There are four ways of choosing a Bible passage in our tradition:
Random reading. Through charismatic renewal this has come to the fore again in our church. I just open the bible randomly and receive whatever word is there as God’s word for me on a particular day, or in a particular situation. This is a perfectly respectable way of reading the Bible and some have had life changing experiences by reading the Bible in this way.
But there is a danger in it and that is we cannot presume that every time we do this that the work will speak to the particular situation we find ourselves in.
Once there was a man who wanted to know God’s will on a particular matter. He took the Bible, opened it at random, and dropped his index finger onto the page, assuming that the verse on which it landed would tell him what to do. But much to his distress his finger fell on Mt 27:5 which reports that Judas went out and hanged himself. The man thought he had better try again. This time his finger came to rest on Lk. 10:37 “Go and do likewise.” When he followed the same method a third time, his finger fell on these words in Jn.13:27, “What you are going to do, do quickly!”
The second way is to read the Bible from cover to cover: Gen. to Rev. Or to take a particular book of the Bible and to read it from beginning to end. That’s fine. You get the sense of the Bible being one book. The difference between old and new testament is not in the Bible. That is an invention of the Church. What is concealed in the old is revealed in the new. The new interprets the old and the old interprets the new. In the Gospels we encounter the fullness and totality of the word made flesh in Jesus of Nazareth, but the story of the word becoming flesh is also there in the old testament be in a partial and limited way. If you like the old testament is the story of Jesus before Jesus of Nazareth and apart from the gospels the story of the new testament is the story of Jesus after Jesus of Nazareth. While it is Jesus of Nazareth who calls the shots he has to be supplemented and filled out by his presence and activity in the old as well as in the early Christian community.
Also, in reading a book from beginning to end you have a sense of God acting within history of a person or a people during a particular period. This is how God always reveals himself: within historical happenings, and then interpreted by people of faith and written down as word of God. So God doesn’t send an abstract message down from heaven. In the Bible God has spoken in and through historical events and in the same way God continues to speak in and through the historical situations we find ourselves in today.
The third way is to read the Bible according to themes. You look for passages that will speak to particular moments or situations in our lives. Sometimes you will find an index in the Bible referring to particular readings depending on the nature of the moment. In our lectionary there are readings offered for particular needs and occasions.
Also, during the seasons of the church’s year the reading are chosen to expound or expand a particular theme and to cultivate a certain spirituality.
And finally there is the lectionary. There are private lectionaries and the official church lectionary. This is a selection and arrangement of readings given to us by the church and set out for us for every day (Weekday lectionary) and every Sunday (Sunday lectionary.) These readings and their arrangement are carefully chosen by the church under the guidance of the holy spirit and seek to provide us with a rounded and whole picture of the work of God in human history and in particular in the life, suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus.
So in the lectionary you get a wonderfully rounded and whole picture of Jesus and the work of God in salvation history.
With the lectionary you journey through many different passages and so you never remain with just one aspect of Jesus. You move around. One week you meet Jesus who is gentle and humble of heart and next week you hear him say “I’ve come to set fire to the earth and how I wish it were blazing already.” So there is no danger of becoming fixated on one metaphor and therefore on one aspect of God.
In lectionary reading we receive the passages rather than choose them for ourselves and in doing so we express our trust in God and we are open to let God surprise us with his word and there is no danger of us controlling God or what he wants to say to us.
Also, in lectionary we are doing our meditation with the church throughout the world. That is the will of the church that the entire church should meditate on one particular text in any given week. In this way we are growing in communion with our brothers and sisters in different parts of the world. We can even ask ourselves how do we think they are reading this passage in Palestine or Latin America or wherever.
It also gives a tremendous sense of dignity to small communities. What we are doing the Pope is doing! And the hierarchy in our country is doing! And the monastic communities are doing! And communities in important cities and towns are doing! And the church’s understanding of the work of God is only complete when every community is doing its meditation. In society a particular community may not be taken too seriously but in the eyes of the church every community is vitally important for an understanding of what God is doing in the world. And the meditation of each community is irreplaceable as the circumstances in each are unique and peculiar to it. We are all playing an irreplaceable part in the formation of the great mosaic of the church’s appreciation of God’s presence and activity in the world.
