 So, you bought your Bible. You have it in hand. It’s been placed next to your comfy chair. And, now, you are ready to enter into the reading of the Bible. Where to start? What to do? How? Below are some pointers on starting to read the Bible. PLEASE NOTE: This is just some advice from a young Catholic priest who is not an expert in anything. Cheers!
WHERE TO START If you’ve never read the Bible outside of PSR, RCIA, or listening to the Scriptures during Mass, then you might feel intimidated. It’s a library of many books in one Book and so much of the Scriptures originate in times and places foreign to our time and place. God desires to speak to us in real and tangible ways, for example, through Jesus Christ. God also desires to have His word preserved for us, and so we have the Scriptures. Even though some spots are difficult, seem remote from our own life, it is inspired by the Holy Spirit and can pierce our lives with the living Word of God. Some people might want to go from Genesis to Revelation. And that isn’t a bad idea. But I would suggest taking another route: Start with the New Testament, the Gospels in particular. Remember, we’re not trying to “finish” reading the Bible. We are going to be making the Bible a part of our daily life. That means we do not need to “get through the Bible” from start to finish. There’s no “finish.” If you’ve not spent a lot of time with the Bible, start with the person who Saved you: the Gospels. Which one? START WITH THE GOSPELS Mark’s Gospel is the shortest of the Gospels. It packs a punch. Mark moved the story along with miracle after miracle, pepper in some solid teaching, then pump the breaks and join Jesus along his Way of the Cross, end with a quick Resurrection account and BAM go out and spread the Gospel by word and miracles. That’s a very quick and poor summary of Mark. I would suggest starting with Mark not only because it’s the shortest, but because Matthew and Luke followed Mark’s Gospel very closely when writing their own. Mark became the pattern of the Gospel as we have it written down today. Mark is considered the earliest of the Gospels, so we are also getting a very early account of Jesus Christ. Many scholars believe that Mark’s Gospel was read in the catacombs, at night, during the Easter Vigil, in its entirety, to those being baptized in Rome. Mark’s Gospel is, therefore, meant to be a powerful summary of the message of Jesus Christ. There you have it. Start with Mark and let it flow where you will from there. HOW Some people learned to speed read and find it hard to slow down. I would suggest trying to slow down, though, when it comes to the Scriptures. Every word matters. Every story is a wellspring of insight, revelation, and grace. When you’re reading the Bible, think in terms of encounter rather than in terms of memorizing for a test. When you encounter something that moves your heart in some way, like towards conversion, joy, peace, confusion, pondering, meditation, etc., don’t rush through that moment. If a particular story or verse or verses “strike” you deeply, then simmer with that for a while. Pray with the Scriptures as you study the Scriptures. God is speaking to you through your prayerful reading of the Scriptures. PRAYER One of the best ways to pray with Scripture is called Lectio Divina, which simply means Divine/Holy/Sacred Reading. Click on this link for a helpful guide to start Lectio Divina. STUDY One helpful way to study is to first recognize that you have time to sit with and ponder the Scriptures. We aren’t in a rush to “figure out” God’s word, because we are seeking an encounter over a passing grade on a test. That being said, your Bible might have footnotes and references to different parts of Scripture that will help unpack passages. A first step in study is to familiarize yourself with the layout of your Bible and its own particular system for references and notes. There are a myriad number of websites to go to and a ton of commentaries. So much can be helpful, but some can be misleading, especially if the authors have a particular “take” they’d prefer you to have on the passage. Be aware. Don’t be naïve. And pray through the study you do. A particular commentary I use is called The Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture. I find it to be a great resource and I suggest it for the Bible study at SS. Edward & Lucy for interested parties. Here’s a link to their website: Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture. WRITE IN YOUR BIBLE For some this will seem like a bad thing to do, but I use erasable pens while reading, praying with, and studying my Bible. I underline passages I like. I make my own notations. I draw out different connections I see. And, sometimes, I even write out different quotes or verses that move me in particular. The ink on the page is meant to draw us into the Word and writing in the Bible is a way of dialoguing with the text so that we can ultimately dialogue with the Word who personally inspired the text. If you are way to uncomfortable with writing in your Bible, perhaps having a notebook nearby will help, too. As I said, this is just Fr. Jacob’s rant about Bible reading. FELLOWSHIP The original context for the Bible is actually within the family, Temple, synagogue, and church. It’s interesting to note that there is a communal element to each of the books of the Bible. The Bible is meant to be read in community in a prayerful manner. Studying the Bible with others can be a beautiful way to enter more deeply into God’s word. Joining a Bible study can be helpful. But you do not need to join an official Bible study. If you have another person or a small group of people in your life who are willing to pray together and study the Bible together, then take advantage of that. You can help support one another, pray with one another, and get familiar with the Bible together. LASTLY: ATTITUDE Like anything, our heart-set will determine a lot when studying the Bible. If you study in order to argue, you’ll miss out on the finer notes of God’s word. If you pray with the Scriptures in order to pat yourself on the back and never change, then that’s what will happen. BUT, if you approach the word with a reverent and joyful heart, one docile to the move of the Holy Spirit, then the Word of God will console you, challenge you, draw you away from sin, change your outlook and worldview, and unite you with the Trinity and the Church in beautiful ways. ENCOURAGEMENT You. Can. Do. This. Have fun!  