ASK THE ACOLYTE

Mark Biolo, OSB Cam

How are the readings for Mass chosen?

Before I answer that, a short quiz: What do those initials after my name stand for? Can’t recall? Better look up last month’s column. (Which I am certain you carefully filed away in your "important documents" safe!)

Well, as you know, the Mass is composed of two parts, the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist. The Liturgy of the Word, the sequence of readings and instruction, is an essential part of the Mass, the vital preparation without which we ought not approach the altar of sacrifice. It is not optional, nor can we claim to have taken part in the Mass if we miss the readings. As St. Jerome tells us, "Ignorance of the Bible is ignorance of Christ".

We do not know a great deal about the form of the Mass in the early Church though St. Justin, in his book called The Apologia, written around the year 150, gives us some hints. The description left to us by Justin says that "the memoirs of the Apostles [that is the Gospels] or the collections of the prophets are read for as long as possible", (Can you imagine?!). And at first the readings may well have been quite long. It did not take long for the Church to recognize that the attention span of a large, mixed congregation is fairly brief and the readings should be kept reasonably short. It must also have been apparent that if you leave it to the leaders of each congregation to choose their own readings, the people will be treated to a repetitive diet of the leader’s favorite passages. As a result there appeared the lectionary, a book of selected passages from different parts of the Bible appointed to be read on specific days so that in the course of a year the people could hear all the most important texts and a good selection of the rest. Various lectionaries were used in the early centuries, though the Roman version was the most common for over 1500 years and formed the basis for the others. The Roman lectionary was superceded in 1969 and a completely new lectionary drawn up. This, following some revision, is what we use today.

The lectionary is one of the principal liturgical books of the Catholic Church and we have two primary forms: the Lectionary for Sunday Mass, which includes solemnities and holy days, and the Lectionary for Weekday Mass, which comes in several volumes. The Sunday lectionary runs on a recurring three-year cycle with each year featuring one of the synoptic Gospels, particularly in Ordinary Time. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called "synoptic" from the Greek meaning to "view together". The reader of these three Gospels would, in fact, see many parallels among these stories of Jesus. Indeed, there is impressive agreement – verbal and sequential – among them. (For the purposes of comparison these three Gospels can be put into parallel columns and they would line up pretty well.) These three Gospels may also be thought of as providing a summary or "synopsis" of Jesus’ life. The Gospel of John is quite different in character. It is highly literary and symbolic. It does not produce the same stories nor follow the same order as the synoptic Gospels. John’s Gospel is primarily reserved for the seasons of Christmastime and Eastertime, though we do see smatterings of John in other parts of the year, particularly in Cycle B, the year of Mark. So, in scriptural union with other Christian churches that use three-year lectionaries based on ours, we move together in an ordered and orderly fashion through the synoptic Gospel of the year. Cycle A features Matthew, Cycle B Mark, and Luke is featured in cycle C. The rotation then repeats. The Gospels for the Sundays in these cycles are chosen to suit the liturgical season when applicable or chosen to teach us about the life of Christ in Ordinary Time (more on that in the next column). So, during the course of each year we experience most of the Gospel featured in that year. The weekday lectionary rotates on a two-year basis, Cycle 1 and Cycle 2.

The first reading is chosen because of its correlation to the Gospel. Sometimes the relevance of the first reading to the Gospel is obvious, at other times the relationship may seem quite obscure. The first reading is always from the Old Testament except during Eastertime when it comes from the Acts of the Apostles, an easy read and a sort of history of the early church.

The second reading is from one of the epistles or letters of the New Testament (mainly St. Paul). Except for a very few days of the year, the epistle readings were not chosen with any reference to the other two. As a result if you or the preacher can find any connection, this is pure chance, or rather, since few things happen by chance, pure grace. Fundamentally, the idea is to read through each of the second readings consecutively, so that this Sunday’s reading will follow on last Sunday’s, in the same way the gospels are usually read. Unlike the Gospels, however, the epistles do not come apart easily into small sections of thought ("pericopes"), and a single idea may be spread over two or three Sundays. Remember that weekday Mass has only one Old Testament reading and a Gospel.

So there you have it in a nutshell, so to speak. Next month we’ll take a look at the liturgical calendar and come to know a bit more about "Ordinary Time". That will help us gain an even clearer picture of why the readings are chosen as they are. And there will be a quiz!

P.S.

OSB Cam is the abbreviation for the Camaldolese Congregation of the Order of St. Benedict, the religious community to which I belong as an oblate brother. You remember what an oblate is, don’t you?