Whose resurrection?

The Collect for the Fourth Sunday of Advent is especially well known because it is also the concluding prayer of the Angelus, and consequently recited by many people three times every day. Our current official translation bids us pray that we, through the Passion and Cross of Christ, may be brought to the glory of his resurrection. This version goes back at least as far as Challenor.

A few years ago, attending the Angelus recited by Pope Benedict XVI at noon on a Sunday in Rome, I was struck by a discrepancy between our familiar English version and the text recited by the Pope, who prayed ut . . . ad resurrectionis gloriam perducamur. This translates as that we may be brought to the glory of the resurrection, or even that we may be brought to the glory of resurrection.

I realise that the latter version, though accurate, would be distasteful to many, who would find it unacceptably vague. But the former brings out more clearly, I would suggest, that we are thinking here of the General Resurrection, in which we hope to participate. This is not a separate, second resurrection, but the resurrection of Christ extended to embrace us. The Latin speaks of his Passion and his Cross, but simply of the resurrection, indicating that the suffering was his, but the glory is his and ours.

The insertion of his in the English translation has necessitated a change in the conclusion to this Collect. Whereas the Latin uses the standard adverbial phrase beginning Per Dominum, the English ends with a relative clause: his resurrection. Who lives and reigns. (The CTS bilingual Daily Missal goes further, altering the conclusion in its Latin text to Qui vivis et regnas . . . as though the prayer were addressed to the Son, which it is not.)

The Anglophone preference for an insertion of his here seems to me to illustrate a more general point. Many of the prayers in our Missal originated in the first Christian millennium, before the Scholastic era. They are more content with allusion, whereas Scholasticism prefers definition. Modern translators, influenced by Scholasticism, tend to view earlier texts through scholastic spectacles, and so to produce a more definitive, less allusive translation than the texts warrant, losing subtleties offered by our oldest liturgical texts.

Advent 3

Today's Collect was preserved for us for many years on a scroll written in the eighth century. It is narrow but, when fully opened out, it is some four yards long, containing forty prayers. It is now kept in Geneva, but for some of its long life it was in Ravenna, though it was not originally written there. Still, it is known as the Rotulus (i.e. scroll) of Ravenna.

The prayers that it contains belong to the seasons of Advent and Christmas. They do not look on Advent as a penitential season, but rather as a time of joyous expectation. Today's Collect speaks of 'glad rejoicing' and the 'joys' of our salvation. It was a suitable choice for Gaudete Sunday, and is the only prayer from the Rotulus that occurs on a Sunday.

We can detect a similar serenity in last Wednesday's Collect, also from the Rotulus, in which we prayed that 'no infirmity may weary us, as we long for the comforting presence of our heavenly physician'. This brings into my mind a picture of the whole Church in an enormous waiting room at a doctor's surgery, with the patients keeping each other's spirits up as they await their turn.

Clunkiness

This Sunday's Prayer over the Offerings has already occurred in last Tuesday's Mass, and will occur another five times before Advent is over. It is an example of what many people call a 'clunky' text:

Be pleased, O Lord, with our humble prayers and offerings,

and, since we have no merits to plead our cause,

come, we pray, to our rescue

with the protection of your mercy.

As often happens, this 'clunky' feeling is due to the order of the words. Move two parentheses ('O Lord' and 'we pray') and you have a much smoother text: 

Be pleased with our humble prayers and offerings,

O Lord, we pray, 

and, since we have no merits to plead our cause,

come to our rescue

with the protection of your mercy.

The altered text is an example of what I like to call the 'Morecambe Missal' in memory of the great comedian Eric Morecambe who, when accused by conductor Andre Prévin of playing the wrong notes on his piano, naughtily replied that he was playing the right notes, but in a different order.

Prevenient

Some people have said to me that they are uncomfortable with the word 'prevenient' in the Prayer over the Offerings for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. It has no place in ordinary speech, they say. It may be helpful to reflect a little on the underlying Latin word praevenire, which means 'to go in front of', and occurs quite often in the Missal. We shall meet it, for instance, in the Collect for Saturday in the Third Week of Advent, which begins:

May your grace, Almighty God,

always go before us and follow after . . .

Before 1970, this was the Collect for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost. In the sixteenth century it found its way into the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, where it began:

Lord, we praye thee that thy grace maye alwayes preuente and folowe us.

Clearly, at that time 'prevent' could mean 'go before and enable' rather than 'go before and impede' as it does to us.

In the Mass of the Epiphany the Prayer after Communion begins:

Go before us with heavenly light, O Lord . . .

On the second day of Lent, praevenire is translated in our official version with the verb 'prompt':

Prompt our actions with your inspiration, we pray, O Lord.

So if you are uncomfortable with 'prevenient' in today's Mass, think of the sixth line of today's Prayer over the Offerings as meaning simply:

. . . on account of your grace going before her . . .

Christ the King of Everything

When today's feast was first instituted by Pope Pius XI in 1925, its title was 'The Feast of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King'.

I find that this title is often still used, and its use is often accompanied by a focus on Our Lord's supposed regalia. During the 1930s, as military displays became more common, this will have offered a welcome iconographical alternative reminding us of a higher power.

But in 1970 the title of the feast was changed to Solemnitas Domini Nostri Iesu Christi Universorum Regis, which is often translated as 'The Solemnity of our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe'. To my ear, 'Universe' has an unduly astronomical ring, and a version that better brings out the meaning of the feast is:

'The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the King of Everything'.

