My principal goal with this web page is to encourage myself and others to encounter Jesus in the liturgy through the Scriptures. Finding him in Scripture, especially in the Gospel, leads us from a vague awareness of God to a lively, specific awareness of who Christ is and how he wants to transform our lives. The danger is that we hear the Gospel read at Mass and it might as well have been in a foreign language, because we aren’t paying attention.
I have found writing these pages to be a practice helpful for opening myself to the word of Christ. I hope they help you too.
Today I want to talk about some other little methods I have found helpful. These might be helpful for priests who will preach on the Sunday Gospel—and also helpful for those in the pews who want to get more out of the Sunday Gospel than they can get from their priest’s homilies.
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Read the Sunday Gospel each day. Make it part of your daily ritual. My family tries (and often fails) to read the coming Sunday’s Gospel every day at the end of dinner. You could also do it at breakfast or lunch, or before bed, or before you come from work in the evening—whenever.
Just read it. A danger is that we are so caught up in our own concerns that we can’t hear Christ speaking. I imagine it would be especially tempting for priests preparing homilies to jump ahead to their own concerns. I tell my seminarians the liturgical gesture I most dislike is when the priest reads the Gospel, then shuts the book before preaching: “Enough of what he says—now for what I say!” Instead, we need to open the book, read it without any agenda, let it speak to us before we begin to speak.
It may be helpful to read it out loud, just to slow yourself down a little.
With repetition, you notice details you hadn’t noticed before, funny little things you’d skipped past. The message also begins to sink in, the seriousness of Christ’s word to you. When you get to Sunday Mass, your ears are ready.
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Spend some time, maybe ten minutes, with a short passage, such as the Sunday Gospel.
It’s good to read long passages too. I recommend starting from page one, whether of the whole Bible or of the New Testament, and just reading it all, getting a sense of the whole. Then do it again. That’s very good.
But it’s good too to spend extended time with a short passage. Even ten minutes is much more time than you usually spend with a paragraph. Read it once. Read it again. Let a passage strike you, and sit with it a little, roll it over. Then go back and read through again, and pull out another line. Then move to another thing.
Don’t be systematic, just be determined to find out what it’s saying.
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There’s a method of Scripture reading (that’s all “lectio divina” means: reading the Bible) where you pick one word and stick with it. That’s fine—but from homilies I hear, I think it’s often misused.
This isn’t random word association. You don’t hear there was a lake, and that reminds you of fishing with your grandpa, and that reminds you of playing cards with your grandmother, so you meditate on “lake” and then think about what time at “the lake” meant for you as a kid. To do that is precisely not to listen to Scripture. Imagine tuning out like that when a friend is talking.
Instead, you should be looking for words that encapsulate the meaning of the passage. To do that, it’s helpful to return to the passage, to move from word to word. Again, you don’t want to close the book, and dive into what you think. You want to find what Jesus is saying. That means looking at the book, again and again.
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Dig into the weird stuff. If there’s a metaphor that seems strange, don’t gloss over it. If there’s an idea that seems odd, or a funny word choice, think about that. Jesus, and his holy writers, inspired by the Holy Spirit, choose their words deliberately. They’re not always speaking literally, but they chose those words for a reason. Be surprised.
To that end, I also recommend Bible software. I love “e-sword” on my computer, and the “i-sword” app on my phone. The most basic setting allows you to click on an English word and find the Greek or Hebrew behind it. My Greek is okay, my Hebrew is non-existent. But the point isn’t that you’re an expert at those languages. The point is that the dictionary entries for those words can help you dig into what’s being said. Look at where the words come from, what images they are evoking. Dig into the meaning of the words Jesus uses to speak to you.
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Finally, learn to pray “Alleluia.” In Hebrew it literally means “Praise the Lord,” but a great author says, the way we use it, it is more like we are cheering, “The Lord is here!”
Hear his voice.
What methods do you use to dig into Scripture? Please comment and tell us!
