If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood, and don’t assign them to tasks and work—but rather, teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
~Antoine de Saint-Exupery
FAQ… Why have the past weeks had such long Gospel readings??
If you’ve been attentive at mass the past three weeks, you may have noticed that we’ve had REALLY long gospel readings each week, and wondered why on earth they went on at such length. A typical gospel selection is about 10 verses long. On the first Sunday of Lent, when Jesus goes in the desert, it was eleven, and on the second Sunday, the Transfiguration, it was nine. On the Third Sunday of Lent, though, we heard the story of “the Woman at the Well” which runs for 38 verses, or nearly the whole fourth chapter of John’s gospel. The next week we heard the story of “the Man Born Blind”, 41 verses (most of chapter nine). Last week we heard about “the Raising of Lazarus,” 45 verses long (most of chapter eleven). Why such long readings?
In the 1970s the Catholic Church revised the Lectionary (the book containing the scripture selections we read at mass) to include more scripture by adopting a three-year cycle (with the inspired names of Year A, Year B, and Year C). At the same time, the Church was re-instituting the long-dormant process called the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, which is how adults join the Catholic Church.
The decision was made to use these three long readings from the Gospel of John in Year A (the year we are in now, which uses the Gospel of Matthew most of the time) for two reasons. One reason was that those readings had been used in the early church in Rome during Lent (3rd-5th century). Scholars also think the preparation period for baptism at Easter in the Roman church was three weeks long and used these three readings. Therefore, the decision was made that anytime a local church has people being baptized at Easter, the church can (and should) use these readings from Year A, even if it’s actually Year B or C, restoring an earlier practice.
As my liturgy teacher said to me in a recent email, “those three pericopes [readings] were considered to be a great example of the church's pastoral care of those preparing for initiation and for those remembering and renewing their initiation. ‘Give me water’ . . . ‘He healed me’ . . . ‘LAZARUS!’—each is a story of conversion and transformation, personal to social to cosmic transformation. Through those readings we call to mind our own journey of conversion, accompany those on their immediate journeys and pledge ourselves to the ongoing journey of the Christian life!”
As we come to the end of the season of Lent, these are great questions to reflect on: What do I thirst for? In what ways am I blind and need to see? Do I believe that life is greater than death? Our reflections can then be brought with penitent and hopeful hearts to the journey through death into new life that we experience during Holy Week.
FAQ … What is Palm Sunday, and why is it also called Passion Sunday?
- Holy Week begins with Palm / Passion Sunday. On Palm Sunday we give out blessed palms in commemoration of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and we hear the gospel story read before mass begins that describes this.
- The blessed palms are called ‘sacramentals’: they are reminders of our faith, and people often put them in their homes or cars where they’ll see them regularly.
- Palm Sunday is also called Passion Sunday because we read the Passion narrative for the gospel—which we also do on Good Friday. Why do we have such a long reading twice in one week? Partly because Holy Week developed out of different traditions observed in different parts of the early Christian world, and they ended up all lumped together…and partly because lots of folks don’t go to church on Good Friday, and Easter makes no sense without the crucifixion which preceded it.
- Our liturgical color is red for both Palm Sunday and Good Friday, because among other things, it signifies blood, the passion and the martyrs.
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Karen Soos
Associate Chaplain and Catholic Campus Minister
Davidson College
Campus Box 7196
Davidson NC 28035
704. 894. 2423
Associate Chaplain and Catholic Campus Minister
Davidson College
Campus Box 7196
Davidson NC 28035
704. 894. 2423
