My Little Friend

Overcoming stigma of not being Bible Christians

11/19/2019

Luke 19:1-10 At that time Jesus came to Jericho and intended to pass through the town. Now a man there named Zacchaeus, who was a chief tax collector and also a wealthy man, was seeking to see who Jesus was; but he could not see him because of the crowd, for he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus, who was about to pass that way. When he reached the place, Jesus looked up and said, “Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house.” And he came down quickly and received him with joy. When they saw this, they began to grumble, saying, “He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner.” But Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone I shall repay it four times over.” And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house because this man too is a descendant of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost.”

Catholics often carry the stigma of being called Christians who don’t read the scriptures. When we hear the phrase “Bible Christians” do you usually think of Fr. John or Dc. Greg? Probably not. After all, we don’t usually have a Bible on our desk that is well-worn, with dog-earned pages, underlined passages, and maybe even coffee stains. Sometimes I have to ask several people in the church office where a Bible is, and they really have to search to find one. A Bible is not sitting on every staff person’s desk, and maybe it should be. So, there is some legitimacy to the criticism that Catholics are not “Bible Christians.”

Today, however, I want to give you some reasons to refute and even reverse that complaint. That is, I believe Catholics are more Bible Christians than more Protestants. And now, like Al Pacino said in the movie “Scarface,” “Let me introduce you to my little friend!” My little friend is not a machine gun like in the movie, but rather a book called the Lectionary. Have you ever heard of the Lectionary? That is the big read book containing scripture passages that the lector reads from at daily Mass and Sunday Mass. Two years ago I gave my parents a Christmas present of a book called the Daily Roman Missal that has both Sunday and daily readings for Mass. My dad does not like to use the phone for scripture readings because he thinks the phone is from the devil. And it probably is. The name Lectionary comes from the Latin word “lectio” which means “reading.” So a Lectionary is the Catholic collection of readings from the bible we use at Mass. Let me share a few thoughts about the Lectionary to remove the unwarranted stigma that Catholics are not Bible Christians.

After the Second Vatican Council, the Church updated the Lectionary by expanding the variety and number of scripture passages we hear at Mass. Basically, we hear two sets of cycles depending on whether you attend Sunday Mass or daily Mass. Sunday Mass readings are organized around a three-year cycle based on the three synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, and then the cycle repeats. Matthew is Year A, Mark is Year B, and Luke is Year C. We just heard from the gospel of Luke, so which Year are we current in? You guessed it: Year C. And that’s why priests only prepare three years’ worth of homilies because we can recycle old homilies every three years when the same readings come up at Mass. And the people sleep through our sermons anyway, so you don’t even notice when we do.

The weekday readings of the Lectionary are structured differently, that is, on a two year cycle, called Year 1 and Year 2. Year 1 corresponds to odd numbered years of the calendar, while Year 2 corresponds to even numbered years. If we are currently in the year 2019, an odd numbered year, and therefore which two year cycle are we in? Correct: Year 1. My main point is that if you attend every weekday and Sunday Mass for three years straight – someone like Gene Bruick would – you would hear more of the Bible than most so-called Bible Christians do. Indeed, after Vatican II updated and expanded the Lectionary of the Mass, guess what many Protestant denominations did? They used the Catholic Lectionary as the basis of their own readings of scriptures in their Sunday services. In other words, the Catholics are teaching the Protestants how to read and reflect on and revere the Sacred Scriptures. Now who are the real Bible Christians?

But let me not overstate my case about my little friend, the Lectionary. Catholics do not hear the whole Bible in the course of three years, even if you attended Mass every day. In fact, we will hear only about 40 percent of the Old Testament and about 70 percent of the New Testament in three years. Three books of the Old Testament are entirely omitted from the Lectionary: Judith, 1 Chronicles, and Obadiah. Your homework for today is to read those three Old Testament books before bed!

Even though Catholics have the Lectionary, we still have a long way to go to overcome the stigma of not being Bible Christians. The only way to finally overcome it, of course, is to have a bible on every Catholic’s desk, and actually to read it.

Praised be Jesus Christ!