Chapter XXI: Of Reading the Bible

YOU need not, however, have a great many books; a few good ones are all-sufficient to furnish food for your souls. Such books can be read over and over without getting tired of them. They will always renew some good impression, and excite in you a strong desire to regulate your life so as to please God better. There is one book far above all others that have ever been written or ever will be — that is, the Holy Bible. This book is different from all other books, because we can put the most entire confidence in all that is written in it. Why? It is God Himself, the Holy Ghost, that has caused it to be written for our benefit.. This is what the Scripture itself says: “All Scripture, divinely inspired, is profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice, that the man of God may be perfect, furnished unto every good work” (2 Tim. iii. 16).

Especially is this the case with the New Testament, which is better fitted to our times and circumstances, which is for the most part plainer and easier to be understood, and which tells us all that has been done for us by our Saviour and His apostles.

In the Old Testament, I would advise you to select such parts as you can read with understanding and profit, and not those which are above your comprehension, or not applicable to your situation. There are many prophecies, and accounts of ceremonies, and some narratives, which, though edifying, no doubt, to those who understand them, are only curious and without profit to those who do not. Such things are better let alone. Perhaps some person who is acquainted with the different books will advise you what to read, and what not.

In the New Testament it is different. Every part of it is full of holy instruction, and I am not at all afraid that any harm will come to a well-intentioned, pure-minded person, from reading it; on the contrary, such persons will not fail to derive much good from it.

But does not St. Peter say, speaking of the epistles of St. Paul and the other Scriptures, that in them “are many things hard to be understood which the unlearned and the unstable wrest to their own perdition?” (2 Peter iii. 16). Undoubtedly he does, and nothing can be more true. There are even things which seem perfectly plain and easy to understand, that would certainly mislead any but a scholar unless they were explained. Such things were understood well enough at the time they were written, because all the people were accustomed to use words in the sense in which the writers meant to use them. But now that language and manners have changed, these words have lost the meaning they had at that time, and convey a very different one to us. They must be explained or we shall be misled.

Other things are very deep and difficult in themselves, even to scholars, and it is a real folly to set up one’s opinion about them without an explanation.

It is the Church’s office to guard and preserve the true sense of the Scripture, as you remember the Scripture itself calls her “the pillar and ground of the truth.” The Church, where the meaning of a passage is obscure, or has become changed in the translation from one language to another, has placed notes and explanations to preserve the original meaning. There can be no objection to reading a Catholic Bible, and I find it strongly-recommended to the faithful as the best of all books to read. Pope Pius VI. declares that “the faithful should be excited to read the Holy Scriptures, which are the most abundant fountains to be left open to every one to draw from them purity of morals and doctrine,” and he declares that “this is most suitably effected by publishing the sacred writings in the language of the country, suited to every one’s capacity, with suitable explanations.” (See beginning of Catholic Bible.)

It is true the proud and the evil-minded can injure themselves by the reading, but what of that? Cannot everything good be turned into evil by such persons? I have seen self-conceited and ignorant people do this, and to the great peril of their salvation. Were the matter not so serious, one could not help laughing at the absurd sense sometimes put on the Scripture by such people. Could they have either a little more learning or a little more sense, they would see what others see so plainly, how utterly ridiculous they have made themselves. Read, then, the Catholic Bible in the proper spirit, not for disputation or display of learning, but for the good of your soul.