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Speak, Lord; thy servant is listening. 1 Kings 3
At this point in the Mass, we get on to something quite fresh; I mean, when we get on to the Epistle and Gospel. Everywhere else, nearly, we are talking to God, just now and again exchanging a Dominus vobiscum, or something of that kind, with one another. But in the Epistle and the Gospel we are letting God speak to us. It is an awful mistake to think that at this point we can take the thing easily; that we have heard all this hundreds of times before, and even if we hadn't we could always look it up; what is the sense of having that very long Gospel about the end of the world (it isn't about the end of the world really, it's about the destruction of Jerusalem) when we are all rather hungry for breakfast, which our insides are accustomed to taking at eight? All that is a mistake; we ought to follow the Epistle and Gospel on Sundays, anyhow, when it's read in English; why does the Church want it to be read in English if we don't listen to it? And even on week-days the Epistle and Gospel are worth following, though you may not want to follow the whole Mass. That is especially true in Lent, when we get a fresh Epistle and Gospel every day.
By the way, I forgot to tell you something.
Occasionally, but not often, and never on Sundays, you get things called " Prophecies " which come in between the Kyrie eleison and the Collects. If the Gloria is being said on a day of that kind, these Prophecies come before the Gloria. You can generally tell when it is happening, because there is generally a bit of a scrap between the priest and the server. Having got through the first Prophecy, the server says Deo gratias, and comes round and tries to take the book away from the priest, thinking that this is the end of the Epistle. And the priest has to explain that it is a false alarm, we haven't nearly got on to the Epistle yet. Sometimes there are quite a lot of them; on Holy Saturday there are twelve, and the last is a very long one, all about Nabuchodonosor and the band. Originally, I imagine, Mass always started with these long chunks of the Old Testament-the Prophecies always come from the Old Testament to remind Christians of the origins they sprang from; to remind them that if they had still been Jews, instead of becoming Christians, they would have far longer and more frequent readings from the Old Testament, and it would have been much worse. I am not quite sure whether you will still be infesting the place on Wednesday the 19th; but if so you will come in for Prophecies at Mass, or rather for a single Prophecy. When I've finished the Kyrie I go straight over to the book, without any Dominus vobiscum, and say Flectamus genua, which means " Let us bend our knees ", genuflecting as I do so. And the person who is answering, if it's somebody terrifically on the spot, will answer Levate, which means " Get up ". That sounds rather rude, but it's not meant that way; in theory we ought all to be genuflecting, and of course with those rather crowded seats it would be very uncomfortable if you had to stay genuflected for long, so the server says " Get up ". Then I read a rather jolly bit of Isaias, and rather topical just now: " They will melt down their swords into ploughshares, their spears into pruning-hooks, nation levying war against nation and training itself for battle no longer. Come you too (they will say), children of Jacob, let us walk together where the Lord shews us light." And then there is a verse or two from the psalms, and we go on to the Dominus vobiscum and the Collects.
But, as I say, that only happens now and again. The Epistle always happens; what exactly is the point of it? Well, I told you that the Collects were rather like telegrams sent off as a demonstration of loyalty; and I think the Epistle is rather like a letter, as indeed you would expect from its name; I mean, the kind of letter that is written from a long distance away, perhaps from a son in China or somewhere, and consequently has to be read out for the benefit of the whole family at breakfast. Letters in the old days used to arrive in time for breakfast, and in the old days we used to listen to them being read out-we didn't just sit there and say, " Hurry up with that letter, Pop, I want the stamp ". It happens, sometimes, at public gatherings; one of the people on the platform gets up and reads out a letter from the Prime Minister or somebody like that. And sometimes, of course, the bishop sends round a letter that has to be read out in all the parish churches; at the beginning of Advent, for instance. Next Sunday, if you got your deserts, you would have eight or nine pages from the Bishop of Shrewsbury read out at Mass, and your breakfast would be further off than ever. Only we don't do that, partly because this isn't exactly a parish church, and partly because the Bishop is a very nice man, who doesn't fuss one about those things.
Well, of course, that's what St. Paul's letters were; they were addressed not to individuals, Tychicus or Trophimus or Mary Jane, but to a whole local congregation, and no doubt they were read out at Mass; though I hope the Epistle to the Romans was taken in sections, or breakfast must have got very cold indeed. And I suppose, if you come to think of it, they have gone on being read out in church from that day to this. That Epistle we had this morning was part of a letter St. Paul wrote to the Christians at Colossae, about A.D. 6o; and I suppose the Colossians said, " That's rather a jolly bit, let's have that again next Sunday "; and then somehow it got into the calendar and we still read it every year, as a kind of pastoral Epistle from St. Paul to us, as if St. Paul were still alive and still living at Rome. And because it's all such a family affair, reading out loud a letter we have just received from the dear apostle, we slack off a bit. Everything, you notice, goes slack at the Epistle. At High Mass, when there is one of those long Sequences before the Gospel, the priest may go and sit down, if he likes; and even at Low Mass, though he doesn't sit down, he is behaving rather casually while the Epistle and the things which immediately follow it are being read, the priest just hangs on to the edge of the book. That is the only part of the Mass, if you come to think of it, where the priest isn't holding his hands joined, or spread apart, or in some other artificial position dictated to him by the rubrics. When the Epistle comes, he stands easy; just puts his hands anyhow.
