'Cause I Gotta Have Faith - Part IV

Let’s just get right to it:

Article 3:

Current Text:

God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, begotten, not made, one in being with the Father.  Through Him all things were made.

Beginning in Advent 2011:

God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father.  Through Him all things were made.

Ok, let’s remember who we’re talking about here.  The first Article of Faith talked about God the Father.  The second one talked about God the Son, a.k.a. Jesus Christ.  Here in the third Article, we’re continuing to talk about Jesus.  In fact, most of the Nicene Creed (or more properly Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed) deals with Jesus—probably because the writing of the Creed, if you remember, was a direct response to Arianism and the idea that Jesus was not both fully human and fully divine.  So here we’re talking about the relationship between God the Son (Jesus) and God the Father. 

“God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father” was included in the Nicene Creed as a direct blow to the arguments of Arianism.  To explain this, we’ll need a short philosophy lesson, specifically, a metaphysics lesson.  See, Aristotle (Greek philosopher) said that everything in the world has 2 metaphysical properties: substance & accidents.  Substance is WHAT a thing is, while accidents are the properties and qualities that make up the object.  Let’s take a chair, for example...just an ordinary, wooden chair with 4 legs, a seat, and a back.  The substance of the chair is that it’s a chair…quite simply.  The accidents of the chair are that it’s wooden has 4 legs, a seat, and a back.  Its accidents can also include the fact that it’s brown, it’s 4 ½’ tall, it has a padded leather seat, etc.  With people, it gets a little more complicated.  Take me, for example.  My substance is “person.”  My accidents are that I’m 5’11”, I have brown hair, hazel eyes, I’m 28 years old, I enjoy long walks on the beach and candlelit dinners…oh, sorry, this is a philosophy lesson, not a Match.com profile…besides, I’m married.  Anyway, with God, it’s exponentially more complicated.  God’s accidents are pretty much unknown to us.  We can try to describe them as best we can, but because he’s infinite and has no “body” that we can see and describe the characteristics of, I’m content here just saying that God’s accidents are unable to be understood by humanity.  Simple enough.  Now for something we can go into slight detail on: God’s substance.  Quite plainly, God’s substance is “God”, whether you’re talking about God the Father, God the Son, or God the Holy Spirit.  They are of the same substance, meaning they share the same basic form of existence.  If that’s enough for you to help more solidly profess your faith, awesome!  If not, welcome to the world of aspiring theologians who exhaust their mental capabilities daily in hopes of trying to understand what probably CAN’T be understood by our simple, limited human minds.

As for the last part, “Through Him all things were made,”  this is from Chapter 1, Verses 3-4 of the Gospel of John which says, “All things came to be through Him (Jesus), and without Him nothing came to be.  What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race.”  This is another one of those things that we got straight from the bible.

So next post we’ll talk about the 4^th article, and so on, and so on…

'Cause I Gotta Have Faith - Part III

Keepin’ it moving, we’re continuing our explanation of the Nicene Creed, or “Profession of Faith” as we call it during Mass, by diving into the second Article of Faith.  The next time you go to Mass (if you’re a regular Mass-goer, that is), it’ll sound a little something like this:

Article 2:

Current Text:

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father.

Beginning in Advent 2011:

And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages.

This second article talks about the second person of the Trinity—the Son, Jesus Christ.  But what’s all this “begotten” stuff mean?  Seriously, who talks like that anymore?  Well, the words might be old, but they have pretty strong meaning behind them.  Just like the last post, we’ll need to break this up into even smaller pieces to really get the WHOLE effect of what we’re talking about here.

