Liturgical Books and Our Sense of Time

[Original post, July 12, 2010]

Anyone who has used a hand missal or a breviary is familiar with the chart of movable days somewhere in the front. I find it interesting to note how far they go into the future, because I suspect it says something about our sense of time and change.

My hand missal for the ordinary form, published in 2003, goes up to 2010, suggesting that the editors imagined one would use it for seven years. Perhaps it was a good guess, given that we expect the new and improved English translation of the 2002 Missale Romanum one of these days. [As we know, it arrived for Advent 2011.]

My Baronius Press hand missal for the extraordinary form, published in 2007, has a calendar that goes up to 2066, suggesting a much longer sense of how long someone might use it.

My 1976 American English Liturgy of the Hours goes up to 1999, while the 2000 typical edition Liturgia Horarum goes up 2022, about the same span of years. My 1962 Breviarium Romano-Seraphicum goes a little bit longer, to 1992.

The 2002 Missale Romanum contains a liturgical calendar that goes up to 2023, about the same span as the breviaries. The 1954 Missale Romano-Seraphicum, however, has a calendar that goes up to 2003, more than twice the span. The editors imagined it being used almost long enough to come back as an option after forty years of Novus Ordo exclusivity!

I'm sure there's a dissertation to be written here, but on the face it one might guess that folks used to imagine liturgies (and books!) as lasting longer than we do now.

--

2019 update: On a recent visit to the Specola Vaticana, the Vatican Observatory, the Brother Astronomer showed me a volume of the work of Christopher Clavius, SJ, who was one of the main authors of the Gregorian calendar reform, promulgated by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. Just on the page that was open, his calculations for the date of Easter, etc.--in the sixteenth century!--go up to 2031. I don't know how far the charts went after that. So it goes to show that sixteenth century Jesuits (at least) had a longer view of the calendar than any of the liturgical books I mentioned in the original post.

with blessed Joseph, her Spouse

I must be a little out of it, or busy, or preoccupied, or distracted--'all of the above' perhaps--to have missed something as sweet and lovely as the addition of St. Joseph to the Eucharistic Prayers last month.

It's a beautiful thing for the whole Church Universal of which St. Joseph is patron; that is, the Church at rest in Heaven, the Church suffering the purifying hope of purgatory, and the Church here on earth, still struggling on the earthly pilgrimage. But it's also a particular joy for those of us who have a devotion to St. Joseph.

English

Today I had to prepare a mailing to all the English-using circumscriptions (provinces, vice-provinces, custodies, delegations) of the Capuchin Order. It's something like forty percent. That doesn't mean that they  speak English in all those places, just that English is used for official communication with the General Curia. (The other choices are Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, and Polish.)

It's a fascinating exercise in the place and power of the English language in the world and especially in the life of the Catholic faith:

The piles, from largest to smallest, are for India, Africa, North America, Asia, Oceania, the Near East, and Europe (that is, Britain, Ireland, and Malta.)

Such an illustration also helps me see how the recent new translation of the third edition Roman Missal into English was an even bigger deal than I realized.

Both And

I notice on the calendar that it will be my turn to be principal celebrant at Mass on the 27th, one of those curious hybrid liturgical days we get this time of year, at once the solemnity of the Christmas Octave and the feast of a saint, St. John in this case. It's one of the rare times in the reformed liturgy that we see something like the celebration of one day and the commemoration of another, as in the older form.

Looking forward to this, I notice a couple things I need to prepare. First, it's the sort of day when at home I would certainly sing the Preface. I haven't heard one sung since I've been here in Italy, and I don't know what sort of resources the Italian missal offers for this, so I'll have to go exploring and see what I can find. Second, according to my famous plan for the minimum use of Eucharistic Prayer I, the 27th qualifies. Oddly, I haven't heard the Roman Canon in Italian yet either. Perhaps a more innocent person would imagine that in the venerable diocese of Rome herself one might hear this particularly Roman anaphora, but he would be quite wrong, at least if his experience were like mine has been. So, having neither heard nor prayed myself the Roman Canon in Italian, I started to look at it in preparation for the feast of St. John.

