The Scripture Text is Sacred
For the past few hundred years the church has made a distinction between the text and the message. And the general impression given was that the message was more important than the text. Once you had extracted the message the text had fulfilled its purpose and could be set aside.
The Bible was treated as a container of messages – doctrinal, moral and spiritual – and the message was taken out and held up as the word of God. It was the message that mattered.
But the message alone is an impoverished experience of scripture. The book of the sacred scriptures is holy because it is a gift of God to us his children. It is God’s work: conceived by God, inspired by God, and sealed by God. Someone once described the Bible as the love letters of God in the handwriting of people. But it is not a question of God merely dictating and the scribe writing it down. Rather it is the story of God at work in human history as perceived and interpreted and formulated by people of faith under the influence of the Spirit of God. These words pulsate with the presence of God. And it has been accepted by the church as what God wants us to hear as necessary for our salvation or put more simply so that we might have life in Him. “These are recorded so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that believing this you may have life through his name.” Jn.20:31.
I find it helpful to compare the Bible passages to the letters of a lover or a friend. Such a love letter is not only read for a message the letter in itself is cherished; the paper on which it is written; the handwriting; the choice of words, phrases or expressions. Furthermore the letter is handled with great care, preserved in a safe place, and taken out and read and pondered over and over again as a source of presence and nourishment.
In our catholic tradition the Bible has always been accorded appropriate veneration in the liturgy. This is evidenced when the Lectionary is carried aloft into the assembly, in procession. Also the lectionary is assigned its own throne or lectern in the sanctuary. Furthermore, the reading of the Gospel is often accompanied by the presence of candles, incense etc.