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

[aMorePerfectUnion]

“body and blood and gave the apostles the power and authority to continue the practice.”

No He did not. He commanded, them to do it in memory of Him.

[terycarl]

Finally; you are admitting that the RCC has had some, shall we say, problems in the past. (and some in the NOT so distance past, as well some ongoing problems even as we speak.)

what do you mean "finally"??, I have never, in my life, denied that the Catholic church has made errors....But, while individual Catholice have made serious errors, the Church itself has never erred in any matter of faith or morals...can't happen. The hierarchy of the church has certainly done some dumb things over the last 2,013 years and the church itself has suffered because of these people...that changes nothing, in every organization in the history of mankind, there have been incompetant, even evil, individuals who unfortunaately, reflect badly on all those in the organization....can't be helped, I guess, but the church has weathered every storm that has come her way and is guaranteed to do so UNTIL THE END OF TIME.

[terycarl]

...and I'm not asking you to prove a POSITIVE, I'm asking you to prove a point declared to be a dogma of the church; using ANY DATA you have access to, from ANY source!

source:bible source within Bible:Jesus Christ

whatsoever you shall bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven, whatsoever you shall loose on Earth shall be loosed in Heaven..

He certainly would not have allowed the church to bind something on Earth that was in error....couldn't possibly happen.

[terycarl]

And in the meantime, you still have the money that you DIDN'T waste on lottery tickets.

no you won't...the lottery is merely a way to pay taxes while smiling...if you don't lose your dollar in the lottery, they will have to extract it from you in some other form...they'll get it.

[terycarl]

always amused me to see some welfare mom spending her last twenty bucks on lottery tickets

it never amused me to see that...recall that I stated earlier that lottery spending should come out of the family entertainment budget...money that can be spent on virtually anything that entertains you....movies (even a bigger waste than the lottery)golf, speed boats...whatever...it is money that you can afford to throw away.

welfare people have no such funds, but this country has so poorly handled the welfare system that almost nothing is sacred anymore.

[metmom]

you cannot be baptized into a denomination.....imposible. You are baptized Catholic

You just contradicted yourself.

If you are baptized Catholic, by wearing that label, you ARE baptized into a denomination.

[terycarl]

there were thousands of men and women before AND after him that carried the Reformation. You would have had to kill them ALL and you still couldn't have stopped it. It was a work of GOD and you cannot fight against HIM!

Nonsense...while there were certainly dissidents in the world as a group they did not exist...communication wasn't texting on your cell phone...I might be a dissatisfied Christian, you might be one in Germany, but...never the twain shall meet.

for you to even suggest that the protestant revolution was a work of God is to say that the halocaust was too...

just because they happened, doesn't mean that God was happy with them......He wasn't.

[terycarl]

“I merely point out that without Catholics, you would have no idea of who Christ was. “ Somehow, I think the omnipotence and sovereignty of God would have accomplished His will.

aabsolulutely correct...and He did so through the Catholic church....say thanks Catholics, for doing God's will!!!

[terycarl]

It’s true. I notice how when there is a pedaphile disguised as a priest, the next guy up shuffles them right out of the parish! Unfortunately, he shuffles them to a new parish... I suggest a Swifter!

Back to that I see...O.K., I promise not to point out that the incidence of pedophiles in the Protestant world FAR surpasses that in Catholicism, and while I have read MANY reports on how Catholicism was taking major steps to remedy and reconcile the situation...I have read NOTHING about how the protestant community is attacking the problem. Also, Catholic diocese have paid out millions of dollars to the victime if these horrendous crimes, the Protestant community has paid out ....what????....$7.35???

[terycarl]

Start posting for every 10 years during the first 100 years after christ and then every 25 years after that. Or admit you like to blow smoke.

real Christians take Christ at His word...He doesn't have to restate them every ten years...once will do, and I recall the Last Supper....Look it up!

[terycarl]

Just got done reading this article about The Wobbly and Heretical Evolution of Rome's Doctrine of Real Presence

well, no wonder....if Paul Hoffer, who was undoubtedly present in the first century, said it, that who is the Catholic church to deny HIM?????

[terycarl]

He commanded us to do this in memory of Him

no He didn't...He commanded us to do THIS (what He had done at the last supper) and then told us why to do THIS.....the THIS is important, the why is incidental...we do a lot of things in His memory.....He specified that we were to do THIS...why is that so hard to accept....He gave us Himself in the Eucharist and you won't accept Him....Pathetic.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

At the end of the day, the cover-up of your molesting priests by the church was worse that the molesting.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

Try again - Christ didn’t say anything to support the later claims of Rome

[aMorePerfectUnion]

We are to share bead and wine in memory of His actual sacrifice - as He said

[terycarl]

“the Catholic Church wrote scripture “ No they did not. There were no Romanistic Christians at the time.

sure there were, while they did not YET claim the title of Catholic, we all know that they shortly became known as Catholic....so it was retroactice for s few years, same people, same scripture, same teaching same everything to this date....one should stop trying to deny reality...get over it....it happened and there's nothing anyone can do to change it....you can deny it all you want, but history cannot be changed.

[boatbums]

Think whatever you want...I choose to follow Christ not a group of elitists who presume they alone can identify who is or isn't a Christian. The ONLY baptism that “counts’ is the one where the baptizee has made a public profession of faith and God, who sees the heart, knows who are His.

[boatbums]

the Church determined what would be inspired and not the inspired Word of God.

I can't believe you are STILL trying this line! The church RECEIVED the divinely-inspired word of God as it was GIVEN to them and they OBEYED it because they knew it WAS from God. Nobody in the group you identify with can claim they EVER had any authority to "determine" what was from God. I think it is terrible how twisted this simple truth has become in Roman Catholicism. It does, however, explain why other perverted doctrines developed there.

[terycarl]

RCC is infallible in that matter, others aren’t. “ No it is not. Never was. Never will be.there is no evidence to prove your claim. It is simply an opinion.

Nope, the Catholic church was given the gift of Infallibility (a necessary gift, by the way)by Christ Himself. While it is certainly my opinion, it is shared by literally billions of Christians over the past 2,013 years.....billions!!

[terycarl]

No He did not. He commanded, them to do it

now you get....He commanded them to do IT....consecrate bread and wine into His body and blood....why is irrelevant.