What’s on your bookshelf?

Over the years I have recommended various books that I found helpful, inspiring or essential in my understanding and application of the Bible. I’d like to turn the tables a bit and ask you to look on your own bookshelf (or laptop or tablet) and identify the titles that have helped you grow to love the Word of God and grow in your love for Christ and his people.

What books have piqued your interest in knowing more about the Bible? Has an author mentioned the Bible or a passage of Scripture and that made you want to dig in a little deeper yourself? This can happen through secular writing as well as spiritual writing.  You might have read a book for Lent or Advent, not a Scripture commentary necessarily, but a book of reflections on spiritual living and the author has used the Bible well. That’s a keeper. A novelist might have a deep religious sensibility that pulls you toward the source. That’s a keeper too.

What books have provided a basic understanding of how the Bible was written? How its books are organized? How to use footnotes and commentaries? How have you learned the ABCs of reading the Bible? Do you have a book or two that you would recommend to a beginner?

What biblical commentaries have provided a way to deepen your appreciation of various books of the Bible? There are some wonderful single volume commentaries, tomes that gather good scholarship into one place, and there are series that provide a commentary for each book of the Bible. And then there are those writers whose scholarship focuses on a given area of Scripture—a gospel, or the prophets, or the Pentateuch, or Paul—and you may have been enriched by some of those.

What titles have helped you to appreciate the Bible as a tool for prayer and an opportunity to encounter Christ? There are numerous books on the Ignatian approach to prayer, Lectio Divina, and biblical meditation. No one method is right for everyone but everyone is right to use God’s Word as an avenue to sacred encounter.

I’m a big believer in building a library that can nourish our minds and hearts and in the process help to reshape our understanding of the world around us, our understanding of God and our appreciation for the church, that community that feeds us and needs us.  Never stop adding to your bookshelves, be they digital or physical. And be sure to loan your books to others as a form of sharing faith.

We have a brand new study, Scripture and the Rosary, available this month.  Clifford Yeary’s commentary, Hail Mary, Holy Bible, is the perfect companion to prayerfully study the biblical stories of Jesus that help us to meditate on the mysteries of the rosary.  The five wrap up lectures are delivered by David LeSieur, Cackie Upchurch, Greg Wolfe and Clifford Yeary.  We hope you’ll use this and help us to reach out to those who may not be involved in Bible study but value the rosary as a regular form of prayer.

Next month, a new volume of Alive in the Word will be available. Laura Kelly Fanucci is the author of Dashed Hopes, When Our Best-Laid Plans Fall Apart.  Gain new perspectives for your own life by focusing on Jeremiah’s plans for “a future full of hope,” the agony of Jesus and Isaiah’s promise of “a way in the wilderness.”  When life feels broken, what comes next?