The important point is that today we celebrate not only the King, but also his Kingdom, and the relationship between them. The Kingdom of God is, of course, a central theme in the Gospels. Pope Saint John Paul II included the proclamation of the Kingdom as the Third Luminous Mystery when he enriched the Rosary. At his inauguration, though he declined to wear the Papal Tiara, he offered a reflection on its significance:-

"Perhaps in the past, the tiara, this triple crown, was placed on the Pope's head in order to express by that symbol the Lord's plan for his Church, namely that all the hierarchical order of Christ's Church, all "sacred power" exercised in the Church, is nothing other than service, service with a single purpose: to ensure that the whole People of God shares in this threefold mission of Christ and always remains under the power of the Lord; a power that has its source not in the powers of this world but in the mystery of the Cross and Resurrection."

These words have helped me to reflect on today's Solemnity.

How many sacrifices?

At Mass in the Roman Rite the Priest, having prepared bread and wine and washed his hands, invites the people to pray with the words 'Pray, brethren, that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father'. To what do the words 'my sacrifice and yours' refer? Some understand them to refer to the bread and wine that lie on the altar, others to the one sacrifice of Christ on Calvary, about to be made present in the Eucharistic Prayer. A seventeenth-century English Catholic prayer book translates the Priest's words as 'My sacrifice, which is also yours'. When the Missal was being re-translated, one suggested version was 'the sacrifice that is mine and yours'. In both these examples, the words are assumed to refer to a single sacrifice.

But there is another way of understanding this invitation, according to which my sacrifice is different from yours. Every Christian is called to do good works and to offer them to God. The works are many, but as we offer them up to God, we do so in union with that sacrificial community which is the Church. Vatican II put it like this in Presbyterorum Ordinis 2: "By the ministry of the presbyters, the spiritual sacrifice of the faithful is completed in union with the sacrifice of Christ, the unique mediator, which is offered in a sacramental and unbloody manner by their hands, in the name of the whole church, until the coming of the Lord".

At a solemn celebration, as I cense the Altar, I like to think about the sacrifices that the people bring to Mass: one may be caring for a sick relative, another perseveres in boring work, a third endures loneliness, and so on. This meditation helps prepare me to speak of 'my sacrifice and yours'.

I am told that in the Premonstratensian Rite, the Priest says hoc meum ac vestrum sacrificium, that is, 'this my sacrifice and yours', clearly indicating that a single sacrifice is envisaged. We may see this as a symptom of the gradual loss of awareness of the priesthood of the laity that took place during the Middle Ages

A missed opportunity - the Preface Dialogue

When the English version of the Roman Missal was being revised at the beginning of this century, there was much discussion of whether 'And with your spirit' should replace 'And also with you'.

Less discussed was the second exchange in the dialogue:

Celebrant: Lift up your hearts.

People: We lift them up to the Lord.

This was a missed opportunity. 'Lift up your hearts' is not the only possible translation of Sursum corda, for sursum does not always denote movement upwards: it can also denote 'being above'. An example is Colossians 3,1: quae sursum sunt quaerite = 'seek the things that are above'. 

Moreover, sursum corda need not be interpreted as a command. It can also be an invitation: 'Let our hearts be on high'.

'We lift them up to the Lord' is not an accurate translation of Habemus ad Dominum, for habemus does mean 'we lift', but rather 'we hold'. So the people's response can be translated 'we are holding them before the Lord'.

The Preface Dialogue with which we are familiar occurs also in several ancient Greek liturgies, and is still in use today among the Greeks. Their texts support the translation I have proposed.

This translation gives us a more level playing-field between priest and people. Instead of a command that the people obey, he issues an invitation to which they have already responded. This fits his role, for in the Roman Rite it is usually the Deacon who issues commands, while the Priest offers invitations.

The translation we have, and have had unbrokenly since the Roman Rite began to be celebrated in English, goes back to the work of Thomas Cranmer, who devised the Book of Common Prayer in the sixteenth century as the Reformation developed. Cranmer abolished the liturgical role of the Deacon, so that any commands had to be made by the Priest. The influence of Cranmer's texts was greatly strengthened after the Second Vatican Council by the International Consultation on English Texts, much of whose work was adopted for Catholic liturgy. Unfortunately this body, although claiming to be ecumenical, contained no representatives from the Eastern Churches.

The Second Vatican Council sought to return to a more primitive, collegial model of the Church. The Preface Dialogue sensitively translated would have assisted that process, fostering an image of the priest 'among' rather than 'above' the people. Some other vernacular translations are closer to what is proposed here. Italy, in particular, has 

In alto i nostri cuori / Sono rivolti al Signore

'Let our hearts be on high' / 'They are turned towards the Lord’.

The people’s response suggests that they have no need of the Priest’s invitation, for they have already done what he encourages.

The next element of the dialogue needed no change: Let us give thanks to the Lord our God is a perfectly faithful translation of the Latin. Notice also that it is an invitation, not a command. If Sursum corda had also been translated as an invitation, the Priest’s role would have been more consistent.

The people's response became It is right and just. This too is faithful. It was chosen because the Priest immediately echoes it as he begins the Preface. That is, he takes his cue from the people.

The Preface Dialogue has come down to us from very early times in both Latin and Greek. It belongs to the period to whose ecclesiology the Second Vatican Council sought to return. But those responsible for our English liturgy have imported into this ancient Dialogue, used at every Mass, an ecclesiology from sixteenth-century England.