Experience of reading the Gospel

[RCIAGraduate]

Blessings and Love through Him

If it is not too personal is it alright if you could please tell me how you felt about reading the Good News.

 

[Bonnie]

Past tense or present? I haven’t stopped reading the Gospels, and I hear them read every time I go to Mass.

I enjoy reading the words of Jesus. He is much easier for me to understand than St. Paul! The Gospels give me the precepts to live by.

 

[RCIAGraduate]

Oh dear perhaps I have not given the right context of such a broad and open question.

How was your experience of reading the Gospel for the first time alone?

How did it feel? How did the words affect your heart and mind? And which parts of the Gospel deeply moved you?

 

[RCIAGraduate]

He is much easier for me to understand than St. Paul!

You find the Epistles complex? May I ask what is more difficult to understand?

 

[sirach2v4]

When I was a young teen,I took a look at our big family deluxe Bible (illustrated). The writings were solemn and inspiring. They still are.

I’m reading a book which said somewhere that faith shines a light on the truth.That certainly is true with respect to reading scripture from a vantage point of faith.

 

[Bonnie]

You find the Epistles complex? May I ask what is more difficult to understand?

Sentance structure - I find it complex. I get lost in his pronouns. If you find St. Paul easy to understand, I’ll trade brains with you!

How was your experience of reading the Gospel for the first time alone?

I was raised a Protestant Christian. Reading the BIble for oneself was a given, but it was so long ago I don’t remember exactly when it was or how I felt.

I do vividly remember the first time (there were other times!) that I “asked Jesus into my heart.” Since I felt no emotion whatsoever, it should have given me a clue about the rest of my spiritual life. Instead, I kept chasing after an emotion-fillled spirituality. That just isn’t for me. I’m so glad to be Catholic - no one expects me to jump up & down, dance, or speak in tongues.

 

[RCIAGraduate]

I guess the Holy Spirit comes to us in different ways then.

I didn’t read real deeply into Paul’s letters but I found select verses quite nice like how one in Ephesians tells us to be nice or how one in Galatians calls us all ONE people.

 

[Khalid]

I can’t really remember, except that the first time I read the Gospel, the Holy Spirit used it to convert me to Christianity. I was a Muslim at the time and was converted in my heard upon my first actual reading with an intent to understand of any NT book (it was Matthew). It took a while to get the conversion in to a canonical state. (There was little “feeling” in the emotional sense: even though I’m a presuppositionalist, I’m often accused of “rationalism” for lacking sufficient religious feeling.)