Dear Sisters, dear brethren, Over the last two months I have had the unusual opportunity to assist in the celebration of Holy Mass in two rites which I have never experienced before: the Syro-Malabar rite and the Syro-Malenkara rite; both of which are used in Kerala and are derived, as the first part of both their names suggests, from Syria, which is home to some of the most ancient Christian communities in the world, dating back to the time of the Apostles. Needless to say, these rites were very different in detail from the Roman rite which we celebrate. It is not simply that both are celebrated in other ancient languages, for in fact both these Masses were largely celebrated in English translation, because they were both ordination Masses for two students at Oscott who were ordained deacons.
As I say, the differences lie not in the language of celebration; after all, the Roman rite itself is now celebrated in hundreds of different languages, including its own ancient language of Latin, still the official language of the Roman rite. No, the differences are of many other kinds, such as the actual prayer of consecration of the bread and wine, and those prayers preparatory to that and others connected with the reception of Holy Communion.
However, one striking point of similarity to our own rite of Mass which I found in those rites from Kerala, and also in other ancient Christian rites I have experienced such as the Byzantine rite as used for instance by the Greeks, Russians and Ukrainians, is this: Throughout Christendom, whatever differences there may in the actual details of the prayers and rites of the Eucharistic sacrifice, all without exception begin with the ritual reading of Scripture before anything else is done. Think of what we do at every Mass whether on a Sunday, a feast day or a weekday: as soon as the celebrant has completed the preparatory rites including our communal act of penance, we sit down altogether to hear the Word of God in the Scriptures read out to us.
This is what happens in every Christian liturgy in the same general way. All rites of the Mass begin with a series of readings from the sacred scriptures, interspersed with chants sung by the cantor and congregation, such as our familiar Responsorial psalm and Alleluia, and culminating always in a reading from one of the four Gospels, always taking the last and most important place as recording for us the words and deeds of Christ on earth. Note that in our Roman rite, as in every rite, these readings are always taken from Scripture, the collection which is brought together in a single volume which we call the Bible, a word which actually means quite simply ‘books’.
But these books are not any merely human compositions. They are not just historical documents, or poetic imaginations, or instructions for our rule of life, or telling us what we must believe about God and our salvation. For there are many such books, some of them written by very great saints indeed, but none of these provides us with readings for the Mass. Only the scriptures are read out at Mass. Why so? Because only the Scriptures are the inspired word of God. By ‘inspired word of God’ we do not mean that God dictated the words to somebody who merely held the pen. No. The last words of divine revelation were committed to writing by the Apostles of Jesus in the New Testament.
How does God interact with the writers of the Scriptures, then? In the Sacred Scriptures God spoke through human agents but in a way which used their style, their minds, their thought processes, their history and their culture, as a means to convey His own divine meaning to us. Although inspired by the same Spirit, all the writers of the books of Scripture write in their own way. Isaiah does not write or think like Ezekiel, yet God the Spirit spoke through both of them; St Paul does not write like St John, yet the same Holy Spirit guided them in what they wrote. We say in the Creed, when proclaiming our faith in God the Holy Spirit, that ‘He has spoken through the prophets.’ Well the writings of those prophets from the Old Testament times are all recorded for us in the Scriptures, and they are among those which we read out on Sundays and weekdays at Mass.
This morning we heard in the first reading an extract from one of the greatest of the ancient prophets, Isaiah, in which the prophet foretells the preaching of the Good News in the distant future which we will hear fulfilled in the Gospel. Then we responded to that by singing psalm 26, ‘The Lord is my light and my salvation’. You see how we answer God’s word in Isaiah with God’s word in the psalms. God Himself provides us with the words in which we praise, adore, thank and beg Him for mercy and help. After the psalm we heard a very different reading, from one of St Paul’s letters to the Christians of Corinth, in which Paul resolves some important questions about the Christian life and faith. Today we heard him explain that even when His followers may become divided into separate factions, Christ Himself cannot be divided up into separate parts. He is always One. So we must strive to be as well.
Then, having been seated throughout these readings and the psalm between them, we stand up as a preparation for the most important reading of all, we stand as a sign of respect: the Gospel is not read by a lay person, but only by a deacon or a priest, one who is ordained by a bishop to do this. Moreover, on solemn days like Sundays the Gospel book is carried in procession during the singing of the Alleluia from the Altar to the Lectern.
After the feast of the Baptism, the Gospel reading each Sunday for the next few weeks before Lent tells us of some event in the early public ministry of our Lord. Today we heard about the call of the first Apostles to follow Christ and His earliest preaching and healing miracles in Galilee. You can hear a similar kind of sequence of readings – always ending with the Gospel – in all the ancient rites of Christendom. And they all precede their own particular versions of the great Eucharistic Prayer in which the bread and wine are consecrated into our Lord’s Body and Blood.
Because the readings are from the ‘word of God’ which is what we mean by the Scriptures, they are given a special ritual; above all they are proclaimed from the ‘ambo’ or lectern. In many churches the ambo is a fixed stone reading desk at which the lector stands to read the sacred text in full view of the congregation. Here in Carmel we do not have a fixed ambo because it would be impossible to place one anywhere in the sanctuary that did not interfere with the view of the altar; instead there is a moveable lectern. However, the lectern is not treated simply as a reading desk, but its dignity is shown by the veil that adorns it, of the same colour as the Mass vestments. Once the Liturgy of the Eucharist has begun at the altar, nothing else must obscure the altar itself which is thereafter the centre of attention.
Nonetheless, the Book of the Gospels remains on the lectern when the lectern is put to the side of the sanctuary. Note how the Gospel book remains visible hereafter, in an honourable place, visible both to the sisters and to the laity. At the end of the Liturgy of the Word, the lectern is placed against the wall next to the Tabernacle in which the living Word of God made flesh for us is dwelling. The Gospel book stands next to the Tabernacle and beneath the sanctuary lamp, to suggest the reverence we should show to God’s word after it has been read out to us, because God’s holy word abides. It does not die away. It remains present in our midst. We venerate it when we hear it at Mass, and we continue to venerate it after Mass as it remains on the lectern for us to see it standing open here, radiating God’s word and being illuminated by the presence of Christ Himself in the Blessed Sacrament.
On this Sunday of the Word of God, I invite you, dear Sisters, to see the lectern thus placed by the tabernacle as a kind of exposition; the exposition of the word of God open towards you as you pray both during Mass and during the Divine Office which follows, your hearts illuminated both by the Body of Christ and by the word of God. That word prepares us to receive Him in Holy Communion. May that word stay in our hearts as we leave this holy place, and may we bring it to all whom we encounter until we come together here again to hear it and to celebrate the Eucharist once more.
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