Scripture readings at Mass leave a lot out

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Tis_Bearself

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Does anyone else feel like the Scripture readings at Mass, even if you go to daily Mass and/or keep up with the reading cycle via your missal or USCCB, leave a lot out? Particularly for the OT. The last couple weeks has been the Samuel/ Saul/ David story, and if you hadn’t already read this all the way through in the Bible, the presentation of it in the daily readings is so disjointed that you would just get the barest sense of what is going on. I was thinking, “I know what basically happens because I read this a few times before, but if someone walked in who had never read the Bible, they wouldn’t be able to follow this story.”

The Gospels are shorter, so more gets covered at Mass, plus everybody usually knows the life of Jesus and the parables pretty well from a variety of sources. The rest of the NT consists largely of short lessons for some particular congregation, or short discussions of some particular event in a particular place, so you don’t get the same kind of continuity gap you do with the OT.
 
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I think the OT readings tend to skip out verses and such so that it stays on one theme.

That being said, in today’s reading they skipped out Job 7:5 for no apparent reason.
 
Yeah, I get the thematic thing and how the OT reading is supposed to relate to the Gospel.

As a narrative though, the OT readings are like those previews on TV. “Next week on “King of Israel”” and then they show you 1 minute of highlights scenes like Absalom hanging by the hair and King David breaking down and crying over his son.
 
My problem is Shorter Homilly…the newest priest is taking most of the Masses to gain experience,but…Yesterday was at least good music…today silence…silence is good for prayers…dont get me wrong i wish well,its hard and Who am I when dont know and tottaly ignorant but also wish longer readings and Hommilly
 
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whyeyeman said:
I think the OT readings tend to skip out verses and such so that it stays on one theme.

That being said, in today’s reading they skipped out Job 7:5 for no apparent reason.
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Maybe because “My flesh is clothed with worms and scabs; my skin cracks and festers” doesn’t help anyone – who doesn’t already know the story – understand it better (and might think that Job’s lament is all about himself)! 🤷‍♂️
Tis_Bearself said:
As a narrative though, the OT readings are like those previews on TV. “Next week on “King of Israel”” and then they show you 1 minute of highlights scenes like Absalom hanging by the hair and King David breaking down and crying over his son.
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LOL! Yeah, in a way, that’s what it feels like. But, we’d never get through all the breadth of Scriptural material that we get through, if we read each and every verse along the way. (Alternately, it would mean that we’d have ten-minute-long readings each day!)
Kts1816 said:
My problem is Shorter Homily… wish longer readings and Homily
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To be fair, my sense is that you’re in the minority.

In any case, keep in mind two things:
  • Priests are taught that daily homilies are supposed to be shorter than Sunday homilies. He’s doing what he’s been taught.
  • Mass isn’t a Bible study class. There is Scripture present, and the priest does talk about the Scripture of the day, but his main goal isn’t simply to explain the Scripture – it’s to relate it to our present experience, and point us (through the Scriptures) to the Eucharist!
So, if we wish a better understanding of Scripture than we’re getting at Mass, maybe that’s the Holy Spirit’s way of prodding us to ask for a Bible study at our parish – or even, to volunteer to help coordinate one! 😉
 
Yes, they do have a lot of Bible studies at the parishes now, I’ve noticed. I wonder how many people attend them?
I’ve never been to one because it was easier to just read the Bible and commentary on my own, especially if one’s main interest was to understand the stuff in the Bible and the meaning and context in which it was written (the fig tree story thread is a good example of the info I’m most interested in) and not so much for me to spend extra time contemplating how the Bible relates to my life. As you said, the priest at Mass gives a homily on that, and if one is attending regular Masses including at least some weekday Masses, then one gets those lessons at Mass.

The last Scripture study program I attended was back in the early 90s and I think was for Lenten preparation and it was a lot of “share with the group your feelings on what this reading is about”.
 
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What means i am in minority?
I spoke of Sunday homilly,daily is clear.
Yeah,mass is not a Bible study.
 
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The overwhelming majority of the hundreds of people I’ve spoken to about this think the Sunday Mass homily is usually too long.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
Does anyone else feel like the Scripture readings at Mass, even if you go to daily Mass and/or keep up with the reading cycle via your missal or USCCB, leave a lot out? Particularly for the OT.
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I was told that for Sundays about 3% of the OT is read. I don’t know what the weekday readings bring that up to.
 
