Each month, I explore an aspect of our liturgy experience. This series is called Mass Communication. Today, I look at the Second Reading.

We move from sung psalm to another oration of God’s Word. The Second Reading is taken from one of the letters of the Apostles.

These are people who belonged to the Old Testament world and had as their center the Exodus event. Like the First Reading, they looked back on the Exodus event and the great deed of God. Now, in this time with the Lord, Christ is their center.

At the center of Christ is his life, death, and Resurrection. This is the center from which the authors of these letters are announcing their narrative. Abbot Jeremy considers the proclamation of the Second Reading as “a contemplative moment” (What Happens at Mass 45). The abbot goes on to say:

This is theology, the reflective effort of the first believers to absorb all that had been experienced in the death and Resurrection of Jesus. They unfold its consequences, showing in various ways that the believer is summoned to an unimaginably profound sharing in the Lord’s Passion and so in his victory.

We are attentively engaged with the faith of the early Church. The Holy Spirit inspired them so that we will understand Christ as the center of all history. This is an important point!

We confess Christ not because we have seen him. We confess Christ because of the witness of his apostles! He has allowed us to come to faith through their witness. This expresses the importance that we must be in communion with the Church and the witness of the Apostles. Christ is teaching that “he lives and acts only through her” (What Happens at Mass 47).