How to Read the Bible – A Three Step Plan (written for Catholics - valid for all)

taylormarshall.com ^ | September 30, 2013 | Dr. Taylor Marshall

[NYer]

How do you read the Bible? Today is the feast day of Saint Jerome, who once quipped, “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.”

“Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.” – Saint Jerome

It’s a running joke that if you want to find a Bible verse, you ought to ask a Protestant and not a Catholic. Protestants read the Bible. Catholics not so much.

This raises the question:

Why Don’t More Catholics Read the Bible?

I think the answer lies in the fact that we Catholics go to Mass. The Holy Mass has at least two Bible readings every time. If you pray the Breviary or Liturgy of Hours, multiply that several times.

Joe Catholic says to himself, “Why should I study the Bible? I go to Mass. I hear it there. Check and check.”

There is something beautiful in this. For Catholics, Bible reading is liturgical. Hence, Bible reading remains chiefly a community experience.

Three Step Plan to Kick It Up a Notch

It’s good to listen to the readings from the Bible at Holy Mass. However, we also need a personal (even private) encounter with God in the pages of Sacred Scripture. All of the saints breathed Sacred Scripture. Scripture served as the grammar for their souls. They couldn’t communicate without it.

Here are some basic spiritual needs that you have every single day of your life:

1. Praise – Voicing your delight in God and His provision for your life. Gratitude destroys discouragement.
2. Wisdom – You need practical advice to navigate the complexities of life.
3. Challenge – You need to be lifted higher. You need to grow in your faith. You need to be inspired. You must be an intentional Christian.

So when you wake up tomorrow, do the following:

1. Read a Psalm. Start with Psalm 1. Make it your anthem of praise for that day.
2. Read at least one Proverb. Proverbs are the wisdom morsels of your day. There are 31 chapters. Why not read one chapter every day during the month. Oct 1 is Provers 1. October 31 is Proverbs 31. You get the idea.
3. Read a chapter of the one of the Gospels. This is your challenge. Your Savior challenges you in the four Gospels. He calls you to be not merely a nominal Catholic but a disciple. You cannot seriously read the Gospels and stay lukewarm. Christ speaks in a way that cannot be ignored.

“But I’m so busy. I don’t have the time!”

What? You’re too busy. Sorry, you just got served a yellow card:

That’s a yellow card. You’ve been warned…

Doing these three readings will take you only 3-5 minutes. That’s the time of a commercial break. It will change your life for good. I promise. It takes 21 days to make a habit, so give it 21 days and see if you aren’t hooked. Put the Bible on your night stand and read it in the mornings. Start fresh.

“Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.” – Saint Jerome, Doctor of the Church

[Jvette]

I am not offended. This whole strain started from a sort of aside in a post about what the Church teaches regarding salvation of those who never heard of Jesus.

There is a distinction which I know that many here care nothing about and I pointed it out. I never thought it would engender the response it has.

[Jvette]

Thank you for the information but I have already conceded that Roman Catholic has indeed seeped into use by those within. The fact remains, however, that officially it is the Catholic Church and the use here of RCC is generally by those who dispute the origin and history of the Church.

[boatbums]

2 Corinthians 1:13
We don't write anything to you except what you can read and also understand.

Now just wait a sec! Didn't Paul KNOW that nobody could read back then??? Isn't that what we have been told repeatedly by the "our church wrote the Bible and gets to tell everyone what it says" folks here?

[boatbums]

would He arrive in less than a PERFECT environment??? Yes He did.

Somehow I do not get a picture of that stable and floor being disinfected first. People back then were not nearly as germophobic as we are today.

[boatbums]

I wouldn’t hold my breath while waiting for that retraction if I were you. ;o)

[BlueDragon]

I wouldn’t hold my breath while waiting for that retraction if I were you. ;o)

No worries. I'd just as soon not get bit, anyway...

[boatbums]

Firstly, I am not protesting anything. It is the protestants who are whining about imaginary anti-protestant bigotry.

This time, however, it is the protestants who are whining, not the Catholics. Tell *them* to get more thick-skinned and stop crying about imaginary anti-protestant bigotry.

Your memory, I'm afraid, seems to be fading. This is when you stuck your nose into the fray about "bigotry". NKP_Vet, in post 626 whined FIRST saying, "the height of anti-Catholic bigorty on FR Boggles the mind." To which Elsie replied:

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To: NKP_Vet

The height of anti-Catholic bigotry on FR boggles the mind.

The height of anti-PROTESTant bigotry on FR boggles the soul.

628 posted on Thursday, October 03, 2013 11:32:12 AM by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 626 | View Replies | Report Abuse]

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This is when you, DSC, replied:

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To: Elsie

“The height of anti-PROTESTant bigotry on FR boggles the soul.”

Remind me, what do we call it when someone utters a statement he knows to be false? Would that be the “L” word?

There is not and never has been a scintilla of anti-protestant bigotry on FR.

629 posted on Thursday, October 03, 2013 12:11:37 PM by dsc (Any attempt to move a government to the left is a crime against humanity.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 628 | View Replies | Report Abuse]

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You were accusing anyone who said there was anti-Protestant bigotry on FR of lying and claimed NONE existed and NEVER had. What followed were numerous posts of amazed non-Catholic Christians - those who deal with blatant anti-Protestant bigotry on a pretty regular basis by a cast of usual suspects but who very rarely "whine" about it. Some Catholics, however, seem to get their knickers in a knot over just about anything that criticizes their "church" and scream "anti-Catholic bigots!!!", as a kind of knee-jerk reaction. There ARE many more instances of the SAME bigotry Protestants are accused of exhibiting against Catholics by Catholics against ALL Protestants. That you have refused to acknowledge what is clear to see by any other objective person demonstrates a type of bigotry all its own. You have proved that no amount of evidence will change a mind that has already been made. Don't imagine no one sees it going on.

