FOTA X: First session, talk ii

For our second talk of the morning, refreshed by our coffee, we heard Gregory DiPippo on the Patristic Sources of the Roman Lectionary in Lent.  Again what I write is my memory based on my notes.  It is not verbatim nor is it exhaustive.  If Markus Bünning had a strong German accent Gregory DiPippo had a fast and soft spoken American one but I managed to understand both of them, mostly.

There was so much in Mr DiPippo's presentation that it is impossible to do it justice.   I look forward to reading the final article.  Using the two of the oldest surviving liturgical texts of the Roman Rite, the lectionaries of Wurzburg (Wurzburg Capitulary, c.700) and Rohrbach.  These lectionaries are from about 250 years after the era of the Great Fathers of the Church.  They reflect the readings used by the Roman Church as the Pope visited the various station churches in the city during Lent to offer Mass.  Mr DiPippo showed how the Church in Roman meditated on and used the readings to make connections not only to the mystery of Christ but also to events in the history the Church and her ancient conflict with Judaism as well as the ongoing struggle against heresy.

Here in the readings were the echoes of the Church's own ancient origins.  In the lectionary and in the  history of how the Church has used scripture in the Liturgy we have the finest commentary on those scriptures.  There is always more than meets the eye in the texts and the contexts of their use by the Church.  As Mr DiPippo remarked there's a book (perhaps more than one) in all of this.