The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 15: Interpreting Scripture (2026)

Episode Date: January 15, 2026

How do Catholics interpret Scripture? Fr. Mike breaks down the three basic principles for interpreting Scripture: attentiveness to the content and unity of the whole Bible, reading Scripture within the living Tradition of the Church, and attentiveness to the analogy of Faith. These criteria allow the Church to interpret Scripture accurately and prevent us from taking Scripture out of context. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs are 109-114. This episode has been found to be in conformity with the Catechism by the Institute on the Catechism, under the Subcommittee on the Catechism, USCCB. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/ciy Please note: The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

Hi, my name's Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in scripture and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a Year is brought to you by Ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity in God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is day 15. We're reading paragraphs 109 to 114.

Just before we get started, I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the foundations of faith approach, but you can follow along with any recent version of the catechism of the Catholic Church. Also, to download your own catechism in your reading plan, you can visit ascensionpress.com slash C-I-Y. And lastly, you can click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily notifications. Also, I said lastly, but here's what I mean by lastly. Just a quick thank you to all those who have supported the production of this podcast

with your prayers and financial gifts. It would be impossible to do this without you. But here we are, day 15. We've passed the two-week mark. And you guys, this is one of those things where I'm just so, so grateful that we're journeying together in this way. Because, you know, it's different. It's different, as we said before. But here we are as a community once again saying, I want to learn more.

God, I want you to reveal yourself even more because he's revealed himself, obviously, through sacred scripture, talking about that today, and sacred tradition. But so often, we just, we don't know. And so this is such a great gift to be able to be in the place where we are right now, literally right now, to be able to just dive more deeply. So in the past, meaning yesterday and the day before, we were talking about here's how God has revealed himself fully, right? His fullness of his revelation is through his son and his deeds and his words that gets committed to writing in some ways, sacred scripture, and committed to handing on sacred tradition and interpreted by the magistrarium. Okay, we got that. We also talked yesterday about how God wanted to reveal himself to us, and he has spoken one single word, one utterance within whom he expresses himself completely.

And so we just, we venerate sacred scripture, right? And we recognize how truly inspired and how true sacred scripture is. Today, we're going to talk about how the Holy Spirit is not only the inspirer of sacred scripture, but the interpreter of scripture. And so here's how do we as Catholics interpret the Bible. That's so important. And here in just paragraphs 109 to 114, we're going to be given some real basic principles.

In fact, there are going to be three criteria for interpreting scripture in accordance with the Holy Spirit who inspired the scripture. The first is we need to be attentive to the content and unity of the whole scripture. So basically, the whole Bible, we don't just take out one piece. We look at the whole Bible. Secondly, we read the scripture within the living tradition of the whole church. So not just scripture, but also the fathers of the church, sacred tradition, all those. And thirdly, we have to be attentive to the analogy of faith. And so those are the three criterion that we'll look at in order to interpret scripture correctly.

And those are the three criterion. The criteria? Criteria. Yeah. Those are the three things that are going to be spelled out in today's section. So here we get. Let's get started. Let's say a prayer.

Heavenly Father, we are thank you so much. We're so grateful. We are so grateful for you that you are. And that you reveal yourself to us, that you reveal the depth of your heart to us, that you gave us your only beloved son so that we might not. perish, but that we could have eternal life. And you give us your Holy Spirit to guide us and to continue to guide us into all truth. Lord, help us. Help us to read the scriptures according to your spirit. Help us to live according to your spirit so that we can pray according to your spirit and that we may,

by your will and by your gracious gift, dwell with you, Father's Son, and Holy Spirit for all eternity. We make this prayer in Jesus name, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. As I said, it's day 15. We're reading paragraphs 109 to 114. The Holy Spirit, Interpreter of Scripture. In Sacred Scripture, God speaks to man in a human way. To interpret Scripture correctly, the reader must be attentive to what the human authors truly wanted to affirm and to what God wanted to reveal to us by their words. In order to discover the sacred author's intention, the reader must take into account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary genres in use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking, and narrating then current. As Dave Verbum says, for the fact is that truth is differently presented and expressed in the

various types of historical writing, in prophetical and poetical texts, and in other forms of literary expression. But since Sacred Scripture is inspired, there is another and no less important principle of correct interpretation without which Scripture would remain a dead letter. De Verbum states that it is. this. Sacred scripture must be read and interpreted in the light of the same spirit by whom it was written. The Second Vatican Council indicates three criteria for interpreting scripture in accordance with the spirit who inspired it. First, be especially attentive to the content and unity of the whole

