A Prayer and an Indulgence for you before Reading your Bible

I signed up for Jeff Cavin's The Great Adventure Bible Timeline Catholic Bible Study at my local parish. I am so excited to delve into this intensive Bible Study.

Here is an awesome prayer I just read while looking through some of the course material.  I think I am going to print this out on business cards and pass it out to the women in my study. I would like to pray this before I read my Bible. It is a prayer from Origen, one of our early Church Fathers who lived in the years 184 to 253. (Isn't it so great to be Catholic?!)

Lord, inspire me to read your Scriptures and to meditate upon them day and night. I beg you to give me real understanding of what I need, that I in turn may put its precepts into practice. Yet, I know that understanding and good intentions are worthless, unless rooted in your graceful love. So I ask that the words of Scripture may also be not just signs on a page, but channels of grace into my heart. Amen.
 

Also, I wanted to add that there is an indulgence that was granted by Pope Leo XIII in 1898 to all the faithful who "shall read for at least a quarter of an hour the books of the Sacred Scripture with the veneration due to the Divine Word and as spiritual reading, an indulgence of 300 days". (Preces et Pia opera, 645.)

So, next time you are going to read the bible for 15 minutes, remember Pope Leo XIII, and do so with the intention of obtaining your indulgence.

God Bless!