Word of God Sunday: Causes for Celebration
National Catholic Register, 22 January 2022
One unambiguous success from the Second Vatican Council has been the deepening of devotion to sacred Scripture by Catholics in the pew.
There is a great deal of fretting about the Second Vatican Council — and there will be more this year as the 60th anniversary of its opening falls next October. Has it been properly implemented? What does proper implementation mean?
So it is comforting that one unambiguous post-conciliar success has been the deepening of devotion to sacred Scripture by Catholics in the pew. That’s something to celebrate this Sunday, designated by Pope Francis in 2019 to be “Sunday of the Word of God.” This designation of the Third Sunday of Ordinary Time recognizes the explosion of biblical study by the Catholic faithful in recent years, and encourages that expansion.
“Easy access to Sacred Scripture should be provided for all the Christian faithful,” Dei Verbum (22) teaches, the Vatican II constitution on divine revelation.
That has been achieved in spades, with the last year bringing some significant new initiatives. Indeed, 2021 was known for the success of the Ascension Press “Bible in a Year” podcast with Father Mike Schmitz and Jeff Cavins, which rocketed to the top of the most popular podcast lists.
The phenomenal reach of the podcast is yet another medium for the Great Adventure Bible Timeline, which Cavins developed decades ago to provide a “big picture” look at biblical revelation by focusing on 14 key “narrative” books.
Cavins was a pioneer in new media, recording cassette sets and audio CDs in the 1990s. Now the material is digital, but the original Great Adventure Bible itself, with its accompanying timeline and charts, is still a good starting point for Catholics looking to deepen their understanding of the Word of God.
While the Great Adventure timeline approach might be decades old, there are a plethora of new resources that merit attention on Sunday of the Word of God.
Multi-Volume Series
Before turning to the latest offerings, it would be good to note some major achievements in recent Catholic Scripture commentaries. Two are notable for scholars and preachers of a more intellectual bent: Sacra Pagina and the Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture. Both sets cover the New Testament in 17 volumes, with the former appearing in the 1990s and the latter completed in recent years.
Making expert scholarship more accessible to non-specialists was the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible series, edited by Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitch, issued in booklet form book by book. An elegant one volume New Testament was published in 2010, and the Old Testament books are still being released.
Word on Fire Bible
One of the most ambitious biblical publishing projects ever attempted is the Word on Fire Bible, with Bishop Robert Barron’s team producing what they call “a cathedral in print.” The sacred text is complemented by commentaries from Bishop Barron himself, a collection of apposite quotations from the tradition, and adorned with Christian sacred art. Volume I: The Gospels was released in 2020, and Volume II: Acts, Letters and Revelation is released this week. The Bible provides an intellectual and visual feast, analogous to the Catholicism DVD series of 10 years ago.
Consider the presentation of the First Letter of Peter. The theme highlighted is suffering for Christ. There is a stunning visual schematic of the tomb of St. Peter under the Vatican basilica, evocative of the best of National Geographic. There are quotations across the millennium, including saints — Benedict, Cyril of Alexandria, Ignatius and Paul VI — as well as Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Henri de Lubac and Flannery O’Connor. All in just a few pages, including two short essays by Bishop Barron.
The Word of Fire Bible recaptures — with greater depth and more advanced publishing technology — the sort of large family heirloom bibles that were common decades ago. For example, in 1953, Father Patrick Peyton published the “Family Rosary Edition,” which included plenty of sacred art, an extensive essay on extra-biblical sources on the life of Mary, and the full text of two encyclicals on scripture — Pope Leo XIII’s Providentissimus Deus (1893) and Pius XII’s Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943) 50 years later. Father Peyton had a rather elevated sense of what Catholic families might wish to read!
Father Peyton’s biblical project was not unlike Bishop Barron’s in its own time, including such additional material as art essays on the principal Roman basilicas and — oddly to our tastes today — formal portraits of all the North American cardinals.
The Augustine Bible — ESV
High-quality production is evident also in the Augustine Bible, released about two years ago. While the Word of Fire Bible uses the NSRV Catholic Edition text, the Augustine Bible uses the English Standard Version (ESV), which has an interesting history. The ESV is in the tradition of the King James and Douay translations, taking as its starting point the 1971 Revised Standard Version (RSV), which is the Vatican’s preferred English translation. Published in 2001 as Protestant initiative, a Catholic Edition was approved in 2018 by the Catholic Bishops Conference of India.
It’s a handsome Bible with a literal and literary translation. It does not include significant supplementary material, but will serve well as Bible for reflection and study. It is noteworthy that this initiative has its roots in India, indicating an important contribution of younger local Church to the English-speaking Catholic world.
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