The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
BONUS: Bringing the Bible Back to Catholics (with Jeff Cavins)
19 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What is the purpose of the Bible in a Year podcast?
Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and I want to welcome you to the Bible in a Year podcast. With me today is Mr. none other than the illustrious, the inimitable, the incomparable, the infamous, Mr. Jeff Cavins. Hey, good to be with you.
jess i'm so grateful um for actually we're gonna as we kick off like this this this podcast is bible in a year podcast um one of the things that i think it needs to be said before anything else is that um this bible linear podcast is following basically a um
template that you designed that that you came upon when it came to the great adventure bible timeline which has probably i don't want to just start this whole thing off by by going over the top but for me i've said this many times i've told this to anyone who asks or anyone who will listen uh that that great adventure bible timeline was the most significant um most significant tool that i've ever encountered that ever um i've ever used that has gotten me more uh
Nothing has been better to get me more deeply into the Bible than the Great Adventure Bible Timeline. And I'm just really grateful, not only for you and for that, but also that here you are now as we begin this Catholic Bible or the Bible in a Year podcast, that we get to use this thing that has changed my life maybe more than any other study I've ever done in my entire life.
So thank you. I appreciate that very much. And you and I have known each other for quite a while, and it's a lot of fun getting together because we talk about the Word of God constantly, and we're always sharing insights.
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Chapter 2: How did the Great Adventure Bible Timeline change the hosts' lives?
And myself included, you mentioned the tool as far as your own life, mine too. People come up so often and they say, wow, that really changed my life, the Bible timeline. I said, well, not as much as mine. I had no idea.
And we can talk about that a little bit later, but I had no idea that when I was 25 years old that a 48-hour period was going to define the rest of my life and I was going to live in it. But, you know, it speaks of the story, really not us, but the story of salvation history. And that's what you're going to be bringing people through. So it's going to be exciting.
Yeah, I'm overwhelmingly excited about it for not only for like anyone who's going to be listening to this and going to be journeying with us, but for even the people that I know that are in my life. So I have a sister and a brother-in-law.
Chapter 3: What personal experiences do the hosts share about their relationship with the Bible?
I have a couple of sisters and brothers-in-law, but one in particular who got the Great Adventure Bible maybe, I guess, maybe three or four months ago now. and maybe a little longer than that, I think it was April. Who knows? Time just all happens. But she not only got the Great Adventure Bible, but she also was like, hey, what's a good Bible study?
I'm like, okay, the Great Adventure Bible timeline, you need to do it. So she and her husband,
started it and I was over at their house a couple days ago and I picked up her Great Adventure Bible and I saw that that ribbon was still somewhere in the book of Genesis and I'm like, oh, I'm so grateful because the podcast is gonna help people who are trying to get through, who just like, you know, you kind of bottom out sometimes or you just kind of get...
the log jam becomes so much that it's like, oh, how do I break through to the next book and keep on moving?
Because that's one of the things that I found when it came to reading the Bible and when it came to doing the Great Adventure Bible timeline is that sometimes it was like, oh, shoot, I can't sit down right now or I'm not finding the time or making the time to sit down and reading through the next section.
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Chapter 4: How can listeners engage with the Bible daily through this podcast?
That the whole idea behind the podcast is like, okay, no, you just get to let the word of God like kind of wash over you in a different way. Um, and to be able to not just get through it, that's not the point, but the, to allow it to get through to you really, uh, by the word of God being proclaimed.
So, so not only for the people who will be listening, but also for my family members who, um, you know, all of us at times can struggle to like, let's keep on going. Let's keep on moving through the word of God and let it keep changing us. Um, and let it keep shaping our lens.
Well, in a nutshell, Father, it's probably good to share with those who are joining us. In a nutshell, what are you going to be doing over the entire year? And then it'd be fun to go kind of deep into that and look at the Bible in our lives as Catholics and also in our lives individually. Personally, what does the Word of God mean to us?
And I'm curious what it's meant to you, and I know it's meant the whole world to me.
Chapter 5: What unique structure does the Great Adventure Bible Timeline offer?
Yeah, yeah, no, well, the idea behind the whole thing was, so what I found myself doing is I found myself listening to a lot of, you and I have talked about this just in various phone calls over the last six months, but one of the things I found myself doing was, I was taking in all this input.
I was listening to a lot of different voices when it came to different podcasts and YouTube videos, people who are teachers who I think like, you have something good to say, you have something wise to say that is enlightening and is informative, and it's actually forming me. But what I found was that there were times when I would listen to some of these people who, again, I'm grateful for,
but I wasn't thinking with the mind of Christ. And so then what I would do is I would listen to scripture, because I love audio books. And so one of the audio books I have is the Bible. And I found that when I would listen to the Bible, I wouldn't just get more information.