For the occasion of its first birthday, this brought to mind my standard shtick regarding the new translation of the Missal in English. I always say that I love it and support it in every possible way, but that I have one little issue with it, namely that, in my arrogant opinion, the 'vel' in "vel qui tibi offerunt hoc sacrificium laudis" in the memento for the living, which now in English is an 'or,' ought instead to be an 'and.' I would also accept something like 'indeed,' but this 'or' just doesn't fly. Now, even though I have been given permission to make this change on my own authority in Masses I celebrate, by a learned and somewhat well-known scholar of the Sacred Scriptures no less, I have never done so. What can I say? I'm like St. Paul, not taking advantage of all my rights in the Lord.

Therefore, given that I have decided to make this a kind of 'ha ha only serious' liturgical pet peeve, I enjoyed reviewing the Italian translation of the same and finding it thus: e anche'essi ti offrono questo sacrificio di lode... Not only an 'e' but also an 'anche.' Further evidence of my claim, I would say. Now, to be fair, I have observed that some of the more traditionally-minded (taking 'tradition' in the narrow sense of tending towards Catholic 'traditionalism') here complain about their translation of the Mass and look with some longing on what has been accomplished for the English-speaking world, the prayer as it is nevertheless supports my complaint, I think.

Not that I have much pity for such people. Should there be legitimate reasons for celebrating the liturgy in a language other than Latin (and I accept that there might be in certain cases), the Italians are surely in possession of the fewest of them.

In any case, I'll keep studying and I'll let you know how it goes.

In a more serious spirit, for those into the tradition, I recommend a new blog, Missal Notes, to which I was alerted by the reliably edifying Br. Matt of the New Sandals blog.

Joys and Dubia for Giles of Assisi

For the last year and a half or so, I've been going on Monday mornings to offer Mass at the local Poor Clare monastery. It's been a great joy. One of my favorite little things is that their liturgical calendar is sometimes slightly different than ours. We follow the Capuchin Ordo, of course, but the nuns seem to follow the Ordo of the Leonine friars. I enjoy this because sometimes there is a Franciscan saint who seems to have fallen off of our calendar, but who nevertheless appears in the liturgical calendar I step into when I visit the Poor Clares.

Today is a good example, the feast of Blessed Giles of Assisi. I don't know why he seems to be absent from our calendar; Giles was one of the first companions of Francis and one of the great characters of the early Franciscan movement. One even speaks of an 'aegidian' strand in the Franciscan tradition ('Giles' being English for 'Aegidius.')

Whatever one wants to assert about the origin of Giles's so-called Golden Sayings, they're certainly interesting and challenging. Here are a couple of my favorites:

On the spiritual struggle: "A certain person said to him: 'I am frequently tempted with a most grievous temptation, and I have often asked God that he would take it away from me, and He does not take it away.' The holy Brother Giles replied to him: 'The better any king arms his soldiers with armor, the more he wishes that they should fight valiantly.'"

On preaching: "Many not knowing how to swim have gone into the water to aid those that were drowning, and they themselves have been lost with those that were perishing: first there was one evil and then there were two."

So it was a joy to be able to offer the Mass of Brother Giles this morning at the Poor Clares.


This does, however, raise a liturgical dubium. What is to be done about the proper orations? Bl. Giles has a full Mass formulary in the 1974 Roman-Franciscan Sacramentary, the liturgical book that was our parallel to the now superseded American English Sacramentary. There isn't, or isn't yet, any Roman-Franciscan Missal for the new translation.

