PROCLAIMING THE WORD OF GOD - #1

Something wonderful happened in 1969. For the first time in four hundred years the Catholic Church decided that it would use the Bible differently. It would revise the structure and re-organize the format of the first part of the Sunday liturgy. It would create a new listing of Sunday readings to fit the newly revised liturgical calendar and make the Word of God a principal conversion tool for the instruction of catechumens. For the first time in four centuries Catholic and Reformation Church communities recognized the primacy of the Word of God.

In 1570 Pope Pius V issued the Roman Missal. This had a one-year listing of Bible Readings for Sunday Mass. The average Catholic became familiar with about 120 scripture passages. Here is how the schema looked.

None of the Sunday readings was taken from the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament. (There were single Jewish readings for Epiphany, Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, and there were a dozen readings from Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Baruch, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, and Jonah at the Easter Vigil). You'd hardly know that Catholicism was the daughter religion.

The missal's Sunday schema included readings from seventeen of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament. (In fact, there is nothing from the Apocalypse or Revelation of Saint John).

The four Gospels had the best representation. Matthew appeared the most times (24), followed by Luke (21), John (17), and Mark (4). Catholics heard 33% of Matthew, 16% of Luke, 28% of John, and 5% of Mark.

This survey indicates that we Catholics were deprived. We had a full Biblical banquet-menu and we settled for a small snack. The 20th century Biblical renewal in Catholic and Reformation Churches pushed us to remedy our poverty and to indulge in the nutritious fare that was truly our birthright.

"The treasures of the Bible are to be opened more lavishly, so that a richer share in God's word may be provided for the faithful. In this way a more representative portion of Holy Scripture will be read to the people in the course of a prescribed number of years. (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, 51)."

The new lectionary was to make clear that we were living out the mystery of salvation in its entirety. This mystery stretched from the original events recorded in Biblical texts and continued in us and in our world today. The lectionary would also point out the Central mysteries of faith and what the Christian life was about. The Old Testament manifested God's covenant bonds and pointed to Jesus, his Passover, and his teachings. Finally, the liturgical year was the ideal setting for proclaiming the message of salvation. A one year cycle of readings was expanded to three years so that Matthew, Mark, and Luke and their distinctive portraits of Jesus would be presented. In addition, the revised catechumenate, the structure for Christian conversion, might last up to three years.

Pope Paul VI carefully supervised and encouraged the work of revision. The new lectionary appeared four hundred years after the Roman Missal of Pope Pius V. A marvelous ecumenical blessing came from this project. The new lectionary served as a model for the lectionary and catechumenate revisions of the Anglican, Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, and Presbyterian Churches.