The Alleluia Verse from today’s readings:

Alleluia, alleluia.
Receive the word of God, not as the word of men,
but, as it truly is, the word of God.
Alleluia, alleluia.

This is such a great call to attend to the Word for what it is – the Word of God – and therefore be subject to it, rather than it subject to us.

I remember some years ago, about twenty probably, chatting with some Religious Education teaching colleagues who were horrified at my comment that: “No, I don’t think it’s appropriate to use something from Anthony De Mello’s book The Prayer of the Frog as an alternative to scripture for the First Reading at Mass”. The response of “You can’t seriously suggest that poetry or some other piece of meaningful literature can’t be used in this place” was met with “No!” Doesn’t this conversation illustrate for us the need to understand and appreciate the Word for what it is: the Word of God! Our Alleluia verse asks us to do this.

In a couple of schools where I was the Religious Education Coordinator/Director of Religious Education, I tried (mostly with a great lack of success and against some strong opposition) to encourage staff to use the ‘readings of the day’ or prayers from the ‘Mass of the day’ for the times that we prayed together. Among the arguments I used to support this approach, apart from that it would allow us to join in harmony with the rest of the praying Church, was that it is vitally important for a Christian to be formed by the Word of God rather than employing the Word of God to make a point. When we always pick readings to suit a ‘theme’, or select a prayer or reading that ‘says something nice’, then we limit the Word’s capacity to form us, and as a consequence will never grow in the Christian life.

There is great merit in placing ourselves in the presence of the Word across the liturgical year, rather than placing the Word at our disposal across the less ordered nature of our years. To do the former is to let God be God in our lives, while the latter tells God who we’d like God to be.