Your Holy Family

Your Holy Family

Guard, Reveal and Communicate Love in your Family

Family Bible Study Resources

Bibles

Many people ask which is the best bible to use and my answer is the one that you will read. But there are a lot of bible versions available. The main differece is that Catholic Bibles include more books than protestant bibles. The two main english bible versions used in the Catholic Church are NABRE and RSVCE (The full list from the USCCB is here and Catholic Answers has a good article too). The NABRE is what will be most familiar to Catholics since it is used in the Lectionary during mass. The RSVCE is used for all bible passages in the English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

We recommend that a printed bible be used when reading scripture as a family, this allows for fewer distractions and for members of the family to become familiar with the Bible and where to find the various books of the bible (there are 73 total books). It is always impressive for a young person to be able to quickly find a book of the bible.

I personally love using a bible app on my phone or tablet. The one I use is Olive Tree. I like it because I can have multiple version of the bible and quickly move between RSVCE and NABRE versions and even go into a bit of exegesis using a concordance to better understand the use of the original Hebrew or Greek words. The Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture is available for purchase in this app.

Commentary

Commentaries are a great way for parents to learn a bit more about the scriptures that are being studied. There are many commentaries available, some are printed books and others are available online. As with any online resource, be careful to use reliable sources of information to explain scripture. Anyone can publish content to the Internet and not all scripture commentary content available online is consistent with Catholic teaching. Here is a list of reliable webistes (this is not exhaustive, but are the ones I often search for answers):

Hearing God

In the end, the purpose of reading scripture as a family is to hear the voice of God and get to know Him better. Familiarity with scripture by the older members of the family is essential to instruct the younger ones. You can’t give what you don’t possess. Parents should to know more than their children.

When reading scripture pay attention to what God is saying to you. In our world we are busy and often try to finish tasks as quickly as possible and move on to the next task. Reading the Word of God should not be approached in this way. Reading scripture should be performed slowly, paying attention to the words being read. In the process of reading scripture, you will find that your mind will from time to time dwell on certain words or passages. It could take the form of “I never noticed that before” or “What does that word mean?” or “Who was this prophet, who was he writing to?” or it could be that a word or phrase keeps coming back to your mind for some reason. Often this means that God is drawing your attention to this part of scripture because He has something to teach you or say to you. When this happens ask God to speak to you (1 Samuel 3:7-11).

Hearing the voice of God through scripture is essential in the spiritual life, this is one of the most important skills you can teach the members of your family.

Mental Prayer

Mental prayer is taking the previous section (Hearing God) to the next level. As we read scripture God is speaking to us, we should resist the temptation to read too much scripture in one sitting. We should read scripture, meditate on it and ask God how it applies to our lives. Dive deeply into His word and then patiently wait for Him to speak to us in our minds. This is mental prayer. Dan Burke at SpiritualDirection.com does a great job explaining mental prayer.

Family Prayer Resources