It seems to me that there are three possible courses of action:

First, since no legitimate new translations of Mass formularies for propers of saints particular to the Franciscan calendar have yet appeared, one might presume that the ones attached to the old translation of the Mass are still in effect and licit for liturgical use. Therefore, one might use the old Roman-Franciscan Sacramentary for the proper orations but use the new Roman Missal for the rest of the Mass. Clumsy as it is to have two books on the altar, this is the solution I have decided upon. I admit that some of my choice derives from just liking the prayers themselves, such as when the Collect for Giles today speaks of the "heights of exalted contemplation."

On the other hand, a stricter view of things might suggest that the old prayers, in the style of the old translation, have gone out with the rest of the old book, and that the new Commons ought to be used for the Masses of saints who don't have, or don't yet have, proper prayers in the new translation.

Finally, the whole trouble might be avoided simply by celebrating Mass in the Extraordinary Form on Franciscan feast days, according to the 1962 Missale Romano-Seraphicum. But this won't help with poor Br. Giles, who doesn't appear therein, even though he was beatified in 1777. Perhaps his recovery into some calendars is the result of more recent Franciscan scholars providing for us an awareness of his importance. If anyone out there has a 1942 Missale Romano-Seraphicum, I would be interested to know if the feast of Bl. Giles is in there.

In any case, do pray for us, Brother.

New Translation: Prayer for Various Needs

Today I had my first chance to use the new translation of the good old 'Swiss Synod' prayer, formerly called in English the "Eucharistic Prayer for Masses for Various Needs and Occasions," appearing in the typical edition Missal as "prex eucharistica quae in missis pro variis necessitatibus adhiberi potest" and now similarly Englished as "Eucharistic Prayer for use in Masses for various needs."

It's a free day in the calendar today, at least where I am, so I took the ordo's suggestion to offer the Mass for the unity of Christians # 17A, which I presume is a way to participate in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

Generally speaking, it's fairly close to the previous English translation as it appeared for use in the United States in 1995. So if you're one of those who doesn't like the new translation and misses how things were before last Advent, this is the eucharistic prayer for you.

I especially like the new version of the post-consecratory epiclesis. Here's the old version:

Look with favor on the offering of your Church
in which we show forth the paschal sacrifice of Christ
entrusted to us.
Through the power of your Spirit of love
include us now and forever
among the members of your Son,
whose body and blood we share.

And the current one:

Look with favor on the oblation of your Church,
in which we show forth
the paschal Sacrifice of Christ that has been handed on to us,
and grant that, by the power of the Spirit of your love,
we may be counted now and until the day of eternity
among the members of your Son,
in whose Body and Blood we have communion.

I appreciate the stronger and more explicit eschatological language in the new translation. Our communion with Christ in the Eucharist is not just 'now and forever' but 'now and until the day of eternity.' This eternity is the blessed destiny to which Jesus Christ has blazed a trail through the death we have earned for ourselves with our sin. By passing through, with the humanity he borrowed from us by the consent of our Blessed Mother, all of our misery up to and including the searing grief of knowing oneself alienated from the Father, the Son of God has made the blessedness the Trinity himself available to our humanity. This is the eternal life we both have now and towards which we journey in the holiness of communion.

The Gift Is Not Like The Transgression

The feast of Bernard of Corleone today was my first chance to pray the new preface for "Holy Virgins and Religious." There was one change in particular for which I was grateful:

...For in the Saints who consecrated themselves to Christ
for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven,
it is right to celebrate the wonders of your providence,
by which you call human nature back to its original holiness...


I appreciate the "holiness." (The Latin is sanctitas) The old preface said "innocence."

The change reminds me that "the gift is not like the transgression." (Romans 5:15, NAB) The redemption we have in Christ is not just a restoration of the original innocence--or even the blessedness--of Adam and Eve in the Garden. Our salvation goes beyond even this to raising us to the holiness of the Origin himself, that we might come to participate in the infinite delight, joy, and creativity of the Blessed Trinity.

Jesus Christ is not God's 'plan B' for fixing what was lost in the fall. Christ accomplishes this, of course, but does even more, fulfilling God's eternal plan to make his rational creature a sharer in the originary, creative delight out of which everything else that is comes to be.

