Immersed in the Word: Liturgy of the Word, Part II

Every family needs to be reminded of its history - its story. The family story binds present generations to past and future generations. It grounds us, gives us our identity, and offers direction for our lives.

In our country today, for example, we don’t just acknowledge that the majority of us are immigrants or descendants of immigrants. We celebrate this fact! From St. Patrick’s Day to Cinco de Mayo, from OktoberFest to Kwanzaa - every cultural holiday in our country reminds us of how and why our families came here.

But these celebrations lose all meaning if we don’t allow our family’s stories to form us, and to give direction to our lives. It’s not enough to just talk about what our ancestors did years or generations ago. We talk about these things so that we can pick up the story where they left off.

In our previous newsletter we talked about how, in the Liturgy of the Word, we as a Church celebrate our story as God’s family. We hear the Word proclaimed in the Readings and the Gospel. And we respond to the Word through the Responsorial Psalm and the Gospel Acclamation.

From celebrating our story as God’s family, we must then learn to take up our role in that story. That’s what the second movement of the Liturgy of the Word is all about: personal appropriation.

There are three aspects to the movement of personal appropriation in the Liturgy of the Word. Here they are briefly:

Personal Appropriation
1)     The Homily
Drawing from the main theme of the day’s liturgy – as proclaimed in the Old Testament and Gospel readings, and emphasized in the Responsorial Psalm – the priest breaks open God’s Word for us in the homily. Relying on the Scriptures, the Catechism, and the example of the saints, he applies the core message of the day to our lives in the modern world, helping us to appropriate Jesus’ teaching in our own lives today.

2)     The Profession of Faith
In the Profession of Faith we recite either the Apostle’s Creed or the Nicene Creed as a community. Pope St. John Paul II referred to this as an “inner renewal of our baptismal promises,” a renewal that is “implicit in the recitation of the Creed,” but made explicit during the Easter season. It is important that we recite the Creed attentively, because what we believe determines how we live.

3)     The Prayer of the Faithful
Once we have appropriated God’s word to our own lives, we then look outside of ourselves and see the needs of our neighbors. This movement out of ourselves and into the broader human family leads us to a prayer of intercession. In the Prayer of the Faithful we apply God’s Word to the world today, asking our heavenly Father to provide for the needs of our neighbor. This prayer serves to close the Liturgy of the Word and connect it to the Liturgy of the Eucharist.
 
Yes. Every family has its stories. These stories not only shape us as a family, but also remind us of our responsibilities as members of the family. As Pope St. John Paul II said, the Liturgy of the Word is “a dialogue in which the wonders of salvation are proclaimed and the demands of the Covenant [membership in God’s family] are continually restated. On their part, the People of God are drawn to respond to this dialogue of love by… demonstrating their fidelity to the task of continual ‘conversion.’” (Dies Domini, 41). Love has its demands, but the demands themselves are freeing, if only we conform ourselves to them willingly.