by Kevin Tierney
for Rorate Caeli
When it comes to talking about the Latin Mass, her devotees will find a lot of things to praise. When criticizing the Novus Ordo, they will find fertile ground for criticism. Sometimes they criticize so much, they are presented with a challenge “name one thing that the Novus Ordo does better.” In almost every instance, they will be led to concede that “yes, the reformed lectionary is better, since it includes more Scripture.” I don’t want to concern myself too much with if the new lectionary (or at least the idea behind it) is “better” than what came before. What I would like to do is offer a brief defense of the single year lectionary that the Latin Mass uses on it own terms.
I think the biggest strength behind the one-year lectionary is its simplicity. You know what the readings for a particular Sunday will be, year in and year out. While it can be tough (if not impossible) to memorize every reading every Sunday, you can focus in on a particular Sunday and always know you will have the same readings every year. These can be useful reminders to always return to not just in the liturgical life of the Church, but in the liturgical life of the individual. We are supposed to live the liturgical seasons, and this includes living the Epistle and Gospel. Each Sunday has a lesson, and while they often overlap and tell a narrative, they tend to emphasize points for you, in their own special way. In this previous Sunday for example, the readings focused on the wedding feast where Christ institutes his public ministry. I know that every year of my life, I will be reminded this Sunday that Christ offers the best gifts to us as time goes on, promising us the greatest reward possible at the end. You can do this in the Novus Ordo, yet to a lesser degree due to the multi-year cycles and optional readings in the lectionary.
Another reason for its strength is that the concept draws strongly on the Apostle John. Being “the disciple that Jesus loved” and a member of his inner circle, John got to experience aspects of our Lord’s personality the other disciples did not. Arguably he experienced aspects of our Lord’s personality that even St. Peter did not. When he sat down to begin telling the stories that would make up his Gospel and the epistles, John had unique insight. This is showcased in how different John’s Gospel is from the other three, and the unique personal character of his epistles. Yet another aspect of that uniqueness comes in his frequent admonitions that he is not telling you everything. He concludes his Gospel by making clear Christ said and did many more things than were recorded here, but he was only focusing on that which was necessary for salvation. His epistles are filled with the admonition that he could share more, but such sharing was for better venues, namely a face-to-face communion, not an instructional letter.
The single year lectionary is good because it understands the assignment. There is always more that could be said, and if you spend enough time on it, you might even say it perfectly. Yet at Mass, God’s word is not an end unto itself, it is something meant to focus the mind on something: Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, now made present on the altar. It is not meant to be a bible study, much less a university lecture that gives a systematic covering of a topic. Including more Scripture in your life is always wise and beneficial. While this can be hard for the modern mind to accept, more Scripture exposition at Mass may not always serve the end of Mass, the making present of the sacrifice, in time and space, of Jesus Christ’s death on the cross some 2000 years ago.
Finally, when considering the Lectionary, I would like to make a case that, sometimes, less is more. The Church faces a difficulty today in having the world listen to her message. While the world struggles to listen to the Church’s message on a good day, perhaps we can be self-critical in admitting a reason they fail to listen is because we won’t stop talking. We put out papal documents hundreds of pages long. Our Catechism is a tome that rivals most tomes that sit in libraries gathering dust. Her priests give homilies over twenty minutes that are clinics in excess and self-absorption. Her thinkers and writers have long ago abandoned any idea of brevity, viewing brevity the enemy of knowledge, opposing the wisdom of Solomon and his proverbs. She has forgotten a lesson that all in authority occasionally forget, that the sign of proper authority and eloquence is you do not need to constantly explain yourself. The one year lectionary is simple, and its simplicity is its strength.