The First Sunday of Advent

Advent-and the new Liturgical Year with it-has arrived, and this year a new translation of the Roman Missal comes with a new cycle of the seasons, and that means some changes in how we celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Even before the so-called "change" came into being, the complaints in certain quarters began. Some of these were simple and were born of obvious concern. One veteran parishioner at my parish asked bluntly "why would you change the Mass." I reminded them as best I could that the Church has been through major changes in the Mass before-changes that this person lived through-and we did alright. Indeed, compared to the last major liturgical reform, this one really is a cakewalk.

Many other complaints come from some folks who seem to have a problem not with the changes per se, but what the new Roman Missal is actually designed to do. The Mass as we will begin to pray it today has been translated in such a way so as to be as literal a rendering as possible of the Latin text of the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite. In addition, there have been some changes in the Latin text itself since Pope John Paul II promulgated a new Missale Romanum, and the Anglosphere would not be in harmony with the rest of the universal Church if we did not change our text of the Mass accordingly. The new English translation is designed both to be more biblically accurate and in language that is a bit more formal for the sake of the Church's highest and most important form of prayer, the Sacrifice of the Mass.

None of this is to say that this will be an easy process for everyone. At Mass this weekend, I found myself saying "and also with you" at least twice when I should have said "and with your spirit," though I did remember the correct salutation at the beginning and the end of the Liturgy. At the end of the Eucharistic prayer, I began to default to the old "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you...," until Nicole prodded me with the correct "Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed." Even though I have read through the new text of the Mass multiple times for months in advance in an attempt to teach myself, I still tried to default to the old form at least four times that I could count during the Mass-and I came into these changes giddy with excitement about them (and still am)! If it is hard for me, who has been a vocal proponent of the "reform of the reform" since John Paul II first announced that the Roman Missal would be changing, I can just imagine the difficulty faced by some of our parishioners around the Diocese of Knoxville and the country this weekend. And if it is any consolation, my personal copy of the Daily Roman Missal, bought with $60 of a college student's wages (money I didn't really have back then) in the days shortly after I was baptized and entered the Catholic Church because I wanted to be able to learn everything I could about the liturgy-and pray even when I couldn't personally be at daily Mass-well, that book is now largely obsolete, only some of the scripture readings are still correct. (Copies of the new Daily Roman Missal make great Christmas or Birthday gifts, and that will be my shameless plug of the day.)

This isn't a painless process for anyone, but I really think that if we all embrace this "new" translation of the Mass in a spirit of obedience and genuine prayer, we are going to get far more out of it if we allow it to slowly sink into us. We live in a part of the country where we constantly hear the false accusation that "Catholics don't read the Bible" or "Catholics don't know the Bible." It is vital for us, then, that not only should we read and learn our Bibles in parish Bible studies and on personal time, but our prayer lives should be filled with scripture, and the highest prayer of the Church-the Mass itself-should be a font of quotation and allusion to the Word of God-not merely from the scripture readings in the Mass, but within the prayers of the Mass. This new translation accomplishes this even better than our previous English translation did.

A few notes: At St. Pat's this weekend, I noted that at the Mass that I attended, we did the Kyrie but not the full Confeteor. It is my personal opinion that we are all going to have to learn to say the new Confeteor correctly "through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault..." ("mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa"), so we might as well just drag it out and get everyone used to it.

We used Eucharistic Prayer III today-the beauty of the new Eucharistic prayers and the way that they present vivid imagery of the mystery of salvation just blows me away. If you are having trouble "getting" the new translation of the Mass, take the time to stop and listen to the prayers of the priest during the consecration-meditate on what is being said here. It may help you better understand just why it was felt that this change had to be made-and have a blessed Advent.