Bible Sunday

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The Bible Sunday is in Germany on the last Sunday in January in Protestant , Catholic , Orthodox and Free Church celebrated parishes. Despite all denominational differences, it reminds us of what all Christians have in common and what they unite : the Bible as the basis of Christian faith . It is usually the start or end of a Bible week in which Christians of different denominations read and discuss biblical texts together on several evenings.

German Bible Society / Catholic Biblical Works

Based on an initiative of the Working Group of Christian Churches in Baden-Württemberg , the first common Bible Sunday was celebrated in 1976. It has been taking place regularly in Germany since 1982. The (Protestant) German Biblical Society and the Catholic Biblical Society prepare preparatory material for church services. In a collection, money is collected for Bible projects around the world (which are supported by the World Bible Aid and the Catholic Biblical Federation) in order to enable people in poorer countries to acquire Bibles and to support local Bible study .

In Switzerland, the Swiss Catholic Biblical Works and the Swiss Bible Society have also been calling for an ecumenical Bible Sunday in November since 1991. Due to a lack of support in the regional churches and dioceses and a lack of response in the communities, the project was ended in 2011.

Since 2011, Biblical Sunday has been continued by the Swiss Bible Society alone. The goal of the annual Bible Sunday is to bring the Bible to the fore in the parish. The Swiss Bible Society provides documents for church services on a specific biblical topic. The Swiss Bible Society's domestic projects are supported with the help of the Bible Sunday collections. Biblical Sunday is intended for all churches and parishes. It is traditionally celebrated in the Reformed Churches in Bern-Jura-Solothurn on the last Sunday in August. There it is one of the compulsory church-wide collections for the Swiss Bible Society determined by the Synodal Council.

Roman Catholic Church

In the Roman Catholic Church , the third Sunday of the year is celebrated as the Sunday of the Word of God (also: Word of God Sunday ), for the first time on January 26, 2020.

In his Apostolic Exhortation “ Aperuit illis ” published on September 30, 2019, Pope Francis introduced this Sunday as a theme Sunday throughout the Church in the church year . It should be "dedicated to the celebration, contemplation and spreading of the word of God." The day of remembrance was placed close to the " Week of Christian Unity " and is also close to the "Day of Judaism", which is in the Catholic Church in Italy , Austria , Poland and the Netherlands . The Pope refers to the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum on the divine revelation of the Second Vatican Council and emphasizes that this Sunday expressly “falls quite appropriately in the period of the year in which we are to strengthen our relations with the Jews and for Christian unity are invited to pray. It is not a mere temporal coincidence: the celebration of the Sunday of the Word of God is ecumenical, because Scripture shows those who listen to the path that must be followed in order to achieve an authentic and solid unity The Pope particularly points out the importance of the homily as an interpretation of the Word of God in Holy Mass . One element of a worship service on God's Word Sunday can be a special veneration ("enthronement") of the lectionary , who is carried along with the entry and solemnly placed on the ambo .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Off for the Ecumenical Bible Sunday! . Website of the Swiss Catholic Biblical Works, accessed on January 12, 2016.
  2. ↑ www.die-bibel.ch . Website of the Swiss Bible Society, accessed on April 21, 2020
  3. ↑ Pope creates his own Bible Sunday: reference to ecumenism and Judaism. In: domradio.de. October 1, 2019, accessed May 25, 2020 .
  4. ↑ a b Aperuit illis 3.
  5. ↑ P. Norbert Hofmann SDB: Day of Judaism: Common origin, common future. In: vaticannews.va. January 17, 2019, accessed May 25, 2020 .