A Journey through the Mass
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We have completed the Preparatory Rites and the priest has Collected all our prayers and now we sit and listen as the first major part of the mass, The Liturgy of the Word, begins. The Holy Spirit inspired the prophets to reveal the ways of God through the Scripture. The Israelites were like anyone else with their sinners and saints. Through it all, we read how sin leads to disorder and disaster, followed by contrition and then asking for God’s forgiveness and mercy as they remember to Love God with their whole hearts, their whole mind and their whole soul and to love their neighbor as themselves. In the liturgy of the Word God first moves toward the world. Creation is God’s pure expression of Himself. After sin entered the world humans simply forgot how to hear it. Over centuries, the Israelites, chosen by God to receive the divine revelations and prepare for the coming of the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed one – God becoming flesh. The Old Testament is an event; the event of creation and the event of what God is doing and saying in Israel. In the proclamation of these words, the event proclaimed becomes present. Everything is organized around the Exodus, Commandments, wandering in the desert, and coming to the Promised Land. The whole of revelation for Israel is focused in what God manifested himself to be in these events. Every subsequent generation remembered and celebrated them, defined their present dealing with God in reference to them. Jesus, as a Jewish man, would have done the dame. These events, then, become directly part of who he is.
To read scripture at mass is one of the great privileges of our Baptism. We can marvel at the grace that enables one of us to stand up and be used as an instrument through which the holly and life-giving Word of God is announced in the assembly. The more the Reader is conscious of this the more effectively the Word will be proclaimed. In short, holiness of life, and not mere rhetorical technique, makes for effective reading. The passage ends with, “The Word of the Lord”. The assembly, not taking for granted that God should speak in our midst, respond, “Thanks be to God.”
Responsorial Psalm
After the presider priest gathered our prayers, we sit and listen to the Word of the Lord. The First Reading, usually from the Old Testament, ends with the Reader proclaiming, “The Word of the Lord” and heard by all with absolute amazement that God talks to us. In gratitude we respond, “Thanks be to God.” As we sit in adoration and awe in the presence of God who has spoken to us, we have no words of our own, so we turn to the words the Holy Spirit has given us in the Psalms. Psalms embody the prayers of a people who heard God speaking in the creation and in the events of Israelite history. Psalms contain all the emotions one can imagine – joy, wonder, gratitude, repentance, petitions for mercy and protection and help throughout vagaries of life. Moreover, the Psalms allow Christ to emote in prayer to our heavenly Father as he journeyed through life right up to Jesus’ death on the cross. Psalms lead us to a trusting relationship with God. We pray the Psalms with Christ to open our hearts, release our innermost feelings and not fear vulnerability. With trust in God, we do not fear to do whatever He tells us, especially in the Scripture, even if means suffering. Christ suffered, innocently, because he was not about himself but about his people. God’s plan is bigger than any one of us. God’s plan brings all of us to his peace.