Introduction
Promise
Promise is a companion app for reading, studying, and coming to know the Bible.
With a Bible at hand
You will find here the references and explanations you need, but we recommend keeping a printed copy at hand to read the full passages and grow familiar with them. Any Catholic Bible works; two good options are the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible and the Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition (RSV-CE).
How we approach the Bible
A few brief keys for reading Scripture as the Church does. They shape all of Promise's study.
The Word of God
The Bible is the Word of God set in writing, and all of it speaks of Christ and is fulfilled in him (cf. Catechism, 134). To approach Scripture is therefore to approach Jesus. In Promise we walk through it as a single story that leads to him.
Inspired and without error
God is the principal author of Scripture; he made use of human authors as free instruments. So it teaches without error, «for the sake of our salvation» (Dei Verbum, 11), what he wished to entrust to us. It is not a science manual: when it describes the world, it speaks as we see it.
Written to save us
God does not speak merely to inform us, but to save us and to enter into friendship with us. He comes down to our level, like a father with his children. So we read it not with cold curiosity, but as one who listens to someone who loves him.
The senses of Scripture
First the literal sense: what the human author meant, according to the genre (narrative, poem, letter, parable…). Upon it, the spiritual senses: how the Old Testament announces Christ, the Church, and the sacraments (typology), what it teaches us for living, and where it leads us. The literal and the spiritual are not separated.
How we read it
The Church gives us three criteria (cf. Dei Verbum, 12): to attend to the unity of the whole of Scripture, which is one book; to read it within the living Tradition of the Church; and in the «analogy of faith», in harmony with all that we believe. So every explanation in Promise rests on Scripture, the Catechism, and Tradition.
Read in the Church, made prayer
We do not read the Bible alone, but in the Church and with the saints and Fathers who lived it before us. And we read it not only to know, but to pray and be converted: Scripture is food for the soul (cf. Dei Verbum, 21). Studying the Word and praying with it go together.
The Church «forcefully and specifically exhorts all the Christian faithful… to learn the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ by frequent reading of the divine Scriptures», for «ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ».