The Second Vatican Council made Bible readers out of many Catholics. In the four centuries after the Protestant Reformation, the Bible had become known more as a Protestant than Catholic book because Martin Luther made the scriptures the basis for his reform, which began in 1517.
The Second Vatican Council urged priests and lay people to study the Bible. The bishops of the council called for a new Sunday lectionary that put more scripture on the table of the Word at Mass.
A committee created three year-long cycles of scripture readings for the Sundays of the Church year. The new lectionary reads from all four gospels and includes generous selections from the scriptures of Israel and the letters apostles wrote to Christian communities they founded.
Verbum Dei are the first words in Latin and title of the Council’s Document on Revelation. Verbum Dei means Word of God. The Council stresses that God reveals God’s own self in creation, in the history of Israel, and most fully in Jesus Christ, in whom God becomes one of us.
To become friends people hang out, talk, express our feelings and interests, and do activities together. Our holy history is the story of people getting to know God and discovering God wants to know us. Israel’s relationship with God in history reveals what God is like — creative, faithful, loving, always seeking friendship. The stories about Israel’s encounters with God become what Christians call the Old Testament.
God calls Abraham and Sarah to move to a new land and promises them descendants as numerous as the stars.
God calls Moses to free the Hebrew slaves who cry out in Egypt and makes a covenant, a friendship agreement, with these newly free people. They become God’s own people by keeping the ten commandments; God becomes their God.
God calls David to unite the tribes of Israel into a kingdom. Solomon builds a great temple.
A long line of prophets — Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah — speaks for God to the kings who follow David and Solomon but who make alliances with other nations and turn to their gods. A longing for a wise ruler who will build peace arises in the voices of the prophets — a longing for a messiah.
When the Babylonians defeat the people of Israel and destroy the temple, the priests in captivity write down these ancient oral stories. These sacred writings declare Israel’s faith that God speaks a living word. God does not shape the world like the Babylonians gods through the power of violence and killing. Israel’s God creates by speaking: “God said, ‘Let there be light, and there was light. And God saw the light was good” (Genesis 1.33-4).
John the Baptist is the last of Israel’s prophets. He tells people in Sunday’s gospel about how to prepare the way for God to come among them.
In Jesus Christ, God comes among us as a person. Who sees Jesus sees his Father, says the gospel of John (14.9). The Second Vatican Council writes, “The most intimate truth revealed about God and human salvation shines forth for us in Christ’ (Verbum Dei, #2).
The New Testament contains the stories of Jesus’ words and actions and the stories of the apostles who spread his message and gathered communities in his name. Of the 27 books in the New Testament, the most important are the four gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John each tell the story of Jesus’ public actions, teachings, death, and resurrection.
The Catholic Church has two sources of its origins — the sacred scriptures in which we hear the Word of God inspired by the Holy Spirit and sacred tradition, the teachings of the apostles and practices of the early Christian communities.
The council insists all baptized Christians have an active role in handing on our faith and living it in the world.
“The tradition in the Church makes progress in the world with the help of the Holy Spirit. There is a growth in INSIGHT into the realities through the CONTEMPLATION and STUDY OF BELIEVERS who ponder these things in their hearts. It comes from the intimate sense of SPIRITUAL REALITIES which they experience. And it comes from the PREACHING OF THOSE WHO, ON SUCCEEDING TO THE OFFICE OF BISHOP, have received the sure charism of truth. Thus as the centuries go by, the Church is always advancing towards the FULLNESS OF DIVINE TRUTH, until eventually the words of God are fulfilled in it” (#8).