I wouldn't just be reminded of a story or introduced to a new story that maybe I had forgotten or whatever the thing is, a new element.
Chapter 6: How are the narrative books integrated into the Bible reading plan?
But it was that my lens, my worldview was being shaped. And I don't know if you, I'm sure you've heard the story of Saint Ignatius of Loyola when he had broken his leg and he was convalescing in, I think, his sister-in-law's house or something like this. And he used to read romance novels or stories of like the glory of knights and whatnot.
And he'd also read stories of the saints and life of Jesus. And he said that after he read those stories of those knights, he said, during, while I was reading them, I felt like charged it up. I wouldn't want it to live like that. But afterwards I kind of like a sugar crash or it's kind of like this disappointment he experienced versus reading the life of Christ.
He was lifted up, but then afterwards he was sustained. It was like the sense of like, this was something not just inspiring, not just powerful, but it was something that was good and true and beautiful that had lasting effect.
And that's what I found was I found that when I listened to scripture, that it had this lasting effect in me that because it had shaped my lens of looking at the world and reminded me of like, I just, here's an example.
Chapter 7: What community aspects are encouraged through the podcast?
I was reading the book of Judges and that sense of the last line of, in those days there was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in their own eyes.
In that sense of man, the lawlessness kind of a sense or people who are striving after the Lord but then unfaithful to him and this how God continued to work with their brokenness was one of the things that just, again, it kept reminding me as a touch point, it kept shaping how I was,
living through like, I don't know, pandemic times and living through just trying to be with others in the midst of their brokenness and their crises of their lives. And it just, again, it wasn't just like I got a nugget of, here's a nugget of truth or here's a little kernel of something good. It was more like, again, my lens or the way I was looking at the world and really interpreting
what i was going through living through was being shaped it was being like fashioned and so that was a that was a really big conviction of like i think we need to do this from a real solidly catholic perspective and i don't think of a more powerful perspective than to go through it via the great adventure bible timeline
Well, it's gonna be so exciting because, you know, in the Great Adventure Bible timeline, it's basically taking the entire Bible, and I've got, my office is filled with Bibles, I've got the Great Adventure Bible here, but it's taking the Bible that is, some would argue it's the most complex book in the world, you know? It's going way back into creation, all the way to Revelation,
And for some people, it's very difficult to read. They don't know how to read it.
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Chapter 8: How does the podcast aim to transform listeners' lives through Scripture?
And what you're going to be doing, and I'm going to assist in any way that I can, is that you're going to take people through that entire journey from Genesis to Revelation, not just reading it like it is in the Bible, but you're going to read it in chronological order so that they basicallyā get the story.
And I think that that's what's going to make this so different and so unique is that for a year, people are going to soak themselves in God's word and really get a hold of the story, not just the stories, which you and I can talk about the stories day and night, but it's the story. And that story is really going to illuminate people's lives and give them direction in their life and correction and
And it's going to give them hope and a foundation on which they can really trust the Lord. And let's admit it, most Catholics that we know of, I'm not talking about people who follow you on social media or people who have gone through the Great Adventure, but Catholics in general in the country, they don't have that real personal relationship with the Word of God.
And I think you're going to be bringing that to them.
Well, I think that you nailed it when you said that one of the things The Great Adventure Timeline does, and I think this podcast is shooting for, is to get the story, not just the stories. And I love that because so we were talking before we started recording about like our original, our first Bibles. And I went to get my first Bible and I
saw next to it, my actual kind of first Bible, my first Bible is this one. It's the picture Bible, which is like a comic book Bible. It's awesome. It is this, like every page is, here's the- Did you underline? Did you highlight? Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego. So I have underlined, highlighted notes. But this was, I got this for my first Holy Communion. So when I was in second grade, still have it.
And I lent it to my little sister, her first Holy Communion. I lent it to my little brother, took it back after he got done with it. And now what I do for all of my nieces and nephews is, There is a new version of this called the Action Bible that they know, their parents know, that Uncle Father Mike is going to give them an Action Bible to all the second graders when they get it.
Because part of it is, like you said, it can be so daunting for us as anyone, as Christians, specifically as Catholics, because I don't want to get it wrong. I think one of the things that as Catholics we have is going for us and kind of going against us is we don't want to get it wrong. We don't want to read it and misinterpret it. We don't want to read it and misunderstand it.
And so it's kind of like there's hesitation. And so what I've always wanted to do with my nieces and nephews is get them started by having something that's accessible. And then the really cool thing is my oldest nephew I think he was the first one that I ever gave the action Bible to. He went to one of our camps and that one for engineer high, so sixth grade.
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