Grassroots Liturgist

Following the death of our Holy Father, Pope Francis, on Easter Monday this week, there have been many stories and anecdotes about his life and deep faith cropping up in the news, on the internet, etc.   A repeated theme that I have noticed is how strongly his faith was rooted in his life of prayer, and how important the various sacred liturgies of the Church were in nurturing his faith.   Again we come back to the importance of full, conscious and active participation.   It is so easy for us weak, fallen mortals, to say or read the prayers or the Bible without really absorbing into our innermost being what it is that we are saying or reading. I have often noticed, however, that truly holy men and women naturally, without thought, make reference to the Bible, Psalms, or other prayers and readings when talking about or explaining the Christian faith.   I have seen it often in monks, nuns and other religious.   But also lay people. And one story that I read ...

Languages and translation are more complex than we might imagine. We all know how the English of Shakespeare, who was writing over 400 years ago, is so very different to the English that we use today.   Go back another 200 years to the second half of the 14 th Century, and the vast majority of us simply wouldn’t understand Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English. When abroad, have you ever seen signs that have been translated into English for the tourists, but done so poorly and maybe with unintended comical results? Or try this: type an English sentence into an app to get a Spanish translation; then take that translation and translate it into German; and then take that translation and translate it back into English.   The likelihood is that you will not have the same sentence as you started with, and it may have turned out to be very different. One more anecdote…modern Mexicans have a saying: “The donkey talking about ears.”   It’s a cultural i...

Have you ever been to the supermarket and spent time looking for something, only to realise that what you are looking for has now been moved to a different aisle?   You may be be at least a little frustrated and wonder to yourself, “Why change?   Everything was fine as it was!”   It’s even more frustrating to know that the reason that things were changed was most likely not for your benefit, but to bring other produce to our attention and, therefore, to increase their profits. In the Church, most of us have experienced at least one change in the celebration of Holy Mass.   The most recent was the New Translation of the Missal, when we were suddenly confronted with different wordings for the Gloria, Creed, Eucharistic Prayers, etc.   And, in December, we will have another change, with the introduction of the New Lectionary.   Some familiar phrases from the Gospels, Psalms and other books of the Bible may, overnight, sound a little different.   And we...