The Revisions of the Mass (part 2)

The Introductory Rites & The Penitential Act

This week we will begin the explanation of the different responses we, as the laity of the Church, will give in the Mass. (We will not focus on the different prayers of the priest.  There are actually far more changes for them than there are for us.)

The Introductory Rites

The priest has 3 different forms he can use in the Introductory Rite:

1) The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you.

2) Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

3) The Lord be with you.  

We respond to any one of these forms with the word, “And with your spirit.”

       Explanation

• ·         At the ordination of every priest the Holy Spirit descends upon him to give him the spirit to serve in persona Christi. The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us in paragraph 1551, “The sacrament of Holy Orders communicates a “sacred power” which is none other than that of Christ.” This means our priests stand visibly in the place of Christ, who is not visible to us as man, here on earth.  When they speak, especially in the sacraments, they are the voice of Christ.

• ·         When we say, “And with your spirit” we are calling on the Holy Spirit who was given to the priest at his ordination to work through him, bringing Christ to us.

Scripture Connection

• ·         St. Paul taught that It is in the spirit, or we might say heart, in which the Holy Spirit resides in us. (1 Corinthians 14:15).  We are calling on the Holy Spirit to work through the priest.

• ·         St. Paul used similar words.

o   When saying good-bye to the people of Galatia he said, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brethren. Amen” (Galatians 6:18).

o   To his friend and disciple Timothy, he said, “The Lord be with your spirit” (2 Timothy 4:22).

Penitential Act (Confiteor)

This is the general confession we make at the beginning of Mass.

The change will be as follows with changes in red:

 “I confess to Almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do,…”

The addition of the word “great” is to help us to realize that every sin is an offense to the good God who wants to love us and receive our love in return.  When we sin, we hurt and disappoint God.  We want to sharpen the awareness of sin in our lives so that we can experience God’s transforming love in our lives.

During the next phrase, we strike our breast (chest) three times at the word ‘fault’.

“…through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault;

Therefore I ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin, all the Angels and Saints, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God.

      Explanation

• ·         We say the word ‘fault’ three times as we strike our breasts so that we may humbly realize the rejection of the love of the Holy Trinity when we sin.

• ·         This helps us to have real sorrow and contrition for our sins and for hurting God, who gives us nothing but love.

• ·         This prayer prepares us to three times ask for God’s mercy. (Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.)

Penitential Act Form B

The priest will say, “Have mercy on us, O Lord.”

We respond, “For we have sinned against you.”

Priest: “Show us, O Lord, your mercy.

We respond: “And grant us your salvation.

       Explanation

• ·         This is a less used form, but has the change.

• ·         The words in red are the exact Latin translation.

• ·         We are acknowledging that not only has our sin possibly hurt someone else, it has hurt God and we are in need of His healing.

      Scripture Connection

• ·         “As for me, I said, “O Lord, be gracious to me; heal me, for I have sinned against you!” (Psalm 41:4).

We will cover the Gloria next week, which has several changes, all of which are beautiful and rich.  

As always, feel free to leave a comment or ask a question and we will do our best to get back to you. 

God’s blessings!

The Revisions of the Mass

As most of you know on the first Sunday of Advent, in November, we in the English speaking world will begin to have a little different Mass experience than what we have lived.  Many of the words spoken over the last forty-something years will change.  They will actually be much closer to the words spoken by those before that time, only in English. 

Robert and I will be presenting some of the new responses expected of the laity to our 10th grade Faith Formation class.  We thought sharing the information with whomever wanted to read it here might be helpful.  The lessons are a blending of information from three different sources: Magnificat Roman Missal Companion, Dr. Edward Sri's CD from Lighthouse Catholic Media entitled "A Walk Through the New Mass Translation" and Jimmy Akin's book Mass Revision; How the Liturgy is Changing and What It Means for You.


Each week we will be covering a little at a time up until just before Advent begins.  The lessons are written for 10th grade students so enjoy the ease of understanding.  We hope this helps you as the reader to be excited about entering into Mass at a deeper level.  That opportunity is exactly what the new translation offers. 

Week 1
Reasons for the Change

1)  Latin is the language of the Church. The new translation is a more accurate translation of the original Latin and therefore brings us closer to the heart of the Church.  It also brings us into a closer unity with Catholics around the world because we will now be speaking and praying what they have been speaking and praying all along. The original English translation after Vatican II aimed at more of a spirit of the Latin rather than a literal translation. This new translation brings us closer to the words originally spoken before Vatican II, only in English.
 

2) The new translation will give us a deeper, richer meaning to the words spoken in the Mass.  In the first English translation we lost some of the adjectives that were written in the Latin for a purpose.  This lends a more heartfelt response when our response is complete.  It turns our family picnic into a heavenly banquet.  (Not to say the Mass was done incorrectly before, only to say now we will experience a deeper, richer flavor.) 

3) The new translation, like the Latin before, refers to Scripture in many ways.  Many of those references had disappeared.  Example:  We currently use the words before leaving our pews to receive the Eucharist, "Lord, I am not worthy to receive You, but only say the word and I shall be healed."  The new response, which is the correct translation of the original Latin, will be, "Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed."  I won't explain this here because we will dive in deeper on a later date, but in using it as an example of Scripture, we find this in Matthew 8:8 when the Roman Centurion asked Christ to heal his sick servant.  There are other places where our response leads us back to Scripture and we'll see those in the upcoming posts. 

4)  One more reason for change is simply the correction of inaccurate translation altogether, words left out or added that were not in the original Latin.  Example:  In the Nicene Creed we currently say "We believe."  The Latin is credo.  The literal translation of that word is "I believe."  I used this as an example in our class which is about half Hispanic and half Anglo.  I asked some of the Hispanic students how we begin The Creed.  One girl said I only know it in Spanish.  I told her that was fine and asked how it is said.  She told us it begins, "creo", which is the Spanish word for "I believe."  I looked at Robert and said, "It was even translated correctly in Spanish."  This is another example of one of the changes we'll be making and we'll discuss it in a later post. 



This is not an exhaustive list of the reasons why our missal is changing, but the more obvious and useful to a class of 10th grade students. 

Please feel free to leave comments or questions.  It would be great to have discussions about this wonderful change in our Mass that will only bring us closer to Christ in the Eucharist and to his flock, the Church.


God's blessings!!