scripture. Different as the books which comprise it may be, scripture is a unity by reason of the unity of God's plan, of which Christ Jesus is the center and heart opened since his Passover. St. Thomas Aquinas once wrote, the phrase, heart of Christ can refer to sacred scripture, which makes known his heart closed before the passion, as the scripture was obscure. But the scripture has been opened since the passion, since those who from then on have understood it, consider and discern in what way the prophecies must be interpreted. Second, read the scripture within the living tradition of the whole church. According to a saying of the fathers, sacred scripture is written principally in the church's heart rather than in documents or records, for the church carries in

her tradition the living memorial of God's word, and it is the Holy Spirit who gives her the spiritual interpretation of the scripture, according to the spiritual meaning which the spirit grants to the church. Third, be attentive to the analogy of faith. By analogy of faith, we mean the coherence of the truths of faith among themselves and within the whole plan of revelation. Okay. There we are. As I said, paragraphs 109 to paragraph 114. Okay, so let's go back to 109. Once again, the church is reminding us in sacred scripture, God speaks to us in a human way. And that's just so important, right? Remember we highlighted this yesterday. The author of sacred scripture is the Holy Spirit. And the author of sacred scripture is the human author. They are both

truly authors. Now, though, that might seem like a contradiction. It is not. It is a paradox. It's a mystery that they're both the human authors. But here's to understand this, to interpret scripture correctly, we must be attentive to what the human authors truly wanted to affirm and to what God wanted to reveal to us by their words. So we have to discover the sacred author's intention.

And that's so important. We have to keep that in mind. Why? Because we realize that scripture transcends cultures. It transcends time. It goes, you know, there are phrases that you and I will use in the course of our daily lives

that if you were to translate them into another language, it would be nonsense, right? It would be gibberish. There's also things that other languages, they're called idioms as one example, right? There's in other languages, if you try to translate that into English, it just seems like, what are you saying?

We recognize that here's sacred scripture, which is written over essentially a 2,000 year time period. I mean, going back to Abraham 4,000 years ago, and Jesus 2,000 years ago, that's what we're talking about now. You have it spanning cultures. You have it spanning generations, you have this recognition that the human author is going to be affected by their culture. They're going to be affected by the modes of feeling and speaking and narrating then current.

So, as the Averbum stated, the fact is that the truth is differently presented and expressed in the various types of historical writing, in prophetical, poetical texts and other forms of literary expression. So not only do we have to take into account the human author's intention, and like their time period and whatnot, but also what is the literary genre of this? So as the kind of maybe big example I could give is Genesis chapters 1 through 11 essentially are prehistory. And then 12 to the end of Genesis are they're giving us a history. But prehistory is going to be really, really unique. So Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are a true account of the creation of the world. And that's that's the reality. It's a true account of the creation of the world. Now, at the same time,

is it a true biological account of the creation of the world? Well, no, that wasn't the sacred author's intention, was not to give a biological account. It was to give the substantial account, right? It was to give the reason account. Like, why did God create the world? Who created the world? In the case of the early chapters in Genesis, the question that science asks are what and how. The questions that faith asks are also who and why.

And so keep that in mind as we're reading scripture at the same time. So we try to discover the sacred author's intention. And I love this because the church continues by saying, but, and that's important, the big but, since sacred scripture is inspired, meaning it's not just the sacred author. The sacred author is not the only author. The other author is the Holy Spirit. So since sacred scripture is inspired, God breathed, right? There is another and no less important principle of correct interpretation, without which

scripture would remain a dead letter. And it's this. Sacred scripture must be read and interpreted in the light of the same spirit by whom it was written. So we recognize that there was a human author and there is a divine author. And so, yes, we have to interpret this. Like, okay, so Matthew says this and Luke says this other thing. Oh, you can account for some of those differences by difference in the temperament of the individuals, a difference in their knowledge, difference in their cultures they were coming from, because Matthew was Jewish and Luke was originally a Gentile. But the main author, or the other

full author is the Holy Spirit. So we must read and interpret. all the books of Scripture by the light of the same Holy Spirit. And so here's the three criteria for interpreting scripture according to the Holy Spirit. Number one, be attentive to the content and unity of the whole scripture. What that means is that we never isolate one text and say, okay, this is the definitive thing. What I mean by that is we never take a text out of context. And that's just really, really important. In fact, every text is read in light of every other text, right?