We start this second Article with the words: “one Lord, Jesus Christ.”  But wait—I thought GOD was the Lord!  So you might ask, “How can Jesus be Lord if God is Lord?” and my answer would be, “Yes.”  Confused?  You probably should be at this point.  Here’s where my good buddy the Blessed John Paul II comes in handy.  He wrote an Encyclical (letter from the pope to the bishops of the whole church, or sometimes to a particular part of the world, or even to those of a specific country) in September 1998 called Fides et Ratio, which is Latin (*gasp* Latin??? Really??? In the Catholic Church???...hard to believe, I know…) for “Faith and Reason.”  In this encyclical, this man, who will most likely be remembered as one of the greatest theological minds of Church history, explained that we need both faith AND reason to help us on our journey.  Some would believe that all they need is faith, and that can get them through anything.  However, that’s pretty dangerous, because we’re human.  I mean, look at Jesus, Himself: The night before He died, He KNEW He was going to die, and KNEW that it was necessary for the salvation of the world (we’ll get to that later), but still PLEADED with God to not have to go through with it (read Matthew 26:36-46).  Now if Jesus had trouble accepting some things, how much more will our feeble minds cause us to falter in things that we need to accept on faith?  On the flip side, some think that if they can only understand more ABOUT God that they won’t need to accept things on faith as much.  The problem with this theory is that our intellectual minds will only take us so far.  In the end, there is no undeniable, scientific PROOF that God exists.  We ultimately just need to accept that (as well as other things) on faith and let our reason back it up and solidify our faith, just as our reasoning can help us understand God more fully, but our faith is necessary to complement it. 

So back to the “one Lord, Jesus Christ.”  One because there is one God.  Lord because he is master of all creation. Jesus because that’s what God told Mary to name her son (Luke 1:31). Christ coming from the Greek Christos meaning, “anointed one.”  Throughout the Old Testament, we see different examples of priests, prophets, and kings being anointed with oil as a sign of blessing and commissioning them for their roles and duties.  Christ (just like each Christian that follows Him is at our Baptism) is under the mission of a priest, prophet, AND a king, and is therefore anointed by God to fulfill these roles.

Then we have (going by the Advent 2011 version): “…the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages.”  The Merriam-Webster (online) Dictionary’s 2^nd definition of the word beget points beautifully to this concept within the Trinity by defining it this way:  “to produce especially as an effect or outgrowth.”  It is important to realize that God did not CREATE Jesus.  See, God lives outside of the realm of time.  We ONLY know how to experience things in time.  I mean, even as you read this sentence, time is passing, and the moment you were in at the start of this sentence has already passed, and it’s never coming back, just like the moment in which you’ll read the sentence that starts the next paragraph hasn’t happened yet.  All we know in this life is how to measure and refer to things in timeframes.  God is not bound by time.  I’ve heard it said that God is, was, and always will be.  I find this confusing, and border-line “incorrect.”  It’s much more correct and direct to simply say, “God IS.”  So when we say that Jesus was “born” of God “before all ages,” it’s really just our best explanation in our language and experience that are both HEAVILY reliant on “time” to give meaning to so many aspects of themselves.  Jesus is part of God, and there never was a time/moment/state of existence when that wasn’t the case.  Again, God existing outside of time is just one of those things you just have to take on faith.

So that’s the second Article of Faith in our Creed.  We’ll get though all 12 eventually—there’s just so much to unpack from each line of this thing, I believe (hah, “credo” means I believe…see what I did there?  Ok, that’s probably not even funny enough for PRIESTS to laugh at…so back to me concluding this post) we need to take just one or two articles at a time to fully take it all in.  So we’ll see you next time with the 3^rd Article.

'Cause I Gotta Have Faith - Part II

The Nicene Creed as it exists today (as we saw in our last post) is a culmination of efforts between the Council of Nicea and the Council of Constantinople.  From these councils, we have the summary of our Catholic Faith that we profess every Sunday (and certain other days).  The Creed, much like other parts of our Mass, when translated from Latin to English lost some direct, literal meanings from the original Latin concepts.  Beginning in Advent 2011, however, the (English-speaking) Church will be using a re-translated, and more “correct” version of this Creed.  Keep in mind, though, I put “correct” in quotation marks, because we weren’t saying anything wrong before, we just weren’t saying it as fully as it could have been expressed, because of our limited English language barriers.  It will still remain our brief and very pointed summary of the Catholic belief basis.  But as concise as this creed is, it can still be pretty overwhelming to try to attack all at once.  Because of this, scholars have broken it up into “bite-sized” pieces that we can better understand individually which are known as the 12 Articles of Faith.  Again, it’s not separate from the Creed—it IS the Creed, just broken up into 12 simpler thoughts that make up the fundamental framework of our Faith.  Today we’ll just start “simple” with the first article (I use quotation marks, because there’s nothing “simple” about the first article—or ANY articles, for that matter) and take the other 11 in our next few posts.