New Translation: Temptations to Idolatry

The Christmas season having ended, we find ourselves again in the tempus per annum, unfortunately Englished as 'Ordinary Time.' My first--and very influential--liturgy teacher used to refer to the typical day of low solemnity as the 'rainy Tuesday in Ordinary Time.' And so here it is. As the first day with the new translation when one is free to offer 'any Mass' as the Ordo puts it, a 'feria of the iv class' in an older dispensation, I decided to pray one of the new Mass forumularies for the dead this morning, offering the Mass for the the recently deceased father of one of the friars. Requiescat in pace.

After Mass I was thinking about how the prayers seemed like an improvement, and how they were more supplicative and contained less presumption about the deceased having already arrived at the beatific vision. But you know what? When I went back and looked at the old prayers, they weren't much different. I thought I would be writing a post about how the new prayers better recognized continued purification after death and the need to pray for the dead on their continued journey to the fullness of salvation. I was going to sing the praises of the new translation, saying that it would help restore a pastoral consciousness of the Last Things. As it turned out, there wasn't much in the old prayers to accuse them of failing in these things.

So I guess one has to say that the widespread error of presumption with regard to the state of the departed after bodily death is not the fault of the liturgy, or at least of the liturgy as the Church presents it (How the liturgy is celebrated, mis-celebrated, and abused is another matter.) Conversely, then, one has to say that the new translation won't auto-magically fix the problem. Thus we arrive, by extension, at a general principle: the new English translation of the Roman Missal will not magically solve all the pastoral and theological problems with which the Church is afflicted.

The new Missal isn't a savior. We have one of those already.

New Translation: Victimhood

In accord with my practice for the minimum use of Eucharistic Prayer I, I've been praying the Roman Canon through this whole week of the Christmas Octave. This has given me further opportunity to pray through and reflect upon the new translation.

One thing that strikes me with some intensity is the restoration of the triad at the end of the Unde et memores: offered to God is the hostiam puram, hostiam, sanctam, hostiam immaculatam.

The new translation renders this as it is in the Latin: this pure victim, this holy victim, this spotless victim.

The old translation did away with the structure of the triad, replacing it with this holy and perfect sacrifice.

On the one hand, I like the restoration of the normative structure of the prayer. Now I just have to let go of the interior urge to make the signs of the cross that accompany this moment in the Extraordinary Form! On the other hand, I see the translation problem. In our time and place, victimhood and victimization have such a connotation of meaninglessness injustice. Jesus' victimhood was certainly an injustice, but one that was, in the paradox of the cross, superabundant in meaning. Can we hear this over and above our common connotations of 'victim'?

Even though hostia and victima may have been somewhat interchangeable in late antiquity when the Roman Canon came together, the meaning-history of hostia, with its general sense of sacrificial victim and technical use as such in ancient religion would seem to be lost to the average pray-er speaking it as 'victim' in twenty-first century English.

So it goes to some basic questions regarding liturgical translation. For example, what is the value of trying to bring out the sense of terms in our best guesses as to their original connotation and intent? On other hand, one of the values embedded in the new translation, and to which I consent easily, is that sacral language, such as that of the liturgy, is not supposed to be the same as or beholden to common speech.

So what do you think? Is it an o.k., good, or not-so-good thing to translate the hostia in hostiam puram, hostiam sanctam, hostiam immaculatam as 'victim'?

New Translation: Womb and Altar

The Prayer over the Offerings from this past Sunday has been sticking with me this week.

May the Holy Spirit, O Lord,
sanctify these gifts laid upon your altar,
just as he filled with his power the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
Through Christ our Lord.

The prayer brings out the relationship between the Eucharist and the mystery of the Incarnation.

It is the Holy Spirit who stretches forth the overflowing love of the Father such that this Beloved takes on our humanity in the womb of Mary. The prayer asks this same grace for the altar at the center of the Christian assembly. As St. Francis put it so simply, Mary is the virgo ecclesia facta, the Virgin made Church. In the Eucharist the Church takes up her Marian role, becoming once again the place where the Spirit conceives the Body of Christ.

