How to Listen to the Readings
BOOK CLUB 2 | WEEK 4: A Devotional Journey Into the Mass, Ch. 4
If you’d like to purchase a copy of Carstens’ book, you may do so here. If you’d like to access the Table of Contents for this series, click here.
A quick note before we begin: As we get further into this book, I think it’s important to remind ourselves that the touch-points we are discussing are not intended to be additional burdens for us to shoulder, but rather, moments of invitation to recall our attention and join (again!) into the deeper significance of the liturgy. The Lord knows that we are fickle and distracted creatures, and He continues to draw us back to himself using these consistent moments of prayer and invitations to participation within the Mass. This is a tremendous gift!
This chapter speaks to something that is very near and dear to my heart… or, perhaps, something that is unfortunately familiar to my experience—distraction. Especially in a season of little children As human beings with busy lives and stress and fallen wills, it is so easy to go through the Mass without really hearing and processing what is said. We touched on this briefly last week, when we talked about the Opening Prayer, and it is such a common human experience, so I don’t think there is much need for elaborating on the topic.
As it is, the Church gives us a tremendous gift in the cycle of readings, confusing as it may be to navigate.1 And we should want—not out of guilt or shame, but out of a deep love and desire for God and His grace—to accept this gift wholeheartedly and integrate it into our lives. The Scriptures themselves are, of course, a profound gift from God, but the inclusion of Scripture in the liturgy and the regular proclamation of Scripture to us, the Mystical Body of Christ, is something I think we often take for granted. Christ is really and truly present in the Word proclaimed at Mass! “Thus, to hear and say and pray the Scriptural Word is to hear ands ay and pray the Eternal Word.” Of course, His presence in the Word proclaimed is different from His presence in the Eucharist, but it is no less real.
Flowing from this truth of Christ’s presence in the Word, we then travel to the Incarnation, to the importance of Christ’s having both a divine nature and a human nature, so as to speak and listen on behalf of both God and man. And we come to understand the ways in which we are taken up into participation in this dialogue in the Mass: “the Mass’s Liturgy of the Word is a microcosm of the great story of salvation history.” The rhythm of readings, psalm, Gospel, homily, creed—this is the rhythm of conversation, the rhythm of a dialogue of love in which we can participate by giving our attention and assent. The rhythm, one might say, of a heartbeat:
As our physical heart is the means by which lifeblood extends to the body and then returns for vital oxygen, so too our hearts are the conduits through which the world gasps for God’s love and from which that love reaches others.
The remainder of the chapter is a step-by-step walkthrough of lectio divina, a way of conversing with God by reading and praying with scripture slowly through five steps: reading, reflection, response, contemplation, and resolution. I would love to invite you to read through this portion of the chapter (again, if you’ve already read it) with this coming Sunday’s Gospel open in front of you: “The Mass’s proclamation of the Word is indeed powerful, but to benefit from such power, we the faithful ought to pray with the passage in the days leading up to Mass and the days following.” The longer we allow ourselves to be steeped in the Word of God—not in isolation, but in the rich context of our lives—the more deeply we will allow that Word to dwell in our hearts, in our families, in our neighborhoods, and in our world. I love the example at the end of this chapter of how one might use the five steps lectio divina in family life, taking one step per day, asking questions of self and spouse and children, in order to give the Word time and space to permeate throughout the family life and culture.
In closing, I’d love to share a few of my personal favorite resources for praying with the Mass readings:
Print: Magnificat and MagnifiKid (for the Novus Ordo) and Benedictus (for the Latin Mass)—monthly or annual print or digital subscription
Digital: Liturgical app (for iPhone) or Laudate app (for iPhone or Android)
Audio: The Lanky Guys podcast—always delightful, often insightful, now retired, but with a back-catalog so long that each Sunday has two or three options
Do you try to incorporate the daily or Sunday readings into your daily and weekly prayer? If so, how? If not, is there one thing you can “test drive” for this week in order to enter more deeply into the Liturgy of the Word?
One more thing! We’ve got a date for our Virtual Discussion! Our call will be hosted on Monday, March 11, at 7:30pm CST. I am thrilled to share that Chris Carstens (the book’s author) is planning to join us! The call will be a chance for us to discuss the book more fully, to ask questions, and to share how these habits have been bearing fruit in our lives over this spring semester. I’m truly so excited for the chance to chat with you all.
I would love to hear from you whether you are planning to hop on! This is not a hard commitment, but having a gauge of the expected attendance will allow me to plan for the logistics of the event.
This is my one frustration with the “read more Scripture in the Mass” part of the implementation of the Second Vatican Council. I am all for more Scripture in the Mass, but did we have to do it on a complicated system where Sundays cycle through every three years, weekdays every two years, and certain holidays/feast days never changing, while others have four or five different Masses that can be offered at different times on the same day? I feel like this was unnecessarily complicated? Is that just me?
During my family's car ride to Mass each Sunday morning, we listen to Hallow's Family Mass Prep ("Let's get ready for Mass!") with Katie and Tommy McGrady. It's always the perfect length. I haven't used the daily readings in quite a while for prayer. What I'd like to try out this week is taking a journal to Mass and taking note of what strikes me during the readings and homily. Then, I'll review those during my daily prayer through the week.