So let's try and think of the Epistle, always, as a personal letter sent to us from St. Paul, or one of the other apostles, who is a long way away, but still very much interested in us. Take that Epistle this morning -there's nothing there, I think, St. Paul wouldn't be wanting to say, isn't wanting to say, to you or me. " We have been praying for you," he says, " unceasingly"; of course he has; the saints in Heaven go on praying all the time, and they pray for all Christian people. He has been praying that you and I may have a closer knowledge of God's will; that you and I may live as God's servants, waiting continually on his pleasure; that you and I may be inspired with full strength, to be patient and to endure; isn't that nice of him? We feel inclined to say" Hurrah! " at the end of it; only we don't say it; we just think "Hurrah! " when the server says Deo gratias.
I don't think we'll worry much about the short prayers that come just after the Epistle. They really belong to sung Mass; and in old days the sacred ministers just sat there and fanned themselves while the choir had its day out; there was no business of people bowing to one another and carting candles about while the choir was singing. In old days, too, it was a full psalm; we should have had twenty six verses of Gradual this morning. It was called the Gradual because the man who intoned the psalm was mounted on a high step; Latin, gradus, a step. Of course it is sung very gradually indeed, in churches where they sing plain chant; but that has got nothing to do with it. At Low Mass, it helps by giving the server time to come round and take the book away after the priest has looked round and caught his eye, or laid his hand on the altar, as some priests do. I forgot to mention that that gesture is the only gesture in the Mass which isn't prescribed by the rubrics; it's just a private hint to shew that the Epistle is over.
And then the Gospel. The most obvious thing about the Gospel is that it is read at the wrong side of the altar, at its northern end; nothing ever happens there at Mass except the Gospel and the last Gospel. One is apt to be a little surprised at that, because the Gospel is obviously of terrific importance in the Mass, so why should it always be sung or said on the left-hand side? The answer to that, I think, is that it is really the right-hand side. You are thinking of it as the left-hand side because it is on the priest's left. But you ought to think of the altar as God's throne; you ought to learn, in this and everything else, to look at things from God's point of view. Think of God sitting throned over the altar, with our Blessed Lord on his right hand, and you will see why the Gospel of Jesus Christ is read out from that side. Or think of the crucifix which stands over the altar -it was on our Lord's right, according to the pictures, that the Penitent Thief was crucified; and that explains why the Gospel of pardon is read just there. At High Mass, there is a great deal of ceremonial here, and a procession with candles and incense, and the sub-deacon turning himself into a sort of human reading-desk, so that the deacon can get a good look.
At Low Mass the thing is all rather telescoped, but you can tell something important is happening all the same.
The priest prepares himself for the reading of the Gospel by saying two prayers, as he bows to the Cross on his way over from one side to the other. They both ask that he may have the right kind of heart and the right kind of lips for proclaiming the holy Gospel. In theory, you see, the deacon or priest who reads out the Gospel is doing what the Christian ministry exists to do before everything else-he is preaching Christ. I always wonder whether the idea of the Gospel being read at the north end of the chancel may not have been partly due to the fact that Christianity started in the south; I mean, it was the south of the known world. Our religion started in Palestine, spread in Asia Minor and round the Mediterranean. For a long time, it seemed like a kind of Polar expedition to preach the Gospel of Christ to Russians, or Germans, or the inhabitants of Britain. All those dreadful heathen people up in the cold north-perhaps that was how the deacon was meant to think of it, as he shouted the day's Gospel at the northern wall of the sanctuary. And I think it is a good thing for us, when we see him doing that, to reflect on God's mercy in calling us, calling improbable people like us, to be Christians.
In order to preach the Gospel well, the ministers of Christ want to have pure hearts and pure lips. Pure hearts, because in proportion as their consciences reproach them with the kind of life they are living, the kind of thoughts they are thinking, in that proportion they will feel false inside, and to feel false inside means a want of conviction about the handing on of your message. Pure lips, because it is on the whole by what we say, and the way in which we say it, that other people judge our characters; and if the priest is given to backbiting, to outbursts of anger in his speech, to boasting, to flattery, to grousing, to lying, to blasphemy, to unseemly talk, he is not likely to impress the people who listen to his sermons. That does not apply only to the clergy. Every Christian is preaching Christ, every day, by the life he or she lives, by the words he or she utters, from day to day; you are all the time unconsciously influencing other people. Don't try to influence other people CONSCIOUSLY, to talk good and put on airs of goodness; it will only turn you into a prig, and your friends will see through it. Try to live near to our Lord; get inside the thought of what his words mean, live on that model, so that you may be a friend of his, so that you may be the kind of person he feels at home with. Then, unconsciously, you will influence other people. In this nasty, wind-swept world, in which charity has gone cold and there is a frost of winter all about us, your life will be a glow of love; a faint glow, perhaps, but one at which other people can just warm their hands. Now, at the beginning of it, say Gloria tibi, Domine, as the server says at the beginning of the Gospel; try and dedicate it, the whole of it, to God's glory. Then, when you come to the end of it, your last thoughts will be of thankfulness for having been allowed to live it, and you will say Laus tibi, Christe, as the server says at the end of the Gospel, " Praise be to thee, O Christ".
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