St. Peter Canisius Apostolate

That’s the number of books of the Bible you have to read if you want to understand salvation history — from the creation of the universe to the establishment of the Church. Once you read these 14 books, you’ll have a good grasp of Bible history; and once you have a grasp of Bible history, the Bible is much easier to understand.

If, after working your way through these 14 books, you want to learn more, I recommend you watch Our Father’s Plan, an EWTN program with Jeff Cavins and Scott Hahn. Surprisingly, it’s available through Netflix. Or, you can listen to the program at the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology.

So, what are the 14 books you need to read?

1. Genesis
2. Exodus
3. Numbers
4. Joshua
5. Judges
6. 1 Samuel
7. 2 Samuel
8. 1 Kings
9. 2 Kings
10. Ezra
11. Nehemiah
12. 1 Maccabees
13. Gospel of Luke
14. Acts of the Apostles

Here’s a good article by Fr. Scott Haynes on the ancient spiritual practice of lectio divina — the praying of Sacred Scripture (and other worthy spiritual writings).

I particularly like the way he sums up the basic method of lectio divina:

Traditionally, Lectio Divina consists of these four stages:

Seek

Lectio – Reading as a receptive hearing of Sacred Scripture

Find

Meditatio – Meditation as a pursuit of truth according to reason

Knock

Oratio – Prayer as an approach to God, knocking on the doors of God’s heart

And the door will be opened unto you.

Contemplatio – Contemplation as tasting the sweet joys of God’s presence

HT: Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

In this week’s Jesus and the Catholic Church Podcast #2: The Word of God and the Light of the World, we talked about what it means to become a child of God. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 526, to become a child of God we must (1) become childlike in our attitude — namely, by cultivating humility and becoming little before God — and (2) we must become a spiritual child when we are born from above — namely, when we are born again through water and the Spirit in the sacrament of Baptism.

The Catholic Church teaches that “what faith confesses, the sacraments communicate” (Catechism, no. 1692). Scripture teaches that becoming a child of God is the condition for entering the kingdom (Mt 18.1-4; Jn 3.3-5). The question, then, is this: How do we become a child of God? The answer the Church gives is this: through the sacraments. We confess we must become a child of God to enter the kingdom of heaven, and this reality is given to us through the sacrament of rebirth — that is, the sacrament of baptism.

Now this teaching is often questioned by non-Catholic Christians. So what I’d like to do in this post is to list the passages in the Bible that speak of baptism without comment. First, I’m going to list the New Testament passages that speak of baptism, and second, I’m going to list some of the Old Testament passages that the Church sees as pre-figuring the sacrament of baptism. Obviously, for a full understanding of the passages, they should be read in context.

What these passages will show is (a) that baptism was instituted by Christ, (b) that baptism was presupposed in the apostolic church, (c) that baptism unites us to Christ, and (d) that baptism is not merely a symbolic ritual, but, rather, actually brings about an authentic spiritual cleansing.

New Testament Passages about Baptism

Matthew 28.19: [Jesus said:] Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit . . .

Mark 16.16: [Jesus said:] He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.

John 3.5: Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.”

Acts 2.38: And Peter said to them, “repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

Romans 6.3-4: Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in the newness of life.

1 Cor 10.1-2: I want you to know, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.

1 Cor 12. 13: For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — Jews or Greeks, slaves or free — and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

Gal 3.27: For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

Col 2.11-12: In [Christ] also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of flesh in the circumcision of Christ; and you were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.

Titus 3.5: [Christ] saved us, not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit.

Hebrews 10.22: Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

1 Peter 3.21: Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Some Old Testament Images of Baptism

2 Kings 5.14: So [Naaman] went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.

Psalm 51.7: Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Ezek 36.25-27: I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances.

An excerpt from Cardinal Francis George’s address at the Synod of Bishops, as reported by Zenit:

“Scripture is the soul of liturgy even more than it is the heart of theology,” the president of the US bishops’ conference said. “With decreased participation in the Sunday liturgy, the faithful cut themselves off from contact with Scripture in the context of communal worship.

