I hope everyone is getting more comfortable with the new Mass translation. (I have to admit that I slipped up a few times myself the first day!) Still I am delighted with how the new translation of the prayers sounds. Sure, some people might shrug their shoulders, and ask, What’s the difference? But I think the new translation has a certain “poetry” to it that the old one lacked. The texts of the Mass are not meant just to communicate information – like an instruction manual – but to express our love and wonder and awe at God’s presence among us – more like a love letter.
One of the greatest benefits of the new Mass translation is that is sort of knocks us out of auto-pilot, and makes us think much more carefully about the texts of the Mass. The old ones had become so familiar that they became almost like “background noise.” Now that the prayers sound different, it helps us to pay more attention to them, to think about them, really to pray them.
As we continue through Advent, I wanted to propose for your prayer this beautiful poem from the “Preface” of Advent (the opening to the Eucharistic prayer where the priest consecrates the bread and wine): For all the oracles of the prophets foretold [Christ] / the Virgin Mother longed for him with love beyond all telling / John the Baptist sang of his coming / and proclaimed his presence when he came. It is by [Christ’s] gift that already we rejoice at the mystery of the Nativity so that he may find us watchful in prayer and exultant in praise.”
The new poetry really captures the sense of longing, and of triumphant joy when at last Jesus, the long-promised Messiah, came to earth. We can picture the intense longing of Mary, God’s most favored daughter, anticipating not just the birth of any Son, but the Savior of the World; We can picture that peculiar but holy prophet John literally singing out in the desert, with joy that His own cousin would redeem the world – something he somehow knew since the moment Christ reached out to him by the power of the Holy Spirit while he was still in the womb! How boldly and joyfully John the Baptist must have proclaimed the words we echo at every Mass, when he first introduced his cousin to the waiting world: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!”
During the Advent season, we are swept up in the pure joy and praise of the Blessed Virgin and John the Baptist. As the prayer says, we exalt in the coming of our Savior.
Now, exalt is not an ordinary word we would probably use in a daily conversation. But that is precisely the point. The birth of Jesus Christ is no ordinary event. It is so marvelous, so astonishing, something that makes our spirits soar to such a degree, that we need a whole new vocabulary to express that sense of fulfillment of our deepest longings and the deep-rooted happiness that only Christ can give – a happiness that transcends any surface pleasure we can imagine.
In this new translation of the Mass, we finally find a language suited to expressing the depth of the mystery of the gift of Jesus Christ to us, God’s own Son given for our salvation.
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