Read the Bible with Me!

Welcome to the Pauline Family's "Year of the Bible"! I'm reading the Bible clear through this year, and I invite you to read along with me. But first, let us pray: 

Everlasting Father,

All time belongs to you, and all the ages. In signs, in songs, in words of promise, you reassured your chosen ones, “I am with you; fear not.” You taught them through the prophets to trust that your saving deeds were not limited to the past.

When Jesus came, he fulfilled “all that was written in the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms.”

The Church has found him everywhere in these same holy books.

Help me to find Jesus in my reading today, to listen to him, and to follow him with all my heart.

Amen.

Today's chapters are Ezekiel 38-40.

Do you remember the "letter of Jeremiah," in which the prophet told those going into exile to put down roots, to raise families, and to contribute to the society in which they were going to be inserted? Chapter 40 opens "in the twenty-fifth year of exile." Ezekiel is given a detailed vision of a new Temple on a "very high mountain," but according to Drs. Bergsma and Pitre in A Catholic Introduction to the Bible: Old Testament, the measurements given for this magnificent edifice mean it would be "too big even to fit on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem"! As Jesus would say in another context, "There is something greater than the Temple here" (see Matthew 12:6).

Start reading here.

If you are looking for a solid but approachable companion to the Bible, I can wholeheartedly recommend A Catholic Introduction to the Bible: The Old Testament by John Bergsma and Brant Pitre. Although the authors are top-level Scripture scholars, they write for "real" readers. Notes include recent findings from archaeology and ancient manuscripts, and how each book of the Bible has been understood by the Church Fathers and used in Liturgy.