“Through steady attention to the Scriptures that shape the liturgical cycles and calendar, the believer opens himself to conversion and development in the life of grace.”

Cardinal George called regular attendance at Mass a “schooling in the obedience of faith.”

“A love of Scripture,” he continued, “feeds the desire to worship in spirit and in truth, and, in turn, our worship gives God the opportunity to transform us more profoundly into the image of Christ.”

The cardinal commented on the practice of “lectio divina,” which he called a form of prayer “so apt to purify one’s desires and bring one’s will into harmony with God’s will,” yet so “far from common even among those who regularly come to Church.”

He said that if pastors are attentive, “people will not fear confusion when they read and listen to the Bible. It will not be for them a grand puzzle but a path to the freedom that comes from personal surrender to God’s world, God’s mind, God’s will.

“If the power of God’s word in Holy Scripture is to be felt in the life and mission of the Church, pastors must attend to personal context as well as to inspired text.”

From Zenit. Note how often the Pope says that the Word of God is the ultimate reality. That’s the key to understanding what he’s saying.

The current economic crisis shows the importance of building our lives on the firm foundation of the Word, Benedict XVI affirmed on the first day of the synod of bishops.

The Pope said this today as he offered a meditation to the 244 synod fathers gathered for the first full day of the assembly on the word of God in the life and mission of the Church.

“We see it now in the fall of the great banks,” the Holy Father said. “This money disappears; it is nothing — and in the same way, all these things, which lack a true reality to depend on, and are elements of a second order. The word of God is the basis of everything, it is the true reality. And to be realists, we should count on this reality.”

“We should change our idea that matter, solid things, things we touch, are the most solid and secure reality,” the Pontiff continued. He noted how Jesus spoke of the two possibilities of building a house on the sand or on a firm rock. [See Matthew 7.24-27]

“He who builds only on things that are visible and tangible, on success, a career, money — he is building on sand,” he said. “Apparently these are the true realities, but one day they will pass away.”

Built on sand

The Bishop of Rome continued: “And in this way, all these things that do not have a true reality to count on. […] He who builds his house on these realities, on material things, on success, on everything that seems to be, builds on sand.

“Only the Word of God is the foundation of all reality; it is stable like the heavens and more than the heavens. It is the reality. Therefore we should change our concept of realism. The realist is he who recognizes in the Word of God, in this reality apparently so fragile, the basis of everything.”

Archbishop Claudio Celli, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, afterward told the press that the Pope had invited his listeners to see economy and finances as a “penultimate reality.”

“It is undeniable that other realities, when they are compared to the Word, reveal their limits,” he explained. “They are truly penultimate, but not the final truth.

“The heart of the topic that the Pope addressed is not the current economic situation, but the importance of the Word of God in the path of man. And from this light, other dimensions are like clouds that show their flimsiness.”

This month, I want to recommend to you Christ in the Psalms by Patrick Henry Reardon (see sidebar for link). In 300 pages, Fr. Reardon offers a short meditation on each of the 150 psalms. He draws from the collected wisdom the Church Fathers of both East and West, and, as the title suggests, he makes a point of showing how Jesus Christ stands at the center of each psalm. Fr. Reardon shows that to pray the psalms is to enter into the mind, heart, and soul of Christ — indeed, to pray with Christ. As Fr. Reardon says in his reflection on Psalm 7:

The humanism of the Psalter is a humanism rooted in the Incarnation. The Psalter is not human merely because it speaks for man in general, but because it speaks for Christ. The underlying voice of the Psalms is not simply “man,” but the Man. To enter into the prayer of this book is not merely to share the sentiments of King David, or Asaph, or one of the other inspired poets. Indeed, in a theological sense the voices of these men are secondary, hardly more important than our own. the foundational voice of the Psalms, the underlying bass line of its harmony is, rather, the voice of Jesus Christ, the only Mediator between God and man. The correct theological principle for praying the psalms is the Hypostatic Union, the ontological and irreversible coalescence of the human and the divine, “the synthesis achieved by God, which carried the name of Jesus Christ” (Hans Urs von Balthasar).

