THE EPISTLE & GOSPEL READINGS
Up until the eighth century, the daily readings commenced with Old Testament readings, both from the Torah (first five books of the Bible) and from the Prophets. The Church, in creating a liturgical calendar of readings from Scripture, followed the Jewish Temple practice. We can witness Christ participating in this liturgical cycle of readings in the Gospel of Luke: “And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up: and He entered, as his custom was, into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. And there was delivered unto Him the book of the prophet Isaiah” (Luke 3:16-17). When Christ simultaneously read and fulfilled this prophecy of Isaiah, He was reading the Prophecy that was appointed for the day. As the Church came to recognize the four different Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as well as the Apostolic epistles also as Scripture, those readings were integrated into the cycle of readings, with the exception of The Revelation (or Apocalypse) of St. John, which was finally accepted into the New Testament canon only after the cycle of what we now call the New Testament readings was established.
Considering myself to be still among the youngest of the brethren, and hence less experienced then many, I approached this subject with fear and trembling ... not as much because I knew that this paper was going to be presented before the Bishop and my brother priests, but more so because, as are all things, it is presented before God, who is the one to whom we must answer for our every word. In thinking about this enormous topic, I drew from my experience growing up in this country and serving the Church in my adult life in various capacities for now 20 years. This includes my work as a lay person as well as my service to the Church as a priest. The seriousness of this subject is one which causes the most fear, because more and more each day I am convinced that the influence of what is commonly called secularism on the work of the priest and parish is greater and greater. Having heard the presentation of Fr. Petar Jovanovic on this subject, I have chosen to focus my presentation on The Work of the Priest and Pastoral Ministry in our contemporary American secular society. The question I hope to address is: How did the parish, and hence the role of the priest get to be what it is during century in the United States - What some have called the Missionary period - which was the bringing together of "our people" who fled their homes after the catastrophe of what befell the "old country."