I know that some people think we hear most of the Bible if we attend Mass every day for a 3 year cycle but there is a lot that is left out. Some entire OT books we never touch (Chronicles I, Judith, Obadiah), some we get less than 10% (Job, Proverbs, Song of Solomon, Maccabees I & II).

We get much more of the NT, from a high of 100% of I John , to almost 90% of the Gospel verses to a low of 32% of the from Revelations.

Interesting statistics here http://catholic-resources.org/Lectionary/Statistics.htm
 
I usually say about Mass that it has two themes. First is to listen to the Word of God, and the second is to eat the Word of God.
 
Nor i.

We had Bible study twice a year for several years. Typically the first one or 2 sessions were 40ish people dwindling to 15-20 folk who actually wanted a Bible Study by the end.
 
Maybe some year I’ll try one again. I’m doing okay on my own with the Great Adventure Reading Plan, although I didn’t really need a plan to tell me to start by reading Genesis and Exodus all the way through. At least it skips Leviticus which I remember from my past Bible-reading forays as being very dull.
 
My favorite is when you have a weekday reading that gets recycled for Sunday, and you’re like, “Hey! This is a repeat! I feel cheated!” 😛

I think it’s sort of like Sunday School— you don’t just drop your kids off at Sunday School and expect them to learn everything they need to know. You need to make prayer a part of their day, like saying grace, and nighttime prayers, and expose them to the high points. But when you have a First Communion class, and only two kids know how the Our Father goes— it kind of suggests the parents aren’t really doing anything to supplement religious education at home.

The same thing for the Mass, I think. If your only experience with scripture-and-other-writings is what you hear at church, you’re missing out… so its up to you to supplement what you hear at church with your own reading. Especially the Bible. But just being exposed to things like Augustine/Faustina/Lisieux/Aquinas/Avila/de Montfort/de Sales/whoever also helps give you more dimensionality, as you figure out whose perspectives and insights you connect with, and whose fly over your head at this stage in your life, or whatever.

If you read two chapters of the Bible a day, you should be able to read the whole thing straight through in a year or so. Sometimes it slogs a bit— like when the Israelites get into a cycle of wrongdoing and repentance— or Psalm 119— or whatever. Some people like having a formal reading plan that mixes things up— jumping between types of books, or jumping between OT and NT, or whatever.

But, yeah. If you don’t supplement on your own, you miss out on a lot of that middle stuff. Or if you chop up one scenario over the course of two or three or four Sundays, you miss out on how connected the ideas are and how one thing flows into the next thing. So there’s definitely a lot to be said for independent reading.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
I’m doing okay on my own with the Great Adventure Reading Plan, although I didn’t really need a plan to tell me to start by reading Genesis and Exodus all the way through. At least it skips Leviticus which I remember from my past Bible-reading forays as being very dull.
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I like the ‘Great Adventure’ stuff. Are you only following the reading plan, or do you also have access to the videos/CDs? The ‘trick’, I think, is understanding the text in its own context, and not just reading it without anything to aid in understanding.
 
midori said:
My favorite is when you have a weekday reading that gets recycled for Sunday, and you’re like, “Hey! This is a repeat! I feel cheated!” 😛
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Yeah, that drives me nuts too. I have to remind myself that probably 90 percent of the Sunday Mass crowd wasn’t at the weekday Mass, so didn’t hear it.
But seriously, there is plenty of Scripture to choose from…no need for a repeat.
 
I’m just using the reading plan. The CDs cost an awful lot. I could probably find a church near me offering the course and try to sign up, but I travel quite a bit and would likely miss sessions, so I thought I’d just begin by reading. Reading Scripture for 1/2 hour is the only plenary indulgenced activity that doesn’t have to be done at a church, so on those days when I cannot get to church early enough to pray Rosary or Staitons before Mass and they want to lock up right after Mass and the Adoration chapels are not open, I read the Scripture at home instead, and I wanted to do it in a more structured way than just flipping open to whatever book struck my fancy. Plus I haven’t read the Bible straight through since I was a teenager which was sadly a long time ago, so I figured it was time for a re-run.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
I’m just using the reading plan. The CDs cost an awful lot. I could probably find a church near me offering the course and try to sign up, but I travel quite a bit and would likely miss sessions, so I thought I’d just begin by reading.
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It’s a good start.

However, with a lack of understanding of context, it’s pretty difficult to understand what the text is saying (and pretty easy to misunderstand it, given that we come from a Western, 21st-century perspective).
 
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