Happy Belated Word of God Sunday 2026

By Peter Wolfgang ( bio - articles - email ) | Jan 30, 2026

Yes, I know. Word of God Sunday has already passed. It is almost a week later. But as the Scriptures tell us, “The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever” (ESV-CE). So, in my heart at least, does Word of God Sunday. I’m not ready to let it go. So Happy belated Word of God Sunday and let’s talk about it some more.

Did I say “more?” Let’s talk about it at all. There was very little discussion about Word of God Sunday on the Catholic internet this past week, at least on the sites I frequent. I asked ChatGPT about the origin of Word of God Sunday and here is part of what it told me:

“Sunday of the Word of God” is a relatively recent observance in the Catholic Church. It was formally established by Pope Francis in 2019 to encourage a deeper engagement with Sacred Scripture...He decreed that the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time each year should be “devoted to the celebration, study and dissemination of the Word of God.” The first celebration took place on January 26, 2020...The observance aims to “reawaken an awareness of the importance of Sacred Scripture for our lives as believers,” especially as proclaimed in the liturgy.

The National Catholic Register did run this one great article by Fr. Raymond de Souza. But it was an article from four years ago. A lot has occurred just in the short time since he wrote it.

Fr. de Souza, for instance, praises the Augustine Bible, which had only come out a few years earlier. The Augustine Institute is the U.S. publisher of the English Standard Version-Catholic Edition (ESV-CE), my favorite translation of Scripture. They originally branded it the “Augustine Bible,” similar to Ignatius Press branding the RSV-CE (and the second Catholic edition of the RSV, which owes its existence to Ignatius Press), the “Ignatius Bible.” It was great marketing. Unfortunately there was a disagreement of some sort between the Augustine Institute and Crossway, the Protestant creator and copyright holder of the ESV, and the Augustine Institute is now working on its own “Catholic Standard Version” of the Bible. The final product will likely not be available for several years.

Probably the biggest news in the Catholic Bible world here in the U.S. is the forthcoming “Catholic American Bible” (CAB) which will replace the “lethally drab” New American Bible (NAB), some version of which has been the official translation that we have heard at Mass in our country for over 50 years. “Lethally drab” is the judgment of Anthony Esolen, as quoted by Fr. de Souza in his 2022 article. To those who have cried “How long, O Lord?” over the New American Bible, the answer is: Just until Ash Wednesday of 2027. At least to own the CAB. It will replace the NAB at Mass some time afterward.

Much of what Fr. de Souza praised in 2022 has only gotten even better since then. Fr. de Souza wrote in the immediate afterglow of the incredible success of Fr. Mike Schmitz’s “Bible in a Year” podcast from Ascension Press. Ascension has now published a version of its “Great Adventure Bible” that is widely regarded as the first “premium” Catholic Bible on the market. Remember my column lamenting that Protestants had so many more Bible choices than Catholics? We’re catching up.

The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible referenced by Fr. de Souza in 2022? The whole thing has been published now. The Word on Fire Bible? More volumes have since been published.

This all amazes me. I am like a kid in a candy store. For Christmas 1999, my wife and my mother bought me the complete 12 volume set of the Navarre Bible New Testament. Back then, it was the only orthodox Catholic Bible commentary we could find. Everything else leaned heavily modernist. Don’t even get me started on the notes in the New American Bible. The Navarre Bible, at the time, was the only glass of water in the desert.

Catholics are no longer in a desert. There are now an enormous number of good and faithful Scripture resources available to us. I mentioned above Word on Fire, Ascension Press and the Augustine Institute. Each of them is overflowing with classes, video resources, and other tools you can use to help your journey through Scripture. And there are so many others.

Let me just close by mentioning my personal favorite: the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology. Scott Hahn is a legend and at this point so are John Bergsma and Jeff Morrow. I just saw all three of them give talks recently in Connecticut and they were amazing. I was particularly struck by how their age differences brought something to their different but complementary experiences of Scripture. Hahn, the late-Boomer/Generation Jones guy, Bergsma the Gen Xer, Morrow the Millennial. Bergsma is closest to me in age and I could feel it. The playful irreverence, the pop culture references with which we grew up. These are not your father’s Bible scholars. They’re orthodox, for one thing. But they bring other gifts too.

In his 2022 article on Word of God Sunday, Fr. de Souza celebrated the new Biblical literacy of Catholic laypeople as a fruit of Vatican II. He’s right. Though it did take a while. The first time I ever saw Scott Hahn in person, in Enfield CT in 1999, he began by telling his audience to take out their Bibles. It was a joke. The audience was Catholic and few of them had brought a Bible. I think Hahn told that joke again when I saw him speak in Torrington CT in 2001 and perhaps as late as when I saw him in Norwalk CT in 2014.

As I said, I saw him again just recently, in Trumbull CT. He’s not making that joke anymore.