Please help, quick question: New Testament reading

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VeritasLuxMea

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I have to do a New Testament reading at a Catholic wedding today (not a gospel reading). I don’t usually do readings at Mass and for some reason I’m drawing a total blank about this!!! Maybe it’s just my nerves.

I forget how the beginning and the end works. Is there anything you say at the beginning or the end, besides the reading?

Do you say “The word of the Lord. [Congregation: Thanks be to God.”] at the end? Or is it something else?

I will ask the Deacon, but I don’t want to look like an idiot!
 
The General Introduction to the Lectionary gives the following rules. For the beginning:
121. The formula to be used is always: “A reading from the Book of. . .” "A reading from the Letter of . . . " or "A reading from the holy Gospel according to . . . " and not: "The beginning of. . . " (unless this seems advisable in particular instances) nor: “The continuation of. . . .”
  1. The traditionally accepted titles for books are to be retained with the following exceptions.
    1. Where there are two books with the same name, the title is to be: The first Book, The second Book (for example, of Kings, of Maccabees) or The first Letter, The second Letter.
    [*]The title more common in current usage is to be accepted for the following books:
    Code: 
     —1 and 2 Samuel instead of 1 and 2 Kings;
 —1 and 2 Kings instead of 3 and 4 Kings;
 —1 and 2 Chronicles instead of 1 and 2 Paralipomenon;
 —the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah instead of 1 and 2 Ezra.
    [*]The distinguishing titles for the wisdom books are: Book of Job, Book of Proverbs, Book of Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Book of Wisdom, and Book of Sirach.
    [*]For all the books that are included among the prophets in the Neo-Vulgate, the formula is to be: “A reading from the Book of the prophet Isaiah, or of the prophet Jeremiah or of the prophet Baruch” and: “A reading from the Book of the prophet Ezekiel, of the prophet Daniel, of the prophet Hosea, of the prophet Malachi,” even in the case of books not regarded by some as being in actual fact prophetic.
    [*]The title is to be Book of Lamentations and Letter to the Hebrews, with no mention of Jeremiah or Paul.​
    For the end, “The word of the Lord. [R/ Thanks be to God.]”.
In practice, then, for the introductory formula, this yields the following examples, with the distinctions to be carefully noted:
  • A reading from the Book of Genesis.
  • A reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah.
  • A reading from the Acts of the Apostles.
  • A reading from the Letter to the Hebrews.
  • A reading from the Letter of Saint Paul to the Galatians.
  • A reading from the second Letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians.
And so on.
 
All the words you need to say are most probably in the lectionary.

It will have…

“A reading from the Acts of the Apostles” (for example)

Then the reading

And then

“This is the word of the Lord” (in our lectionary, these have all been amended, by pen, to “The word of the Lord”).

The layout is clear as to what is to be read, and what is structural, however it is more likely that you will incorrectly speak some words which should not be spoken (eg. “The responsorial psalm”) than omit words, so be careful of this.

All readers, no matter how experienced, try to rehearse by speaking it aloud at home, several times. This is very important for your confidence, and also to be prepared for any tricky words. You should attempt to find the translation that you will use - presumable NAB, which can be found at the USCCB lectionary.

I also recommend that you arrive a few minutes early to familiarise yourself with the layout of the readings in the book itself. I have been caught out just because there was a page turn, at an important point, that I wasn’t ready for, and my inflection was all wrong 🙂
 
Edmundus1581 said:
All the words you need to say are most probably in the lectionary.
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Many times, at least in my experience, the Lectionary isn’t used in cases like weddings and funerals. It can be somewhat hard for an unexperienced reader to navigate perfectly, and putting the available choices in a binder or on a website allows the couple (or next of kin) more easily to choose what they want and give it to people to prepare.

I definitely agree about speaking it out loud a few times, and make sure you use a pronouncing dictionary like this one or this one if there’s any name you’re not 110% sure of, including things like where the accented syllable lies (you don’t want to make a giant blunder like Co-lo-SEE-unz instead of Co-LAH-shunz, or Phi-li-PEE-unz instead of Phi-LIP-ee-unz, for instance).
 
Stopping back in to report that it went off without a hitch!

Here’s the real kicker: before you all answered, I had forgotten what the ending was: “The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God”, but I know almost the entire passage from Corinthians by heart! (Well the NAB version of it, or whichever Bible we’re using now). Isn’t that funny?

Anyway, it was great, got a number of compliments on the way that I read. The key is to deliberately be as slow as possible, in my opinion. As slow as you think you’re going, chances are you are STILL rushing through it. Just take it very slow and enunciate every word. I find that with passages like the one I read from Corinthians, there is a lot of power in the words, and the slower you do it, the more people can reflect on them.

But the more important thing is that the wedding was excellent, bride and groom are thrilled and I’m very excited to have a new cousin-in-law, who might as well have been my sister long before the wedding occurred! 👍
 
VeritasLuxMea said:
Stopping back in to report that it went off without a hitch!

Here’s the real kicker: before you all answered, I had forgotten what the ending was: “The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God”, but I know almost the entire passage from Corinthians by heart! (Well the NAB version of it, or whichever Bible we’re using now). Isn’t that funny?

Anyway, it was great, got a number of compliments on the way that I read. The key is to deliberately be as slow as possible, in my opinion. As slow as you think you’re going, chances are you are STILL rushing through it. Just take it very slow and enunciate every word. I find that with passages like the one I read from Corinthians, there is a lot of power in the words, and the slower you do it, the more people can reflect on them.

But the more important thing is that the wedding was excellent, bride and groom are thrilled and I’m very excited to have a new cousin-in-law, who might as well have been my sister long before the wedding occurred! 👍
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Thanks for the report! 😃
 
VeritasLuxMea said:
Anyway, it was great, got a number of compliments on the way that I read. The key is to deliberately be as slow as possible, in my opinion. As slow as you think you’re going, chances are you are STILL rushing through it. Just take it very slow and enunciate every word. I find that with passages like the one I read from Corinthians, there is a lot of power in the words, and the slower you do it, the more people can reflect on them.

/quote]
please consider helping to instruct readers at your own parish, why why don’t they get told this all important fact?
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puzzleannie said:
please consider helping to instruct readers at your own parish, why why don’t they get told this all important fact?
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I greatly prefer to have things read at a normal, human pace, rather than in the super-slow style that some people think sounds “Biblical.” That’s just me, though. 🙂
 
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