It is almost sixty years since the Vatican Council launched the Church into renewal. We need to reflect what has taken hold in the life of Church and what has not.
One of the questions that I ask is, ‘why has the Scriptures (the Bible) not gripped the imagination and prayer life of the Church as it was hoped at the Vatican Council?”
We are a people of revelation. The Word of God is the gift of divine life to lead and support the life and ministry of the Church. Somehow it should demand more energy from the Church than it actually does.
The answer to my question is found in the actual prayer life of the people of the Church. For four and a half centuries the prayers of the Sunday worship were completely dominated by the priest and were spoken in a foreign language. The people adapted by their own personal prayer devotions, primarily the rosary. The laity lead a very vibrant prayer life that was parallel to the Sunday Mass.
If you compare this to huge hill, the introduction of the Scriptures as our source of prayer and liturgy had an uphill battle. The mountain of personal prayer and devotion was just too big. No one had to change or adapt to the introduction of the Scriptures into our prayer life. We already had sufficient tools to nourish our spiritual life.
To picture this in a biblical image: Moses was sent to move the mountain, but the mountain wouldn’t move!
What was hoped for was the proclamation of the Word of God at the Sunday Mass and the people of the Church would pray, sing, wrestle with and be nourished by the Good News of the Gospels each Sunday. It was meant to be a nourishing moment for the people of the Church.
Unfortunately, so little of this happened. If you ask the Catholic in the pew, many would say that “I get something out of the gospel reading but the rest just washes over me.”
Learning the story of the Bible, using the words of the Gospel in our daily prayers was not part of the religious upbringing of the majority of Catholics. We must continue to work hard to educated and help all our people become comfortable with using the texts of the Bible in their daily prayer.
The three year cycle of readings has been a gift to all of Christianity. The goal is to have the entire Church work through the entire Bible every three years. In the three year cycle of readings we have read the entire New Testament and the significant parts of the Old Testament.
There is much work to be done. We have only begun to scratch the surface of becoming a Church of the Bible, a people of the Word of God.
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