U.S. Senator Marco Rubio tweets a Bible verse a day, in good times or bad, a morning devotional that delights his fans and irks his critics.
Typically, the Senator broadcasts them unadorned with side commentary, even as it could be possible to read some into the context of the day’s events.
But why does the Senator tweet them? In a conversation Thursday with Dr. Andrew Abela, dean of Catholic University’s Busch School of Business & Economics, Rubio was matter of fact about what has become a morning ritual.
“It’s not a very difficult thing to decide every day. It’s based on the daily reading in the Catholic Church, from the mass,” Rubio said. “For the most part…it’ll give you an Old Testament verse, it’ll give you a Psalm, it’ll give you a New Testament, and then it’ll give you a Gospel. And you can pick from that.”
“If you do that, every three years you’ll get through the whole Bible. So, generally speaking, that’s where it comes from. Every now and then if that day it’s just not in context or it just doesn’t line up, I’ll use my old, reliable Proverbs. I actually started doing it that way. You can basically pick one chapter every day of the month and get through it, unless you have 31 days in the month. So that’s sort of the process.”
The Senator suggested that the Good Book may even be good for those who don’t share his Roman Catholic faith.
“I think one of the things that’s most amazing as you do that every day is you look at this ancient document, the most read book in the history of the world, and you realize that even if you’re not a believer, even if you’re an atheist, or an agnostic, or whatever it may be, it’s extraordinary how it captures the essence of so much of our human psychology and instinct and behavior and the nature of humanity that applies to this very day,” Rubio said
“There’s not a single day where you don’t read through it and you don’t realize that these words were written in a very different time, a very different society, and yet it still speaks so deeply to some contemporary issue going on in our daily life, not even in politics.”
Today’s Rubio tweet?
Because the LORD knows the way of the just, but the way of the wicked leads to ruin.
Psalms 1:6
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) October 14, 2020