It became a Catholic stereotype somewhere after the invention of the printing press and the time Bob Feller took the mound in Boston in 1948 that: “Catholics don’t know their Bible.” Many reasons exist for this worn idea. For one thing, until recently in human history – like not until the late 1400’s with the invention of the Gutenberg printing press – the cost of hand written books prohibited most people from owning them. Along with the rarity of book ownership came a low rate of literacy coupled with the reality that both the church and university often wrote in Latin; up until recently (late-1960's) the priest proclaimed the Prologue of John’s Gospel at the Mass in Latin. Then throw in the Western schism in the 1500’s with Martin Luther, followed by subsequent ruptures within Protestantism, and denominational fault lines developed with interpretations of Scripture passages wedged between ecclesial communities. Although this simplifies the issues at play way too much, there developed a hesitancy within the body of the Church towards the personal reading of Scripture due to the fallout that occurred after Lutheranism. Some church goers today still recount times when consecrated religious in Catholic schools would imply to pupils to just let the priest preach on the Scriptures because, if they tried to read it themselves, they might fall into heresy. We can look at this with sorrow while honoring the sincere desire to remain faithful to beauty of the Church’s teaching. At the same time, we can admit that the program of “suspicion first unto avoidance” of Scripture led to many Catholics losing out on a deeper union with the Trinity and losing out on having our attitudes and actions shaped by the very Word of God. With literacy rates relatively higher today than they presumably were in 1523AD, we might want to scale back the hesitancy. It’s time for Catholics to embrace reading, grappling with, and praying with the Sacred Scriptures.
There is no shame in needing help when starting to read the Bible for the first time. It’s a big book and can be intimidating if you’ve never paged through books and nested in the verses of the Scriptures. There’s no perfect starting place. But a reasonable place to start is: buying a Bible. Buying a Bible You’ll notice the myriad options when clicking around online for a Bible. It might feel overwhelming. Where to start? Which translation do I use? Why are there so many options? Let’s simplify this a little bit. Catholics love the Word of God so much we have seven extra books of the Bible. If you’d like the learn more about the reasons why this is, click HERE. Suffice it to say, the disagreements that divided the Church in the West ran deep enough to create divisions about the number of books in the official listing of Scriptures. It’s sad, but it happened. And, so, look for a Bible with all of the books in it. Some Bibles will say “complete with deuterocanonical/apocryphal books” or “Catholic edition.” No need to get lost in the long word “deuterocanonical” or “apocryphal,” just know that’s the Bible you’ll want to purchase. Now we move on to translations. I’m hesitant to do this because some people have very strong opinions about different translations. Then again, people have strong opinions about everything from thread counts of bed sheets to weather patterns, so that’s not strange. What will follow is my personal take on some translations and why I use them. Each translation attempts to solve its own problems and I am so thankful for those who spend their lives in offering us English translations of the Bible that draw us into God’s word. I use different translations for different purposes. The New American Bible (NAB) is the translation the Catholic Church uses in these United States for the Lectionary (the readings at the Sunday Mass). If I’m getting ready for the weekend Mass, I’ll check out the NAB simply because the wording is the same. The NAB is available in paperback, too, so that can be a help. For Bible study I use the Revised Standard Version (RSV). I use the RSV for Bible study because the main commentary I use employs the RSV when expounding on the Scriptures. It helps me to see the connection between the commentary and the Bible I’m reading in that instance. If I’m giving a talk, I’ll sometimes use the New Living Translation (NLT) (Catholic Edition), because the translators have done, in my opinion, a pretty beautiful job of keeping true to the translation while making it easy to understand when hearing it read aloud. I have a New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE) that is a study Bible with a lot of notations and many articles in it that I go to from time to time to unpack verses. And, those are the translations I use. I know Word on Fire has a book of the Gospels out. Ignatius Press has a Bible out. And these are all fine Bibles. The one’s I’ve outlined above are simply the translations I use most often and are not guided by any private revelation of Mary. Note: If you need a large print edition, it would be worth the extra cabbage for the ease of reading and prayer. Think about what you’ll be doing with your Bible. You’ll be praying with and studying your Bible. That means you’ll want a Bible that you can transport easily, one that doesn’t weigh fifty pounds, and a Bible that doesn’t take up the entire kitchen table after you open it. It’s so much up to personal preference here. The main point is: if you don’t have a Bible, it is time to get a Bible. Attitude Change Before concluding, I want to speak to one of the most important aspects of reading the Bible: our mindset and heartset. We do not read the Bible to “get through it” and “finish” the Bible. If the mindset is “Bible in a Year” means done with the Bible for the next 20 years, then we need a little adjustment of the heart. We need reading and praying with the Bible to become a pattern and habit in our daily life. This will be a big change for some people, but it is so worth it. We read the Bible during the course of our day and pray with the Scriptures regularly because it is through the Scriptures that we encounter the Living Word and become shaped by that Word. If we do not allow the Word of God to shape us through the Sacred Scriptures, then we are missing out on Heaven’s graces, promises, and blessings. Next Post: After you get your Bible, where do you start?  