THE GREAT ADVENTURE CATHOLIC BIBLE WITH FLEXIBLE LEATHERETTE COVER - 2nd EDITION ("Bible in a Year")

Review

SECTION ONE Most Catholics own a Bible. Far fewer have read it through. The Great Adventure Catholic Bible, developed through Ascension Press using Jeff Cavins' salvation-history method, exists to close that gap. Rather than presenting the 73 books as a shelf of independent volumes, it arranges them within a single chronological narrative — 14 sequential periods running from Creation through the early Church — each color-coded so a reader always knows where they stand in the larger story. The accompanying 'Bible in a Year' reading plan (365 daily portions, typically 15-20 minutes each) gives that structure a daily rhythm. The result is an edition aimed at ordinary Catholics who have tried and failed to read Scripture systematically, and who need both a map and a pace car. Commentary notes connect individual passages to the Catechism, the Church Fathers, and the liturgical calendar. This second edition includes a flexible leatherette cover designed for daily handling. The intended reader is any Catholic adult or older adolescent willing to commit a quarter-hour a day to encountering the whole of Scripture as a coherent whole. SECTION TWO - **Created**: Scripture's opening arc — the goodness of creation, the naming of the animals, the declaration that the human person is made in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26-27) — is not incidental background in this edition but the narrative foundation on which everything else rests. By walking the reader through these texts in sequence, the Great Adventure Bible allows the imago Dei to function as a genuine anthropological premise rather than a decorative phrase. The reader encounters human dignity as a story-level fact before encountering it as a doctrinal claim. - **Fallen**: The chronological structure does not soften the Fall or the long sweep of Israel's infidelity. Exile — the dominant experience of the Old Testament's middle periods — is presented as a consequence of disordered worship, broken covenant, and the structural weight of what Aquinas calls the disorder of concupiscence: the tendency of the human will to seek created goods as though they were ultimate. The reader who follows the narrative through the books of Kings and the prophets experiences that disorder not as an abstract theological datum but as a recurring, tragic pattern in a story they have been reading for months. - **Redeemed**: The 14-period framework culminates in the Church and Consummation periods, situating the reader's present moment within an ongoing redemptive history. The edition's commentary consistently connects Old Testament typologies to their New Testament fulfillments — the Passover lamb to the Eucharist, the Davidic king to Christ — so that reading becomes an exercise in recognizing grace already at work in history. This is formation in the theological virtue of hope, grounded in memory of what God has already done. - **Prudence (docility)**: The daily reading plan trains the integral virtue of docility — the habitual openness to being taught — by placing the reader in a posture of receptivity for 15 minutes each day. Over a year, that posture becomes a stable disposition of the intellect toward Scripture, which is precisely what Aquinas means by the formation of a habit through repeated acts (Summa Theologiae I-II, Q. 51). - **Justice (worship and devotion)**: Because the commentary links each day's reading to the liturgical calendar and the sacramental life of the Church, the edition moves Bible reading out of a purely private register and into the public, ecclesial act of worship. Lectio divina ordered toward the Mass is an exercise in the virtue of religion — the just rendering to God of what is owed. SECTION THREE The Aparecida document's repeated insistence on 'new life' as the fruit of genuine encounter with Christ[^1] finds a natural echo in an edition whose entire pedagogical premise is that Scripture, read as a unified narrative, can re-orient a believer's self-understanding from the inside. John Paul II's[^2] meditation in Dives in Misericordia on the parable of the prodigal son (Lk. 15:11-32) — read there as the paradigmatic movement from exile back into the Father's house — corresponds directly to the salvation-history arc the Great Adventure Bible uses as its structural spine; the reader who follows Cavins' 14 periods is, in effect, walking the prodigal's route in slow motion.[^3] ## References [^1]: CELAM. (2007). *Aparecida: Concluding document of the Fifth General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean*. CELAM. Index entry: 'New life,' pp. 11, 220, 250, 281, 332, 348-357, 399, 536. [^2]: John Paul II. (1980). *Dives in misericordia* [Rich in mercy]. Libreria Editrice Vaticana. fn. 123, citing Lk. 15:11-32. [^3]: John Paul II. (1980). *Dives in misericordia* [Rich in mercy]. Libreria Editrice Vaticana. fn. 115, citing Jn. 3:16.

✓ Strengths

• ✓The Great Adventure Catholic Bible's chronological and thematic organization addresses one of the most persistent obstacles to Scripture engagement: readers who open a Bible at random, lose narrative thread, and abandon the effort within weeks. By situating every passage within a color-coded 'Timeline Chart' and Jeff Cavins' 14-period salvation-history framework, the edition gives the human intellect the structural scaffolding it needs to receive revelation as a coherent story rather than an anthology of disconnected texts.
• ✓The 'Bible in a Year' reading plan, popularized through Fr. Columba Kelly and later through Fr. Mike Schmitz's widely-used podcast adaptation, establishes a daily habit structure that trains the will through repetition — a mechanism Aquinas identifies in the Summa Theologiae I-II, Q. 49-54 as the formation of stable operative habits. Consistent daily engagement with Scripture is itself an exercise in docility, the integral virtue of openness to learning that orders the intellect toward truth.
• ✓The commentary notes throughout the text connect individual pericopes to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Church Fathers, and the liturgical calendar, giving readers tools to move from private reading into ecclesial participation — Mass, the Liturgy of the Hours, and the sacramental life — rather than treating Bible reading as a purely private exercise.
• ✓The leatherette cover and physical durability of the edition signal an object meant for sustained, daily use rather than display. This attention to material form is consistent with the Catholic understanding of the unity of body and soul: the tactile weight and texture of a well-made book reinforces the embodied, habitual character of lectio divina.
• ✓By presenting the whole of Scripture as a unified salvation narrative — Creation, Fall, Promise, Exile, Return, Incarnation, Church, and Consummation — the edition implicitly structures the reader's self-understanding within the Created-Fallen-Redeemed arc, making personal history legible as participation in a story larger than any individual life.

⚠ Considerations

• ⚠The edition is tied, in much of its popular reception, to a single 365-day podcast format. Readers who miss weeks or find the pace unsustainable may experience the reading plan as a source of guilt rather than formation, particularly those already prone to scrupulosity or perfectionism. A pastoral note to formators: introduce the plan alongside explicit permission to restart without shame.