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

[jodyel]

Thanks for the advice, mod, but if they are screaming like little babies here, can you imagine what they’d do if I mailed them?

I shudder to think!

[jodyel]

Yada, yada, yada...rules, rules, rules.

Hit me with your best shot, narses.

[Elsie]

Are you disputing what I said?

With THIS reply??

But if they'd go to their priest, then HE would let them read all they wanted; right?

---

Again, do you dispute that the individual could not have read any of the NT for himself?

Well; since you've moved the goalposts back to the BEGINNING; what can I say about that?

[Elsie]

I guess I was wrong.

Not as pointy as I had ASSumed...

[Hegewisch Dupa]

didn’t you get the memo? Rules are up to everyone’s personal interpretation

[Elsie]

Definitely!

Especially from a follower of Pope Urban VI...

[Elsie]

“Catholics sure do like rules....guess that is why the RCC is so full of ‘em!”

The rules of this site forbid “mindreading” on this forum.

I wish there was a 'rule' forbidding illogical statements.

---

Mindreading only works on INDIVIDUALs; not an ill-defined group like 'Catholics'.

[Elsie]

Let scripture guide, not the ideas of men.

"By Jove; I think he's GOT it!"

[daniel1212]

I am sure you agree, but while the varying views (to varying degrees) of pius but post-apostolic so-called church “fathers” (who are not the fathers of the NT church in Scripture) have a place such as showing that Luther’s rejection of apocryphal books was not novel as RCs allege, yet they are not to be treated as if their understanding is determinative for doctrine, and even Rome judges them more than they judge here. But for NT Christians (not Rome) Scripture was the transcendent supreme standard for truth and obedience, and it was upon Scriptural substantiation that the Lord established His claims in dissent from those who were the stewards of the Scriptures.

And thus in my opinion, that endless thread debating what CFs said has gone way beyond what is warranted. Scripture teaches historical accounts as literal, which RC scholarship denies in her own official Bible, and often uses eating as metaphorical, as in Jn. 6, and never is physically eating the means by which souls have life in themselves.

Nor was that the means by which the Son “lived” by the Father, which serves as the examples of how believers live by Christ, (Jn. 6:57) but He said His food was to do the will of His Father, (Jn. 4:34) for He lived by every word of God, and instructed that we are to as well, after His example. (Mt. 4:4)

[aMorePerfectUnion]

placemarker

[daniel1212]

BECAUSE IT WAS A BAD TRANSLATION, AND THAT PROHIBITION WAS IN EFFECT FOR THAT TRANSLATION IN THAT LOCATION ONLY! Don't let the facts get in the way of prot opinions.

Evidently the Roman mind control will not even let you read thru material from RC sources which disturb your cherished fantasy of history, and require you read what you want into it. For rather than RCs being only prohibited from reading incorrect or heretical translations, they were at times, in places or universally prohibited from freely reading Scripture, part or whole, even if only in the language they could read, and not simply a bad translation of it.

You only mention the Council of Toulouse (1229) and Terragona, (1234), SHOUTING that this was only for that location (even if in two different countries), but you evidently failed to see that i myself said these were local councils. You also protest this was only for that translation (even if in two locations), but which is not what it says:

Canon 14. We prohibit also that the laity should be permitted to have the books of the Old or New Testament; unless anyone from motive of devotion should wish to have the Psalter or the Breviary for divine offices or the hours of the blessed Virgin [a small portion]; but we most strictly forbid their having any translation of these books . --S. R. Maitland, Facts and Documents, Rivington, 1832, pp. 192-194.; cited in Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe, Edward Peters, Ed. © 1980 by Edward Peters, pp. 194-195

The Roman Catholic Council of Tarragona also ruled that: "No one may possess the books of the Old and New Testaments in the Romance language, and if anyone possesses them he must turn them over to the local bishop within eight days after the promulgation of this decree, so that they may be burned." D. Lortsch, Histoire de la Bible en France, 1910, p. 14.

As the Catholic encyclopedia states,

What these decrees (e.g. of the synods of Toulouse in 1229, Tarragona in 1234, Oxford in 1408) aimed at was the restriction of Bible-reading in the vernacular. http://oce.catholic.com/index.php?title=Censorship_of_Books

"Any translation of these books" means any, as these were written in the common tongue, and another Catholic sources affirms that in Spain did a decree of the Spanish Inquisition totally forbid Bible-reading in the vernacular; this decree was withdrawn in 1782 unconditionally forbidden (except in Spain - -John Gilmary Shea, Ed., The Catholic Educator: A Library of Catholic Instruction and Devotion, "Vernacular Bibles," (C) 1902 by Thomas Kelly, p. 544 has Imprimitur ) And while it is claimed that apart from that a general prohibition of Bible reading was never unconditionally forbidden, yet not only was reading forbidden without special permission, if even granted, but since the laity usually could not read Latin, what the decrees such as the synods of Toulouse and Tarragona amount to is a prohibition on reading Scripture, even if local and a small portion was allowed.

Moreover, if you had cared or dared to read on, you could have seen that by way of its restrictive permissions (so that only the most spellbound devotees of Rome read them) on reading Scriptures in the common tongue, which Trent states will result in more harm than good (including such harm as Rome's error being discovered), Rome effectively prohibited reading of the Scriptures by the multitudes.

And knowing you could be dragged before the Inquisitor for reading Scripture is certainly a deterrent.

Furthermore, both the he Bull Unigenitus and the Douay-Rheims preface condemn that the reading of Sacred Scripture is for all.

[Elsie]

I am a pro-life traditional Catholic faithful to the Magisterium...

O...
K...

[Elsie]

Or the WAY it was said.

I can’t judge - for it was gone before I got here this morning.

[Elsie]

This gets awfully wearisome going over and over again thread after thread after thread with the disagreement over the "real presence" of Christ in the "Eucharist", doesn't it?

AMEN!

It was a HECK of a lot more fun in the Angels Dancing on the Head of a Pin thread!

[Elsie]

Ever hear of Lanciano -- Eucharistic miracle with real flesh? Ever hear of any of these Eucharistic Miracles that involve Real blood?

2 Thess 2:9 For at the coming of the Lord there will be great activity on the part of Satan, in the form of all kinds of deceptive miracles, signs, and marvels, ...

And no one's heard of Pharoah's sorcerers?

---

I await the usual, "If a miracle advances the Kingdom; it CAN'T be anything but from GOD!"

[Elsie]

After all, the very concept pf a thing made absolutely necessary loses every bit of it's force the very moment it is admitted there is another way.

Be very, very quiet..

You might hear the sound of LOGIC kicking in!!

Flushing away useless ritual and excessive 'veneration'.

 

 

 

 

 

[Elsie]

(The answer: He is Jesus, who was made flesh, just like the Bible says, and just like Catholics say when partaking of the Word in the Holy Eucharist.)

'SAY' indeed!

---

The Word was made flesh: not the Wafer was made flesh.

The RCC's little wafers are about as effective as two day old manna.

[Elsie]

You a wonderful observer of the human condition.

[Elsie]

narses; Jim Robinson; Religion Moderator; editor-surveyor

Why address these folks?

Isn't there some Catholic 'saint' that's in charge of Unfair Rules Toward Catholics??