nunblog: 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've reached 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 in glory.

Open my mind today to the gift of life and truth your Word offers me through the Church. By your Holy Spirit, grant me wisdom and strength to put this Word into practice and to become, myself, a presence of Jesus for people who are looking for you.

Jesus, eternal Word and Son of the Father, live in me with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Today's chapters are Matthew 7-9.

Yesterday we read the centerpiece of the Sermon on the Mount: Seek first the Kingdom of God and his justice, and all else will be given you in addition. Now, after some very pointed real-life application, Jesus reinforces the message of God's trustworthiness: "Ask and you will receive..." There are a number of memorable sayings in today's final section of the Sermon on the Mount. Small wonder the crowd was "astonished at his teaching."

But if his teaching authority amazed the crowds, as soon as he came down the mountain, they witnessed that authority extending even to disease, which is the very borderland of death. His word is not only a message of truth: it has within it the power to restore life itself. In the storm at sea, his word commands even the elemental powers of nature. It's hard not to recall what we read in Job 9:8 ("He alone stretches out the heavens and treads upon the back of the sea") and Psalm 89:9 ("You rule the raging sea; you still its swelling waves").

Note Matthew's "fulfillment formula" in 8:17, quoting the third Song of the Suffering Servant. As Jesus goes from town to town, he is almost like Simon the Cyrenian, taking on himself the burdens of all those who suffer so that he can take them away at the source. (Of course, we won't meet Simon until Chapter 27.)

Start reading here.

For additional background

On Matthew

We have barely a week and a half with the Gospel of Matthew, and there's just too much wealth there for me to even hint at in my little introductions (to three chapters a day!). So Dr Edward Sri's companion to the Gospel of Matthew is a good study guide: it even has reflection questions and space for you to write your answers!

For all Four Gospels

I am happy to recommend this volume of The Four Gospels in an edition directed to young readers and their parents. The text of all four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) in the New Revised Standard Translation is accompanied by FAQs that a middle-school reader might ask (or, to be honest, anybody reading the Gospels for the first time). The footnotes were prepared by a team of Scripture scholars for parents and guardians, making the book ideal for family Bible reading.