Grassroots Liturgist

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...

This seems an appropriate point at which to explore the Lectionary, of which we start using a new edition on the 1st Sunday of Advent later this year. The Second Vatican Council reminds us that we are fed from two tables in the Holy Mass: Word and Sacrament. “The treasures of the Bible are to be opened up more lavishly, so that richer fare may be provided for the faithful at the table of God's word.   In this way a more representative portion of the holy scriptures will be read to the people in the course of a prescribed number of years.” (Sacrosanctum Concilium 51) For too long, the Church didn’t provide its flock with a great deal of nourishment from Scripture in the Mass.   The Council Fathers sought to correct that, which led the introduction of the 1969 Lectionary – the   book which contains all the Readings that are proclaimed during the Liturgy of the Word.   On any given Sunday, at every Catholic church in every country of the world, we listen to the same...