[boatbums]

Protestants have the truth on their side. Catholics do not, hence the neverending guilt trip of Catholics. Attacking anything and everything Protestant.

Just curious, DSC, if this statement would qualify as "bigotry" in your view?

[boatbums]

Absolutely false and you know it. Catholics never rant and rave and put down protestants.

Said he who JUST got done posting:

No one can depart from the teaching of Catholic truth without loss of faith and salvation.”

~ Pope Pius XII

“He who is separated from the body of the Catholic Church, however laudable his conduct may otherwise seem, will never enjoy eternal life, and the anger of God remains on him by reason of the crime of which he is guilty in living separated from Christ.” ~ St. Augustine & the Council of Cirta (412 AD).

Who is the one here being "absolutely false" and knowing it???

I get it that you claim to be a failed Protestant and believe you have found the "true faith" in Roman Catholicism, but it looks like a case where former smokers make the most obnoxious anti-smoking advocates, it seems like you have a "guilt trip" of your own to deal with. We KNOW from God's word that it is faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior that gives salvation. This grace is no more available ONLY through the Catholic Church as it was through Judaism BEFORE Christ came. A relationship with God is by grace THROUGH faith and those who sincerely come to Christ can NEVER be cast out from His family, the Body of Christ. Redirect that guilt and anger to defending Jesus Christ instead of a church.

[Elsie]

I don’t think non Traditional Christian is a good choice.

I was being snarky.

I should have put Traditional in quotes.

I was referring to (trying to!) the weight that Catholicism places on non-Scriptural teachings and beliefs.

[Elsie]

Your illiterate rantings are not worthy of a reply ...

And yet you did.

[Elsie]

“No one can depart from the teaching of Catholic truth without loss of faith and salvation.”

Twelve said I was going to Hell?

Not even PURGATORY?

My knees are aquiver I tell you!

[Elsie]

And Augie did as well?

NOW I am going to hie me to a nunnery!

[Elsie]

Catholics never rant and rave and put down protestants.

[Elsie]

Father, forgive me; for I have sinned...

[Elsie]

It is what it is.

So true.

And, if one is NOT a JEW - then they are a GENTILE.

The REQUIREMENTS for Gentiles are found in Acts 15.

[Elsie]

“Right is right if nobody is right, and wrong is wrong if everybody is wrong.”

Bishop Fulton Sheen

[Elsie]

It is not that the Church rejects Protestants, it is that she rejects the notion that there is more than one church.

Not quite...

'she' rejects the very idea that it could possibly be wrong about something.

[Elsie]

This whole strain started from a sort of aside in a post about what the Church teaches regarding salvation of those who never heard of Jesus.

I thought that Romans chapter 2 took care of this?

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12 All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. 14 (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.)

[daniel1212]

“Actually it is RCs who have much engaged in posting pro-Catholic and anti-protestant articles here, far more than articles promoting Protestantism and against Catholicism”.

Absolutely false and you know it. Catholics never rant and rave and put down protestants.

Rather, it is your absolute statement that is absolutely false, and i know it and can show it, while your denial of what i said has no more substance than your last assertion that Catholics make of up to 50% of the military, versus what substantiation shows. We are still waiting for your source for that one.

First, you ambiguously use "rant and rave" to describe posting pro-Catholic and anti-protestant articles, while just a quick search will evidence Catholic attacks on Protestants and putting them down, such as.

Sola Scriptura and Protestantism’s Hermeneutical Chaos

The Barren Harvest of Protestantism

Thomas A. Droleskey on the Lies of Protestantism

Why Only Catholicism Can Make Protestantism Work

First the Protestants, Now the Cults

Can Protestantism Really Co-exist with Conservatism

One Hundred Fifty Reasons I'm Catholic -- And You Should Be Too!

Converting Protestants [to Catholicism]

The Idealization of Protestantism [attack by Fathers Rumble & Carty]

St. John Neumann Confronts the Protestants

There are many more, and I am not going to advertize the above pro-Catholic and anti-protestant articles, but Google each (select and right click) and you can find them. And also about a 100 conversion stories to Catholicism.

Plus posts by Catholics broadly attacking protestants, even saying that protestantism IS NOT Christianity and that it should be wiped out.

All they have to do is post anything about the Catholic Church and the usual suspects on FR attack them like a pack of rabid wolves.

Translated, all they have to do is post anything about the Catholic Church under the premise that it alone is the one true church to whom all are to submit, and that Prot churches are not worthy of the name church, then they find this presumption challenged and attacked. (And besides articles as above, the over 200 articles just on the pope in the past 30 days, with RC responses, provide many things to respond to.)

As long as Rome maintains her elitist assertion and Catholics uphold it then you cannot complain that it is challenged. She is not Moses though she presumes as much, thus the ground does not swallow her enemies as the oppose her (but she honors her own in death who basically do)

Protestant-guilt is a hell of a thing and Catholics have been putting up with these adolescent temper tandrums for 500 years.

Quite a broadbrushed put down of protestants, but you and Catholics do not engage in such, and i am confident that under the biased definition of bigotry then this not any of the above would qualify.