Article 1:

Current Text:

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of Heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen.

Beginning in Advent 2011:

I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.

Right off the bat, we established ourselves as being opposed to the polytheist pagans that were a large population before the writing of the Nicene Creed.  Polytheists are people who devote themselves to a whole group of gods (with a little “g”) as opposed to one, all-powerful God, like we worship.  See, polytheism is a compound word with the prefix poly- meaning “many” (like a polygon is a shape that has “many sides”) and theism referring to “belief in god,” from the Greek qeos (theos), meaning “God.”  As Christians, we’re what are called monotheists meaning we believe in ONE God—mono- meaning “one,” like monosyllabic, meaning “one syllable,” or monosodium glutamate, meaning “one sodium glutamate” (ok, that one was for me…).  So anyway, it’s vitally important that in our summary of beliefs we first and foremost establish ourselves as believing in ONE God rather than many gods.  This is huge, because it means that for us, everything we have and everything we need comes from ONE source, and we point to ONE entity to find our being and our purpose.  …pretty deep stuff, this monotheism.

The next part we mention is “the Father almighty.” Here’s where we dive into the Trinity.  Now, the Trinity is worthy of its own post (or series of posts) so here, we’ll just mention it briefly just to give us a simple understanding that will allow us to get through the rest of this article.  The Trinity, that is to say, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit is not three gods, or even three partial gods that make up one God, but are altogether always considered ONE GOD.  It’s really tough to wrap our minds around this concept because we’re human, and we can only easily understand things that relate to our experiences.  I don’t know about you, but I never encountered anything that was three complete things that were all the same all making one greater thing without making that one thing bigger.  But since God is actually infinite (no beginning, no end, no physical limitations of a body or any space to occupy—or not occupy), He can’t get “bigger.” You see how complicated this Trinity concept can get…which is probably why most priests cringe around Trinity Sunday.  How do you POSSIBLY explain the Trinity to your church in a 10-minute homily???  Not an easy task, and I do NOT envy priests and deacons who give Trinity Sunday homilies. 

Anyway, God the Father is the person/aspect of the Trinity associated with creation and providing existence (along with the Son & Holy Spirit) to the world.  So that’s where we get the rest of the first article: “maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.”  Now, it’s easy enough to think of God as being able to create the planets and the oceans and mountains, and even people and animals, but not as easy to think about the stuff we CAN’T see.  Take a deep breath…go ahead…in……..hold it…..now out……good!  That stuff that you just breathed in?  Did you see it?  Nope!  It’s air, and it’s invisible. That one is still a little easy to understand, because air has physical properties.  In fact, next time you open your freezer, poke your head inside and breathe out.  You’ll probably be able to see the air as it turns “foggy” with the temperature change.  So even though air is invisible, it still has physical properties that make it easier to lump into the category of “things” that God created when he created the universe.

What’s a little harder to understand are the invisible things that DON’T have physical properties.  What happens when we die?  Well, as a Catholic (which we’ll see later in the Creed), we believe that we have souls that (hopefully) ascend to a state of what we refer to as heaven, which is where we will share in God’s awesomeness forever.  But have you ever seen someone’s soul?  Chances are, no.  If you have, I’d suggest either running straight to the Vatican to have them investigate this miracle, or running straight to a psychologist to have them investigate your grip on reality.  There are things in what we refer to as the “Spiritual realm” that we cannot see, and that do not have physical properties in the way that our bodies do.  These things include God, our souls, and the angels—both good and evil.  These things, too, we believe God created (except for Himself—he didn’t CREATE Himself, He just always was…more on that when we discuss the Trinity in greater detail).

So there’s the first Article of Faith.  It’s a biggie, and I probably didn’t do it even a laughable excuse for justice here, but hopefully it gives you SOMETHING to think about.  As I said above, our next few posts will take care of the rest of the Articles so we can all have a better understanding of what we fundamentally believe as Catholics.

Cause I Gotta Have Faith

After the Homily, we continue the Mass with the Profession of Faith.  Now, sit back and get comfy, because this is going to be a multi-post topic, here.  See, the Profession of Faith that we say today (which is about to be re-translated for Advent 2011) is a summary of what the Christian Faith teaches, but it’s not something that the Bible spells out plainly for us.  However, over time, Christians recognized the need to have a concise, easily remembered way of explaining to non-Christians what we believe.  But to see why it came about when it did, we need to have a little History class…..

