By Emilie Ng
MISPLACING her Bible would be Catherine “Cackie” Upchurch’s worst nightmare.
As the director of the world’s largest Catholic Bible study ministry, Little Rock Scripture Study, the sacred Scripture is Cackie’s most important tool for her job of teaching people to love the Word of God.
Cackie has worked for LRSS for 26 years and has been director for the ministry for almost 17 years.
The 57-year-old recently travelled to Australia to celebrate distribution partner Evangelisation Resources Down Under’s 10th Bible Institute and share her passion for Scripture.
Cackie’s thirst for the sacred and divinely inspired text didn’t spring from her Catholic upbringing, but from her deeply Protestant high school environment in the “Bible Belt” of Arkansas, in the south of the United States.
“In the 1970s I was in high school and our Catholic high school closed so we moved in to the public high school,” she said.
“I was with a lot of fellow students who were Baptists, and Presbyterian, Pentecostal, Anglican, Lutheran, and I felt like I didn’t know God’s Word.
“In reality I think I did know it more than I realised it – we’re so permeated with that in our liturgy – but I couldn’t quote chapter and verse and they could.
“So I was determined I was going to read the Bible in high school.”
Cackie bought and read her first Bible, opening up to Genesis and devouring the stories of “murder, growing families, wars and floods”.
“It was engaging, especially as a teenager, it was animating,” she said.
“And then there’s Exodus, you start with Exodus and think it’s a great story and then you get halfway through and it’s all about building a tent in the desert.”
Cackie’s eventual solo journey through Numbers left the teenager “discouraged”, and without any study aid, she closed her Bible, but not for good.
Help came less than 250km away in Little Rock, Arkansas, where a yet unknown Scripture study ministry was beginning.
Named after Arkansas’ capital city and, more importantly, the Catholic diocese, Little Rock Scripture Study made the Bible come alive for Cackie.
“Our community had heard there was a Bible Study in Little Rock and we thought, why couldn’t we have that?” she said.
“As a senior in high school I started studying the Bible with others and I loved it.
“I felt like it spoke to me and it gave me truth to latch on to.”
When Cackie left high school for university in Toronto, Canada, her yearning for Scripture followed her.
“The more I grew up as an adult Catholic, the more valuable I found the Word of God,” she said.
“By the time I graduated (university) and was working (as a high school teacher) I worked with adults in the evening in parishes.
“And the more I did that the more alive I felt, and the more I felt drawn to learn more about Scripture, and grow in my ability to help other people love Scripture.”
Her love for Scripture led her to working full-time with LRSS, a job, although unconventional, that is one she feels proud to call her vocation.
“I can’t tell you how many people say, ‘Well, what do you do for a living?’” Cackie laughed.
When she’s not working, Cackie is either sitting down with her Bible imagining herself into the sacred scene in the spirit of St Ignatius, or flipping through the Psalms praising God for all of creation.
“For me personally, one of the greatest evidences of God’s love and work and care is creation,” she said.
“And sometimes I’ve had such an appreciation for the created world, and I can turn to the Psalms – ‘The Heavens proclaim the glory of God’, or, ‘The trees of the field clap their hands’.
“This is God’s first Good News, first Gospel, creation.”
Cackie’s father’s funeral was another moment when the Scriptures proved to be more than just “a dead letter”.
“When my father died, the Scriptures that we proclaimed was, ‘Give me your burdens, for my yoke is easy and light, come to me all you who labour and are burdened’,” she said.
“And my dad was a very hard worker – that was one of his character traits that was both a strength and a weakness.
“To hear that scripture proclaimed, all I could think of is he is getting rest, and I know he is getting rest in the best possible way.”
As the 41st year of LRSS’s life goes by, Cackie prays that more Catholics will open their Bibles and encounter the living God.
“The priority is to get people to God’s Word, and get God’s Word to them,” she said.
“We know Little Rock is profoundly Catholic but solid and it’s transformed people’s lives.
“This is my vocation, and I’m grateful to God that I get to do what I’m passionate about.”
