By JAMES MONTI
It has long become commonplace in many quarters to say that before Vatican II, before the Charismatic Movement, before the modern influx of converts to the Catholic faith from evangelical Protestantism, Catholics were more or less ignorant of the Sacred Scriptures. Many a Protestant could cite the Bible by chapter and verse from memory, whereas most Catholics could not.
The problem with this premise is that it defines “knowledge of the Bible” too narrowly. Knowing the Bible requires a lot more than simply memorizing verses and knowing by heart what pages they are on.
The Catholics of past generations by and large did know the major events of the Bible. They knew the fall of Adam, the covenant with Abraham, the Flight from Egypt, and the Ten Commandments. They knew the events of Christ’s life from the Annunciation to His public ministry, His Passion, death, Resurrection, and Ascension into Heaven. The event of Pentecost was impressed upon their minds by the Sacrament of Confirmation. They knew the major parables of the Prodigal Son, the Lost Sheep, and the Good Samaritan.
St. Stephen’s heroic martyrdom and St. Paul’s dramatic conversion as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles were by no means unfamiliar to them. And St. Paul’s teachings from his epistles entered into the seamless fabric of living one’s Catholic faith.
Assuredly the upswing in personal reading of the Bible among Catholics over the last few decades is very laudable — but it doesn’t follow that earlier generations of Catholics were really ignorant of the Word of God.
To talk about Christ, about what He did, what He taught, what He suffered is in fact to speak scripturally, to think scripturally. For are not the Scriptures all about Christ? Even the Old Testament is by way of foreshadowing and preparation all about Him, as He Himself explained to the disciples.
And to live like Christ, to model our actions on His and to keep His Commandments, is indeed to live scripturally. The liturgy is all about the life of Christ; His life forms the very substance of divine worship. The walls, ceilings, and windows of medieval and Baroque churches were adorned with visual expressions of the Word of God, depictions of events from the Gospel, of Christ’s parables, and of those living embodiments of the Gospel in action in a myriad of times and places, the saints.
Of course the Church has from the beginning recognized and believed that the very words of the Sacred Scriptures, the exact words as inspired by the Holy Spirit and recorded in the books of the Bible, are pre-eminently sacred, and that they possess a power and efficacy that transcends any paraphrase or summary of them.
And in this the Catholic liturgy is far more intensely scriptural than any Protestant service of Scripture reading, preaching, and hymns, for in the Catholic liturgy the Bible is not simply read like a book but it is also conveyed and reiterated with actions, gestures, and rituals, preaching the Word of God not just to the ears but to all five senses.
Even the very reading of the Scriptures in a Catholic liturgical setting surpasses what is done in a Protestant service, for it is not merely spoken but it is proclaimed as a sacramental action, ritualized with incense, candlelight, a procession to the ambo with the Gospel book, the blessing of the one who reads from it, the singing of the words themselves, the signing with the cross of the forehead, lips, and heart of both him who reads or sings it and all those who hear it, so that the Word of God can be experienced to the full as “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword” (Heb. 4:12).
The book from which it is read is venerated with a kiss. And indeed over the centuries Gospel books destined for liturgical use have often been fashioned in such a way as to command reverence, to be treated as symbols of Christ Himself, with lavishly illuminated pages and intricately wrought covers studded with precious stones to symbolize the five wounds of Christ.
In the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite the Mass even ends with a further reading of the Word of God, the opening of St. John’s Gospel (John 1:1-14) that is in itself an epitome of the mystery of the Incarnation. Beyond the Mass the Church has her priests and religious recite that vast corpus of scriptural texts arranged for divine worship that we call the Divine Office.
Medieval theologians, most notably Pope Innocent III (+1216), Sicard of Cremona (+1215), and William Durandus of Mende (+1296), saw the Mass through the deeply scriptural prism of the allegorical interpretation of the liturgy.
In this light the Mass was understood as teeming with biblical references, allusions, and imagery. From this perspective the priest’s entry at the beginning of the Mass was seen as representing Christ’s entry into the world by His Incarnation. The two candle-bearers preceding him represented the prophets and the Law of Moses respectively. The singing of the Gloria manifested the joy of men and angels alike at the Birth of Christ.
The Epistle was read on the right side of the sanctuary to denote the preaching of the Word of God first to the Jews. The reading of the Gospel on the left in turn symbolized its proclamation to the Gentiles. The incensation at the Offertory was likened to the anointing of Christ’s feet by Mary the sister of Lazarus six days before the Lord’s Passion, whereby “the house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment” (John 12:3). The concluding words of the Sanctus evoke the biblical event from which they are drawn, the Palm Sunday entry of Christ into Jerusalem (Matt. 21:9).
As the priest began the Roman Canon he entered the Holy of Holies like the high priest of the Old Covenant in the Temple of Solomon and like Christ entering the sanctuary of Heaven to offer Himself for us (Heb. 9:6-7,11-12).
The elevation of the Eucharist following the consecration was associated with the elevation of Christ on the cross (“…and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself” — John 12:32). The repose of the newly consecrated Body and Blood of Christ upon the altar during the second half of the Canon corresponded to Christ’s body resting upon the cross. When after elevating the Eucharist for the concluding doxology of the Canon the Host and chalice were put down again upon the altar, the lowering of Christ’s Body into the tomb was recalled.
With the Holy Communion segment of the Mass that begins with the Our Father, the Easter mystery was evoked: the sign of peace symbolized that peace which the Resurrection of Christ has brought to mankind. The Communion antiphon represented the jubilation of the apostles upon seeing the Risen Christ. The return of the priest to the right side of the altar to say the Postcommunion prayer, the side of the altar that earlier in the Mass had been associated with the Gospel being preached first to the Jews, foreshadowed the profession of the Christian faith by the Jewish people that St. Paul prophesies will occur before the end of the world (Romans 11:25-27).
The final blessing imparted by the priest would recall the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, with the departure of the priest from the sanctuary compared to the Ascension of the Lord.
The Rosary
Such a luxuriant effulgence of biblical allusions and comparisons could only have arisen within a culture profoundly familiar with the Sacred Scriptures. Our Catholic experience of the Sacred Scriptures is considerably richer and runs a lot deeper than simply sitting down to read a Bible in the privacy of our own homes. The Church mediates the Word of God to us through the sacraments that reconfigure our very souls, conforming them to the likeness of Christ.
One of our most popular expressions of Catholic piety, the rosary, is largely a scriptural exercise. Thirteen of the 15 traditional mysteries of the rosary, plus the five additional mysteries added by Pope St. John Paul II, are events from the Bible. The entire first half of each Hail Mary recited is simply a conjoining of two verses culled from the Gospel according to St. Luke (Luke 1:28,42). And the Catholic who daily recites at least five decades of the rosary thereby commits himself to saying the ultimate scriptural prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, at least five times daily.
The magnificent rituals with which the Church has traditionally surrounded the reading of the Scriptures in a liturgical setting should serve to remind us all that the Word of God is inalienably sacred — that the meaning of the Scriptures cannot be redefined or reimagined to conform to the spirit of a desacralized world that has grown impatient with the Commandments of God. For as our Lord has told us, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Mark 13:31).
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