FRIDAY POTPOURRI: THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH WORDS TO SAY I LOVE YOU. OH WAIT. THERE ARE.

Let’s say that it is your vacation.  It is one thing to interrupt your vacation to answer a short text, it is another to be interrupted by a three hour video conference call.  Secretly you are dying a slow and terrible death.

So it is one thing to have little ceremonies added to the nuptial Mass.  But the part of the Catholic brain that has not shut down at Mass, that is at least aware of the flow that should be happening, and that is looking forward to Communion, is suddenly thrown off track by a long, long nuptial blessing.  You know who loves this prayer?  The moms and the priest.  Everyone else has just run into a brick wall and is too concerned about why they are no longer moving forward.  

Well, I am exaggerating.  Maybe I just don’t know how to do it well.  And often I have a couple looking at me with dreamy looks in their eyes over what is being said about them.  Maybe it is my attitude.  About half way through I am thinking, “Gads, am I still talking?”

But it is a beautiful prayer.  And though now it is better translated, even ICEL did not strip it down in length during the post Vatican II translation and they were not adverse to slashing and burning.  AND AS IS OFTEN THE MISTAKE it should be remembered (even by me!) that the people present are not the ones being addressed at this point - it is our Father.  We are going to our Father and asking for a very specific blessing on two of His children who are being united.  Other than to remind us of what is going on and to agree, the job of those who are there is to offer with the celebrant the words being spoken to our common Father.  He is certainly the cause of the day in so many ways, the King present and begged for a blessing, the eternal Father Who loves and blesses His children.

FRIDAY POTPOURRI: COMBATING LITURGICAL SENILITY

"But what have you done for me lately?"

Unless someone is family or in our lives in some other capacity so that we must deal with them on a regular basis, if a person is not blowing us up or giving us money (to state it in a vulgar fashion), we tend to forget about them.  It's human nature.  Two weeks after there is a shooter at a school, we forget about making schools safer.  When we figure out we will not benefit from the lottery winner, we have no recall at all who it was that did win and perhaps even that there was lottery.  I imagine this saves us a lot of grief.

But there are some things and persons we should never forget.  There is a part of the Mass called the anamesis (paragraph 79 sub paragraph e).  It is from the Greek word for rememberance.  (Speaking of "remember," something to recall at this moment is that before Latin, Greek was the language of the Church, of which the Kyrie is a remnant.  But of course we cannot forget "Alleluia" which is, in fact, Hebrew). What we remember specifically at each Mass is the Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus.  Here is the particular phrase from the Roman Canon (Eucharistic prayer I), "Therefore, O Lord, as we celebrate the memorial of the blessed Passion, the Resurrection from the dead, and the glorious Ascension into heaven of Christ, your Son, our Lord, we, your servants and your holy people . . . "

And really, it is not even a matter of, "What have you done for me lately," it is more reminding us that these actions are saving us at this very moment.  If salvation were a roller coaster, we would not be anticipating the ride, we would not be remembering it, it would be as if we were on the wild hair ride down the steep slope, in the midst of the joy and radicalness of the moment.  Unfortunately we can be a bit like my Dad as he descended into Alzhiemers.  About every 15 minutes during his birthday party he would ask, "What are we celebrating?"  We would tell him, "You birthday!"  And he would light up afresh each and every time.  "Really?  This is a party for me?  What a great surprise!"  

You are being loved and saved at this very moment.  Christ did not die 2000 years ago for some idea of you today.  That mystery in which we are present at the Mass is going on right now for you.  Christ suffer and dies for you now.  His resurrections is present to us at the Mass.  At that moment, when the portals of heaven and earth are open, he leads us in His ascension into heaven.  And it is for you.  Not an idea of you.  He calls you by name.  It is almost too much for us to comprehend.  So at the Mass we work on remembering this.

Anamesis 

UNMARKED ANNIVERSARY

We find ourselves about one year and one month into the new translation of the Missal.  Our liturgical aids are looking pretty shabby – but we still need them so we will probably have to do something about that.  I am finally starting to get the hang of the construction of the sentences with their endless spans between periods and other spots where periods must be ignored all together for the sake of the listener.  And rarely is the phrase, “And also with you” heard accidently anymore (though once in a blue moon I switch some words around reverting back to previous sentence constructions.)

 

So was it worth it?  No doubt there are things, particular words, certain phrases, construction of sentences that each of us might want to change.  But overall has it served?  From a personal perspective I would say yes.

 

Perhaps there is no other time that I feel this is true than during a funeral.  Knowing that there were non-Catholics in the congregation I always felt a bit uncomfortable with the old translation fearing that it was not explaining enough.  It contained all the particulars of Catholicism without any of the explanation or grand devotion.  Now I feel as if we are saying, “Here’s the naked truth.”  And if it makes non-Catholics understand better, might the new translation help Catholics understand better?

 

It also seemed rather amazing that we hit the one year mark and it went almost completely unnoticed.  After all of the fear that people would leave in droves or that there would be protests for use of the old translation, the anniversary came and went with barely a peep – not even a review of how we were doing a year after such a change in the Mass.  It was as if we forgot we had even done it.  Like a new great friend, it seems like they have always been around except when something calls attention to the fact that they are new to the pack.

