After having listened to the words of the Gospel proclaimed, the deacon or priest announces: “The Gospel of the Lord”, to which we respond with great joy: “Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ!”  At this point, if you pay close attention, the priest or deacon does something unique.  He will bend down to kiss the Book of the Gospels (or the Lectionary).  If the Bishop is present, and a Book of the Gospels is used, the minister reading the Gospel will bring the Book of the Gospels to the Bishop to kiss the book and impart a blessing.  At various times in the Church’s history, the ritual action of kissing items during the liturgy was more frequent, but in our current form of the liturgy, the only time a kiss is employed is here and when the altar is kissed at the beginning and end of the Mass.  

In doing some research on this kiss, I came across a beautiful reflection on this action from the book The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass by Father Nicholas Gihr.  He writes:

The Book of the Gospels, or rather, the sacred text of the Gospels in general, represents our divine Savior Himself and was, therefore, ever (the same as the images of Christ) a subject of religious veneration … After having tasted and experienced in the Gospel how sweet the Lord is, how faultless His doctrine, how good and refreshing His consolations and promises, the heart of the priest overflows with happiness and joy, and he kisses the words of eternal life, in order to testify his profound reverence, his great and ardent love for them. (p. 482)

Even if only the bishop, priest, or deacon kisses the book at this point, all of the faithful can express the overflowing joy and happiness of hearing the Word with our resounding response of “Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ” and a desire, at least in our heart, to kiss the Word of God as well.

Along these lines, it is a pious practice for the faithful that, when concluding their personal reading of the Scriptures, that they physically kiss the Bible as a sign of reverence and gratitude.  This is one of the reasons why I much prefer reading Scripture from a physical Bible, not an e-reader or smartphone.

There is one more somewhat hidden thing that happens as the minister kisses the book.  He would say quietly:  “Through the Words of the Gospel may our sins be wiped away.”  Although these words are said silently, notice how the petition is that our sins be wiped away, so it is a prayer for all present that the power of the Word of God would bring about a conversion of heart and even wipe our sins away.  Of course, this is not a sacramental absolution as with the Sacrament of Reconciliation, but nevertheless, the power of the Word of God is capable of purifying our hearts and turn away from sin.

One final point to consider on this action comes from a series of reflections on the silent prayers of the Mass that I came across a few years ago.  These come from a modern spiritual author, Father Boniface Hicks, O.S.B., and when concluding his reflection on this prayer said silently at the end of the Gospel, he offers the following beautiful words that I myself am happy to be reminded of:

This gesture moves his heart outwards to the congregation to whom he prepares to preach. He unites himself with the faithful at this point. He is in need of hearing the Holy Gospel and having his sins wiped away as much as anyone else. The moral unity with the faithful expressed in this prayer can help to overcome the temptation to “face off” with the congregation and to preach at them. To the contrary, he should realize he is in need of the Gospel and even his own homily as much as his people are.

Feast Day: October 9th | Patronage: Poets, Anglican Ordinariate, Converts, Theologians, Scholars | Iconography: Wearing Red Cassock (of Cardinal), or Black Cassock (as Oratorian), and Biretta (as Cleric) or Zucchetto (as Cardinal), sometimes holding Book (as Scholar)

John Henry Newman, the agnostic young man, turned Anglican cleric and scholar at Oxford who then leads a dramatic reform of the Anglican Church only to shockingly convert to Catholicism in the middle of his life (and career) in 1845, only to find himself ostracized by the Catholic Church just as much as by the Anglicans … he’s a hard man to fit onto one page. But we can get to know him as a saint quite quickly. See, the thing with saints is that they live lives just as complicated and filled and up-and-down as all of us, but their lives come to have a focus, a center, a simplicity in the midst of all of it. I think this is actually a good definition of a saint: to live a life centered, grounded, anchored on God, and this is something we can quickly discover in the life of Cd. Newman.

A few biographical threads that will triangulate his heart: In 1816, a few years after his teenage conversion to Evangelical-Calvinism, he had a decisive realization that – though his encounter with Christ was certainly crucial to his eternal salvation – the principal of solo fidei was an insufficient anchor for true faith. There had to be something rock-solid to conform oneself to, something revealed, not just felt, something universal, not just subjective. Faith only survives if it is grounded on dogma.

A second pillar: After going to Oxford, and then becoming an Oxford Don and Anglican Prelate, Newman finds himself attracted inexorably to studying the Fathers of the Church. In the 1830s he began work on one of his famous works, “The Arians of the Fourth Century”, which chronicled the battles throughout the Church over the divinity of Christ, including the period when practically every bishop of the Church had fallen into heresy, with St. Athanasius – and countless lay people – holding fast to the truth … and the truth prevailing. Tired from this battle of his own, Newman embarks on a sabbatical/journey around the Mediterranean. He was moved by the site of some of the places where St. Paul preached, annoyed by the devotions of the Catholics in Rome, and he got quite ill in Malta. 

There he was, quarantined, in a chilly stone building overlooking the cantankerous sea, it was Christmas eve and he had no way to celebrate the Nativity of Christ. Yet down from his window were a group of Maltese Catholics happily celebrating the feast, unhindered by the inclement weather and their isolation. God was planting more seeds than Newman knew, but already this brush with death moved Newman to rededicate his life to the reformation of the Anglican Church. He, and several other men, were convinced that the Anglican Church was sliding too far into “liberalism” (not in a political sense, but insofar as it was drifting too far towards the subjectivism that was already eviscerating the protestant Churches.) They proposed that Anglicanism must instead find its way back to being a ”middle way” between Roman Catholicism (too many devotions, too much “popery”) and Liberal Protestantism (which had forgotten the doctrines/creeds of the Church, and the incarnational-sacraments of the Early Church). 