Having become once again the Body of Christ in Holy Communion, the faithful go forth from the Eucharist as the Word-made-flesh born into the world, on his way to preach, heal, suffer, and give his life that the grace of his Passion and Resurrection may continue to flow over the world.

New Translation: Femininity Restored

The other night I was talking with someone about the new translation and the many things we appreciated about it and how grateful we were for its appearance.

One thing that was mentioned, which I hadn't yet thought of myself, was the restoration of feminine pronouns for the Church. As one example among many that could be adduced, the intercession for the Church in the ever-popular Eucharistic Prayer II used to say, Lord, remember your Church throughout the world; make us grow in love...but now it says, Remember, Lord, your Church, spread throughout the world, and bring her to the fullness of charity...

My friend said that he was very grateful for this change, and that he thought it would have good spiritual effects.

So what do you think? What will the restoration of the femininity of the Church in the new translation do for us and our prayer? Will it help us amid the world's widespread confusions around sex and gender, many of which have crept into the Church?

New Translation: Similitudini Mortis

On a rainy Tuesday in Ordinary Time--that was my first, and very formative, liturgy teacher's shorthand for a liturgical day of low solemnity--I have a tendency to use Eucharistic Prayer II. If the Mass is being offered for a deceased person or persons, and I have not the liturgical or pastoral option to offer Mass in one of the full formularies for the dead, I tend to add the embolism for the deceased during the prayer.

This little prayer is one of many improvements in the new translation. Here's the old version:

Remember N., whom you have called from this life. In baptism he (she) died with Christ: may he (she) also share his resurrection.

And the new one:

Remember your servant N., whom you have called (today) from this world to yourself. Grant that he (she) who was united with your Son in a death like his, may also be one with him in his Resurrection.

It is the conformity of our death to the death of Christ which is saving, a conformity that God has accomplished in the Son by emptying himself into the misery of our death-bound condition in Christ. Of course the 'death like his' language comes from St. Paul and refers most specifically to our baptism. The translators of the older version were surely trying to bring out this baptismal connection. Our baptism is our dying into the death of Christ, passing mystically into the new life of the Resurrection. The whole of our post-baptismal, eucharistic life is the working out and flowering of this Resurrection mystery, culminating in the final letting-go into God that is our bodily death. But bodily death means little to the Christian; after all, we have already died in baptism.

Nevertheless, in having prayed this prayer a couple times now in the new translation, I'm led to pray for all of those in this world who die a death like the Lord's in a more plain and immediate way: lonely, humiliated, in physical torment, abandoned by friends and even feeling abandoned by God. Offering the Mass that is the memorial and re-presentation of the Sacrifice of the Cross, I remember that is for such that the Compassion of God stretches forth from the Blessedness of the Trinity to live and die in us.

New Translation: Sinning Toward Christmas

You can certainly say this about the transition of praying in the new translation: one feels more like a sinner. It starts with the change in the Confiteor: it used to be that I had sinned. Now I have greatly sinned. It used to be through my fault. Now it's through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault. And in many other ways, too, the new translation is marked by a greater and more explicit language of the tragedy of sin.

There are those who have and will object to this, protesting that 'we are an Easter people' and such things, and reminding us that an obsession with sin is terribly unhealthy. I have no argument with that; as a confessor I have witnessed many times the miserable trap of so-called spiritual lives becoming about nothing but sin and the failure of our struggles against it.

On the other hand, I have to say that the renewed--some might say 'restored'--emphasis on sin speaks better to my own experience. How today's Collect resonates with the supplications of own journey in prayer!

Stir up your power, we pray, O Lord, and come,
that with you to protect us,
we may find rescue
from the pressing dangers of our sins,
and with you to set us free,
we may be found worthy of salvation.
Who live and reign...