See, in the early days of the Church (remember, before the Protestant Reformation began in the early 1500s, there’s no need to specify “Catholic” Church, because there was only ONE Christian Church: the Catholic Church), all the followers of Christ (Christians) had to go on when it came to questions of faith and beliefs about God, were the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament) and the teachings of Jesus that had been passed down by word-of-mouth, until the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, then the New Testament Letters, then the Book of Revelation were written down and began to be distributed.  After that, you just really hoped that the priest who was the leader of the church you attended really knew what he was talking about when it came to teaching the beliefs of the Christian Faith.  After a while, though, it was only a matter of time before individual priests started to develop new theories—some good and productive, some…not so much—about what the Church should believe.

One of these priests that fell into the “not so much” category was a guy named Arius.  Arius was a priest from Alexandria, Egypt who lived from about the year 250 to the year 336.  He had an issue with the belief that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine.  He also proposed that Jesus, referred to in the Bible as the “Son of God,” was MADE the Son of God, and didn’t always exist in that way.  This is contrary to what the Church believed at the time, and still believes today.  See, we believe that Jesus is like the ULTIMATE version of the 2-in-1 classification.  Let’s take shampoo, for example.  2-in-1 shampoos are pretty misleading, because it’s really 2 HALVES-in-1, in the fact that half of the mixture is meant to act as a shampoo, gently cleansing the hair, and the other half is meant to act as a conditioner, leaving the hair moisturized, shiny, and silky smooth.  With Jesus, on the other hand, it’s like if it would be physically possible to have a WHOLE, say 14 oz. bottle of shampoo and a WHOLE 14 oz. bottle of conditioner fit inside a single 14 oz. bottle.  Not physically possible with shampoo…but then again, we’ve stretched this shampoo analogy out way too long already, anyway.  Since Jesus is fully divine, however, it IS possible that he can be FULLY human and FULLY divine.  We refer to this concept as the “two natures of Christ.”

Well, as it turns out, Arius was able to convince a ton of people that HE was right and that the rest of Christianity was wrong.  This was called Arianism. As you can imagine, saying that Jesus wasn’t fully divine struck a nerve with quite a few Christians at the time, and fights and arguments broke out all over the place.  So now we look to Emperor Constantine, who was emperor of the Roman Empire at the time.  All this fighting made him unhappy, so he broke “protocol” and invited a number of bishops of the area, himself, to come to Nicea, Italy, for an Ecumenical Council.  Ecumenical Councils are meetings of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church (bishops, cardinals, highly educated priests, etc.) for the purpose of carrying out their judicial and doctrinal functions, by means of deliberation in common resulting in regulations and decrees invested with the authority of the whole assembly.  Or, in plain English, Ecumenical Councils are meetings of God’s chosen leaders of His Catholic Church which are meant to clarify or more deeply understand some aspect of the Catholic Faith.  They are typically called by the Pope, but in the year 325, Emperor Constantine called the council.  Basically, Emperor Constantine was tired of the fighting in his empire and told Pope Sylvester I and the bishops of the area, “Fix it.” 

Now, it’s important to note here that Ecumenical Councils are not random priests sitting around making up new rules and regulations for the Church to adhere to just because they feel like it.  Ecumenical Councils are meetings of the brightest theological minds of the time who come together to pray, study the scriptures, and openly discuss and discern what God is saying to all of humanity on a particular issue, or series of issues. The Council of Nicea was meant to restore religious peace to the Roman Empire through the composition of a summary of the Christian Faith, and also dealt with other issues, such as when to celebrate Easter every year.  In the case of the summary of Christian Faith, the Council ultimately came up with this (translated literally from the Latin it was originally recorded in):

We believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten of the Father, that is, of the substance of the Father, God of God, light of light, true God of true God, begotten not made, of the same substance with the Father, through whom all things were made both in heaven and on earth; who for us men and our salvation descended, was incarnate, and was made man, suffered and rose again the third day, ascended into heaven and cometh to judge the living and the dead. And in the Holy Ghost. Those who say: There was a time when He was not, and He was not before He was begotten; and that He was made out of nothing; or who maintain that He is of another hypostasis or another substance [than the Father], or that the Son of God is created, or mutable, or subject to change, [them] the Catholic Church anathematizes.