Thing was, though many people were convicted by the tracts that they were publishing, and even though Newman especially was ever more clearly articulating and fleshing-out the principals of the Oxford Movement, he was also discovering its weaknesses. It had tried – by choosing the middle way – to avoid the superficiality and flimsiness of liberal Protestantism as well as the devotionalism and archaism of the Roman Catholic Church, and to return to the core of Christianity: the doctrines and practices, the biblical and liturgical ardor of the Early Church. They didn’t hesitate to call what they were seeking the “Catholic” Church, for they used that word in its original sense: universal. What did the whole Church believe from its beginning, that was what they wanted to hold.

The only problem was that the whole church, the universal church, didn’t ascribe to a “via media”, and neither did Jesus Christ Himself. As Newman continued to plum the riches of the Church Fathers, especially the heroic St. Athanasius, he discovered that often heresies were themselves the “middle road” between two extremes, while the truth was actually one of the extremes! Consider the Arian controversy: Arianism claimed Jesus was just a particularily high-creature, not the same essence as God [hetero-ousia]. The other extreme was to say that He was fully God, the same essence [homo-ousia], consubstantial with the Father. The middle-way, the easier road, the balanced one, was to say Christ had a similar substance [homoi-ousia] to the Father. And it’s sure easier to hold onto Jesus’ humanity if we only have to mesh that with His being similar to the Father, but this middle way is also wrong! Jesus claims: “I and the Father are one” and if He is just similar to the Father then can He really save us?

More to come as Newman followed this Truth through.

– Fr. Dominic leaves you with a hymn that Newman wrote after his dramatic days in Malta, “Lead Kindly Light”. He didn’t know, but he would faithfully follow that Light, which was Christ, through a lot of thick and thin in the years to come. So should we. (QR code links to BYU Vocal Point’s rendition.)

When we arrive at the time for the proclamation of the Gospel at Mass, we have reached a very important point of the liturgy, though I sometimes wonder if we overlook just how important it is.  I think for some of us, the Gospel is seen as a sort of preparation or introduction to the Homily.  As preachers of the Homily, we often have people offer comments to us after Mass about our preaching.  Do not get me wrong, we appreciate the feedback.  But it is pretty rare to have somebody comment on the Gospel, which is ALWAYS more powerful than the best homily because it is God speaking to us, usually with the very words of Jesus Himself.  Here is what the General Instruction of the Roman Missal has to say about the Gospel:

The reading of the Gospel constitutes the high point of the Liturgy of the Word. The Liturgy itself teaches the great reverence that is to be shown to this reading by setting it off from the other readings with special marks of honor, by the fact of which a minister is appointed to proclaim it and by the blessing or prayer with which he prepares himself; and also by the fact that through their acclamations the faithful acknowledge and confess that Christ is present and is speaking to them and stand as they listen to the reading; and by the mere fact of the marks of reverence that are given to the Book of the Gospels. (GIRM, 60)

I think what I have written already regarding our listening attentively to the Word of God is sufficient for how we should approach the Gospel.  But I want to share a few things that lead up to the proclamation of the Gospel that often go unnoticed or unappreciated.  When the celebrant stands for the Gospel Acclamation, if there is a Deacon present, the Deacon will ask for a blessing from the celebrant, who says quietly: “May the Lord be in your hearts and on your lips that you may proclaim His Gospel worthily and well, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”  If there is no deacon present, the celebrant (or concelebrating priest, says a similar prayer silently: “Cleanse my heart and my lips, almighty God, that I may worthily proclaim your holy Gospel.”

The Church has the minister pray for God’s blessing to proclaim the Gospel worthily, signifying how these are not just mere words that we are proclaiming.  It is a humbling privilege to proclaim the Gospel and this prayerful preparation is a good reminder.  For the rest of the faithful, there is no such prayer, but I would call your attention to how the Gospel is introduced.  After the initial exchange of “The Lord be with you…and with your spirit”, the minister announces that he is about to proclaim a reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.  The faithful then respond: “Glory to you, O Lord.”  As with so many of our responses, this can be very automatic without our even really thinking about what we are saying.  But consider what saying this means.  We are NOT responding back to the minister as though saying: “Thanks for letting us know, I hope you do a good job reading.”  No, we are making a profession of faith that we are about to hear the Lord speaking to us from that most important section of Sacred Scripture where we hear the very words of Jesus Himself.  Our response is one of glorifying God for this gift we are about to receive.  The following words of Jesus come to mind as I think about how privileged we are to listen to the Gospel: “Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.” (Mt 13:17)

Over the years, the Church has extended to the faithful the opportunity to join in the gesture made by the minister at this point, making a Cross on one’s forehead, lips, and heart.  There are no scripted words for the minister or the faithful at this point, but many have come to see it as an opportunity to pray that the Gospel will be in our minds, on our lips, and in our hearts, such that our encounter with the Gospel about to be proclaimed will find rich soil in our hearts to produce fruit in our lives.