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

[metmom]

skipped out on religion class did you??? a sin is an intentional violation of God's will....you must know that it is a sin, and you must commit the sin knowing that it is a serious sin against God....then you must never fully repent nor ask God's forgiveness (Catholic Confession fills the bill exactly)!!

No it isn't. If you knew Scripture, you would know that there are unintentional sins.

Leviticus 4:1-3 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the people of Israel, saying, If anyone sins unintentionally in any of the Lord's commandments about things not to be done, and does any one of them, if it is the anointed priest who sins, thus bringing guilt on the people, then he shall offer for the sin that he has committed a bull from the herd without blemish to the Lord for a sin offering.

Leviticus 4:13 “If the whole congregation of Israel sins unintentionally and the thing is hidden from the eyes of the assembly, and they do any one of the things that by the Lord's commandments ought not to be done, and they realize their guilt,

Leviticus 4:22 “When a leader sins, doing unintentionally any one of all the things that by the commandments of the Lord his God ought not to be done, and realizes his guilt,

Leviticus 4:27 “If anyone of the common people sins unintentionally in doing any one of the things that by the Lord's commandments ought not to be done, and realizes his guilt,

Leviticus 5:15 “If anyone commits a breach of faith and sins unintentionally in any of the holy things of the Lord, he shall bring to the Lord as his compensation, a ram without blemish out of the flock, valued in silver shekels, according to the shekel of the sanctuary, for a guilt offering.

Numbers 15:22 “But if you sin unintentionally, and do not observe all these commandments that the Lord has spoken to Moses,

Numbers 15:27 “If one person sins unintentionally, he shall offer a female goat a year old for a sin offering.

Breaking the Law is breaking the Law, intentional or not.

If you speed, you are guilty of breaking the law, whether you know the speed limit or not.

Sin is not sin because of intent. It is sin because of violating the Law.

[metmom]

I can't believe that a person with your knowledge of scripture would ever say anything this inane....you would have known Jesus and learned of His wonderful teachings, and learned the lessons He taught, and learned of His miracles, and learned of His death for you, and learned of His ressurection FROM THE JEWS???????

YES!!!

Hello, the NT had not been written yet. When Jesus talked of the Scripture, it was the OT to which He was referring. It was that which He used to witness of Himself because it all points to HIM.

Matthew 22:29 But Jesus answered them, “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.

John 5:39-40 You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.

Luke 24:27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

[metmom]

there has been an unbroken line of presidents even though we have suffered through Roosevelt, Carter, Clinton and Obama.

And just who is claiming that the unbroken line of presidents is because they had been infallibly elected by the electoral college because they were being guided and protected by the Holy Spirit?

[Iscool]

The Mary statues are usually quite pretty, enjoy them, they are called decorative art, kind of like the picture of your mom on the mantle.

Had to go get my hip boots on for that one...

[Iscool]

What you posted certainly is enough to debunk what he said and prove that there is no point continuing on with the comparisons.

I agree with that...And one has to check everything these guys post...

[metmom]

The first red light was the copyright date....

1996? Really?

And nobody ever heard of it or posted it before?

If it were valid, it would have flooded the web by now and it hasn’t because it isn’t.

[metmom]

Thanks for that work, BTW.

I pinged dan because with all his research on Catholicism, I thought he’d be interested in adding that in case it comes up again.

Once one Catholic posts it, the others take it as gospel and I expect to see someone try to use it again in spite of you showing it to be nonsense.

[narses]

“Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.’ And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’ “

[daniel1212]

Rome can be said to essentially be a false church with many true doctrines

by who????

If you dared to read on then you would have seen ultimately by who, as it is the Holy Spirit who is the author of Scripture, who both contradicts Rome and fails to provide such needed evidence such as even one prayer among about the approx hundred in Scripture of any believers praying to anyone else in Heaven but he Lord, or of souls becoming good enough to enter Heaven in purgatory.

You also impugn the noble Bereans who also examined even apostolic claims by Scripture. (Acts 17:11)

Meanwhile "by who?" is the question asked you, for since Scripture cannot be the real basis for your assurance of truth, nor your interpretation of history, then who or what is?

[verga]

Your comments are out of touch with reality.

[verga]

This is My Body.

I will take Christ at His word over the boastings of mere man made religion. Jesus said, “All who come to me I will in no wise cast out.”, I trust HIM.

I don't think so.