(Anathematize, for the record, comes straight from Greek, and literally means, “to set aside/suspend,” but for matters of the Church, it’s meant more directly as, “to exclude a sinner from the society of the faithful.”  Let’s just say, it’s not exactly desirable to be declared “anathema.”)

So this original creed (from the Latin credo, meaning “I believe”) which we now refer to as the Nicene Creed (because it came from the Council of Nicea) obviously didn’t exactly have “elevator speech” written all over it, so it was later revised at the Council of Constantinople in 381.  So I guess we should really call it the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, but you can probably understand why we just favor the brevity of “Nicene Creed.”  Anyway, it’s this revised version we say today in Mass, and which we’ll dive further into in our next few posts.

Until then, Keep the Faith, man...

Can You Practice What You Preach? And Would You Turn the Other Cheek?

After the Biblical Readings, the priest celebrant will then give a reflection on the readings, called a homily.  The word homily comes from the Greek homilos (homilos), meaning “crowd/assembly.”   The homily is an integral part of the liturgy, and is strongly recommended.  It is required by the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM) on Sundays and holy days of obligation (we’ll list those and their importance in a later post), and should not be omitted from these Masses without serious reason (being tired or lazy isn’t a serious reason, by the way).  If you attend a weekday Mass, which is generally shorter, due to many factors including lack of music (typically) and not as many attendees (which makes for a shorter communion period), the celebrant may choose to not do a homily simply for the sake of time.  However, the Church recommends SOME sort of reflection to be made on the scripture readings of the day and how they can apply to our daily lives.

While the homily is ordinarily done by the priest celebrant, he may permit another concelebrating priest to give the homily, or may even permit a deacon to give it.  The homily should, however, never—NEVER—under any circumstances be given by a lay person.  To clarify, a lay person is, by definition, anyone who is not a deacon, priest, or bishop.  Monks, nuns, and other individuals belonging to religious orders who are not ordained deacons, priests, or bishops are as much lay people as the average Catholic just going about their business as part of the universal church, and therefore, even monks & nuns should NEVER be allowed to give a homily.  Deacons and priests undergo very thorough and rigorous education in philosophy, theology, scriptural history, and even a discipline called homiletics (the art of preaching), which all work in concert to better prepare them to give a theologically sound, emotionally charged, and spiritually challenging homily.  A lay person who has had a deep religious experience that brought them to a profound conversion may have a very inspirational story to tell that many people might benefit from; but, if the priest celebrant wishes to allow them to share this witness, there are other much more suitable occasions to allow this, such as after the final blessing of Mass, or at some sort of “Parish Mission” where a central theme (usually tied to the liturgical season) is focused on, usually for a 2- or 3-night series…but again, NEVER during the homily.

If the Mass being celebrated is for a certain occasion with a certain congregation, such as a Children’s Mass, local customs may instill the desire to perform a small play or other artistic performance that further reflect the message of the daily scriptures.  HOWEVER, these things should NOT take the place of the homily, but rather be a supplement to it.  And, as always, whenever a priest celebrant wishes to allow for something that is not prescribed by the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, in order to ensure that what is proposed is not against the spirit of being part of the universal Catholic Church, a priest should ALWAYS approve these sorts of things with his bishop BEFORE allowing them to find their way into the Mass.

Now, let’s take a minute to talk about our role during the homily.  One of the reasons we attend Mass is to be spiritually fed.  There is no easier way to do this than to be attentive during the homily.  The Bible was written a very long time ago using language that was used a very long time ago, and when we try to apply our very limited English language to the overall message behind the Bible, we lose a considerable amount of really amazing guidance.  The homily is “supposed” to provide this guidance to us so we can relate it to our daily lives today.  Now, most Catholics know a priest or two who gives REALLY amazing, life-altering homilies consistently, while other priests….ehhh, not so much.  Like St. Paul says, however, in Chapter 12 of his first letter to the church of Corinth, we all have certain roles to play and all certain gifts from God that we are called to use to fulfill those roles.  Some priests are VERY gifted speakers, while others may be more gifted in understanding the finer points of sacramental theology, and still others may be more gifted in providing pastoral counseling and advice.  So just because a priest doesn’t make you want to jump up and shout, “AMEN!” doesn’t mean he’s a bad priest.  It just means being a memorable preacher might not be one of his particular gift.  Our role is to see past what may be “lacking” from the presentation and focus on the message being delivered. Remember that priests have been chosen by God to fulfill this ministry, and we should trust in God’s guidance that the message His priest is giving is one we need to hear.  So let’s remember to cut our priests some slack if they don’t give award-winning speeches at ever Mass, and just appreciate the genuine love that comes from their ministry.

