The Verbum Catholic web application

I think I have mentioned this wonderful resource before, but I've just rediscovered it, as I was flipping through the apps on my tablet computer. If you haven't got this application downloaded, I would like to recommend it again. The Catholic Faith is grounded in centuries of tradition, and a lot of that tradition is preserved and recorded in text. It is rather hard to decide what texts to use, because there are libraries full. But we could certainly begin with very basic things, like Scripture and the Catechism. Once we move beyond those, there are other treasuries, such as the Lives of the Saints, so very colourful in their depictions of faithful Catholics of all ages. And then there are the Fathers of the Church, those great bishops and priests of the first centuries who gave us, among other things, the decided collection of books of Scripture (the Bible), the statements of belief (the Creeds) and basic syntheses and understandings of Scripture and theology in general.

My argument for the Verbum library app is this: we can not longer criticise the use of internet devices, like computers and smartphones, because we have been reduced to using only those. With the restrictions on public libraries as well as private libraries, we must now assemble our own libraries. That could be expensive and space-requiring. But we tend to have these modern gadgets hanging about us, and they have increasingly vast amounts of space, presumably for pictures and videos. Great. But they will easily hold sizeable texts. They could hold our libraries, easily. And apps like Verbum can provide a systematic plan for reading through large books that could terrify us by their size. A little bit a day, and we are wiser after a whole year of lockdowns and restrictions on movement. All of sudden, the homilies start getting clearer to us, and we are able to follow through the vast amounts of Scripture that the Fathers have injected into the Mass after 1970.

So, if in this difficult time you have some love for the Church and some patience with your smartphone or other internet device, give Verbum a shot. Here are the books I have begun to use on that app: 

• a treasury of Scripture knowledge, by Browne, Canne, Torrey et al.
• a pictorial Lives of the Saints, by Shea.
• the Divine armoury of Holy Scripture, by Vaughn.

Looks interesting. I shall measure these books over the year, and get to the end of them all. And I'm linking to the Verbum website on the sidebar, too.

God bless, and a happy New Year to you and to yours.