To my fellow Catholics (and if you’re Protestant, this applies as well):
“Then Jesus
was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of
God, tell these stones to become bread.”
- 13.5 percent of the Old
Testament (not counting the Psalms)
- 54.9 percent of the non-Gospel
New Testament
- 89.8 percent of the Gospels
- 71.5 percent of the entire New
Testament
(Source: https://www.catholic.com/qa/percentage-of-the-bible-in-the-lectionary )
Look again at those
percentages: Catholics who attend daily AND Sunday Mass will only hear 13% of
the Old Testament, and only 72% of the entire New Testament!
(Protestants receive a
far worse anemic diet of Scripture if they only hear God’s word once a week on Sundays).
Who would expect to be
proficient in any academic field by reading only sentences and paragraphs here
and there without studying the CONTEXT of those sentences and paragraphs?
And yet, that is
precisely what an overwhelming majority of Catholics and Protestants do who do
not have a personal program of reading the Bible. To depend only on hearing the
Scriptures during church – even if they attend DAILY Mass – is to rob
themselves of the riches and the guidance and the encouragement and the exhortation
and the chastening of God’s word read in CONTEXT.
It was for good reason the Lord Jesus responded to the devil by quoting from Moses: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’
Nor should
we remain unaware of Satan’s knowledge of the Bible. He used it when he tempted
Jesus: “If you are the Son of
God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written: ‘He will command
his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that
you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”
But when the Father of Lies quotes the Bible,
you can be certain he quotes a sentence here, a paragraph there, totally out of
context with the rest of Scripture. That’s how he confuses the biblically illiterate
because they do not know what the WHOLE Bible teaches.
We should not be surprised to learn that the groups knocking on our doors get most of their converts from church pew-sitters who content themselves with pieces of Scripture here and there, and who do not take the requisite time to personally study the whole of God’s word.
Christmas, the celebration of God’s gift to humanity, is at the
door. I urge you, give to God this gift – that you will set yourself to read
His word every day, even if it is only a chapter. You can find numerous annual
Bible reading plans on the internet. Simply type into the search engine: Yearly
Bible Reading Plans. Or, you can try
mine: https://thecontemplativecatholicconvert.blogspot.com/2016/09/bible-reading-plan-revised-sept-2016.html
For good reason God moved the Psalmist to write: “Thy word is a
lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”
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