After hearing the Word of God and learning how to apply it to our daily lives, it’s time to let that message work on our hearts and profess the Faith that makes us Catholic Christians.  The Profession of Faith comes next, and we’ll talk about that in our next post.

He’d Tell You the Gospel According to Luke

(…yes, I am old enough to remember Skip Ewing)

After the First Reading, the Responsorial Psalm, and the Second Reading, the Liturgy of the Word reaches its climax in the Gospel reading.  The Gospels are the 4 (accepted) accounts of the life and teachings of Jesus.  In Mass, the selected reading from one of the Gospels is proclaimed by a deacon.  If there is no deacon, it is read by a priest other than the principal celebrant.  If there is only one priest at the Mass, it’s his duty.

The Gospel reading is preceded by the Gospel Acclamation.  During most of the year, this acclamation is an antiphon consisting (mainly) of the word Alleluia.  Alleluia is a super old word that appears in plenty of places throughout the Bible.  It can generally be translated as meaning “All Hail to Him Who Is” with “All Hail” being equivalent to “Glory to God in the Highest,” and “Who Is” being reminiscent of when Moses asked God who he should tell the Israelites sent him, and God said to tell them “I AM” sent him to them.  There’s a pretty fundamentally metaphysical and ontological truth behind that whole “I AM” bit that we don’t have time to get into here, but it’ll all come in time.  Anyway, the only time we DON’T say Alleluia is during the season of Lent, because Alleluia is a joyful term, and Lent is a time of penance, and so we use some other Gospel Acclamation such as “Glory & Praise to You, Lord Jesus Christ,” which is still signifying the importance of the Gospel, but it is done with a more solemn tone.  Plus, having this span of time away from being able to say Alleluia makes it that much more awesome when we get to sing it (and sing it up BIG) at the Easter Vigil. (I’m getting chills just thinking about that Easter Vigil…awesome stuff, there.)

The Gospel is the high point of the Liturgy of the Word, and there’s plenty going on to make us realize this fact.  First, we see the incense making an appearance for the 2^nd time in Mass.  Prior to (or sometimes during the beginning of) the Gospel Acclamation (Alleluia), the thurifer (altar server who is in charge of the thurible) brings the thurible over to the celebrant, who puts a couple scoops of incense over the charcoal in order to turn the smoke factor back up to 11 (sorry if you don’t get that movie reference).  Then everyone stands, which, if you remember, is a more respectful posture than sitting, and the deacon turns to the celebrant and receives a blessing from him that helps prepare his heart for proclaiming the Gospel.  The blessing goes like this:

May the Lord be in your heart and on your lips that you may proclaim his Gospel worthily and well, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit

Then the deacon, accompanied by the thurifer and two acolytes (altar servers in charge of the candles) goes over to the place where the Book of the Gospels was placed during the Entrance of the Mass.  The Book of the Gospels is generally kept either on the altar, or on a separate stand—as long as it’s put in a place of respect.

