Along with Roman Catholics throughout the world, today we observe the Word of God Sunday. Sunday is the day we gather around the one table of the Lord’s word and sacrament. It is true that “the liturgy of the word and the eucharistic liturgy, are so closely connected with each other that they form but one single act of worship.”1
Holy Mass is where the word becomes flesh, not just the bread and wine becoming Christ’s body and blood through the Spirit-empowered words of the Eucharistic Prayer, but by means of these, the word becoming flesh in each one of us, thus making us together, Christ’s true body, the Church. “Indeed,” the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, inspired by the Holy Spirit, writes: “the word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.”2
Mass is the privileged place to proclaim and to hear the scriptures proclaimed. Reading is different from listening. Listening requires a different, deeper kind of attention. In our time, this is difficult. Doing it requires discipline. Because the liturgy is the primer venue for the scriptures, they need to be proclaimed well. Proclaiming the scriptures to the gathered assembly is not just reading out loud in front of people. Neither is it the performance of a dramatic reading. It is a proper ministry, a service to the People of God, a sacred responsibility. One who lectors should be immersed in the scriptures and thoroughly familiar with their meaning if s/he is to proclaim God’s word and not just read it.
In its Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, the Second Vatican Council insisted that “Easy access to Sacred Scripture should be provided for all the Christian faithful.” Because “the word of God should be accessible at all times,” the Council fathers continue, “the Church by her authority and with maternal concern sees to it that suitable and correct translations are made into different languages, especially from the original texts of the sacred books.” GIven that we are currently observing the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, the Council urges Catholics to work with our separated sisters and brothers in publishing translations of the Bible that “all Christians” can use.3
Billy Graham was once asked by someone which translation of the Bible he should get. Graham’s response was “The one you’re going to read.” While there might be some translations to avoid, there are many very good translations suitable for reading, meditating on, and praying with the scriptures. There are fourteen English-language Bibles approved for use by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.4
There are several good translations of the Bible that do not contain the Deutero-Canonical books, which Catholics from the Church’s beginnings have recognized as inspired, thus constituting part of the Old Testament, that are suitable for reading. Keep in mind, there is no disparity among Christians about which books constitute our uniquely Christian scriptures, the New Testament.
Rather than dividing us in the manner indicated by our reading from Saint Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, the scriptures should unite Christians, helping to bring about the unity of all who believe, the unity explicitly willed by Christ himself when he prayed to the Father:
that they may be one, as we are one. I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me5For Catholics, as for all Christians, the scriptures as gathered together by the Church, within the Church, and for the Church, in a book we simply call “the book” (i.e., the Bible) remain the primary rule of faith.
Saint Jerome, the Church Father who translated the books of the Bible from their original languages (i.e., Hebrew and Greek) insisted “ignorance of the scriptures is ignorance of Christ.” “It is common knowledge” Dei Verbum teaches, “that among all the Scriptures, even those of the New Testament, the Gospels have a special preeminence, and rightly so, for they are the principal witness for the life and teaching of the incarnate Word, our savior.”6
I am often asked by people what books they should read. I am not being dismissive when I make the same recommendation made by the late Dallas Willard, a philosopher and Christian teacher: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Since we are in Year A of the Sunday cycle of readings, I recommend reading the Gospel According to Saint Matthew. Read it more than once. Because, along with Mark, Luke, and John, it is an inspired account of the life of the Son God, who for us and “for our salvation came down from heaven,” it is inexhaustible.7
There is also the simple and fruitful practice of lectio divina, a proven method of praying with, from, and through Sacred Scripture. Lectio divina, which means “sacred” or “divine” reading is, without doubt one of the best ways to hear God’s word. It follows a four-step pattern: reading (lectio), meditating (meditatio), praying (oratio), and contemplating (contemplatio). There are many good resources available on lectio divina.
While the practice of lectio divina is required for monks in the Rule of Saint Benedict, written in the sixth century, it is referred to as if everyone knew what it was and how to do it.8 This remains an ancient and time-tested form of Christian prayer. Following Christ commits the disciple to ongoing spiritual formation. Spiritual maturity is the goal of such formation.
Spiritual and emotional maturity, while not the same thing, go hand in glove to the point that you can only be as emotionally mature as you are spiritually mature and vice-versa. Spiritual formation is a lifelong process. Frequent and fruitful engagement with Sacred Scripture is central to realizing spiritual growth. Let's face it, we live in a society and culture that seems intent on keeping everyone in a state of perpetual adolescence. I dare say, most of the disunity the Church experiences is due a lack of spiritual and emotional maturity.
Our reading from Isaiah and our Gospel from Matthew demonstrate something else the Council is eager to teach in Dei Verbum, namely, how “God, the inspirer and author of both Testaments, wisely arranged that the New Testament be hidden in the Old and the Old be made manifest in the New.”9
One of the major objectives of the inspired author of Matthew, not just in this passage, but throughout his narrative, is to show how Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. In fact, our reading from Isaiah overlaps with the first reading for the Christmas Mass at night. Of course, what this is meant to teach us is that Jesus Christ is the “great light” that dispels our gloom.
Just as in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, those who receive the Light of Christ are impelled to bring this Good News to those who dwell in darkness and gloom. In today’s Gospel Jesus calls his first disciples, whom he later makes his apostles. An apostle is one who is sent. This is an important aspect of what we mean when, in the Creed, we confess the Church to be “apostolic.” And so, at the end of each Mass, you and I are sent to “announce the Gospel of the Lord.”10
It is not enough to hear the word of God. Because it is “living and effective,” God’s word provokes a response in the one who has ears and a heart to hear it.11 And so, to cite the Letter to the Hebrews, which, in turns, echoes or resounds Psalm 95, which typically serves as the first Psalm of each day in the Church’s liturgical prayer: “Oh, that today you would hear [God’s] voice: ‘Harden not your hearts.’”12
1 Second Vatican Council. Dogmatic Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy [Sacrosanctum Concilium], sec. 56.↩
2 Hebrews 4:12.↩
3 Second Vatican Council. Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation [Dei Verbum], sec. 22.↩
4 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. “USCCB Approved Translations of the Sacred Scriptures for Private Use and Study by Catholics.”↩
5 John 17:22-23.↩
6 Dei Verbum, sec. 18.↩
7 Roman Missal, The Order of Mass, sec. 18.↩
8 Rule of Saint Benedict. 48.1.↩
9 Dei Verbum, sec. 16.↩
10 Roman Missal, The Order of Mass, sec. 144.↩
11 Hebrews 4:12.↩
12 Hebrews 3:15.↩
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