That's something like the compunction I have found at my own most authentic moments of prayer. The realization that the roots of sin in myself are a pressing danger, revealing even my pious desires as vainglorious fantasies and my seemingly good deeds as the 'polluted rags' spoken of in these days by the prophet Isaiah. Over the course of my life as a Christian, I have found myself over and over shaken from denial about the depth, insidiousness, and rottenness of sin. From sensuality to vainglory, tricks of the mind and denial, rationalization and jadedness, I'm always discovering that I thought I was taking sin seriously when in fact I had hardly even begun.

In that spirit the new translation reminds me of an early experience in my own journey. At the beginning of my Christian life I tried to read books about prayer and the spiritual life. But I didn't get them, or maybe they didn't get me. All of their happy doctrine about 'experiences of God' and fruitful and nourishing experiences of prayer just didn't resonate with my own experience of trying to pray and find the grace of living a spiritual life. Then one day I read John Cassian on the eight principal vices and John of the Cross on the errors of beginners and the spiritual analogues of the capital sins. It was like meeting real friends for the first time. These men got me; they knew what I was going through, and their writings gave me hope.

So I am glad to have a new translation of the Mass that suits me as the miserable and grievous sinner that I am. But it's not that confessing and growing honest about the depths of our sinfulness is the end of the spiritual life. The good news of the coming great feast of the incarnation is that it is precisely in places that are dark, rejected, cold, and dirty that the Lord wills to be born. If my heart is such a place, then I have that much more hope in the ancient prayer: Come, Lord Jesus.

New Translation: My Opinions on Editions

It's only been a few days, but I've already had chances to use both standard sizes of the three different editions of the new missal one is most likely to encounter here in the States: those of Magnificat, Liturgy Training Publications, and the Catholic Book Publishing Company.

I have formed some clear and distinct opinions.

The Magnificat edition is my least favorite. The art is magnificent, for sure, but is so eclectic as to make the book seem awfully busy. There are only tabs for the beginning of the Eucharistic Prayers rather than for each page turn therein. Even in the larger missal the print isn't very big. The thing feels like a coffee table book rather than a liturgical tool. All that being said, Magnificat wins for the best ribbons. As anybody who knows me will say, I do love proper ribbons in my liturgical books.

Catholic Book Publishing Co. has a long history of producing liturgical books that are durable and clear, but painfully plain and homely. Your breviary from them won't fall apart. Despite the baptismal water in your infant baptism ritual and the rain water in your funeral ritual, they still serve time after time. That being said, they aren't much to look at. Therefore, I was pleasantly surprised to see that CBPC's editions of the new missal are quite lovely as well as pretty usable. Not they didn't fall prey to a little bit of creeping elegance as well; the fancy capitals are pointless and not very readable.

My favorite, though, are the new missals from LTP. I've appreciated much of their work for a long time. I think they make the best lectionaries, and their English-Spanish facing-page edition of Pastoral Care of the Sick is one of the most practically useful priestly go-to books out there. Their new missal is boxy and plain, but eminently readable. There are clearly labeled tabs for every page turn in the Eucharistic Prayers and the Communion Rite, and in different colors, which is very helpful. There's not much art, and what is there not everyone will like, but again, this is a missal, not a coffee table book. The only thing that bugs me a little on the topic of art is the blank left-hand page at the beginning of the Roman Canon. Really? There ought to be an image of Christ crucified there, como Dios manda. Maybe I'll have someone draw one in.

New Translation: My First Stumble

Today being the feast of St. Andrew, according to my Plan for the Minimum Use of Eucharistic Prayer I, it was my first time praying the Roman Canon in the new translation. It was the occasion of my first real stumble over what some folks are calling the awkwardness of the English.

It was right in the middle of the memento for the living:

Remember, Lord, your servants N. and N.
and all gathered here,
whose faith and devotion are known to you.
For them, we offer you this sacrifice of praise
or they offer it for themselves
and all who are dear to them.

I stumbled right on the "or" and lost the thread, as my dad would say.