It is not surprising, then, that we will on occasion come across certain sentiments in the Psalms that are difficult to appropriate as our own. It does not take me long to discover that some of the lines of the Psalter are impossible to pray in my own person. There are cases in which my own “voice” is inadequate to express the sense of the psalm itself.

Psalm 7 provides an early example of the phenomenon. How many of us would feel comfortable claiming for ourselves the moral innocence expressed in this psalm? This is the prayer of someone whose hands are clean and mind undefiled, a man whose conscience finds nothing for which to reproach him. The voice of the psalm is His of whom St. Peter wrote that He “committed no sin, nor was deceit found in His mouth” (2 Pet. 1.22).

For those who want to better understand the psalms used during the Mass, who pray the psalms in their everyday prayers, or who pray Liturgy of the Hours, Christ in the Psalsm is required reading. Fr. Reardon will open to you the meaning of these ancient hymns, which will in turn allow you to enter into deeper union with Jesus Christ.

Here is what St. Paul says to the Thessalonians (from the Jerusalem Bible):

And you observed the sort of life we lived when we were with you, which was for your instruction, and you were led to become imitators of us, and of the Lord; and it was with joy of the Holy Spirit that you took the gospel, in spite of the great opposition all around you. This has made you the great example to all believers in Macedonia and Achaia since it was through you that the word of the Lord started to spread — and not only throughout Macedonia and Achaia, for the news of your faith has spread everywhere. (1 Thess 1.5-8)

Notice what St. Paul says. He and his companions lived a life that was for the instruction of those living in Thessalonica. Though Paul preached the Gospel with words, he also preached it with his actions. It was through the witness of his life that the Thessalonians decided imitated him, and, by imitating him, imitated Christ. And the faithful witness of this small community brought in a great harvest: Many throughout the surrounding regions began to believe.

This reminds me of something Vatican II taught. When speaking of the causes of atheism, the Council said:

Believers themselves frequently bear some responsibility for this situation. For, taken as a whole, atheism is not a spontaneous development but stems from a variety of causes, including a critical reaction against religious beliefs, and in some places against the Christian religion in particular. Hence believers can have more than a little to do with the birth of atheism. To the extent that they neglect their own training in the faith, or teach erroneous doctrine, or are deficient in their religious, moral or social life, they must be said to conceal rather than reveal the authentic face of God and religion. (Gaudium et Spes, no. 19)

So it can work both ways, can’t it? If we live a life worthy of God’s children, we can help people come to Christ. But if we live a life that implicitly denies Christ, we will help perpetuate atheism and unbelief.

Of course, we don’t behave like Christians in order to teach others; we behave like Christians because our deepest desire is to please God. But sometimes we need other motives, and being aware that our lives profoundly affect the lives of others may very well be the kind of motivation we need to live an authentic Christian life.

All of this can be summed up in the excellent saying of St. Francis of Assisi: “Preach the Gospel always, and use words when necessary.”

Let’s make a distinction between spiritual reading and educational reading, between using the Bible as a source of prayer and using the Bible as a source of study. In practice, these two ways should not be separated. A prayerful reading of Scripture deepens one’s study of Scripture, and the study of Scripture helps one’s prayerful reading bear fruit. Here, we’re going to discuss using the Bible as a source of prayer, what is traditionally called lectio divina or spiritual reading.

Lectio divina has three steps: reading, reflection, and prayer. Reading leads to reflection, and reflection ends in prayer. For example, you read Psalm 1 and are led to reflect on how following God’s law is the source of happiness. You might ask, “Could my unhappiness be because I covet the Jones’ new car?” Or, conversely, you might ask, “Is this new sense of peace I have the result of keeping my resolution to pray daily?” Questions like these are only examples, of course. The point is this: The biblical text becomes the source of reflection.

