Candlemass 2023

 On February 2nd this year I went to a nearby Catholic church to take part in Mass for the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, or Candlemass. The liturgy was composed, I found, of a mixture of elements from the current rite of Mass and the pre-conciliar, or Tridentine, rite.

The Mass was celebrated in the evening, which was unthinkable before the reign of Pope Pius XII,

Before the recent liturgical reform, February 2 was known in the Roman Rite as the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin. Mass was preceded by the blessing and distribution of candles and a procession, which set off from the sanctuary and ended there. At one time, violet vestments were worn for these ceremonies, a relic of a pentiential procession that was held in Rome on this day in earlier times. The colour of the vestments offered a foretaste of Septuagesima and Lent. This custom was abandoned before Vatican II.

The ministers at the Mass I attended accepted these changes of name, schedule and vesture, wearing white throughout. But they rejected the change mandated after Vatican II, which requires the procession to begin from outside the sanctuary, preferably outside the Church building. It thus resembles the processions that begin the Masses of Palm Sunday and the Easter Vigil, being a procession to the altar, and so a reminiscence, even a reenactment, of the journey of the Holy Family to the Jerusalem Temple. Our procession began and ended at the altar, thus being reduced to a mere choral walk.

I was disappointed, not for the first time, to find clergy ignoring the laws that govern Catholic worship, and consequently failing to communicate to their flock in full the rich significance of our liturgy.

Collect for the Third Sunday per annum

 This prayer is found in the Gregorian Sacramentary and many other manuscripts. In 1570 it was the Collect for the Sunday in the Octave of Christmas. The 1970 revisers sought out prayers for the Christmas season more clearly suited to its themes. 

This brief text is very difficult to translate, as discrepancies among the versions in pre-conciliar hand-missals clearly demonstrate. The heart of the problem is the verb mereamur. In classical Latin, mereor means 'I earn' or 'I deserve'. Mereor is very common in liturgical texts, but theology teaches us that we cannot earn or deserve God's gifts. To think otherwise is the heresy of Pelagianism, to refute which Saint Augustine said 'when God crowns our merits, he is crowning his own gifts'.

How, then, should we translate mereamur? That is not an easy question to answer, and I do not offer a complete answer here. But I should welcome comments and suggestions from readers of the blog.

The prayer under discussion is unusual: the verb mereor in liturgical texts usually has God's reward as its object, as when we pray the we may 'merit the rewards of the blessed'. But here, we pray 'that we may deserve to abound in good works', to borrow Fr Adrian Fortescue's translation.

When preparing a new translation, ICEL proposed . . . that in the name of your beloved Son we may be made rich in good works. The passive 'be made' was intended to indicate that our good works are God's gift. The Vox Clara committee rejected this, so that now we pray that we may abound in good works. This leaves mereamur untranslated.

We shall need to speak about mereor again as we make our way through the liturgical year.

Prayer over the Gifts for the Second Sunday per annum

Found in the Gelasian Sacramentary and many subsequent MSS, this prayer has been assigned to many occasions in the liturgical year. In the 1570 Missal it is the Secret for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost. It occurs three times in the 1970 book - as the Prayer over the offerings for the Second Sunday of the Year, the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, and the Votive Mass of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Eternal High Priest. 

It has played a significant role in the history of Catholic doctrine. St Thomas Aquinas quotes it (STh 3a q83 a1) in support of his statement that through the sacrament of the Eucharist we are made participants in the fruit of the Lord’s passion. It was mentioned in discussions at the Council of Trent (but not, I think, in the Council’s documents). Pope Pius XII quoted it in Mediator Dei, and Vatican II in Sacrosanctum Concilium. In the Catechism it is quoted twice (1364 and 1405). 

 The last word of the body of the prayers, exercetur, has been questioned, since one very early manuscript has a different reading - exseritur. This, if accepted, would make the final line mean ‘the work of our redemption is made known’. Exercetur is more difficult. 

The official translation ‘is accomplished’ should not be ‘ taken to mean ‘is completed’ like Jesus’ word from the Cross (John 19,30) sometimes translated ‘it is accomplished’. Rather, an ongoing process is implied: ‘is being accomplished’ would make this clearer. 

 Because of the prayer’s long history, there are many translations of exercetur to compare. Here is a selection:- 

‘exercised’ (Husenbeth 1847) 

‘wrought’ (Fortescue 1926) 

‘renewed’ (English Dominican translation 1948) 

‘every offering of this memorial sacrifice carries on the work of our redemption; (O’Connell and Finberg 1952) 

‘accomplished’ (Caraman and Walsh 1961) 

 And from official translations of the Catechism: ‘s’opere’ ‘s’effettua (Italian) ‘se realiza’ (Spanish) ‘is carried out’ (English in section 1364) ‘is carried on’ (English in section 1405).

The Instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum alludes to this prayer when it speaks of priests 'remembering always that in the mystery of the Eucharistic Sacrifice the work of redemption is constantly being carried out', 'constantly' rendering continuo.

The official English translation of this prayer would be improved if its final line was 'the work of our redemption is being accomplished' as the International Commission on English in the Liturgy proposed, before the Vox Clara committee, chaired by the late Cardinal Pell, advised the Congregation for Divine Worship to adopt what we now know as the official text.

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.

The Paschal Prefaces

1. The opening paragraph or Protocol

The official translation reads "It is truly right and just . . . . at this time above all to laud you yet more gloriously, when Christ our Passover has been sacrificed'. This is surprising, since 'when . . . has' in constructions like this usually refers to future events, for example 'when Richard has opened the door, I shall leave'. The Paschal Preface refers to an event not in the future but in the past, namely the death of Christ, so that 'when Christ our Passover was sacrificed' would be more idiomatic.

But there is another point to be considered. In the background is 1 Cor 5, 7-8: 'Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us: let us therefore keep the feast'. Here, the connection between Christ's sacrifice and our liturgy is causal, not temporal. We are not merely marking the anniversary of Christ's death but celebrating its enduring power. 

The revisers may have been following the classical rule, according to which cum with a subjunctive is causal ('because') and with an indicative is temporal ('when'). But in later Latin this pattern lapses, and cum with indicative, as here, can mean 'because'. So I would argue that this clause would be better translated 'because Christ our Passover has been sacrificed'.

1. The final paragraph or Eschatocol

Concern has been expressed concerning the word 'even' in 'and even the heavenly powers . . . sing together . . . the hymn of your glory'. Why should we be surprised that the heavenly powers sing to glorify God? Is that not their principal activity?

The revisers may have been misled by the words sed et in the original. The Latin word sed is an adversative or contrastive particle, regularly translated 'but'. But when coupled with et, sed loses its adversative or contrastive force: sed et means simply 'and also'.

Sed et recurs often in the Missal, and this erroneous translation is repeated in several places, but not in all. For instance, in the Roman Canon sed et beati Ioseph is correctly rendered 'and of blessed Joseph', not 'and even of blessed Joseph'! 

Our Father

Today's Gospel records Jesus' teaching of the 'Our Father', to his disciples. If you were present two days ago for the Rite of Election of candidates for baptism, you may have been surprised that, unlike most liturgical functions, it did not contain this most central of Christian prayers.

The reason is that Christian tradition regards the Lord's Prayer as part of the arcanum, the secrets that are known only to the initiated, and only passed on to catechumens as their initiation draws near. We have already prayed, in the Collect of the First Sunday of Lent, that we will grow in understanding of Christi arcanum, which our Missal translates (with a nod to Ephesians 3:8) as ‘the riches hidden in Christ’. The Lord’s Prayer will be handed on to the elect as part of the liturgy of the third scrutiny on the fifth Sunday of Lent. But they will only proclaim the prayer with the community for the first time after their Baptism and before their first reception of the Eucharist.

In our culture, the Lord's Prayer is widely known and used. Even unbaptised children in our schools are expected to learn and repeat it. Before the Council, the Roman liturgy contained more indications of its special character. At Mass, the celebrant would sing or say it alone, the rest of the assembly only responding with its final clause, sed libera nos a malo. On many other occasions, the bulk of the prayer was said silently, only the opening and the conclusion being audible. In many monastic communities the custom survives of the superior singing most of it on his or her own.

Theological support for this is found in the New Testament: 'unless a person is born again of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God' (John 3,5); 'Blessed be the God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy we have been born anew . . . ' (1 Peter 1,3). Our new birth through baptism gives us a new Mother - the Church - and a new Father - God.

Hence the tentative tone of the introduction to the Our Father at Mass. The celebrant seems almost to be tip-toeing up to the prayer with a reverent hesitation. He refers twice to the giver of the prayer: 'the Saviour's command . . . divine teaching' but not directly, until finally, having screwed up his courage and presented his credentials, he dares to address God as Father.

Striving on the First Sunday of Lent

In the Post-communion of today's Mass we anglophones are bidden to pray that we may 'strive' to live by every word that comes from the mouth of God. That isn't what the the Latin says. It prays that we may 'be able' so to live. The English stresses human effort more than the Latin does.

The previous English translation was widely, and rightly, criticised for the same tendency. Many accused it of Pelagianism. The new translation has improved matters in this regard, but not entirely, as today's Post-communion shows.

Another instance of this tendency can be seen in the invitation to repentance at the beginning of Mass. We are asked to acknowledge our sins 'and so prepare ourselves' to celebrate the Sacred Mysteries. The Latin says merely 'that we may be ready' (ut apti simus) to celebrate - no mention of human effort there, but plenty of room for God's grace.

Pelagius was a Celt, and a high proportion of English-speaking Catholics have Celtic roots. Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that the shadow of his teaching should fall over our translation of the Mass.