It also gives us a great sense of stability that even though we may not be doing it, we know that it is being done and we are part of that. And furthermore even if we neglect our meditation for a while we can enter the movement again without much difficulty by just taking up the text for the next Sunday in the lectionary.
The lectionary was prepared with a lot of thought and teaches a certain way of understanding God, Jesus and humanity.
There are two lectionaries in the church: the weekday lectionary and the Sunday lectionary. The other great liturgical book is the sacramentary. This sets out the order and sequence of rituals and prayers. For practical purposes the lectionary and sacramentary are combined in the missal.
We are invited to follow the weekday lectionary too but not with the same depth as the Sunday lectionary.
The liturgical year can be divided into seasons and ordinary time. There are five seasons in all: Advent, Christmas, Lent, Sacred Triduum, and Easter.
In each season you meditate on different stages in the life of Jesus, not as a past event but as a way he which he continues to live among us.
In Advent we meditate on the aspect of Jesus in the womb of Mary. In Christmastime we meditate on the littleness of Jesus. In Lent we meditate on Jesus as a preacher of repentance and renewal. In the Sacred Triduum we meditate on Jesus passing through suffering and death to resurrection. And in the Easter season we meditate on his risen life, ascension and sending of the Holy Spirit. The understanding of the church is that Jesus is going through these stages again today. These represent ways in which we continue to experience jesus present today in ourselves and in the lives of those around us and in the life of the world. Sometimes we experience Jesus hidden in the womb; sometimes in the littleness of our brothers and sisters; sometimes calling us to a change of heart and new life; sometimes suffering and dying and rising again; sometimes rising to new life, ascending and sending us the spirit.
During the seasons the readings are chosen to celebrate the spirituality of the season and do not follow any chronological sequence in particular book of the Bible.
There is a certain integration of the first reading, second reading and the gospel in so far as they are all in keeping with the mood and atmosphere of the season.
In total there are 18 weeks in the Seasons and that leaves 34 weeks in Ordinary Time.
We might be inclined to think of ordinary time as stale time or a time in which nothing much is happening. On the contrary it reminds us that ordinary time in our lives is truly sacred time, shot through with the presence of God and the movement of his grace.
Ordinary Time was restored by the church as a distinctive period of the liturgical year as part of the reforms of the second Vatican council. Ordinary time means the time of the order, reminding us that in the early centuries before the churchs feast and festivals were adopted by the state the church followed it own liturgical order. It is a reminder to us that the church existed and even flourished at a time it was largely ignored by civil society.
These thirty four weeks invite us to meditate on the public life or ministry of Jesus. In all of the synoptics the life of the public ministry of Jesus took place on a journey from Galilee to Jerusalem. Jesus started his ministry in galilee and gradually made his way down to Jerusalem. In galilee the ministry of Jesus achieved a certain popularity and success; then came the turning point in his life when he decided to go to Jesualem to face the leaders of religion and Politics, and much of his public ministry that took place on this journey shows a noticeable concentration on the formation of his disciples; and then we see Jesus ministering in Jerusalem itself leading up to the beginning of his passion. In each of the three years we see Jesus making the journey through the eyes of a different evangelist:. in year one with Matthew; In year two with Mark; and in year three with luke. With each one we stop at thirty four stations along the way and we meditate on some moment on the journey of Jesus. The understanding here is that we are also making such a journey in our own lives from our own galilees to our own jerusalems and we make the journey with Jesus or better still, Jesus makes it again in us. We walk with Jesus and we allow him to walk with us.
During ordinary time the reading of the gospel is referred to as lectio continua but it is not really continuous in the strict sense. There is a semi continuous reading of one of the synoptic gospels. And in ordinary time the first reading is chosen to fill out or add something to the moment of grace as celebrated in the gospel. The gospel is the primary text and afterwards the first reading was chosen to complement it.
But this is not the case in the weekday lectionary in ordinary Time where the Gospel reading and the first reading are not meant to go together. They follow their own chronological sequence of different books of the Bible.