Since the goal of life is communion with God, these reflections must end in prayer if they are to be profitable. We turn to God in thanksgiving, or in contrition, or with a request, or with a spirit of adoration and praise. It does not matter, really, so long as our prayer is the logical growth from our reflection. For example, if you covet, you might ask God for a love of self-denial. Or, if you are keeping your resolve to pray daily, you should thank God for that grace. In this way, lectio divina becomes a kind of conversation with God. God speaks to us first in Scripture. We listen to his words and think upon them. Then we speak to God. When we have finished speaking, we turn back to the Scriptures to listen once again.

Now, some points for consideration. First, lectio divina takes time. Spiritual tradition suggests that fifteen minutes is the bare minimum. That doesn’t necessarily mean fifteen minutes of reading. One passage might inspire thirty minutes of reflection and prayer. Don’t stop conversing with God because you feel you must finish the chapter. The goal is communion with God, not reading a set number of verses. On the other hand, there might be days when nothing seems to inspire you, and you’ll spend the entire time reading. You have to take it as it comes.

Second, lectio divina takes practice. You must to learn how to read slowly and with the awareness of God’s presence in the soul. You must learn how to reflect and examine your life: your thoughts, words, actions, and, particularly, your motivations. You must learn how to speak freely and simply to God, from your own heart and with your own words, as you would to an intimate friend. So start small and don’t allow yourself to become frustrated.

Third, every part of the Bible is inspired by God, but not every part of the Bible is good for lectio divina. A beginner should confine himself to the Gospels as well as the less complicated letter of Paul, such as Philippians, Ephesians, 1-2 Timothy, 1-2 Peter, and 1 John. In the Old Testament, the Psalms are good for lectio divina, as well as Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Book of Wisdom, and Ecclesiasticus (or Sirach).

Fourth, unless you have imposed upon yourself a discipline of spiritual reading (say, for Lent), if what you’re reading is not inspiring, then stop. There will come a point in your interior life when you must learn how to endure spiritual dryness, but if you are just setting out, there’s little point in struggling. You might consider another book of the Bible, or even some other spiritual book, such as The Imitation of Christ.

Most importantly, of course, is to remember that the goal of spiritual reading is not learning something new, but, rather, communion with God.

The authorship of the Bible is intimately connected to the doctrine of divine inspiration. Here’s what the Church says about divine inspiration:

Holy Mother Church accepts as sacred and canonical the books of the Old and New Testaments, whole and entire, with all their parts, on the grounds that, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author…. To compose the sacred books, God chose certain men who, all the while he employed them in this task, made full use of their powers and faculties so that, though he acted in them and by them, it was as true authors that they consigned to writing whatever he wanted written, and no more. (Dei Verbum, no. 11)

Several points need to be made.

First, what do we mean by author? Let’s make a fine distinction between the ideas of author and writer. An author is someone who can speak with authority. A writer is someone who puts words on paper. Most of the time, authors are writers, and writers are authors. David McCullough is both the author (i.e., authority) and writer of 1776; he did the research, the thinking, and the writing. But this is not always the case. Lance Armstrong, for example, is the author of his autobiography, but he did not write it; Sally Jenkins did. And Sally Jenkins is not the author of Armstrong’s story, he is. From this viewpoint, author is greater than writer.

Second, how is God the author of the Bible? Through the Holy Spirit, as Vatican II teaches, he guided the human authors to write “whatever he wanted written, and no more.” So God is the transcendent author, or authority, behind every passage of Scripture. But God did not write the Bible.

