How Much Of The New Testament Gets Covered In Mass?

[southern california guy]

I was wondering if the Catholic church have a system so that all of the New Testament eventually gets covered in Mass. Are there parts that never get covered? How does it work?

[cappie]

Here is An Overview of the Readings from the NT Acts and Epistles used on Sundays and Major Feast Days : [url="http://catholic-resources.org/Lectionary/Overview-Epistles.htm"]http://catholic-resources.org/Lectionary/Overview-Epistles.htm[/url]

There is more information here" [url="http://catholic-resources.org/Lectionary/"]http://catholic-resources.org/Lectionary/[/url]

[cappie]

The purpose of the Lectionary’s revisions from the Second Vatican Council, in their own words, was so that “[t]he treasures of the bible are to be opened up more lavishly, so that richer fare may be provided for the faithful at the table of God’s word. In this way a more representative portion of the holy scriptures will be read to the people in the course of the prescribed number of years” (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, #51).

On Sundays of “Ordinary Time,” our Lectionary comes in 3 different volumes, called A, B & C. The Gospel selections are, as much as possible, a “continuous” reading of Matthew (for Cycle A), Mark (for Cycle B), and Luke (for Cycle C). Just FYI, we are in Cycle B this year, the Year of Mark.

These 3 “Synoptic” Gospels are divided up to cover the 34 Sundays of the “Ordinary Time” Church year. Since Mark is much shorter than Matthew or Luke, we will get 5 Sundays’ worth of John 6 (the Bread of Life discourse) a little later on in the summer, to make up the difference.

Once a Gospel selection has been made, the people who assembled the Lectionary went into the Old Testament to try to find a reading that would parallel a primary theological point or detail of storyline. So the 1st Reading and the Gospel are deliberately chosen to work together.

Beyond that, the Responsorial Psalm is chosen to reflect the 1st Reading in some specific way. So we can see that all of these should have some way of being related or connected.

This leaves the 2nd Reading, which typically has nothing to do with any of this! It is taken from the writings of the New Testament (usually the letters of St. Paul), and selections are made in what is called “lectio semi-continua” form: we will stay with a given book for weeks, and our excerpts will be more or less in order, but there will be significant gaps.

All of this is pretty well still kept intact during what are called the “privileged seasons” of the Church calendar: Advent/Christmas and Lent/Easter. The difference here is that many of the Gospel readings now will come from John, especially in Lent when RCIA is in its intense final phases). The 2nd Reading will be carefully chosen to fit in with the theology of the other readings (this is, again, especially true in the last weeks of Lent).

In Easter the 2nd Reading is typically from the Acts of the Apostles.

I mentioned that typically, in “ordinary time,” there is no specific or intentional connection between the 2nd Reading and the rest of the Scriptural excerpts for a given Sunday. This is the more true in the daily Mass readings. The structure is to have 2 sets of “semi-continua” readings running more or less parallel to each other: one for the 1st Reading, and the other for the Gospel.

The daily Mass of “ordinary time” is laid out according to the reading of the gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke, in that order. We don’t read every single word of these, but in the “semi-continua” mode we read most of it (excluding the narrative of the passion and resurrection). This takes us through the 34 weeks of “ordinary time.”

But just as for Sundays we have Cycles A, B & C, so in Monday through Saturday we have Year I and Year II. The daily Mass of “ordinary time” is laid out according to the reading of the gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke, in that order. We don’t read every single word of these, but in the “semi-continua” mode we read most of it (excluding the narrative of the passion and resurrection). This takes us through the 34 weeks of “ordinary time.”

But just as for Sundays we have Cycles A, B & C, so in Monday through Saturday we have Year I and Year II. The exact same Gospel readings are done in these years. The rule is that Year I is for odd numbered years, and Year II is for even.

So what’s the difference, you may ask?

The answer is, the 1st Reading and Psalm. Week 1 of Year II began with I Samuel and read through II Samuel & the beginning of I Kings. It skipped over, then, to the Epistles of James, I Peter, Jude, II Peter, II Timothy, and then returned to the rest of I Kings, II Kings, & Lamentations, and that has brought us now to Amos. This is a journey that seems to have no rhyme nor reason except to try to be “semi-continua” and to give a bit of variation (Old Testament, then New Testament, then back to Old Testament...). Psalms are still picked to reflect a theme of the 1st Reading.

Year I begins differently. While still “yoked” to the same Gospel sequence, now the 1st Reading is from Hebrews. It is followed by Genesis 1-11, then Sirach, and Tobit. We move then to II Corinthians, and then return to Genesis 12 to begin the story of Abram and Sarai. As you can see, the benefit of this overall system is indeed to expose folks (especially daily Mass folks) to the widest possible selection from the Bible, with the chance to hear an exposition of the readings from the priest or deacon in the homily.

This sense of being random is not found in the readings for the saints’ days. In these cases readings (just like those, daily or Sunday, for the “privileged seasons” of Advent/Christmas and Lent/Easter) are picked to “hang together” coherently in celebration of the saint or some special aspect of his/her life or ministry.

So thanks to the vision of the Council Fathers of Vatican II in the 1960s, we have a Lectionary that, Sunday and daily, is the richest we have ever known. Enjoy the feast: come to daily Mass (occasionally, at least) as well as Sunday Mass, and be nourished by the Bread of Life and the Word of the Lord.