Abbreviated Readings

[JMJ_coder]

What is the rationale behind the abbreviated readings – you know the ones that being for a shorter reading omit the stuff in the brackets ].

I’ve heard that it is for those who are constrained for time. I can understand that in places like China where you are under the gun to evade the authorities who’ve outlawed you. But, that is not the case in most of the world (certainly not in the U.S. or Europe.)

Then there are readings like the Epistle for this Sunday – Ephesians 5:21-32 – where it seems the omission is there because of uneasiness (people don’t like to hear about subordination). But, in such as case would not the Church have even more the obligation to proclaim the Scriptures, even in the face of uneasiness and being contrary to modern sensibilities?

 

[whatevergirl]

*I wondered myself! How ironic to stumble upon your thread. I started a similiar thread in the Sacred Scripture section…I was disappointed to see the shortening of Ephesians today. Wives have great reponsibilities to their husbands, as husbands do to their wives. I am curious as to why the part about wives being subordinate was completely left out, also. *

 

[FrDavid96]

What is the rationale behind the abbreviated readings – you know the ones that being for a shorter reading omit the stuff in the brackets ].

I’ve heard that it is for those who are constrained for time. I can understand that in places like China where you are under the gun to evade the authorities who’ve outlawed you. But, that is not the case in most of the world (certainly not in the U.S. or Europe.)

Then there are readings like the Epistle for this Sunday – Ephesians 5:21-32 – where it seems the omission is there because of uneasiness (people don’t like to hear about subordination). But, in such as case would not the Church have even more the obligation to proclaim the Scriptures, even in the face of uneasiness and being contrary to modern sensibilities?

As for the second part, I agree with you that the Church shouldn’t be “skipping” parts of a reading simply because it’s politically incorrect. I do think this waters-down the scripture. Most especially given what happened in the Gospel today. Some people said “this is hard, how can we accept it?” and walked away from Christ (He wasn’t being very politically correct). The part that was removed from the Epistle did little to shorten the reading, and it wasn’t a distraction from the main topic either; it harmonized with the rest of it.

As for the general idea of providing a “short form” sometimes this can be helpful. It doesn’t happen all that often, and when it does it’s usually in a very long reading (but not always so as we saw today). Sometimes those long readings can simply “drag on” because the important part is at the beginning and the end. That’s not to say that what’s in the middle isn’t important, but sometimes it’s just a matter of a different topic for a different day.

Sometimes if a reading is too long, the length itself can become a bit of a distraction. It’s not that we can’t take the extra minute or two for the reading, but it’s more of a matter of we have a certain programmed “attention span” for the readings, and if it goes too long without being truly necessary, we start to lose focus. It’s like singing too many verses of a hymn when we sit there and say to ourselves “oh no, they started another one!” The Passion for example is a long Gospel but we know as we’re listening to it that every part is important. It’s not always that way with the epistles or the other Gospel selections.

The verses of Scripture aren’t always exactly arranged to give us one story or one theme at a time in neat little blocks that fit well into a lectionary. Sometimes the Church addresses that by skipping certain verses outright, other times it’s left up to the priest to decide to skip them. I think that a lot of times, if the Lectionary simply omitted the verses without giving the option of long vs short, we’d never notice–in fact when that does happen, we usually don’t notice. The opposite is also true: if we weren’t programmed to expect a short form whenever the reading takes up more than about 2/3 of a page, we’d probably not pay as much notice to the length.

 

[japhy]

I tend to think it was offered (for passages like the one from last Sunday) for “pastoral” reasons. Unless the reading is exceptionally long, I don’t like abbreviating the readings.

I also don’t like the practice in the current Lectionary of skipping over “hard” verses, like the ones at the end of 1 Cor 11 (27-29) which talk about the necessity of being properly disposed to receive Holy Communion. They are read on Holy Thursday and Corpus Christi in the Extraordinary Form, but they are never read in the Ordinary Form.

 

[Mrs_Sally]

There are many instances even in the US when an abbreviated reading could be appropriate–Masses or communion services at a nursing home come to mind.

As Fr David said there are many instances when the readings in the lectionary skip verses or contain only part of what you might consider a whole passage. Because there aren’t options for those days, we don’t always notice.

We should also be careful to realize that if a shorter form is offered in the lectionary, it is a perfectly legitimate option. The priest is not ‘changing’ the reading or ‘skipping’ or ‘taking the easy way out’ if he chooses that version. Sometimes there is an entirely different focus that he wants to bring out and so chooses the shorter reading for clarity. For example, this Sunday was the culmination of John 6. A priest may have chosen the shorter Epistle so that the congregation wouldn’t be distracted by that reading and not focused on his other message.

There are many other readings about marriage and other times that our responsibilities to each other can be brought out.

 

[Digitonomy]

How often does it happen that a verse is added to the short form, which is not found in the long form, such as Eph 5:2a yesterday?

Is the lectionary identical in every language, with choice of long and short readings?

Are there long and short forms in Eastern lectionaries, and do the prescribed readings also routinely skip verses?

 

[peregrinus_sg]

Is the lectionary identical in every language, with choice of long and short readings?

Although all lectionaries in the Roman Rite are supposed to conform to the Latin editio typica (in this case, the Ordo Lectionum Missae, editio typica altera of 1981), Bishops’ Conferences can make some adaptations with the approval of the Holy See. I suspect that the option for a shorter form is an adaptation made by the US Catholic Bishops. In the Lectionary published for the United Kingdom (the one that uses the Jerusalem Bible with the 1963 Grail Psalms), there is no shorter option available this past Sunday. We read the whole passage, wives and husbands and all.