Third, Vatican II also teaches us that the human writers were “true authors.” What does this mean? For one thing, it means that God did not dictate his words to them, as the Jehovah’s Witnesses claim. God made full use of their talents and abilities; they wrote from their own background and understanding. Matthew understood the gospel in his own way, which is different from John’s way. Their words are truly theirs; when we read Matthew, we are really reading what Matthew thought. But at the same time, everything Matthew wrote was inspired by the Holy Spirit, and, therefore, both he and God are the authors of his Gospel.

Fourth, lest anyone desire to separate the divine parts of the Bible from the human parts, Vatican II makes it clear this is impossible. Note the last line: the human authors “consigned to write whatever he wanted written, and no more.” We cannot say that after writing everything God wanted, Paul then went on to add his own ideas. Rather, Paul wrote everything God wanted — and only what God wanted. Every phrase in the Bible comes from God’s mind as well as a human’s.

Whenever we sit down to read, the first question we ask about a book is this one: “What kind of book is it?” The answer (novel, history, true crime) determines how we read it and what we expect from it. We don’t read a crime novel the way we read true crime, and we don’t expect the same kind of accuracy in a historical novel that we do in a biography.

The same is true of the Bible. If we approach it merely as a historical text, as some scholars do, we’ll read it one way; but if we approach it as the inspired word of God, we’ll read it in another way.

The Church sees the Bible as the inspired word of God. As Vatican II states:

Those divinely revealed realities which are contained and presented in Sacred Scripture have been committed to writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. For holy mother Church, relying on the belief of the Apostles, holds that the books of both the Old and New Testaments in their entirety, with all their parts, are sacred and canonical because written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author and have been handed on as such to the Church herself. In composing the sacred books, God chose men and while employed by Him they made use of their powers and abilities, so that with Him acting in them and through them, they, as true authors, consigned to writing everything and only those things which He wanted” (Dei Verbum, no. 11)

In this paragraph, the Second Vatican Council wished to make a number of points. (1) The Church holds all the books of the Old Testament and New Testament to be written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. (2) Because the books of the Old Testament and New Testament were inspired, we may rightly say that God is the author of the Bible. (3) Though the writers of the books of the Bible were inspired, they had full use of their powers and abilities, which means that all of their human learning (or lack thereof) is contained in the Bible. (4) Even though the human authors had full use of their faculties, they wrote everything the Holy Spirit wanted and only those things the Spirit wanted; therefore, every book, every chapter, every phrase, every word was inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Now that we know something about the authors — yes, it is correct to speak in the plural — of the Bible, we can now ask a second question: What is the Bible about?

Simply put, the Bible is about how the Triune God acted in history to offer salvation to the human race. This was the primary subject the human authors had before them as they penned the various books of the Bible. They were not interested in detailing the origins of the universe, nor were they interested in preserving precise historical data (as we would define it) about wars and kings. Their goal was simple: To proclaim God’s saving work.

So, then, what kind of book is the Bible? It’s a book, from the first verse of Genesis to the last verse of Revelation, which tells us how God offered salvation to the human race.

How should we read it? With devout attention, because the story of salvation is our story. For example, when we read how God saved the Hebrews from Egypt and led them across the Red Sea and through the wilderness to the promised land, we should see how God has saved us from the slavery of sin through baptism and leads us through the spiritual wilderness of worldly life toward heaven.

What should we expect from reading it? A deeper knowledge of Jesus Christ, for as St. Jerome said, “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.”

And finally, where should one begin one’s reading of Scripture? First, I’d recommend you begin with the Gospel of Mark; it’s the shortest Gospel, and after reading it a few times you’ll have a good grasp of the life of Christ and a solid foundation for reading the longer and more complicated Gospels. Second, I recommend you to read through the Psalms. The Psalms are prayers to God inspired by God himself, and they examine all parts of life from a transcendent viewpoint: They teach us how pray and how to see life from a biblical perspective. Third, you’ll want to read the New Testament, and always with a special focus on the Gospels. Finally, you’ll want to work your way through the Old Testament.