Now, as a little aside, I’d like to share something I’ve been contemplating for a few years now.  This is not Church teaching…just my observances.  We know that the Gospel is the high point of the Liturgy of the Word, right? (Just trust me on this.) Ok, so if that’s true, then we should take advantage of the little ways we can make it even more “epic.”  There’s nothing wrong with paying extra attention to the tiniest of details so we can try to make the Mass as awesome as possible, as long as it’s not theologically incorrect to do so, right?  That being said, many of the versions of the Book of the Gospels I’ve seen come with a little clear acrylic stand so you can stand them up on display on a flat surface (like the altar).  Many churches (possibly even a majority) use these little stands and put the Book of the Gospels on them until the Gospel Acclamation, and then put them on another stand after the Gospel has been proclaimed.  Here’s where it gets into the detail.  If the Book of the Gospels has been on display for the whole congregation to see all through the Introductory Rites and the first half of the Liturgy of the Word, isn’t it sort of anti-climactic when the deacon raises the book up high during the Gospel Acclamation for the congregation to see?  I mean, it’s been staring them in the face for the past 10-15 minutes of Mass.  It’s not like they’re seeing it for the first time, are they?  My suggestion is:  ditch the junky little plastic stand.  It has no theological significance, and is (again, in MY opinion, and not necessarily the opinion of the whole Church) a waste of a perfectly good opportunity to add some fundamental awesomeness to the Gospel.  Ok, let me just step down off my soapbox for a minute and get back to the facts…

If there is no deacon at the Mass, the priest becomes the default proclaimer of the Gospel.  In this case, when the priest goes to retrieve the Book of the Gospels from the altar or other place, he will say a silent prayer, since he did not receive a blessing like the deacon did.  That prayer, beginning in Advent 2011, will be:

Cleanse my heart and my lips, almighty God, that I may worthily proclaim your holy Gospel.

So the deacon (or priest if there is no deacon) and his “Gospel entourage” take the Book of the Gospels over to the ambo where the Gospel will be proclaimed from and wait for the Gospel Acclamation to finish, if it hasn’t done so already. 

Next, the deacon will say to the congregation, “The Lord be with You.”  The people currently respond, “And also with you;” however, this Advent, this will be changing much like the greeting at the beginning of Mass, and the people will respond, “And with your spirit.”  Then the deacon says, “A reading from the Holy Gospel according to ________,” to which the people respond, “Glory to You, Lord.”  A couple points to make here: (1) obviously, the deacon doesn’t say “…according to blank,” but says which Gospel the reading comes from (Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John), (2) when the people respond, “Glory to You, Lord,” they use their thumbs of their right hands to trace small crosses on their foreheads, lips, and then their hearts.  This is to remind the congregation that the Word of God should always be on our minds, on our lips (meaning that we should preach the Gospel—using words if necessary…oh SNAP!  Thanks, St. Francis!  That’s a classic!), and on our hearts.  After this little silent prayer, the deacon takes the thurible from the thurifer, incenses the Book of the Gospels, and hands the thurible back to the thurifer.  He then reads the Gospel passage and concludes it by saying, “The Gospel of the Lord,” to which the congregation replies, “Praise to You, Lord Jesus Christ.”

At this point, one of several things can happen.  Depending on the diocese you’re in, you may repeat the Gospel Acclamation—or at least a portion of it—while the deacon brings the Book of the Gospels to a place of respect.  It is not taken back to the altar, because the altar will be used for a different purpose later, and the two ideas should be held in their own individual regards.  Some dioceses (and even some parishes, individually, for different reasons) will not repeat the Gospel Acclamation, but will simply place the book in its respectful spot.  If there is a bishop celebrating the Mass, the deacon will take the Book of the Gospels over to the bishop for him to kiss as a sign of respect for the Word of God, then will hold the Book of the Gospels, himself, and use it to bless the people of the congregation by tracing a large cross over them with the Book.  Whichever of these scenarios you encounter, afterward, everyone sits to prepare themselves for the homily…everyone, of course, except for the deacon, priest, or bishop who will be giving the homily, which we’ll be talking about next post.

...And do You Have Faith in God Above, if the Bible Tells You So?

So we’ve had the priest & ministers process to the Sanctuary, then greet the altar and the people.  Then we all made the sign of the cross.  Then after asking for forgiveness for our venial sins and being absolved of them, we thanked God by singing about his Glory.  Then we all said a prayer and sat down to listen to the Word of God.

And now we’re ready to jump right into reading, right?  Well, if the answer was “yes,” I probably wouldn’t have asked that in such a sarcastic tone, would I?  Just like we did before we said the Collect at the end of the Introductory Rites, it’s important for us, before we begin the selected Biblical readings, to take a moment of silence and remind ourselves that we’re in the presence of God and that we need to give Him and His Word our full attention.  I’m not talking about 5 minutes or anything…just 5-10 seconds where people can gather their thoughts and focus on what’s happening.

