Insights into Vatican II’s Reform of the Mass Lectionary from Heinz Schürmann’s Personal Files

The personal documents of the biblical scholar Heinz Schürmann as a member of the commission charged with the elaboration of the Mass lectionary of Vatican II show that this was not an exegetical work which did away with the traditional way the Church used the Bible in the Eucharist, as some critics have recently declared, but an ecclesial endeavor carried out in fidelity to the tradition and rigorous scholarship. My research of Schürmann’s files has shed a personal and original light on the entire process of organizing the new Mass readings. His contributions are multiple, but especially in producing a more biblically Christological lectionary, which would eventually lead to greater unity among the different Christian communities. Schürmann always lamented that biblical scholars were not heard by the overwhelming majority of liturgists. The question of time restrictions on the work of this commission has surfaced as a real concern. Renewed scholarship on figures like Schürmann, who contributed so positively to Vatican II’s liturgical reform, is much needed today to underline the validity and value of such a renewal of today’s Church.