The article deals with history and character of the Gospel procession, examined in the Western liturgies: Gallic, Hispanic, Ambrosian and Roman. The research question is: Why is there a procession inside the block of readings of the Liturgy of the Word? To answer, we use the methodology of the Comparative Liturgy and mainly the law of the evolution of the liturgy at the 'soft points'.
We explore to which extent the Gospel procession is a 'soft point' and we propose three hypotheses about its origin. Without the definitive answer, we show that this sort of research can lead to the better comprehension of the structure and history of the Eucharistic celebration as such.