Changes to Roman Missal Part 1

As you may have heard, there are some pretty important changes about to take place in the way we pray during the Mass. The Mass itself will stay the same, but the sound and rhythm will be different. Because these changes will affect us all it is vital that we take the time to discuss them in depth so that the transition will be as seamless as possible.

Words mean something, and the way we put them together when we communicate is very important. We use grammer to give form to our words, so that everyone can understand what we mean. We don’t just string our words together any which way, as each of us thinks they should go. We give a formality to our words, so that everyone is on the same page and we can be understood.

It’s the same with liturgy, and the words we use in liturgy. Liturgy is more than just the way that we pray together. Each and every Mass is more than just what is taking place here, in this church, at this time. Each and every Mass is tied together into every other Mass that is being celebrated everywhere in the world that day, but also with every Mass that has ever been celebrated before and every Mass that will be celebrated in the future. Whoa. Heavy metaphysics. But that’s important to understand when we try to address the language of the Mass. Because it’s not about us only, here at St. Mary’s, this morning. When we celebrate the Mass we are celebrating it with all other Catholics around the world, always. And so unity in liturgy is vital.

There is a saying that the way we pray is the way we believe. The Church doesn’t generate the liturgy, the liturgy generates the Church. The Mass isn’t what we do, it’s what we are. And it does matter how we say things during the Mass. Just as we learned our English grammer and our teachers marked up our papers for spelling, grammer and punctuation, we must also learn a grammer to speak Christian. Grammer gives form to what we want to say in English, well, liturgy tries to conform to the language of God. Liturgy is not an expression of how people see things, rather it proposes how God sees all people. We don’t do liturgy, God does us. And liturgy is formal not because it is stuffy, but because we need to give form to what we do.

Why all this heavy theological stuff? Because you need to understand that the Church is not just making arbitrary changes. We’re not doing this because we’ve been doing it wrong for forty years. And we’re not abandoning the renewal of the Second Vatican Council. The Mass had been solely in Latin for 1500 years. It has only been in English for a little over 40 years. And the Church has been striving to perfect the language of liturgy constantly over the centuries. Jesus didn’t give the apostles a big red book with all the prayers in it. He only told them to “Do this in memory of me” and they went about trying to form the words to describe that reality and their experience. We are still doing that today. These are not the first changes that have been made to the Mass, and they won’t be the last.

In our creed we say we believe in One, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. We are called to unity in Christ. And part of that unity is unity of language. For over 1500 years the language of the Church has been Latin. By using a common language or our worship we can all use the same grammer and form, and so be unified in prayer. Therefore, faithfulness to what the Latin says and means is vital to our being in full communion with Catholics the world over. That is why a new translation of the Latin into English was seen to be necessary. Overall, the revised translation more closely adheres to the original Latin than the first English translation did forty years ago. Translators now have a firmer grasp of the meaning of the original texts, giving them more depth. The new translation will be in a more formal style than we use in ordinary conversation; remember, we are trying to speak in the language of God. It’s supposed to be different.

Some things, such as the Lamb of God, the readings, and your favorite hymns, will not change at all. Other things, such as the beginning of the Gloria, and parts of the Profession of Faith, have been completely rewritten. Many of the changes are to the prayers said by the priest, so they don’t affect you much. But several of our responses to those prayers have changed, so we will be called upon to memorize them anew. It will be hard for those of us who have grown up saying one response and will now have to learn another, and there will be some awkward moments in the next year as we get them mixed up, but that’s ok.

Just because you may have grown up with the Mass being done in a certain way doesn’t mean it had always been done that way. The Tradition of the Church always maintains a strong connection to the past while remaining relevant to modern ways. Some people will have a problem with any changes, and some folks won’t notice much change at all. Your attitude towards these changes will affect how we do liturgy, how it feels, and so the onus is on us not to make this into a cause for division.

We all have a choice. We can work together to implement these changes in the spirit they have been made, and try to understand the meaning behind them, or we can let it divide us. I think that many of us have become so used to the language of the past forty years that we have stopped listening to what we’ve actually been saying. It has become rote. Perhaps if we are forced to concentrate on what the priest is saying and on our responses we will actually hear our prayer again. It is a good time now to re-focus on our prayers, and to take the time to understand exactly what it is that we are doing here during the Mass.

The new translation will go into effect here in the United States on the first Sunday of Advent, November 27. In future weeks we will be discussing each of the new changes in detail, so that everyone can understand what they are and why they are being made. Thank you for your patience and support.