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 Haggai 1-2 and Zechariah 1. 

Providentially, the first reading for Mass today is taken from Haggai, Chapter 1! With Haggai (remember him from Ezra 5:1 and 6:14?), we move forward in time: from prophetic warnings about exile to the time after the return from Babylon. The Book of Ezra singles out the prophet Haggai for his insistence that the returned exiles not delay in rebuilding the Temple. Here we have Haggai's own account; his journal, meticulously dated, with God's messages to be delivered to the governor and the high priest. Pay special attention to the promise in Chapter 2 of "greater glory" for the new (and, by worldly standards, pitiful) Temple than for the grandiose Solomonic Temple of the past. Indeed, unsurpassable glory. Soon we will read Malachi's promise, "The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his Temple" (Malachi 3:1). (Little did they dream that these words would be fulfilled literally.)

The first part of Zechariah also connects us with a prophet mentioned in Book of Ezra. Zechariah starts us off in an apocalyptic key and introduces an interesting new image: four heavenly horsemen (in Rev. 6:1-2, the four horsemen have a different meaning). Things can only get more interesting as they go on.

Start reading Haggai here and Zechariah 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.