Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Harry Potter and the Catholic Cycle of Readings

I'm hoping I wasn't the only Catholic Harry Potter fan whose ears pricked up at today's Feast of the Assumption mass. The second reading was from the First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians, chapter 15, and included this line from verse 26: "The last enemy to be defeated is death."

Hey, I thought, that's from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows!

Well, OK, Paul wasn't quoting J.K. Rowling; it's actually the other way around. Still, it was pretty strange to be hearing this line just three and a half weeks after the book was released.

Stranger still was when I started doing some digging and found that this wasn't the only biblical reference in HPatDH. The other was "Where your treasure lies, there your heart is also." This is from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 12, verse 34...which was the Gospel reading for this past Sunday!

What are the odds that the two biblical quotations Rowling included in this book would both coincidentally appear in the current Cycle of Readings in the Catholic Mass within three and a half weeks of the book's release? Pretty damned slim, I should think! Did Joanne Rowling plan this? She's being very open about all the formerly secret stuff behind her stories. I wonder if she'll be confronted with this question?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting references considering some Christians consider the Harry Potter books to be Satanic.

D.B. Echo said...

All of the "Christians" who hold that opinion fall into the category of "Wrong". And many of them fall into the category of "Idiots".

Nancy C. Brown said...

I noticed it too, and on this past Sunday as well, and think that it is too much to think Rowling could have planned that, so I chalk it up to the Holy Spirit.

Todd HellsKitchen said...

The Pope should have the following that J.K. Rowling does!

whimsical brainpan said...

I noticed that too. I would love to hear what she has to say about it (surely someone has asked the question).