HOW COME I DON'T REMEMBER IT BEING THAT WAY: TRIDUUM

Interestingly nobody made a peep that there was going to be rubrical changes in the Mass when everybody was either cheering or bemoaning the new Mass translation. There are quite a few that will hit us during the Triduum. The savvy Catholic (or the one not deeply in prayer) will notice a few changes (assuming that your priest noticed that there are, in fact, changes in what we are to do.)

Most are pretty innocuous. There are a few you might pick up on however. Here are a few:

GOOD FRIDAY: Instead of walking in and going directly into a prostration, the celebrant and other ministers will bow and then lay down in prostration.

The deacon has a stronger role in the ten petitions now. The “Let us kneel – Let us stand” is now optional. Congregations are encouraged to either kneel or stand through the whole of the singing of the petitions.

For the revealing of the Cross the first option is to have the deacon present the priest with the Cross in the sanctuary and as the priest uncovers the cross it is he that intones the response three times. The Cross is to be covered in violet (not red) and ALL are to kneel momentarily after each response.

It is still permissible to process the Cross in from the door of the church, but in this instance the Cross is NOT covered.

Here’s a very interesting one: Now the priest is to remove his shoes and his chasuble when he venerates the Cross.

Last interesting one: The ministers will now genuflect to the Cross (the Blessed Sacrament being taken away) before leaving the sanctuary.

HOLY SATURDAY:

When entering the darkened church with the Paschal candle, the presider now lights his candle after the first “Thanks be to God.” Everyone else lights it after the second. The church lights, save for the candles at the altar, are also lit at this point.

Before the Gospel, the celebrant is supposed to intone three solemn alleluias which are answered by the people before the Gospel procession begins.

Before communion the presider may address the newly baptized and those welcomed into the Church about the specialness of their First Holy Communion.

There are other changes but they are comparatively minute. These are the ones that, if you have been to the Triduum before, might cause you to look quizzically and wonder, “I don’t remember that.” That is because we haven’t been doing it that way!

ROAMIN' THROUGH THE MISSALS

I realize that today might have limited appeal.  But there may be those who find it helpful.  This is a personal review of two of the new Roman Missals recently printed and put to the test.

The above book is from LTP.  It was our first choice back when we were only given a sample page or two from each of the companies.  I like very much that they used original art with a certain amount of symbolism involved and a vast step above the Playschool symbols to which we have been subjected over the past years.  The cover of the book looks noble, the paper was glare free and for the most part easy to read and follow.

However, as you can see above, the gold on the cover is severely worn off after just three weeks of use.  Below is a book that has been in hard use for three years and the cover, for the most part, is still in decent condition.  I found this very disappointing.  The book also does not lay flat and worst of all, the tabs meant for easy navigation of the book during the Mass are placed such that when one uses them to flip to the section that one desires, there is then need to flip BACK one page.  But not all of the time.  That is an annoyance and an inconsistency that prompted me to try another company.

 Below is the Catholic Book Publishers who did the above book.  I found the above book to be of the highest quality but lacked much (to my mind) in the way of beauty (which was why I originally went with LTP.)  I used the new one for the first time this morning at the school Mass.  The servers were present at the unwrapping and immediately liked it for various reasons.

For personal taste reasons I am not excited about the artwork on the cover though it does symbolize well what the book is about.  The tabs are much better placed and take you directly to where you need to go without any additional flipping. 

I've heard some guys complaining about the fancy first letter of each section but I like it.  If I should look away for a moment my eyes comes right back to where I need to be and it is due to the letters giving me a reference spot.

It is well laid out and there is no glare on the pages.  The font is easy to read.  I am not over excited about the artwork but it could be far, far worse. 

Below the CBP and LTP are placed side by side respectfully.  Notice that the LTP pages come all the way down almost to the edge of the cover.  This makes for the pages to be more easily damaged and indeed they were damaged in shipping even before we got our hands on it.  An edge also makes it easier for the severs to hold.  There is also the nice gold design on the inside edge that made the servers this morning ooh and ahh.

It is difficult to tell from the below picture but the LTP ribbons are quite thin compared to the amount of pages that they are required to turn causing them to slip out more easily than the broader ribbons in the CBP.

Below is a memorial Missal which we will use only a very special occasions.  It was given in memory of one of our parishioners by her friends.  (It was very expensive.)  It was put out by the Midwest Theological Forum.  They also put out less expensive volumes.  We have an all Latin text from them donated by Fr. M. in our chapel that they produced.  The bindings seems very good, the books lay flat, the have broad ribbons, the text, paper, and lay out make them easier to read.  The book has a noble simplicity about it and it has a goodly amount of space from the edge of the cover to where the pages begin.

If I had one complaint it would be that, although I very much like the art work and appreciate what they used, if I had my druthers I wish they would have used some current artists who are producing (IMHO) good liturgical art in order to support our artists and encourage new Catholic art to be produced.