The Catholic Men’s Bible: Devotional, call to holiness, and study Bible.

r. Lar­ry Richards, who is known for teach­ing Catholic men how to be men and Catholics, has come out with a study Bible (the NAB trans­la­tion; buy here) specif­i­cal­ly for men who want to live their faith more ful­ly. If you belong to a men’s group at your parish, or if you just want to search more deeply for the holi­ness to which God has called you as a man, while mak­ing an ana­lyt­i­cal study of the Bible, this is the one you must own.

I tend toward the ana­lyt­i­cal, and under­stand things best by break­ing them down into their com­po­nent parts. So it appeals to me, at first glance, that this edi­tion of the Bible comes com­plete with intro­duc­tions to the indi­vid­ual books (as well as to groups of books like the Pen­ta­teuch or the Gospels); it con­tains out­lines of each of the bib­li­cal books, and schol­ar­ly foot­notes to the text. It has exeget­i­cal heft. I like a Bible that has been designed for seri­ous study.

In addi­tion, spread through­out the text, are 88 mini-essays on top­ics of par­tic­u­lar rel­e­vance to Catholic men. No. 27 reminds men that fam­i­ly comes first. No. 31 teach­es how to prop­er­ly show courage. No. 40 shows why a man’s nat­ur­al gift at being the deci­sion-mak­er must be sub­li­mat­ed to the will of God. No. 71 reveals “the key to man­hood”; No. 68 says that the ulti­mate goal of life is holi­ness. These essays teach men how to pray, how to evan­ge­lize, how to bal­ance author­i­ty with self-con­trol, and how to show strength through love and gen­tle­ness.

Here is part of what Fr. Richards says on how prayer and father­hood are relat­ed:

Every­thing about prayer is about a rela­tion­ship between our Father and us. It’s about our Dad and us. When we enter into this rela­tion­ship, we need to come to know that God loves us. Our response has to be that I want to love Him. Prayer is pri­marly being with that Some­one who loves you.

Thus through prayer, men can learn to remem­ber what they most need­ed from their fathers, and what they most need to give to their chil­dren. Prayer teach­es men how to be Dads (and hus­bands, and leaders)—how to love as they have been loved and give as they have been giv­en.

Ulti­mate­ly, men need to learn how to bal­ance strength with gen­tle­ness, sex with ten­der­ness, author­i­ty with obe­di­ence, intel­lect with faith, courage and lead­er­ship with the will­ing­ness to admit wrongs and seek direc­tion from God.

There are few bet­ter resources for those things, which also encour­age the need for seri­ous, dai­ly, and in-depth bib­li­cal study, than this Catholic Men’s Bible from Fr. Lar­ry Richards. It is avail­able from Our Sun­day Vis­i­tor.