Patrick Madrid - A Year with the Bible: Scriptural Wisdom for Daily Living

DEDICATION

With gratitude to
Father Luke Tancrell, O.P.

2012 Patrick Madrid

All rights reserved. With the exception of short excerpts in articles and critical reviews, no part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in any form whatsoever, printed or electronic, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-61890-395-2

Cataloging-in-Publication data on file with the Library of Congress

Scripture quotations are from the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1965, 1966 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Book design by A.R.T. Services
Christopher J. Pelicano and Abby M. Pelicano

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Saint Benedict Press

Charlotte, North Carolina

2012

Contents

Introduction

Perhaps the greatest Scripture scholar the Catholic Church ever produced was a man named Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus, commonly known today as Saint Jerome (347420). Born in what is now modern day Slovenia, Jerome was a both a master linguist in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, as well as a profoundly incisive and erudite scholar and translator. Ordained a bishop in 379, he studied under Saint Gregory Nazianzen (329390) and then served for three years in Rome as a personal secretary and theologian to Pope Saint Damasus 1 (305384), who commissioned him to translate from Hebrew and Greek the Catholic version of Scripture known ever since as the Latin Vulgate. Jerome spent the final 32 years of his life as a monk in Jerusalem, and then in Bethlehem, translating and commenting on Sacred Scripture.

Why all this detail about Saint Jerome by way of introduction to this book, you ask? The answer is simple. Jerome knew the Bible inside and out, forward and backward, in its original languages of Greek and Hebrew. If anyone could be trusted to give solid, compelling reasons for spending, not merely a year with the Bible, but indeed a whole lifetime, it was him. And he said the following:

I beg of you, my dear brother, to live among these booksto meditate upon themto know nothing else, to seek nothing else. Does not such a life seem to you a foretaste of heaven here on earth?

Let not the simplicity of the Scripture or the poorness of its vocabulary offend you; for these are due either to the faults of translators or else to deliberate purpose: for in this way it is better fitted for the instruction of an unlettered congregation as the educated person can take one meaning and the uneducated another from one and the same sentence.

I am not so dull or so forward as to profess that I myself know it, or that I can pluck upon the earth the fruit which has its root in heaven, but I confess that I should like to do so. I put myself before the man who sits idle and, while I lay no claim to be a master, I readily pledge myself to be a fellow-student.

For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Let us learn upon earth that knowledge which will continue with us in heaven.

There could hardly be a better introduction, indeed a better recommendation, for a book titled A Year With the Bible.

Follow Saint Jeromes holy advice and his admirable personal example. Make daily meditation on Scripture part of your life. Do not neglect to ask, to seek, and to knock at the door of divine revelation. The truth will be given to you. You will find it. The door will be opened to you.

Let your daily reading of Scripture be for you a foretaste of heaven, your roadmap to heaven, a trustworthy companion along the narrow, rough, and arduous ascent you are making toward heaven. And when that blessed morning dawns on which you finally enter into the eternal joys of heaven, you will see God face-to-face forever and praise him eternally in the glorious company of his angels and with his saints. What you learned and believed by meditating on the Holy Bible will have brought you there.

Just think: Right now, as you turn the page and begin reading this book, you are taking, as Saint Jerome says, another step toward heaven.

How to Use this Book

Saint Jeromes well-known dictum, Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ, is a good and necessary reminder of why reading the Bible is so important. In its pages, you will encounter him personally, hear him preaching and teaching, witness his miracles, and learn from his own lips what he desires for you to know and do and experience in the Christian life. You will see how, for countless generations, God gradually prepared the world for the coming of his son, Jesus Christ.

Whats more, in the Bible you will meet the Prophets and Apostles, the Blessed Virgin Mary, angels and devils, and all the innumerable figuresgreat and small, heroic and pathetic, holy and wickedwho played a role in the sweeping human drama that is Gods plan of salvation for mankind. This drama is truly the greatest story ever told. But, of course, the Bible tells us more than a mere story. It tells us the truth about Gods love for us and how Jesus Christ came to save us from our sins and enable us, by his grace, to know, love, and serve God in this life so that we may be happy with him forever in the life to come.

The Bible gives compelling answers to all of lifes Big Questions: Why am I here? How did I get here? What is the meaning of life? What is the purpose of my life? What will become of me when this life ends?

And so, as you take up this book, which gives you a kind of guided tour of the major themes and teachings contained in the Bible, you will encounter Jesus Christ on every page. His presence is imbued in the Old Testament, where he is implicitly anticipated, prefigured, and pointed toward, as well as in the New Testament, where the fullness of Gods revelation is unveiled for us definitively in the person of the Incarnate Word of God.

As the title of this book indicates, you can spend each of the 365 days in a year pondering some aspect of Jesus Christ and his teaching. The themes contained in this particular selection of Bible passages deal primarily with the issues, challenges, and opportunities that you personally face in your daily life. They will help you navigate through the often turbulent waters of this earthly life and deal more effectively with everything from your own weaknesses, anxieties, and uncertainties, to relationships with family, friends, and even enemies. Day by day, this book unfolds for you what the Bible says about such things as temptation, virtues, vices, prayer, forgiveness, death, fear, faith, hope, love, children, parents, marriage, money, entertainment, sex, friendship, prayer, modesty, angels and devils, heaven and hell, salvation and damnation, atheism, the Cross of Christ (and your cross, too), the Church, the sacraments, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and even the antichrist and the End Times.