; ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.

"I have told you this in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures but I will tell you clearly about the Father. On that day you will ask in my name, and I do not tell you that I will ask the Father for you. For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have come to believe that I came from God. I came from the Father and have come into the world. Now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father." (John 16:23-28)

What is a figure of speech?  This a key question because using figures of speech, Jesus spoke to his disciples.  A word or phrase used in a non-literal sense for rhetorical or vivid effect is a figure of speech. There are these types: simile, metaphor, hyperbole, and oxymoron.  Some other common figures of speech are alliteration, anaphora, antimetabole, antithesis, apostrophe, assonance, irony, metonymy, onomatopoeia, paradox, personification, pun, synecdoche, and understatement.  There are too many here to define.  Needless to say, Jesus told his disciples not to take him literally.

Literally means that the thing to which we refer happened exactly as we've described it. For example, when we bang our knee and say: “My leg literally broke in two,” we are not using the word as intended. What we mean to say is it “figuratively” broke in two.  This is a huge distinction we must appreciate.  If not, we misread the Bible and certainly what Jesus said, or what Gospel writers claimed he said.

Many of us take literally the Bible and especially the Gospel.  A careful reading reveals a very generous use of many types of figures of speech.  To take scripture literally means we likely believe and behave like fundamentalists. One example of fundamentalism among Christians is the opposition to the teaching of evolution in American schools. Evolution contradicts the story of the creation found in the Book of Genesis, and fundamentalist Christians believe that teaching evolution undermines their religious values.  One wonders how many Catholics believe the same way prompting well-educated and savvy young people to say: “No thank you Catholic Church."

Deacon David Pierce