10-Minute Catholic Bible Study

Reading Scripture

How the Church reads the Bible, and a simple way to pray with it.

The Catholic understanding

The Bible is God’s word to us, written by human authors under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture flow “from the same divine wellspring” (Dei Verbum 9), and together they “form one sacred deposit of the word of God, committed to the Church” (Dei Verbum 10). The Church’s teaching office does not stand above that word. It serves it, “teaching only what has been handed on” (Dei Verbum 10).

So we read Scripture in two ways at once. First we ask what the human author meant to say, in his own time and in his own kind of writing (CCC 109-110). Then we remember that the same Holy Spirit who inspired the text helps us understand it. Scripture is read in the Spirit in which it was written (Dei Verbum 12; CCC 111). The Catechism gives three guides for this: pay attention to the content and unity of the whole of Scripture, whose center and heart is Christ (CCC 112); read it within the living Tradition of the whole Church (CCC 113); and keep in mind the analogy of faith, the way the truths of faith hold together (CCC 114).

The Church has long spoken of two senses of Scripture, the literal and the spiritual (CCC 115). The literal sense is what the words actually say, found by careful reading, and every other sense rests on it (CCC 116). The spiritual sense has three parts (CCC 117). The allegorical sense sees the meaning of events in Christ: the crossing of the Red Sea is a sign of His victory and of Christian Baptism. The moral sense shows us how to act justly. The anagogical sense lifts our eyes to our true homeland: the Church on earth is a sign of the heavenly Jerusalem. A medieval couplet sums it up: “The Letter speaks of deeds; Allegory to faith; The Moral how to act; Anagogy our destiny” (CCC 118).

The two Testaments belong together. God, “the inspirer and author of both Testaments,” arranged “that the New Testament be hidden in the Old and the Old be made manifest in the New” (Dei Verbum 16). We read the Old Testament in the light of Christ crucified and risen, and the New Testament in the light of the Old. The Old Testament keeps its own value as revelation (CCC 128-130).

Best practices

  1. Begin with prayer. Ask the Holy Spirit for light before you open the Bible. The Council reminds us “that prayer should accompany the reading of Sacred Scripture, so that God and man may talk together” (Dei Verbum 25; CCC 2653).
  2. Use a Catholic Bible. A Catholic edition contains all the books the Church receives as Scripture. The readings at Mass in the United States, the same texts linked from the USCCB on each study here, come from the Lectionary for Mass, which is based on the New American Bible. For your own reading, the New American Bible, Revised Edition (NABRE) and the Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition (RSV-2CE) are both good choices.
  3. Start with the Gospels, and read a little each day. The Council asks that the faithful be helped to read “especially the New Testament and above all the Gospels,” because “ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ” (Dei Verbum 25). A few verses a day is enough. Read the Sunday readings a day or two ahead of time, too, so that you come to Mass ready to listen.
  4. Pray with lectio divina. This ancient practice lets the word of God become prayer (CCC 1177, 2708). Pope Benedict XVI described its steps (Verbum Domini 87):
    • Read (lectio): What does the text say in itself?
    • Meditate (meditatio): What does it say to us?
    • Pray (oratio): What do we say to the Lord in response to His word?
    • Contemplate (contemplatio): Receive, as a gift, God’s own way of seeing, and ask what conversion of mind, heart and life He is asking of us.
    He adds that it is not complete until it reaches action, a life given for others in charity.
  5. Read with the Church. Read the verses before and after a passage, and notice what kind of writing it is (CCC 110). Let the Catechism and the Fathers of the Church guide you. Saint Thomas Aquinas gathered the Fathers’ comments on the four Gospels, verse by verse, in his Catena Aurea.
  6. Bring your questions. When a passage puzzles or troubles you, take it to a priest or to a good Catholic commentary. All interpretation of Scripture is finally subject to the judgment of the Church (CCC 119).
  7. End with a resolution. Choose one small, concrete thing to do today because of what you read. God’s word is meant to change how we live.
  8. A gift of the Church. The Church grants a plenary indulgence, under the usual conditions, to those who read Sacred Scripture in an approved translation, with reverence and as spiritual reading, for at least half an hour. For a shorter time the indulgence is partial (Enchiridion of Indulgences, grant 30; Verbum Domini 87).

Each week’s study on this site follows the same path. Mass Readings starts with the text itself. Step Into the Story and Encounter the Lord help you meditate on it. Know Your Faith reads it with the Catechism. Talk With God turns it into prayer, and Key Takeaways and the Journal Prompts carry it into your week.