Pope Francis Monday declared the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time to be the Sunday of the Word of God in order to promote a closer relationship with holy scripture and its dissemination in the world.
“A day devoted to the Bible should not be seen as a yearly event but rather a year-long event, for we urgently need to grow in our knowledge and love of the Scriptures and of the risen Lord,” the pope wrote in an apostolic letter Sept. 30.
Pope Francis instituted the special day for celebrating the Word of God in the Church with the promulgation motu proprio of the apostolic letter Aperuit Illis, published Sept. 30, 2019, the 1,600th anniversary of St. Jerome’s death and his feast day.
The Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, on the Roman calendar, typically falls around the end of January.
In Aperuit Illis, Pope Francis said Catholics should keep in mind God’s teaching in the Book of Revelation: that the Lord is standing at the door and knocking. “Christ Jesus is knocking at our door in the words of sacred Scripture. If we hear his voice and open the doors of our minds and hearts, then he will enter our lives and remain ever with us,” he said.
Each community can decide how to mark the Sunday of the Word of God, but it is important, he said, that sacred scripture be “enthroned.”
He said one example of how to do this would be to highlight the “proclamation of the word of the Lord and to emphasize in the homily the honor that it is due.”
Other examples he gave were for pastors to give out Bibles or a book of the Bible to encourage daily prayer with sacred scripture, such as lectio divina, or for bishops to celebrate the Rite of Installation of Lectors that day. He added that this is a good opportunity for parishes to renew their efforts to train lectors to be “genuine proclaimers of the word.”
Francis spoke about the role of pastors, who, he said, have the responsibility of explaining sacred scripture and helping their parishioners understand it, especially through the homily, which possesses, as it says in Evangelii Gaudium, “a quasi-sacramental character.”
Full story at Catholic News Agency.
This makes no sense. Much like everything else he does.
Yawn. Ignore him. Continue the Rosary.
Right. Ignore the Bishop of Rome and the Vicar of Christ at your own peril. As Our Lord said to his Apostles, into whose offices the bishops and the popes have assumed: “Whoever listens to you listens to Me; whoever rejects you rejects Me; and whoever rejects Me rejects the One Who sent Me” (Luke10:16). Beware people; beware your hatred for the Holy Father.
This action by Pope Francis makes a great deal of sense if one digs a little deeper into the history of the Catholic Church and the Sacred Scriptures. St Jerome is reported to have stated: “to be ignorant of the Scriptures is to be ignorant of Christ.” Many faithful Catholics have rediscovered the importance of the Scriptures in their daily walk with the Lord.
The point William that Lawrence is making is that this Pope is not to be trusted…period.
I agree.
You can always trust the Pope. You should not trust the Internet.
This would seem to mean that the Word of God would be heard, read and obeyed.
If only that happened, our Church (and the world) would be in much better shape.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Is this the same Word of God whose politically incorrect passages have been excised from the lectionary?
This looks good but why “train lectors to be “genuine proclaimers of the word.”. Seems to me that this is the role of the priest.
Only priests and deacons can proclaim the Gospel.
I agree with Peggy. It’s the priest’s role to read, not lay people. Please get rid of “lectors” and “extraordinary ministers” and get back to basics.
Larry and Peggy are both mistaken. Even in the Extraordinary Form, in the absence of a priest or a deacon, a “straw sub-deacon” which is basically a lay person or an “oblate” who has received some training in the Mass, is occasionally used to serve as “subdeacon” in the Traditional Latin Mass. So, “going back to basics” as Larry says isn’t the reliable rule. The most reliable rule is that the transferral of the duties of a deacon to laypeople is within the authority of the Magisterium and the Pope. Therefore the rule is simple: Rome has spoken; and whatever Rome says should be good enough for you lot.
I can’t believe we are having a conversation about who can read at Mass. The reason why lay people couldnt read at mass was because traditionally lay people COULDN”T READ AT ALL! Just because something is traditional doesn’t mean it is Traditional.
It seems that every post-V2 pope (except JP1), instead of simply handing on what they received, can’t resist the urge to tinker. One replaces the Mass/lectionary/calendar. Another adds a mystery to the Rosary. Another creates a new “Scripture Sunday”. Hundreds of changes in my own lifetime! I’m not condemning this motu, but these changes in their totality don’t feel Catholic. My great grandparents lived their entire lives without a single papal innovation, yet somehow managed to hand their Faith onto my grandparents. Christ’s Church should be a refuge from the world’s turmoil, not a reflection of it.
It is totally within the power and jurisdiction of the Magisterium, namely the Holy Father and the bishops united with him, to replace, add, amend, remove anything within the liturgy or the disciplines of the Church provided they do not contradict Scripture or Tradition. There is absolutely NOTHING in the Luminous Mystery, in the way the Mass is celebrated in the Ordinary Form, or in the new calendar that contradicts the Catholic faith. NOTHING! Hanging on to the past, just for the sake of the past, is NOT Catholicism. It’s called idolatry of the past.