The whole Bible is seen as a unity. So yes, 73 different books with a bunch of different authors. But the Holy Spirit is the divine author who authored all of them. So again, when you hear the Bible, when you read the Bible, you can sometimes really get the flavor of, wow, this is a different human author. That's true. But it is always the same divine author. And that's true. So we always have to read every text in light of the whole.

That's just so important. Secondly, we read scripture within the living tradition. of the church. And that is so, so important because what do we mean by that? Well, it means that we don't read scripture on its own. We don't believe in this idea of scripture alone because scripture didn't come out of nowhere. It came out of their tradition of the church. And as we've talked about many times, St. Paul wrote, hold fast to the traditions that you were taught, whether by written word or orally, right? So spoken by us or written down by us. So we realize that sacred tradition and sacred scripture are both incredibly valuable, not just incredibly valuable, but essential.

And so we always read scripture within the living tradition of the church. That's kind of like those fence posts that I was talking about a couple days back. Third, we're attentive to the analogy of faith. And that's one of the ones that, one of those statements that we can say, okay, what is analogy of faith? And we're going to end on this. So the new Catholic encyclopedia talks about this. It says originally that word analogy is a mathematical term. The Greek word means proportion and was borrowed by philosophers to refer to the relationship between concepts of things that are partly the same and partly different, right? So we know that's what analogies are.

They're partly the same and partly different. But it means proportion. So this goes back to Romans chapter 12, verse 6. St. Paul, when he was writing to the Romans, one of the things he says, he says, having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them if prophecy in proportion to our faith. So that term proportion, again, the Catholic Encyclopedia says the Pauline injunction is given that this gift of prophecy must be exercised according to the proportion of faith. Right. We said that already. No prophet is to be accepted who proclaims anything opposed to the one faith proper to the one body of Christ. Such preaching would be out of proportion to or beyond the objective truth entrusted to the Christian community. And so what that is is it highlights the fact that every article of faith, Every truth in the faith is in relationship to every other truth of the faith,

meaning I cannot come up with a new interpretation. That's contradictory or out of line or disproportionate to the other truths of the faith. They all have to be one. They all have to be harmonious, essentially. So going on, the New Catholic Encyclopedia says, The analogy of faith, therefore, has always been associated with the one unchanging faith of the church. it is closely related to the notion of tradition and soon became a norm for the early Christian writers. They saw a quote unquote proportion in the manner in which the New Testament complements the Old Testament

and in which each particular truth contributes to the inner unity of the entire Christian Revelation. Okay, so I know that that can sound so jubble, like, you know, word salad time, right? What I'm trying to say, what the church here is trying to make clear is that all of the articles of faith are in proportion or are in relationship to every other article of the faith. And in that relationship, in that proportionality to each other, there is never going to be one that cancels out another. So when we read scripture, we always read scripture in proportion, right? We always read scripture in light of everything that we believe,

scripture, tradition, and the magisterium have revealed. So these three criteria. right? We're attentive to the content and unity of Scripture. Pay attention to the whole Bible. We read scripture within the living tradition of the whole church. So we recognize that scripture is written principally in the church's heart, not just in documents and records. And thirdly, we're attentive to the analogy of faith, meaning that while we read scripture, we always keep in mind all that God has revealed in scripture, in tradition, and through the magistrarium. It's kind of a way of just being able to say, just like we mentioned before,

here are those guardrails right here is that fence that's around that that island that's jutting out of the ocean stay inside these and you can just run and explore and play and dive deeply into the scriptures i'm mixing my metaphors here but that's what we're trying to say when we talk about these three criteria um it's so good these three criteria of interpreting scripture according to the spirit who wrote it as well as trying to discover the sacred author's intention this is just a gift i think it's so powerful than we have these tools and these criterion for being able to interpret scripture and being able to dive deeply because that's what, oh man, it's what gives us that freedom to be able to just open up the Bible and say, I'm not going to be steered wrong, right? I'm not going to be brought

off track because I'm being attentive to all three of these criteria and I'm just reading it from the heart of the church. And that's such a great consolation, it's such a great comfort and gives us such great confidence. So with confidence, I hope that you and I can dive into scripture today and for the rest of our lives. And I want to let you know that I am praying for you. Please pray for me. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.