In today’s Gospel reading from Luke 24, Jesus appears to the disciples and “he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.”
St. Jerome said ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ. We have to remember that when Jesus opened the minds of the disciples to understand the Scriptures, they were all in the Old Testament. At the time, there wasn’t a word of the New Testament written. As Christians, we very much tend to be people of the New Testament. And that is a good thing. But in order to fully understand the New Testament, we must be well versed in the Old.
This is one of the things I love about being Catholic. Over the course of two years, if you follow the liturgy of the Church in the daily readings, you will read from every book in the Bible. You won't read the whole Bible, every chapter and verse, but you will get the overarching story of salvation. It really helps to understand where Jesus was coming from in many of the things that he taught. Let me encourage you today to spend time each day in the Scriptures. The best way that I have found is to follow along with the liturgy of the Church. So find some good resources…there are plenty out there! I’m sure you’ll find that the more you know about the Scriptures, the more you’ll want to know!
Father, we thank you for your word in the Sacred Scriptures. Give us a greater hunger to know your word, that we may know better the Word made flesh, your Son Jesus Christ. Amen.
Gus,
Sorry, my previous post was sent before I finished the credit for Felix Just, S.J., Ph.D. (The Catholic Lectionary website) – Bible Statistics info.
Gus,
I used to think that if you read the Sunday & Daily Mass readings you would read the entire Bible. Actually a close friend corrected me. In the 3-year Sunday & 2-year Daily readings you read 13.5% of the Old Testament (not including the Psalms) & 71.5% of the New Testament. These statistics come from themCatholic Lectionary website by Felix
I get frustrated me when I see this misinformation repeated that we Catholics read the whole bible in the three year liturgical cycle. This is not true. We read only 13.5% of the Old Testament and 17.5% of the New Testament. See link below. Unfortunately I think many peoplee take this statement literally and use it as a reason to never open their bible.
https://catholic-resources.org/Lectionary/Statistics.htm
Gus,
I have been a subscriber for many years and really enjoy the daily inspiration.
I have heard various estimates of what percentage of the bible is covered by the daily plus weekly readings of the lectionary and most estimates I have seen are about 70% of the new testament and much less than half of the old testament (not counting Psalms, which is pretty well covered).
Not a big deal, just thought I would share this a brotherly, non-judgmental way.
Yours in Christ,
Jerry