James ProthroThe Bible is a book that we must bring to life"."The Bible is to be our main prayer book.""Although the Christian faith is not a 'religion of the Book': Christianity is the 'religion of the Word of God', not of 'a written and mute word, but of the incarnate and living Word'". With these words, Benedict XVI introduced the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation "The Word of God".Verbum Domini"The Word of God in the Church. God, who manifested himself fully in Christ, -logos-, word, leaves in the Bible a privileged way of encounter and relationship to mankind of every time and place.
The Bible has been and continues to be the inspiration for the main artistic expressions: music, painting, architecture... are proof of this. In the last two centuries, moreover, these arts have been joined by the cinema and new formats of communication, giving rise to a new way of approaching God and the Church in a secularized society.
This article presents a list of resources in different formats that can be used to learn more about the Bible.
Podcast. "The Bible in a Year".
A plan of 365 podcasts directed, in its English version, by the priest Mike Schmitz. It is one of the best known projects of "Ascension", a multimedia network dedicated to the creation of Catholic faith formation content and digital content.
"The Bible in one year is"Mike Schmitz and a guided prayer to help listen to the voice of God in his Word, that is, to "concretize" God's call in daily life. The podcast follows an original way of Bible reading devised by Jeff Cavins that, through fourteen narrative books of the Bible, tells the biblical story from beginning to end. Since its launch in January 2021, "The Bible in a Year" has had nearly 700 million downloads and is available on all major podcasting platforms.
Ebook . The Holy Bible (EUNSA)
This Holy Bible in Spanish offers an interesting collection of resources for understanding and contextualizing biblical texts. Each book opens with an introductory explanatory text to which are added commentaries on the passages. In addition, this Holy Bible contains an Appendix with references to the Old Testament in the New, a glossary of measurements, weights and coins, the feasts of the Jewish calendar, etc., as well as a series of maps that help to understand and physically locate the events narrated in the books of the Bible. In its ebook version, very easy to use, the explanation of the passages and the internal links make the reading agile and understandable.
The audiobook edition of the University of Navarra Bible brings together for the first time in audio the texts of the Navarra Bible and brief introductions to each book.
Series. "The Chosen."
Undoubtedly, one of the audiovisual phenomena of recent years. The series created by Dallas Jenkins and financed by crowdfunding has become one of the most important phenomena in the Christian panorama. Although its creators are not Catholics, they have several Catholics as advisors or even among its actors, as in the case of Jonathan Roumie, in charge of playing Jesus.
The series recreates the story "around the Sacred History" of Christ and his disciples within a script characterized by the depth of their conversations and the ability to capture the viewer. The figure of a "very human" Jesus who, at the same time, does not dilute his divine nature, is one of the best balances achieved in a series that has just premiered the fourth of its seven seasons and has been seen by more than 500 million people.
Derral Evesproducer of "The Chosen"In Omnes, he stated that "for the Catholic Church, the use of audiovisual language can be a powerful tool for dissemination, connection with the public and transmission of messages in a powerful way". Not in vain, in the "community" of The Chosen there are thousands of messages from people who had never heard of Jesus or the Bible and have come to it thanks to the viewing of the series.
Film. "The Passion."
"The Passion"The film was a turning point in today's religious cinema. After the religious blockbusters of the mid-twentieth century, the U.S. film industry had paid marginal or low-cost attention to religious themes. The film, directed by Mel Gibson, was scripted by the director himself with Benedict Fitzgerald, based on the Gospels and inspired by the works The Mystical City of God, by the venerable María Jesús de Ágreda, and The Sorrowful Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, a book by Clemens Brentano detailing the visions of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerick.
The film, which narrates the hours of the Passion, death and ends with the Resurrection of Christ, was harshly criticized for the realism with which Gibson depicts the passion of Christ. An accusation that Gibson himself refuted by stating that "we have become accustomed to seeing pretty crosses on the wall and we forget what really happened. We know that Jesus suffered and died, but we don't really realize what that means. I didn't realize it either until now.
The film, which starred Jim Caviezel as Jesus, Maia Morgenstern as the Virgin Mary and Monica Bellucci as Mary Magdalene, proved to be a box-office success and a film that changed lives. In recent years, there has been talk of a sequel to this film, which is now twenty years old and still very topical.
Books. "The Portico of the Bible" and "Footprints of Our Faith".
These are two volumes published by the Saxum Foundation designed to assist and enrich the knowledge of the Bible and the pilgrimage to Holy Land.
"Pórtico de la Biblia", a work by Jesús Gil and Joseángel Domínguez, makes a didactic and elaborate tour through the books that make up the Bible. The books are not presented in canonical order but in chronological-temporal order, following the order in which they were written, which helps to frame the moment of the Scripture or to which the biblical books refer in the context of universal history.
For each book, the literary genre, the story told or its historical context, the time and process of composition, authorship, main teachings, key concepts, relevant aspects of the structure and central passages are detailed.
The charts are accompanied by illustrations from National Geographic Magazine and data on the oldest surviving manuscripts for each book.
"Footprints of our Faith", by Jesús and Eduardo Gil, is a guide to help prepare for the encounter with Jesus that a pilgrimage to the Holy Land entails. The volume "presents the reasons why we venerate some sites, the ones that all pilgrimages usually visit, as truly related to the life of Jesus" as Jesús Gil points out.
The authors have recourse to data from Sacred Scripture, historical testimonies and the results of archaeological research to give reasons for the veracity of each site. They also include spiritual notes to help the reader meditate on the Gospel scenes, so that the Word of God may effectively resonate in one's own life.
Book. Seeing Jesus through Peter's eyes.
This volume, the first in the new collection "Meditating the Bible," comments on each passage of the Second Gospel from the perspective of the "composition of place" practiced by St. Ignatius, St. Teresa and St. Josemaría. He illustrates the words and places of the Gospel, but without resorting to the imagination of the possible, but not real; only from geography and archaeology, from the documents of the time - the Old Testament, Philo, Flavius Josephus, intertestamental or rabbinic literature -, and from the stylistic features of the Gospel itself, which suppose the enunciation from a witness of the events. In short, in the Gospels we have, on a weekly basis, what we can know about Jesus. In the hands of his readers the means for that seed to become grass, stem and leafy tree.
Exhibition. "The Mystery man".
A unique exhibition about "the man of the Holy Shroud". This is basically "The Mystery man"This traveling exhibition, created by Artisplendore, a cultural management company specializing in sacred art, has already toured several locations in Europe. The exhibition breaks down, over six exhibition areas, the most important aspects of the figure of Jesus of Nazareth, the condemnation and death of Christ, the Shroud, forensic studies on the Shroud, a spectacular immersive room and, finally, the highlight of this exhibition, the room where the body recreated from the Shroud is exhibited.
This reproduction is, for its creators, "the key differentiating point of this exhibition with respect to others that we have been able to see". The life-size body shows the wounds depicted on the Shroud, which are identified with the Gospels' account of Christ's passion. Next to this reproduction, there is also a life-size copy of the Shroud. In this way, the spectator perceives, in three dimensions, the results of an investigation that has been in progress for more than fifteen years.
From August 1 until August 31 the ostension of the body will be in the Cathedral of Sigüenza. From September the complete exhibition of "The Mystery Man" will be in Barcelona.
