Read the Bible with Me!

Welcome to the Pauline Family's "Year of the Bible"! We've been reading the Bible clear through this year. We are finishing the New Testament, so read along with me. But first, let us pray: 

Father,

When the fullness of time had come, you sent your Word in the One who said, “Whoever sees me, sees the Father.” No revelation can surpass this until Jesus comes again. By your gift, the Church continues to receive unfathomable riches from the inheritance handed on from the Apostles and guaranteed by the Holy Spirit.

Let the Spirit who inspired the writing of today's pages "guide me in the truth and teach me" to follow Jesus ever more closely, until he calls me to follow him to the Kingdom where he lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever. Amen.

Today's chapters are Hebrews 1-3.

With this next book of the Bible we read a Pauline book that may or may not be by St Paul. This is not a question that arose with Enlightenment skepticism: Even the early Church was divided on the Letter to the Hebrews. It had long been "packaged" with the Letters of St. Paul, but something about it kept nagging the early Christian thinkers, who noticed that it doesn't begin like a letter of St Paul (no typical Roman-style salutation such as Paul invariably made) and it doesn't claim to be by Paul. It has more recently been described as "a magnificent homily...by an itinerant preacher" ("A Different Priest": The Letter to the Hebrews, by Albert Vanhoye).

Whatever it is, and whoever originally penned these words under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we are privileged to receive them. Even the opening sentence (all of Heb 1:1-4!) should take our breath away with the vastness of the panorama they spread out before our eyes: All the history of salvation we have been reading for the past twelve months points to Jesus, whose coming we will again celebrate at Christmas. Who is he? Heb 1:4 tells us: the Son who has "inherited the Name" (cf. Phil. 2:9). Chapter 2 will finally speak the human name of Jesus, our Savior, and begin the long reflection on the mystery of his priesthood, for Hebrews is a highly liturgical book. (Some propose that the original homilist of Hebrews may have been Barnabas, a Levite from Cyprus and Paul's first missionary companion: The text reflects that kind of intimate familiarity with the Temple liturgy combined with Pauline theology!)

Start reading here.