A blessed new year to you – liturgical year, that is; the cycle of worship that walks through the history of our salvation in Jesus Christ begins again with the violet vestments and the first candle in the wreath. Happy First Advent!
This year marks a full decade – ten years, ten Advents, Christmases, Ash Wednesdays, Easters, Ascensions, Pentecosts, All Souls, and Christ the Kings – since we introduced the new English translation of the Missal, the words and prayers of our Eucharistic worship. The change was so momentous that I began preparing you for it by writing detailed bulletin letters a full year before the change, so you would know what to expect, and why it was happening.
If you want to see what that looked like - I know I did - you can click on these links to read my letters from eleven years ago, where I 'broke the news' about what was coming, and laid out some of the things to be expected: 1st Advent 2010 'Gears to Shift' ; 2nd Advent 2010, 'Words and Music'. I also enjoyed reading 'the Sunday after', my observations in the bulletin the week after we unleashed the new Missal. Who knew it would make me feel like a new priest again? 2nd Advent 2011, 'The Church is Young'.
One of the things I promised was that you would get ‘your Spirit’ back, and indeed you have. After all this time, the response to “The Lord be with you,” comes naturally and effortlessly as “And with your Spirit.” Oh, sure, occasionally, especially at funerals or other special events with people present who haven’t been to Mass much in the last few years, I will hear a few say “and also with you.” But largely the new language has become our own.
Ten years ago October, we anticipated the change by introducing the new service music for the new texts, so we would be ready to sing when the change occurred. The tunes for the Lord have mercy, Glory to God, Holy Holy Holy, and Lamb of God changed to accommodate and embrace the new texts. Some churches are still (still!!) using old musical settings with the new language shoehorned into it. Every time I am at a parish that does that, I hear about half the people default to singing the old words – music does that. That is why we insisted on new music.
Now after ten years, we are blessed with three excellent settings that we all know well, all crafted and composed by our own talented music directors. Since Labor Day, we have been using the chant-style Mass of the Holy Helpers, which John Henderson gave us. Last weekend, for the great year-end feast, we sang the grand and festive Mass of Saint Bernadette, by Richard Fitzgerald. He composed that at the time of the change, and it was the first one we learned. Now it just sounds like home.
I think the hardest change was the Creed, partly because we do not sing it and thus do not have the help of the tune to keep us on the new words. “Consubstantial” is a real mouthful, and drew a lot of comments in those first months as folks grappled with it. Other formulations throughout that long text changed too, and those are the ones for which I still need to have the printed text in front of me, and I still have to be careful.
Many, many more changes are in the texts that the priest alone says, and I am happy to say that for me they have become second nature. There are a couple awkward phrases now and then that just can’t be right (English) – one on Pentecost, as I recall – but little things like that are to be expected in such an enormous work even with care and precision.
Despite the readiness and general willingness that greeted the changes, I think that some folks got annoyed, and maybe still do, becoming a little bitter that things changed from what they knew and loved before. We all know how easy it is to let such sentiments push us away from the practice of the Faith, even if it be unconscious. If you know anybody who fits that description, Advent is a great time for you to invite them back into the flow of the Faith and the soul-healing reality of our liturgical worship.
So we started working on this eleven years ago this weekend, and now all readily recite the invitation to our Eucharistic Lord to “enter under our roof,” without reading a card or book. Congratulations, and happy anniversary! Oh, and – happy new year, too.
