Proclaiming Faith - The Bible

The Bible, God's Word

It would be next to impossible to count all the books that have been written throughout history. There must be millions of them. But of all those millions of books, there is only one known as The Book. For that is what The Bible means. The word Bible comes from the Greek word for "the book."

Although the Bible may look like any other book on your desk or bookshelf, it is more like a little library. The reason is that the Bible is a collection of seventy-three small books written by different authors over hundreds of years. The Bible is divided into the Old Testament and the New Testament.

The Old Testament is the collection of forty-six sacred books written over a long period of time before Christ was born. Most were first written in Hebrew, a few of them in Greek.

The New Testament was written by the early Christians and was completed around the end of the first century. There are twenty-seven books in the New Testament, some very short, none very long. All of them were first written in Greek.

What brings all of these books together is the fact that they were inspired by the Holy Spirit. This means that the human authors of the Bible wrote under the influence and guidance of the Holy Spirit. Because God inspired the writing of the Bible, we also can say that God was the author of the Bible.

In the Bible, we read God's word. It is the word of God expressed in human words. When the Bible is read with faith, God is present with us. That is the reason we treat the Bible with such great reverence.

The Bible in Catholic Life
From the time of our Baptism, the Bible has a special place in our Catholic life. During the baptismal liturgy, one or two passages from the Bible are read. As we grow up, among the first prayers we learn are the Sign of the Cross, the Our Father, and the Hail Mary. The Our Father and the first part of the Hail Mary both come from the Bible. Readings from the Bible are part of the celebration of the sacraments. Each Sunday at Mass we listen to three passages from the Bible. At each step of our Catholic life, the Bible holds a special place.

In the Bible, God speaks to us. We learn who God is and how much God loves us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We learn about God's expectations for us and the meaning of life. Our Church encourages us to read and pray the words of the Bible often, every day if possible. A very special moment in which we hear God's word is at Mass, during the Liturgy of the Word.