On the occasion of the 2025 Jubilee, Pope Francis invites everyone to reclaim a unique and priceless treasure: the Second Vatican Council. For this very reason, he gives each person 34 small volumes capable of illuminating a historic event that still has much to say to people today and brings with it novelty and freshness.
The second volume
The second volume in the Jubilee 2025 – Council Notebooks series is entitled Revelation as the Word of God, and leads us to discover the dogmatic constitution Dei Verbum, opening the doors to that historic “assembly” in which all the bishops of the world took part.
With brilliance and wisdom, Monsignor Rino Fisichella retraces the most important moments that led to the drafting of Dei Verbum. In just a few pages, he manages to bring back the emotion of the beginning of a genuine change of direction, not only for theology but, above all, for the lives of Christians.
The vote
On November 18, 1965, the Council assembly, with 2,344 votes in favor and 6 against, approved Dei Verbum, the document that finally returned the most important book of all time to the hands of the faithful: the Bible. “It is necessary,” it says in no. 22, “that the faithful have broad access to Sacred Scripture.” And, in the same number, it reiterates: “The Word of God must be available to everyone at all times.”
The document, without exaggeration the Council's finest, was the last to be approved; decades later, it continues to fascinate everyone who reads it: Dei Verbum becomes the foundation and horizon from which to read and interpret all the Council's teaching.
The Bible returns to the hands of the laity
Dei Verbum enables believers to rediscover God's face and regain familiarity with Sacred Scripture. It explains how the Lord of lords, the Most High God, can make himself known, speak to humanity, and reveal himself throughout history precisely through “the Word.” A Word that had remained the preserve of a few for far too long.
Dei Verbum presents revelation as God's free initiative, through which he enters into a relationship with humanity and enables us to immerse ourselves in a love story that begins in the infinity of God and plunges into the human being, a creature desired solely out of love.
Through the second volume in the Jubilee 2025 – Council Notebooks series, the Second Vatican Council becomes familiar and offers a unique opportunity to return to the origins of the faith and let ourselves be challenged by the Word that never passes away.
