Reading the Bible in a Malawian context: the Catholic Church takes steps to reach Malawian peoples

LILONGWE, Malawi — The Roman Catholic Church recently celebrated its first century of work in Malawi with the motto: ‘Rooted in Christ.’ In a humble office above its warehouse in Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital, Father Julio Feliu explained the work being done by the Catholic Church in Malawi.

“There’s Bible study, Bible sharing, meditation on the Bible and the worship, or proclamation, of the Word of God,” he said. “We are trying to make the Bible available not only to the pastors but to the people at a grassroots level.”

He spoke about the difficulty of selling Bibles in the face of rapid inflation, explaining how he had raised funds quickly in order to buy as many Bibles as possible from the Bible Society of Malawi before inflation could drive the prices up again.

Bartering

“Our idea is to make the Bible available to the people in the villages, all of those who are capable of reading.”

Father Julio uses e-mail to keep in touch with parishes across Malawi, and notifies them when he has Bibles available. “If we can keep the price down, we can distribute the 30,000 Chichewa Bibles in stock by next year.”

“In the villages, cash is a problem sometimes,” Father Julio said. “Some of the parishes sell Bibles through bartering. You give us a chicken, you get a Bible, you give us a bag of maize, you get two Bibles.” He explained that interested in this sort of bartering is very high —especially during harvest time.

Understand

“Our program as a church,” Father Julio continued, “is not only to distribute the Bible, but also to make sure that people understand its message.” He explained that the time has now come for a new approach to studying and spreading God’s Word in Malawi. “We must make the people understand that instead of going to the European kind of reading of the Bible you have to go back to your own culture. We have work to do, a task in the church. We call it ‘enculturation.’

“I’ve never seen people so glued to the screen. I have tried with the young, with elderly people, with educated and illiterate people, and they all get the message!”

“We are trying to study the Chewa, Ngoni and Yao cultures, to make the local people understand their own culture. Once they start appreciating their own culture, that is when you say: ‘This is the Bible, it’s got a tradition behind it, a tradition which is in evolution, like your own Malawian culture.’ And once the people are able to appreciate their own culture, they can appreciate the Bible. So one of our priorities now is this re-enculturation.”

Father Julio explained how the Catholic Church conducts several workshops every year for leaders in all the dioceses, who then go back to train people in the parishes.

The result is that a core group of people becomes more familiar with Bible study. The two methods used to spread a deeper understanding of the Bible are: ‘Bible sharing’ and ‘lectio divina’, which is a personal reading and pondering over the Bible. “The Bible sharing is our best method so far,” Father Julio said. “It’s on the point of no return, that is for sure!”

Jesus film

With regard to Scripture engagement, Father Julio highlighted the Jesus film. “I’ve never seen people so glued to the screen. I have tried with the young, with elderly people, with educated and illiterate people, and they all get the message! I don’t know if we should try to develop that because video is everywhere now in Malawi.

“In our worship we want a proclamation of the Word,” Father Julio went on. “We don’t insist that people come to church with the Bible in their hands.

“Once again, we come to our basic principle: it is a witness, a proclamation of the message, that is important. So that even the preaching of the message goes together with the proclamation of the message.

“Have you seen what they do here? They put the Bible on a cloth over an earthen water pot. The significance of the water pot is that water is life-giving. The pot is brought to the altar and the priest takes the Bible and shows it to the people who are rejoicing and clapping their hands. That,” Father Julio emphasised, “is the Word of God. It’s what people want.” (WR 372/21 - 11.02)