The National Bible Week

January 25-31, 2010 marks another national event here in the Philippines, that is, the National Bible Week. The letter from the Episcopal Commission for the Biblical Apostolate was sent to all dioceses and parishes, encouraging all Christians to make this week a special occasion for Bible. The theme selected for this National event was, “They may all be one, as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us…” (Jn 17:21)


Sr. Miriam, our dean of studies, also got the letter and made an announcement, informing all the students of the coming event. Thanks to her generosity and open-mindedness that she gave us freedom to decide if we would like to do something during this Bible week or not. So a meeting among students was held in order to discuss about that. In order that we may also be one with others (as the theme says) in this National event, we agreed that we would contribute something. However, with limited time and budget (we requested some amount of money, though), we would do only the Bible exhibit and Bible games in a rather small scale as our contribution from the SATMI students to the parish during this Bible week. All the tasks were, then, distributed. We were working against the clock. Thanks to the cooperation among the students, everything was finished on time (I mean, almost everything).


As always, we would like to reach out and share our knowledge with others, especially the parishioners. Therefore, the exhibit was held just outside the church so that people would get a chance to participate. We put up tents in front of the chapel of the saints. Inside the tents there were panel boards with some basic information about Bible like how to read the bible; bible as inspired; bible as a collection of books; what is hermeneutic; how to do a group bible sharing; relationship between bible and theology. We exhibited a glass cabinet to show the bible in different languages including the original Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament. We also had the most sophisticated and scholarly bible timeline I have ever seen in my life (all the credits to Bro. Ole who invested his time and resources to get it). On the last day of this Bible Week, January 31, there were Bible quizzes with some prizes. The response from the people was quite positive. Many parishioners showed their enthusiasm to learn more about Bible by spending time looking at the exhibits and participating in the Bible quizzes.


The funny thing was that when we were looking at some of the recommended activities during this bible week in the letter from the Episcopal Commission again, we found that bible exhibit was no where in the list. So we were laughing and joking with one another saying that this exhibit should not have been there in the first place because it was not recommended by the Episcopal Commission for the Biblical Apostolate.

BOY