Proclaiming the readings is a “ministerial” function and not a “presidential” function (referring to the priest who “presides” over the Mass…not the President of the United States), and as such is to be done by an instituted lector (from the Latin legere, meaning “to read”) who has been commissioned to read the Sacred Scriptures at Mass, with the exception of the Gospel, which is to be proclaimed by a deacon.  However, since most church parishes won’t have a formally instituted lector, the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (the general guide for how Mass should be celebrated, abbreviated GIRM) says that in the absence of a lector, other laypersons (people who are not bishops, priests, or deacons) may be commissioned to proclaim the readings.  Let’s be clear, though, that the GIRM points out (taking its cue from the writings of the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy) that the people proclaiming the readings “should be truly suited to perform this function and should receive careful preparation, so that the faithful by listening to the readings from the sacred texts may develop in their hearts a warm and living love for Sacred Scripture.”  In plain English, this means that although some people may WANT to proclaim the readings at Mass, it isn’t necessarily a great idea to just let ANYONE read just because they WANT to.  The readings should be “PROCLAIMED” and not simply rattled off in a monotone voice with no inflection or passion for the true message behind the text.  Besides the emphatic element to reading, the person should, on a very basic level, be able to actually READ the words in the readings.  If someone does not have a firm grasp of the language being spoken at the Mass, the readings can be a very frustrating and distracting time for the congregation who is probably having a hard time following along because of all the little kids crying and dropping their toys and cups on the floor, and saying, “I want some Cheerios!” and, “Dad, I have to go potty!” (Don’t worry, I’m not fussing anyone…these are the things my own kids do at least twice each before we even get to sit down at this point in the Mass.)  If there is absolutely no suitable reader in the entire congregation, a deacon may proclaim the readings, and if there is no deacon, then it goes to a priest other than the principal celebrant.  If there is only one priest, the responsibility ultimately falls to him.

So now that we have someone well-suited to proclaim these readings, they make their way up to the Ambo.  The lector reads the First Reading, which is taken from the Old Testament, but not from the Book of Psalms.  At the end of the reading, the lector will say, “The Word of the Lord,” to which the congregation responds, “Thanks be to God.”

After the First Reading comes the Responsorial Psalm.  The Responsorial Psalm is taken from the Book of Psalms, and is meant to foster meditation on the Word of God.  The Psalm should connect to each reading, and should be taken from the Lectionary.  The Responsorial Psalm consists of a repeated antiphon (the “response” portion) and a few verses that accompany it.  It should be completely sung by a cantor/psalmist (person who leads the congregation/choir in singing) from the ambo, or another suitable place (preferably not from the choir area if the only justification is that it’s just “easier” to do it from there).  If there is no suitable cantor to sing the verses, the people’s response should be led in song by the choir or cantor, with the verses being spoken.  If there is no suitable musician at all, then the entire Responsorial Psalm may be recited.  The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has determined that in dioceses of the United States, it is acceptable to substitute the pre-determined Responsorial Psalm for that day’s Mass with one of two alternatives: (1) the proper or seasonal antiphon and Psalm from the Lectionary, or (2) an antiphon and Psalm from another collection set to music, provided it has been approved by the USCCB.  To be even clearer, the GIRM says, “Songs and hymns may not be used in place of the responsorial Psalm.”  It doesn’t matter how beautiful the new Casting Crowns or MercyMe song is, or how much you think it relates to the readings, THIS is not its place.  The responsorial Psalm is a time for a PSALM (it’s right there in the name).  There are plenty of other opportunities, both Liturgical and non-Liturgical, when other songs and hymns can be used.  Just don’t mess with the Psalms.

After the Responsorial Psalm, comes the Second Reading, which comes from the Acts of the Apostles, the New Testament Letters, or the Revelation to John.  The Second Reading connects to the First Reading, with a central theme that is highlighted in the responsorial Psalm.  The Second Reading is also read by a Lector, and ends with the same formula of the Lector saying, “The Word of the Lord,” and the people responding, “Thanks be to God.”

Tomorrow we’ll talk about the Gospel & the Homily. (sorry, I got nothing witty to say there…unless you count what I just said)