When did the Church start teaching about Jesus’ Real Presence in Eucharist when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, i.e., the Mass? Would you believe me if I said some of the earliest documentary evidence of this teaching dates back to year 50AD? That’s 50AD, by the way, and not 1250AD or 1550AD or 1950AD. You’ve probably heard of Saint Paul the Apostle. He wrote many of the letters in the New Testament section of your Bible. Paul started evangelizing the metropolis of Corinth around year 50AD and we get a sense of what he taught his early church about the Eucharist in 1 Corinthian 11:23-33. Did Paul use the language of “transubstantiation” to describe Jesus’ Real Presence at their Eucharist? No. Not because Jesus wasn’t present, but because the effort to utilize Aristotelian philosophical categories with theologically precise doctrinal language had not yet gained inroads in Christian thought. Paul did write this in 1 Cor. 11:23-27 about his teaching to the early Church:
For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, ‘This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way also the chalice, after supper, saying, ‘This chalice is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the chalice, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. Whoever, therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. In verse 27 Paul mentions that receiving the Eucharist unworthily profanes “the body and blood of the Lord.” Earlier in the letter he makes this connection more explicit: “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation [Greek koinonia, English communion] in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ” (1 Cor. 10:16). Paul recounts this teaching to remind the Corinthian church what he already told them over the course of his time in Corinth. This is startling documentary evidence for faith in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. And, Paul did not simply connect this presence to the gathered believers united in faith-filled fellowship. Paul drew this union into the remembrance of Jesus’ own Last Supper, what we now call “the Mass.” Paul “received from the Lord [Jesus]” the prayer and faith in the Eucharist and “delivered” it to the church; another translation could read “handed on to you.” When we speak of “tradition” we mean precisely this: being handed something from a previous generation. Paul states that he received, was handed, the Eucharist and its prayers from the Lord himself. Although nuanced debates remain concerning Paul’s choice of words about the Eucharist and their meaning, we do know that Paul did not simply manufacture the Eucharist and its prayers from thin air. He believed he received them from Jesus the Lord. And we see powerful resonance between Paul’s account and the other gospel accounts of the Last Supper, see Matthew 26:26-28, Mark 14:22-24, and Luke 22:17-19. What does this mean? Teaching about Jesus’ Real Presence in Holy Communion connected with both the prayers of Jesus (the Last Supper) and the elements used (bread and win) did not originate with a Medieval church, but with the very first generation of believers. Although John the Evangelist does not include the Last Supper prayers concerning the Eucharist in his Gospel, he does give us chapter 6 of his Gospel (check out these verses from John’s Gospel chapter 6:32, 51-58). We have, then, multiple historical accounts from several sources about Jesus Last Supper and the Church’s grappling with his Real Presence in Communion, and one source relates teaching that happened around year 50AD, which is before the gospel books themselves were written; so, we are talking about an early, early account of Christian teaching, “fresh off the press.” As mentioned above, did the language about the Real Presence get honed in over the centuries? Of course. With any group of individuals involved in thinking about specific issues, technical language develops. This development in language does not translate into a development or change in the reality so described. The language the Church uses to describe the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in Communion during the Mass can be nuanced, technical, and sound a bit foreign to the Scriptural accounts given above. But the reality to which those theological words point take us all the way back to Jesus himself, and to Jesus who handed on to the Apostles what was eventually handed down to us: the Sacred Host of Jesus’ Real Presence in Holy Communion. Mind. Blown. Next time we gather together at Mass, take a moment to make a prayerful act of faith in the Real Presence of Jesus during Mass, especially in Holy Communion. |
AuthorFr. Jacob Bearer is a Catholic priest. He's about 6' to 6'4'' tall depending on which Convenient Store he's exiting. Although he enjoys kidney beans in chili, Fr. Jacob does not like baked beans and counts this as one of the toughest blotches on his character. He's been the administrator of SS. Edward's and Lucy's since January of 2022. Thank God for the Hatchery...this is a place where the author can share thoughts and ideas that don't quite seem right for the bulletin and won't exactly make for a homily (except for the times when the homily is posted with a sound file or used for a blog post). God bless you...and the hatchery. Archives
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