Did you parish celebrate the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time as the Sunday of the Word of God? And if you did, was there anything different about the Liturgy? What did your parish do, either at Mass or otherwise?
Last year was the very first time for this new addition to the 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time. I asked that parishioners bring their home Bible to Mass to be blessed. After the Universal Prayer and as a part of the closing prayer of the Intercessions, we asked all to raise their Bibles for the blessing and then the Bibles were blessed with Holy Water.
At the Mass, the Gospel was chanted.
This year, I forgot to ask people to bring their Bibles from home to be blessed. So all I did was to chant the Gospel. Our tradition at St. Anne’s is to repeat the Alleluia after the Gospel. I know this is reserved only for the bishop at Mass, (and this is just between you and me) but I blessed the congregation with the closed Book of the Gospel as the second alleluia was sung.
That was it—no other novelty for the Mass, except in my introduction to my homily I explained it was the Word of God Sunday and the Word of God must take root in our hearts and show forth in our actions, faith and good works.
And you???????
2 comments:
The single most powerful thing that can be done by priests to renew the priesthood is the self-emptying sacrifice of celebrating the sacred liturgy just as it has been handed down to us by Holy Mother Church, the Bride of Christ. Would that this would become the first order of business as it would be the beginning of the cleaning up of the mess in which we find ourselves now.
The functionaries continue to create new "special" days and years on autopilot. We recently were, or are still currently, in the midst of 3-4 years of (fill in the blank, but pretty sure Pizza Hut is one of them). These have the same stultifying effects as mass rote mumbled prayer events substituting for true heartfelt prayer buried under all the weight of congregational exercises. Am eagerly awaiting a Sunday dedicated to all the special Sundays of the year, and a Year of Remembering All The Years.
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