The Scriptures do not stand on their own; they must be explained, interpreted within the context of the living faith of the community, and applied to its present circumstances, often radically different from those out of which the text first arose. The proclamation of God’s word in the liturgy provides the best possible context for the authentic interpretation of the Bible. In the liturgy the biblical context is proclaimed to the assembled Christians, and the apostolic leader of the community explains its significance by relating it to its original situation, to the whole plan of God, to the faith of the Church, to the practical concerns of his particular community, and to the experience of the Lord in the Eucharist.
The Jewish tradition of liturgical proclamation of the Scriptures includes a tradition of interpretation. In the synagogue services of ancient Palestine, the Scriptures were read in Hebrew, but since many in the congregation understood only Aramaic, an official of the synagogue would provide a running translation in that language, a targum, which was a kind of paraphrase including within it a commentary on the text. The spiritual leaders of the synagogue community would also preach on the various scriptural texts. In Luke 4 we have an account of Jesus reading the scriptural text and commenting on it.
In Justin’s description of the Eucharistic liturgy, a member of the community reads the texts and then the leader explains their meaning. Down through the centuries, liturgical proclamation of the Scriptures has been inseparable from the homiletic interpretation. Many scriptural commentaries of the Fathers of the Church are really homilies on the texts proclaimed in the liturgy. In our own day the Constitution on the Liturgy states that “through the homily, the hidden realities of faith and the guiding principles of the Christian life are explained over the course of the liturgical year from the text of the scripture: (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 52). The homily is a basic element of the liturgical reading of the Bible.
The homilist needs to know God and to know the lives of those to whom he preaches. Through prayer and daily immersion in the cares and joys of the congregation he can become an instrument through whom God illuminates the Scriptures and speaks powerfully to the Christian people as they come in from the struggles of their daily lives to seek spiritual nourishment from the word of God and from the Eucharist.
The homilist needs to know the literal sense of the Scriptures: the meaning intended by the inspired author many years ago in the distant culture where the divine revelation took place. Scholarly exegesis of the text can help him to understand that literal sense more fully, and so prepare him to preach more effectively. We cannot appreciate what God is saying to us in a scriptural passage today if we do not work diligently to discover what he was saying to those who first heard it. The critical study of a text in the light of modern scholarship is a sobering discipline, and helps to keep the preacher from distorting it or using it simply as an occasion for random insights. The word of God will speak more clearly in the liturgy to the extent that both the congregation and the homilist know the Bible, and use the many resources which make available the insights of modern scholarship.
The homilist, however, does more than simply retail scholarly exegesis to the congregation. Exegesis is only one stage in the preparation of the homily. Once the preacher has a fuller understanding of the original context of the passages, he must relate them to one another, and to the insights which he has gained from prayer, from a knowledge of the whole faith of the Church, and from a personal understanding of the needs of his particular community. Then, using the resources of imagination and insight available to him, he will be able to situate the scriptural readings for the benefit of his congregation, so that the word of God comes alive in the hearts of the people. The fact that this can happen through the homily is one of the most valuable characteristics of the liturgical proclamation of the Bible.
If we are effectively to confront the problems which we face as Christians in the world, we need to see them within the perspective of the whole of God’s plan. The Scriptures proclaimed and interpreted within the liturgy make that possible. This is all the more important in light of the teaching of Vatican II on the evangelizing mission of the laity. We are not the first to face the challenges of a faith-filled life in a world of unbelief, and telling the story of God’s past actions invigorates us in our present task. This is what the Jewish people have found as they recall every year the saving deeds of God in the Exodus, and it is what Christians must discover as well. Congregation and homilist alike hear and interpret the word of God in the liturgy, where they come to be strengthened for their journey of faith; both need to be aware not only of the original context of the text (which exegesis will reveal), but also of how it shows the pattern of God’s plan.
The lectionary is designed to make this possible. Through the Gospel is chosen according to a principle of continuous reading, the first reading is meant to highlight the connection between the Old Testament and the New. Scripture scholars sometimes regret the way this is done in the lectionary—and rightly so if the Old Testament reading is seen as merely preparing the way for something else, with no significance on its own. But the Christian who hears the Old and New Testament readings proclaimed in the liturgy can be conscious of their independent value, and also of the wider pattern of divine action which they reveal, leading up to the coming of Christ and beyond to the mission of the Christian in the world today. That perspective is the one found in the description of Our Lord’s commentary on the Old Testament on the road to Emmaus and in all the New Testament and early Christian discussions of the Old Testament. It is an essential perspective for both the homilist and the congregation in the liturgical proclamation of the Scriptures, for it shows the purpose behind history and so motivates the contemporary Christian to fulfil the mission of the evangelizing world.
The Scriptures proclaimed and interpreted within the liturgy are also situated within the context of the whole of Christian faith. The word of God comes to us, as Vatican II teaches, not only through the written Scriptures but also through the living faith of the Church. In the liturgy we celebrate that living faith in word and sacrament. We hear the Scriptures, we proclaim the creed, and we receive the Lord, all in the midst of the visible community of God’s people, and always conscious of the whole community of the angels and saints: in that full context we experience the coming of the Lord into our lives.
The proclamation of God’s word in the liturgy is a corrective for the problems associated with an individualistic reading of the Bible, which often occurs in too narrow and impoverished a context. If we are to experience what God truly intends for us in the inspired word, then we cannot simply read or interpret the Scriptures with an eye to a personal relationship with Jesus. We must also be aware, as we are in the liturgy, of the fullness of the apostolic faith, and of our identity as members of the Christian community, the Mystical Body of Christ. When we hear the Bible proclaimed and interpreted in the liturgy, we need to connect what we hear in the written word and what we know of the whole of God’s revelation through the apostolic teaching of the Church and the practice of the faith down through the centuries.
Scripture and the living faith of the Church illuminate one another. A knowledge of ancient times may help make a prophetic text come alive in the present situation of the community, but a Pauline reference to the Eucharist is understood not through exegesis alone. But through the common faith and practice of the Church whose members will receive the Lord in Holy Communion shortly after hearing about the Eucharist in the Liturgy of the Word.
In the proclamation of the Scripture to God’s people gathered for the Eucharist and in its interpretation through the homily, we find the authentic context for hearing the inspired word. In the liturgy, as the sacred text is proclaimed and interpreted, the believer is shown how God spoke in ancient times and how that relates to the whole of the divine plan, to the fullness of the Christian faith, and to the particular situation of this congregation as it goes about its mission of bringing the Good News to the word.
(Permission to copy granted by Cardinal Thomas Collins on October 12, 2016)