Once you believe that Jesus speaks to you personally in the Gospels, your heart tells you when his words are meant for you right now.
When Jesus says, "Come, follow me," he's inviting you to be his disciple.
When Jesus says, "What do you ask of me?" he's asking you what you truly need from God right now.
When Jesus says, "Who do you say that I am?" he's asking you if you believe that he is Son of God and Son of Mary - your Savior, the Lord of your life.
When he begins his prayer "Our Father," Jesus is giving you his Father to also be YOUR Father, a Father Who always loves you, guides you, forgives you, and protects you from evil.
When you truly know the Jesus of the Gospels, when you have begun to know his words and actions by heart, Jesus will, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, help you remember his words and deeds that are right and necessary for you at every moment of your life. Remember, Jesus promised us that his Holy Spirit will help us remember everything that he taught us!
If you have only come to know Jesus piecemeal, through short passages read during Sunday services, you have not given yourself the opportunity to come to know the entire Christ. It takes reading a Gospel from beginning to end to see and understand the full arc of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. It takes reading all four of the Gospels to develop a multi-dimensional understanding of Jesus, because every Gospel reveals him from a different perspective, and some Gospels have stories about Jesus and stories told by Jesus which other Gospels don't have. After all, each was written by a different person and the community he founded.
If you read Scripture and have questions, write them down and then ask your Pastor, or someone else who is knowledgable to explain those words to you. Make the study and understanding of Scripture the great love and passion of your life! As St. Jerome, the author of the quote above, also said, "Ignorance of the Scriptures is also ignorance of Christ." The more we know and love the Scriptures, the more we know and love Christ.
St. Jerome had an incredible devotion to the Scriptures, but the way his life began, no one could have predicted that path for him.
St. Jerome (342-420) was born to a rich pagan family in a town in either Croatia or Slovenia. Eventually he studied in Rome, Italy, where he indulged in dissolute behavior, having affairs with woman after woman. At some level, he recognized that such wild irresponsibility was wrong; feeling guilty, he'd go to the Roman crypts and imagine himself in hell. But all he did was manage to frighten himself. He didn't change his behavior. Eventually he became a lawyer.
He converted to Christianity, but mostly in theory, though he was baptised in 365. It was only when he began to seriously study theology that he had a true conversion. When faith became integral to his life, he finally changed his lifestyle.
He became a monk needing isolation for his study of Scripture, and lived for years as a hermit in the Syrian deserts. There he is reported to have drawn a thorn from a lion's paw; the animal stayed loyally at his side for years. Although he loved his solitude and didn't want to become a priest, he eventually was ordained and became the Pope's secretary. Pope Damascus commissioned Jerome, already a talented translator, to revise the Latin text of the Bible. The result was 30 years of work which we know as the Vulgate translation, the standard Latin version for over a millenia, and which is still in use today.
Knowing that Jerome's life was a constant struggle, - a struggle for purity and then celibacy, a struggle between solitude and the active life of being a Pope's secretary, a struggle for thirty years to translate the Bible, is it any wonder that Jerome had such a devotion to God's Voice in Scripture? God's Words guided him and strengthened him in his day to day life challenges.
Often, as we read the Gospels, we stop, halted, attentive, because at that moment Jesus touches our hearts and asks us to be still and be present to him. Then, through flashes of insight, we realize what he is telling us in this particular Bible verse or story, the lesson he has for us personally.
On other occasions, when we quiet our thoughts and come before Jesus in prayer, ready to encounter him face to face, he comes to us. We can picture him as the Babe in the manger, the young boy with Mary and Joseph, the fiery and loving itinerant preacher, the healer, the comforter, Christ on the Cross, or the risen Gardener appearing to Mary of Magdala, or the luminous Friend forgiving Peter. Whoever we need Jesus to be, he will be for us - if we open our hearts to him and invite him in to our innermost souls.
Pope Francis tells us,
"Standing before Jesus with open hearts, letting him look at us, we see that gaze of love that the disciples glimpsed when he called them. How good it is to stand before a crucifix, or on our knees before the Blessed Sacrament, and simply be in his presence! How much good it does us when he once more touches our lives and impels us to share his new life!"
The more we know the Jesus of the Gospels, the more we understand and believe how much Jesus loves us - and the more we desire to share his love. We want to talk to others about God, about prayer. We let our life become another Gospel, another Good News that others around us can see and "read."
Open your heart to the Gospels; there lie riches unimaginable; there the desire of your heart, Our Lord Jesus Christ, is waiting for you.