You came back. Maybe it was a baptism, a funeral, a hard year, or a random Tuesday you still can't explain. You're at Mass again. You have possibly cried in a church parking lot. And there is now a Bible on your nightstand that you keep meaning to open.
Then you open it. It's 73 books long, the print is tiny, and nobody ever told you how to get past Genesis. Here is the whole plan: pick one Gospel, pick one chapter, read it slowly, and leave most of the rest alone for now.
About fifteen minutes a day. That's a real way to begin, and it's the same advice plenty of priests give people who are coming home.
You also have company. The American Bible Society's 2025 survey found Bible use among millennials up 29% in a single year, and dioceses across the U.S. reported some of their biggest groups of adults entering the Church at Easter 2026. A lot of women your age are standing at this same nightstand, wondering where to go first.
You already know more Bible than you think
Catholics have a reputation for not reading the Bible on our own, and the surveys kinda (unfortunately) back that up. But not reading it is different from not knowing it.
If you grew up going to Sunday Mass, you were read to for years. Fr. Felix Just, a Jesuit Scripture scholar, counted it: over the three-year cycle, Sunday and feast-day Masses cover about 58% of the four Gospels and about 41% of the whole New Testament. You've also been saying Scripture out loud without footnotes. "Lamb of God" is John 1:29. "Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof" is a Roman centurion talking in Matthew 8:8. "Holy, holy, holy" is Isaiah 6:3.
The Old Testament is another story. The same count puts Sunday coverage of the Old Testament (Psalms aside) under 4%.
So when the Gospels feel like running into old friends and the Old Testament feels like landing in a country where you don't speak the language, that isn't a personal failing. It's a fairly accurate map of what you were given. It also tells you where to start.
Don't start on page one
The Bible is a library, and nobody walks into a library and reads it left to right. Genesis starts strong: a garden, a flood, a very dramatic family. Exodus has plagues and a sea that splits. Then you reach Leviticus and its instructions for diagnosing skin conditions, and around there, most good intentions start to expire. It is so common that people who have finished a read-the-whole-Bible plan joke about it.
Which brings us to a slightly spicy opinion. Fr. Mike Schmitz's The Bible in a Year has passed a billion downloads, and that is wonderful news for the Church. If it's working for you, keep going. Truly (truly). But a 365-day plan is a marathon, and if you haven't run in fifteen years, you probably shouldn't sign up for a random marathon. You take a walk around the block. A whole-Bible plan makes a great second step but a hard first one.
The Church gives you a better starting line anyway. The Catechism calls the Gospels "the heart of all the Scriptures" (CCC 125). Start at the heart.
Start with one Gospel. We'd pick John.
First, a fair hearing for the other side. Plenty of people will tell you to start with Mark. It's the shortest Gospel at sixteen chapters, it moves fast, and you can finish it in one long sitting. If what you need most is a quick win, Mark is a lovely choice and we won't argue.
For a woman coming back after years away, though, we'd hand you John. Four reasons.
John tells you what the book is for. Near the end he says these things were written so that you may believe, and so that believing you may have life (John 20:31). Not many books state their purpose that plainly, and this one's purpose is you.
It's the Gospel you've only heard in pieces. Sundays in Ordinary Time walk through Matthew, Mark and Luke, one per year. John doesn't get a year. He shows up mostly in Lent, Easter and the big feasts. So you know his greatest hits (the wedding at Cana, the woman at the well, Lazarus, Thomas and his doubts) but you may never have read them in order, as one story.
It's full of conversations with people like us. Nicodemus comes at night with his questions. A Samaritan woman with a complicated history meets Jesus on an errand. Thomas wants proof. And Peter, who denied Jesus three times, is asked three times, "Do you love me?" (John 21:15–17).
It sounds like Mass. Cana, the Lamb of God, the Bread of Life, "Behold, your mother" at the Cross, the risen Jesus speaking to the apostles about forgiving sins: Catholics have long read these passages alongside the sacraments and our love for Mary. Reading John, you keep bumping into things you already do on Sundays.
We do have one warning: John isn't the easiest Gospel. He opens with a poem about the Word before a single story gets told, so chapter 1 is the deep end; but the water is lovely, promise. Go slowly: twenty-one chapters, a chapter every day or two, and you'll finish in about a month!
