Proclaiming the Scriptures
God is present at Mass. This is the heart of Christian worship. We make big claims about it. Indeed, the Christian tradition asserts that, in the Eucharist, we encounter not bread and wine, like it appears, but Jesus himself ― truly and substantially.
But there’s a sense in which, despite our big claims, Catholics can still sometimes minimize God’s presence at Mass. There’s a temptation to imagine that God is only present in the Eucharist, that the Mass only gets to its real action during the consecration. The Eucharist is God’s substantial presence among us. Everything around it must be dressing, right?
This is decidedly wrong.
The Second Vatican Council teaches that Jesus is actually present in four ways at Mass.1 He is present (1) in the assembly of gathered Christians. Indeed, “where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Mt 18:20). The Council also teaches that Jesus is present “in the person of his minister” ― (2) the priest who acts in persona Christi [“in the person of Christ”]. Of course, Jesus is “especially” present (3) in the Eucharist. This is his substantial presence, and it is preeminent.
But we should not look at the Eucharist with a tunnel vision that excludes our recognizing Jesus’s other sacramental presences, one that blinds us to the Mass’s full mystery. Indeed, Jesus is lastly present, and in a powerful way, (4) in the proclaimed scriptures. “He is present in his word,” the Council says, “since it is he himself who speaks when the holy scriptures are read.”
This is not some insignificant bit of presence, something to hand-wave at so we can just get on with the transubstantiating. When the scriptures are proclaimed at Mass, we do not merely hear descriptions of things Jesus formerly said and did. That’s what happens when we read the scriptures at home. At Mass, when the scriptures are proclaimed, those events, in some mysterious way, happen now.
That may seem strange or improbable. But that is precisely what the tradition holds about the Mass. The Mass makes present not just Jesus himself, but also the events, actions, and words of his life. In a famous fifth-century homily, Pope Saint Leo the Great put it this way: “that which till [the Ascension] was visible of our Redeemer was [subsequently] changed into a sacramental presence.”2 And it is just this sacramental presence that we encounter at each Mass.
How can we clarify this?
It’s not that, when the readings are proclaimed, these events occur again. We are, rather, mysteriously brought into contact with or placed in the presence of those one-time events of 2,000 years ago. The events of Jesus’s life, having occurred just once in Galilee, have not died away with the passing of time. They have, instead, found a new home in the sacraments.
This is what the liturgy is. This is what happens at Mass. And this is what the readings do. They make us contemporaries with the events that are proclaimed. The liturgist Msgr. Kevin Irwin put it this way: “Whenever we proclaim the scriptures, what is described is fulfilled in our hearing. What the text proclaims about the words and deeds of Jesus happens to and for us now.”3
And so, when we hear the scriptures proclaimed — Jesus’s healing of the ten lepers, for instance — and respond with “thanks be to God” or “praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ,” this is not some throw-away expression of piety. On the contrary, our thanks and praise are just as present to Jesus as the thanks and praise of the single leper who, in that passage, “fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks” (Lk 17:15-16). We are there. It happens now. And it is you who is healed. Not metaphorically, but really. Not figuratively, but sacramentally.
Vatican II, Sacrosanctum Concilium, §7.
St. Leo the Great, Sermon 74: “On the Lord’s Ascension,” 74.2.
Kevin W. Irwin, Responses to 101 Questions on the Mass (New York: Paulist Press, 1999), 66.