I was raised Catholic. When I was young my family would be in church every Sunday and holy day. We would also have a traditional Christmas Eve meal , adhere to Lenten outlines, and have our Easter baskets blessed on holy Saturday. When I was growing up every Catholic household also had several things in common. These were: a painting or lithograph of the Last Supper in the kitchen, a sick-call (which I will explain) hanging on a wall, palms hung throughout the house and a Bible. Much pomp and ritual surrounded some of the items, such as the sick-call. A sick-call was a crucifix mounted on a cross shaped box, usually of wood. In the event someone in the home was deathly ill or dying, the sick-call was brought down off the wall and placed on a table. The crucifix was removed and placed standing in a slot at the head of the box. Inside the box were two candles, which would be placed in holders on either end of the cross-piece, and usually there was a small bottle of holy water inside as well, for sprinkling on the sick person. Around this little makeshift shrine a prayer vigil would be held. All this to pray for a sick loved one. My family had all this and more, but the one thing that got the least amount of use was the family Bible. Ours was a huge thick book, which sat under the phone table(yes, there were little end tables designed just to hold the phone, big, ugly, black rotary ones that you got from the phone company)and was never opened. I used to open it occasionally, just to look at the illustrations, but never to actually read it. After high school, I pretty much stopped going to church, only occasionally; that is, until my daughter was born. My wife and I started going somewhat regularly, and we had our marriage blessed so we could get our daughter baptised.
By the time I reached my thirtieth birthday, I was stung by the need for God. At that time I went with what I knew. I went back to the Catholic church, with a vengence. You see a good Catholic would go to church every Sunday, but a dedicated one would go to confession on Saturday as well. After a time I started little rituals of my own. I would come home from working second shift and sit up for hours reciting prayers from little books, I would say the rosary every night and I would read various pieces of literature that I had. Before too long, this got to be tedious and boring. One thing I didn't do though was read the Bible. I had a couple of New Testaments from years back, so I started reading them. When I started reading the Bible,
something happened to me. A light when on in my head, I began to realize that much of what Catholicism taught wasn't in the Bible. Although the Catholic Church claims that the Bible is the Word of God, and was written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, it does not practice what is written in there; in fact the Catholic Church even changed some of it. So, what does all this have to do with a five dollar Bible? Well, the second Bible I ever bought was a King James version and I paid five dollars for it. I got more out of that Bible then I ever did from 30 years of being a practicing Catholic. God doesn't care for how much pomp and ceremony we put into our rituals or how beautifully our homes and churches are decorated. We can have all the trapping of a religious life we want, but God searches only one thing-the human heart. If our hearts are humble before an Almighty God and if we take to that heart all the things that God has written in His Word, then that humble five dollar Bible is more beautiful and more powerful than all the cathedrals ever built. I don't go to a Catholic church any more, haven't for a good ten years, and the only exception I'll make is when a family member dies, but I still have my five dollar Bible and probably will make use of it for the rest of my life.