What to skip for now (it isn't cheating)
Let's be clear about what we are not saying. Every book in the Bible is inspired, and every book is worth your time. Skipping something this year is all about the order you read in. It says nothing about what matters.
The Church sequences too. On Sundays she gives you well over half of the Gospels and, in that same count, exactly nine verses of Leviticus. If the Sunday readings can wait on Leviticus, so can you.
So, with a clear conscience, save these for later:
- Leviticus and Numbers. Laws, rituals and census lists. They open up once you're more familiar with the story they belong to.
- The long genealogies. Our hot take: there's not going to be a test...
- Revelation. Please don't start at the end. It is written in symbols borrowed from the Old Testament, and it reads very differently once you know where they come from.
- The prophets, cover to cover. Beautiful, and much easier with some history in hand.
And keep a few things close. Pray a psalm when you don't have words; you already sing one at every Mass. When you finish John, read Luke and then Acts, which continue as one story. After that, Genesis and Exodus will give you the backstory that everything else leans on.
Which Bible, and what to put on the table
Make sure it's a Catholic edition. Ours has 73 books; most Protestant Bibles have 66. The quick test is the table of contents: if you can find Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch and 1 and 2 Maccabees, you're holding the right one.
Then pick a translation and stop worrying about it. The NABRE is the close cousin of what you hear read at Mass in the United States, and the U.S. bishops post it free online, so you can start tonight for zero dollars. The RSV-2CE stays a little closer to word-for-word and is the one we use in our own study. Both are good. The best translation is the one you will actually open.
Beyond that you need a pen, a notebook, and fifteen quiet-ish minutes. Coffee or a fun bevvy is strongly encouraged.
One more thing, and it's a relief: Catholics don't read the Bible alone. We read it with the Church, with two thousand years of saints and teachers who asked your questions first. So use the footnotes. Use a good Catholic study guide or commentary. Ask your priest. Needing help with this book is the normal way to read it.
A fifteen-minute way to read
This is a pared-down version of lectio divina, the Church's very old habit of praying with Scripture. No candle required, though we'd never talk you out of one.
- Ask. One line is plenty: "Come, Holy Spirit. Help me hear this."
- Read a little. One scene or about ten to fifteen verses. Slowly, and out loud if no one's around.
- Notice. Which word or phrase snagged you? Underline it. Don't work out why yet.
- Ask two questions. What is happening in this scene? And what does it have to do with my actual Tuesday [i.e. insert day, week, month, season here]?
- Answer. Write one sentence in your notebook, say one honest thing back to God, and close the book.
That's the whole method. Tomorrow, pick up at the next scene.
When it gets weird (it will)
You miss eight days. Pick up where you stopped. Don't go back to chapter 1, and don't try to pay off the days you missed. Nobody is keeping a streak on you, this isn't Duolingo.
You read a passage and have no idea what it means. Welcome to the Gospel of John, where almost everyone misunderstands Jesus the first time. Nicodemus thinks being born again involves his mother. The woman at the well thinks the living water comes with a bucket. Write your question in the margin and keep going. Later chapters answer a lot of them, and your priest or a good guide can take the rest.
You feel like a fraud. Fifteen years away, and now you're underlining things? Go back to Peter on the beach in John 21. Jesus doesn't ask him where he's been. He asks one question about love and then gives him something to do.
You feel nothing. Some mornings it's just words on a page and an iced coffee that's the wrong color. That's allowed. Showing up counts for a great deal, and feelings come and go.
Something sounds harsh. John often says "the Jews" when he means particular opponents of Jesus in particular scenes, and those lines have been badly misused over the centuries. The Church is clear that they give no grounds for blaming the Jewish people (see Nostra Aetate 4). When a passage troubles you, treat that as a reason to ask someone, and keep reading.
Come and see
In the first chapter of John, two people start following Jesus down the road without really knowing why. He turns around and asks what they're looking for. They deflect and ask where he's staying. He doesn't hand them a reading plan. He says, "Come and see" (John 1:39).
That's the invitation, and it still stands. You don't need a theology degree or a tidy explanation for the last fifteen years. You need a Bible, a pen, and John, chapter 1.
If you'd like company for it, the first chapter of our study guide, In His Story: A Guide to the Gospel of John, is free. It walks you through John 1 with a little context, a Catholic lens, and room to write.
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