Today’s first reading from Nehemiah describes a Jewish “Liturgy of the Word.” Since Christianity started out as a Jewish sectarian movement our Liturgy of the Word is very similar to what is described in this first reading.
The Jewish people gathered in the Courtyard of the Temple in Jerusalem where Ezra the scribe read from the “Book of the Law of Moses,” or Torah. The Torah consists of the first five books of the Old Testament. It is much more than a list of “do’s and don’ts. The Torah contains the story of how God created human beings in God’s image and likeness and how God declared this creation “very good” (Genesis 1:26-27, 31). It tells the story of how God redeemed Israel from slavery in Egypt (Exodus) and how God choose Israel to be a people peculiarly his own “because the Lord loved them” (Deuteronomy 7:6-8).
The Psalmist proclaims that to meditate of this Torah is a source of joy and life:
“Happy are those their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law, they meditate day and night. They are like trees planted by streams of water…their leaves do not wither.” (Psalm 1:1-3).
Today is the memorial of the great biblical scholar St. Jerome. He translated the Torah into Latin so that the people of his day could understand the Scripture since most could no longer understand the Hebrew or Greek versions. Our Scripture and our liturgical books always need to be translated into the common language of the people to insure the “full and active participation by all people” as the Second Vatican Council declared:
In the restoration and promotion of the sacred liturgy, this full and active participation by all the people is the aim to be considered before all else; for it is the primary and indispensable source from which the faithful are to derive the true Christian spirit” (“Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy,” #14).