Here's the Latin:

Memento, Domine, famulorum famularumque tuarum N. et N.
et omnium circumstantium,
quorum tibi fides cognita est et nota devotio,
pro quibus tibi offerimus:
vel qui tibi offerunt hoc sacrificium laudis,
pro suisque omnibus.

I'm no liturgist or liturgical historian, but my sense of the prayer has always been that everyone present is gathered into the Eucharistic Prayer as well as those named or recalled. It is for them that the sacrifice is offered, as they also are offer to God their sacrifice of praise. That's my sense of the vel; it joins the sacrifice of praise offered by those named and those present to the sacrifice the priest offers to God. In that sense I don't get the "or" in the translation. I think it should say 'and.'

Also, the punctuation of the typical edition would have suggested a helpful colon after "praise."

Not that I'm making excuses for my stumbling and failure to study hard enough before offering the prayer.

New Translation: The Healing Remedy

Journeying through these first days of the new translation, I keep finding new appreciations. Today I'm thinking of two of the private prayers of priest, each of which restores somewhat the sense of Holy Communion as a sort of medicine, a healing remedy.

The first is the second option for the private preparation of the priest, which concludes by asking that the priest's communion be a "healing remedy," translating the Latin medela. The second is the prayer at the purification of the vessels which concludes by asking that the communion just made be a "healing for eternity," translating the Latin remedium sempiternum.

These prayers really speak to my heart at this moment in my journey as a Christian. When I was first trying to live the faith, I think I looked on the sacraments as if they were sources of power for living the agonistic, counter-cultural life I wanted to admire in myself. That was my vainglory. Going on twenty years later, I realize that I am very far from surrendering to any devout energy to become heroically virtuous. Rather, I need the healing touch of the divine Physician just to begin to learn how to be a repentant sinner.

May the sacred mysteries of which God has made me an awkward and negligent custodian be for me--and for those I am unworthy to serve--a healing remedy, now and into eternity. Amen.

New Translation: Supplicants

Reflecting a little more on my first experiences of praying the Mass in the new translation, I have to say that the translation is a shift on the spiritual level. The best I can do in naming it right now is to say that the Mass feels more supplicative. With all of the appearances of humbly and graciously in the various petitions, the restored intensity of the Confiteor, as well as many other and various aspects, the new translation locates the pray-er somewhat differently before God.

New Translation: First 24 Hours

Well, the big day has come and gone. In the past twenty-four hours, I've celebrated three Masses with the new translation. What I notice the most is that I don't feel like I have that much to say. In some ways it felt like when I was first ordained priest; I didn't feel like I was praying that deeply because I was just trying to do and say everything properly.

Certain little things I appreciated. For the two Sunday Masses yesterday I used Eucharistic Prayer III. I loved praying from the rising of the sun to its setting, so much closer as it is to the image from the scriptures, and removing as it does the temptation of those who added a 'north to south' to the old 'east to west' in their missing of the metaphor.

I certainly notice how I hear the Latin behind the English (is that the right metaphor?) I hear the mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa in the new English Confiteor, the double dicens before the words of consecration in the way we now say 'saying' instead of 'said.' And of course I hear the calix sanguinis mei and the pro multis. Does this mean anything that I should hear the Latin under the English? I guess that goes to some of the hard questions at hand. What does Latin mean for western Christianity? Is it a historical accident? Or does God mean for it be that way? I think most folks I know would subscribe to the former theological assumption. For a sort of sed contra on a similar question on the history of human language and revelation, go read the Pope's infamous Regensburg speech, not the part that caused all the trouble, but the part about the Septuagint.

And also with you. It sure is stuck in the voice. The seminarian who served the Mass that was my first with the new translation said it straight away at the greeting, and right into my microphone. Despite looking forward to the change for so long, I said it myself to the deacon before he proclaimed the gospel at the next Mass. Just to be funny, at the Sign of Peace, when the deacon said to me, peace be with you, I said, and also with you.