[daniel1212]

You couldn't find a connection looking with the Hubble telescope... I wish I had time to go thru all these references...I'll bet there's not a Catholic on FR who would bother to check these to see if they have been lied to...And yes, they have..

Thanks, that is a project i never got to, and RCs have amply demonstrated the liberty they have to compel texts to say what is needed to support what their supreme authority lacks support for.

The desperate nature of such is a result of the ethos of Rome in which she presumes she can declare truth by decree, so that actual Scriptural support is not needed, and even speak infallibly although the supporting arguments are not. Attempting to provide support from Scripture, in condescension to evangelical types, for traditions of men has resulted in the embarrassing extrapolations or shameless sophistry recently exposed in attempts to support PTDS .

Then you have the forgeries Rome made use of in the past to manufacture historical support that is not there.

Back to apocryphal references in the NT, as regards the primary proffered example of a apocryphal reference, Heb.11:35, "Women received their dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection," is said to be is "an indisputable reference to 2 Maccabees 7." In which certain Jews were made to "taste swine's flesh," and were "tormented with scourges and whips," and to be fried in the pan, and one had his tongue cut out, while of another they "pulled off the skin of his head with the hair," which they endured in hope of resurrection.

However, 1Ki 17:22-24 alludes to "women received their dead raised to life again," while in the rest if the plausible allusion to 2 Maccabees 7 makes that to be Scripture then all references to history are Scripture. i do not doubt there are some other possible refs (which "may be only a single phrase that echoes one in a deuterocanonical book"), however, even a quotation of something does not make that Scripture, for Paul twice quoted pagans, (Acts 17:29; I Corinthians 15:33) and the book of Enoch (which records 40' men) in Jude 1:14,15.

What is missing are any actual references to apocryphal books as Scripture, in contrast to our canonical books.

Paradoxically, if apocryphal references are indeed references to Scripture then what is does is to provide even moire support for Scripture being the supreme standard on truth and obedience, which is already abundant, as said in this work which is worth seeing. And which states,

It is to be noted that the whole New Testament contains not even one explicit citation of any of the Old Testament Apocrypha which are considered as canonical by the Roman Catholic Church. This omission can scarcely be viewed as accidental.

[Elsie]

Enough Scripture to lead one to Jesus is found in the Hebrew Scripture which existed long before the RCC came into existence.

How can you SAY such a crazy thing as that???

Oh...

---

Luke 16:29
"But Abraham said, They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.'

---

Acts 8:30
Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. "Do you understand what you are reading?"

[Elsie]

Luke 16:30-31 explains why Catholics think their dead saints are so powerful...

[Elsie]

Proof.

Here is a bunch of the RIGHT men:

Pope Stephen VI (896–897), who had his predecessor Pope Formosus exhumed, tried, de-fingered, briefly reburied, and thrown in the Tiber.^[1]

Pope John XII (955–964), who gave land to a mistress, murdered several people, and was killed by a man who caught him in bed with his wife.

Pope Benedict IX (1032–1044, 1045, 1047–1048), who "sold" the Papacy

Pope Boniface VIII (1294–1303), who is lampooned in Dante's Divine Comedy

Pope Urban VI (1378–1389), who complained that he did not hear enough screaming when Cardinals who had conspired against him were tortured.^[2]

Pope Alexander VI (1492–1503), a Borgia, who was guilty of nepotism and whose unattended corpse swelled until it could barely fit in a coffin.^[3]

Pope Leo X (1513–1521), a spendthrift member of the Medici family who once spent 1/7 of his predecessors' reserves on a single ceremony^[4]

Pope Clement VII (1523–1534), also a Medici, whose power-politicking with France, Spain, and Germany got Rome sacked.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bad_Popes

[Elsie]

Who can honestly say moving books to an appendix prefacing each with a statement of why that book is unfit to be in the canon is anything other than playing the same sort of games the Self and Self Alone folks play when they wink and nod at quietly murdering infants in the womb with “contraceptives” while claiming to be “pro-life” because they oppose invasive abortions?

I'll await JUSTIFICATION of why the CAtholic version of the OT is different than the JEWISH one.

[Elsie]

The Bible doesn't say it isn't true - so it COULD be true!

[daniel1212]

Jesus is God. Therefore, Mary is the mother of God. We can then conclude that Catholics believe that Mary is the wife of God because...... Mary is the spouse (wife) of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God. Therefore, Mary is the wife of God.

And the mother of Mary is the grandmother of God.

[Elsie]

Dang!

Who needed the NT that the Catholics so prayerfully and faithfully assembled?