Living prayer with the Word

If you start with
Acts, Luke or Mark, you can pick it up and read it as a living story, as an encounter.  There is a point in the Gospels where Jesus asks his disciples: “Who do you say that I am?”  Evidence for your answer to this question is being offered to you.  
 
If you start with
John or Matthew it will not pay you to hit the ground running.  Stop. Reflect.   And above, all don’t read on from habit, when your attention has either been caught by something else or has simply shut down.
 
Listen.
 
It is all about listening
Your all powerful Word leaped from heaven,
from your royal throne,
into the heart of a land that was doomed.

Wisdom 18:15
 

The Word of God is alive and active, it leaps down to the heart!  It is immediate – even if you are not reading Mark; and ‘immediately’ is his favourite word.
 
Some people recommend you to have a Scripture commentary, but, frankly if you really need a commentary before you start to read Scripture, well:

1  The Holy Spirit, who stands behind the sacred authors would have got it written up differently and 

2 The Church would issue a formal commentary, regularly updated in the light of scholarship and archeology. 


This is something that the Church has never done.  From her earliest days the Church has promoted catechesis, that it the systematic summary of the teachings of the faith from the Catecheses of St Cyril of Jerusalem to the Catechism of the Catholic Church  
But it has never presumed to upstage the Holy Spirit as the interpreter of Scripture for, as the Lord said, he shall teach you all things and bring all thinks to your remembrance.
 
It is a great thing to read the Bible with friends; to meet as a group, to pray for the Spirit’s leading and to share your own understanding.  After you have read with attention in the Spirit, there may be questions you want to ask. It is rewarding to study the section in the Catechism on reading scripture (Article 3: Sacred Scripture 101 onwards). You may, after studying the text, find a good, modern, orthodox commentary will answer some of your questions. The
Ignatius Catholic Study Bible is one that has received many recommendations.  But don’t try answering questions until you have asked them!
 
The most profound presentation of the Word is the Dogmatic Constitution
Verbum Dei.  It has been called the most important and influential document of the II Vatican Council.  It is short, but it is not simple and it caused more excitement at the time than any other document.  A young professor of theology, Dr Joseph Ratzinger was one of the experts who helped to put it together, and as Benedict XVI he is still putting it together!  In the five centuries that had preceded the Council, we had, outside the liturgy, rather lost sight of Scripture, perhaps because it is so simple a child can pick it up and so deep that saints and doctors of the Church fall down before it and so exciting that enthusiastic people with a cause to bolster up can isolate texts from their context and run off with them in all directions!  Sometimes disastrously.  
 
Don’t let that put a stumbling block between you and the Lord.  It is not too simple, or too clever or too powerful for you.  With the Holy Spirit, in the Church it is the voice of Jesus speaking to you…. and those who ask receive, those who seek find and to those who knock the door of the Word will be opened.