About Restless
A companion for the daily Mass readings and the Liturgy of the Hours, for Catholics in the United States and for anyone drawn toward the Church.
What it is
Every day the Church sets readings before us at Mass, and the Liturgy of the Hours (the Church's daily prayer of psalms, readings and intercessions, prayed at set hours) around them. Restless is the "understand" step before you pray: for each reading it gathers the book it comes from, where the passage falls, the people and places in it, what the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches from it, and what the Fathers of the Church (the great teachers of the first centuries) said about the Gospel. The readings themselves are read at the US bishops' site, bible.usccb.org; every card links to them, and this site reproduces none of them.
It is not a study Bible, not a devotional app and not a place for reflections. It is the ground to stand on before Mass, so that when the reading is proclaimed you already know where you are.
Who it is for
Catholics who want to understand the day's readings before they hear them, and those on the way: inquirers, people in OCIA (the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults, the parish path into the Church), a husband or wife who comes to Mass with their family, a reader who arrived through a Bible-in-a-year podcast and wants more. Nothing assumes you already know the words. Each term is explained the first time it appears.
How it is made
- The Church's teaching leads. Where the Church has spoken, that is given first. Where scholars differ, each view is named with who holds it and where it is written. No view is called "what most scholars think".
- Every statement names its source. A fact without a source does not go in. A place is marked as located, traditional, disputed or unknown. Where nothing is known, the gap is shown rather than filled.
- Built by rule, not by a model. The data is assembled by programs from named sources: the US bishops' calendar and Lectionary, the Catechism's own index of Scripture citations, the Catena Aurea of Saint Thomas Aquinas in its public-domain English edition, the 1916 Roman Martyrology, and open data for people and places. No daily text is written by a language model.
- Nothing under copyright is copied. Licensed texts are summarised in our own words and linked to their publishers; public-domain works are named as such.
- Every decision is on record. Each rule chosen and each discrepancy found while building the data is logged, with its reason and its source, so that the choices behind a page can be checked.
Your notes stay yours
Notes are kept with the reading rather than the date, so they return the next time that reading is heard at Mass. They are stored only in your own browser and are never sent to us. The privacy page says exactly what is and is not collected.
The name
“Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee.” St Augustine, Confessions I.1, translated by E. B. Pusey, 1838 (public domain)
The name is for the reader, not the tool: the heart that wants more of the Word. The mark, a heart with a flame rising in it, is St Augustine's emblem. The promise on the house page, Know the Scriptures, know Christ, follows St Jerome, whose words the Second Vatican Council made its own: “ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ” (Dei Verbum 25; Catechism 133).
Who makes it
Restless is made and run by V2 App, LLC, a small company in the United States.
Restless is a study aid. It is not an official publication of the Catholic Church, of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops or of any diocese, and it is not endorsed by them. On any question of faith, morals or practice, the Church's teaching and your pastor come first.
Write to us
Corrections, questions and sources we have missed are welcome at support@restlesscatholic.com. If you hold rights in a work used here and see something wrong, the same address reaches us.