Tomorrow there will be a new trouble as a fresh liturgical dubium arises for us English-speaking Franciscans. Tomorrow, you see, is the feast of All Franciscan Saints. The proper prayers for this Mass are in our proper sacramentary, which is, of course, embedded in the translation that is now suppressed. We don't have a new one according to the 3rd edition Roman Missal. So what to do? My best guess is that we take the proper prayers from the old book and the rest of the Mass from the new.

Grieving the Soon-To-Be Old Translation

Now that we are allowed to have copies of the new translation here in the United States, I've been looking through it. For the most part, I like it. I think that a lot has been improved. I like very much the restoration of and with your spirit. I like that the bees got back into the Easter Proclamation. It's going to be a challenging transition, though, especially for priests.

So far I have but one complaint with the translation, the little prayer the priest says quietly before consuming the Body and Blood of Christ. "May the Body/Blood of Christ keep me safe for eternal life," to me doesn't capture the richness of Corpus/Sanguis Christi custodiat me in vitam aeternam. I'm not in love with the current, outgoing translation either, "May the body/blood of Christ bring me to everlasting life," but I like it better than the new one. Not that it probably matters to me in the end; I usually say this prayer in Latin anyway.

That's a little thing. Here's another, maybe more important: One of the first priests I ever knew was the pastor of the parish where I was baptized, Fr. Leo Sutula at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Quaker Hill, Connecticut. May he rest in peace. He gave me my first Holy Communion and also (six days later) heard my first confession. He had a gentleness that gave glory to God. He also had a funny habit, at least at daily Mass, of saying all of the secret prayers out loud. So, until I learned the Mass well myself several years later, his Mass always seemed to have more prayers in it. I remember being especially struck by the private preparation prayer before Communion, which he would say out loud:

"Lord Jesus Christ, with faith in your love and mercy I eat your body and drink your blood. Let it not bring me condemnation but health in mind and body."

When I use this option myself, I always think of Fr. Sutula. Until I came to be a priest myself, he was my only experience of this prayer. As I pray the words myself, I'm aware of my connection to the man and his ministry in the economies of grace in my own journey. The prayer is a glimpse for me of the communion of saints.

So there's a little grief in my heart at the thought of losing that little prayer at the end of next month. The new version is quite different, and I'll probably just start saying the other option, the Domine, Iesu Christi... in Latin.

It's not a big thing, but in thinking about it I started to guess that there are probably many such things for all kinds of people, connections and devout memory associated with the particular words of the outgoing translation. I bet that a lot of folks have certain parts of the Mass that serve to remind them of specific blessings and graces, or of struggles with which God's help was saving.

I'll grieve the loss of Fr. Sutula's little prayer, but I'll remember that the gift of the new translation serves our devotion and love for the same Eucharist he celebrated for me on that day of my first Holy Communion, and thus is no betrayal but rather a movement of love. As we approach and engage this new moment in our eucharistic lives, I'll also be praying for everyone else who grieves some particular thing soon to become liturgical history.

39. For Chastity

Back in this post I remarked on my discovery of the Mass formulary ad postulandam continentiam in the 2002 Missale Romanum, and how it doesn't appear in the soon-to-be-replaced American English sacramentary. With a little more research I found that this set of prayers appears in older missals, and had been restored by the 2002 missal.

Now that we finally can have our hands on the new translation, I see that this Mass does indeed appear, under "Masses and Prayers for Various Needs and Occasions 39, "For Chastity." I like the Prayer after Communion the best:

Through the Sacraments we have received, O Lord,
may our heart and our body flourish anew
by a keen sense of modesty and renewed chastity,
so that what has passed our lips as food
we may posses in purity of heart.
Through Christ our Lord.

I appreciate these sense in which chastity and modesty are the flourishing of body and heart, and that the end of both is our appreciation of Holy Communion.

Given the world we live in and the state of the Church, why would someone have thought it a good idea to get rid of such a set of prayers?