After a Year, What’s Changed?

The beginning of Advent means Catholics have now completed a full year of the new translation of the Mass.

Most of us have gotten accustomed to saying “And with your Spirit” rather than “And also with you” (although I still hear people occasionally saying “And also with your Spirit”). Few seem to have trouble with remembering they are not worthy “that you should enter under my roof” rather than “to receive you.” Many, however, are still fumbling with the word changes in the Gloria, and even more are still struggling with the revisions to the Nicene Creed.

I recognize that talking about this risks my incurring wrath from almost every corner, but I’m clearly not the only one to wonder what the changes have wrought after a year. I actually started to write this post yesterday, but got sidetracked. Shortly after I did, some sent me a link to a survey asking people about their feelings about the changes one year out.

For myself, the conclusions I’ve come to are these. First, I’m not as bothered by some of the word changes as I thought I would be. I was not a big fan about either the process or the results of the new translation, but certainly there is nothing in the words that has hindered my appreciation of the Mass or my connection with God during Mass. (The fact that almost everyone in the pews has to hold up a card to recite the creed and that many priests are still reading the Eucharistic prayers and fumbling over some of the long sentences is a bit distracting, but that is a termporal issues and, I assume, will get better over time.)

But second, I can’t say that the new translation has done anything to increase my reverence or my connection with God during Mass. The short conclusion is that I like some of the changes and I dislike others, but overall, wonder what has really been accomplished by the changes.

Any views on this one way or the other?

Advertisement

Honoring the Temple

Today’s Gospel from St. Luke presents a very truncated version of the story of Jesus driving out from the temple “those who were selling things.” He tells them, “My house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.”

What did Jesus see? Was it the main activity of the temple market area that offended Jesus and how were the people were engaging in that activity? When I envision the scene Jesus saw, I imagine the buying and selling and money changing. But I imagine Jesus also saw many people cheating each other and others haggling excessively over prices. People socializing and carrying on other business. People off in corners gambling, eating, drinking, and probably engaging in a lot of other activities that one would not associate with a temple.

The people Jesus saw were not just engaging in the necessary buying and selling of temple sacrifices. Rather, the buying and the selling, the haggling, the activity of the marketplace, became the center of activity. What Jesus saw were people who had lost their focus, forgot the purpose for which they were there, a people whose focus ceased to be on God. I think that is what Jesus is reacting to when he laments what they have done to the temple, his father’s house.

And when Jesus speaks of the temple, we know He is not just concerned with the physical building. Part of the Gospel message is that there is a new temple, a new place of God’s dwelling, and that temple is Jesus. Jesus’ own body replaces the physical temple as God’s dwelling. Jesus is where we go to worship, Jesus is where we go for solace, Jesus is the source of our salvation. Once the Word becomes flesh, Jesus is the the focal point; it is through Him that we are saved.

This passage invites us to think about how we approach the temple that is Jesus. Do approach Jesus so wrapped up in the world, so completely distracted by our worldly affairs – with what we are buying or selling or getting or not getting, that we cannot hear Him when He speaks to us? Do we approach with a grudge against our brother or our sister, so that our focus is on our own wounds and the injury done to us by another, unable to truly believe in the love our God has for us? Or do we approach with hearts full of love and joy to be in God’s presence?

At another level, the passage also invites us to think about how we approach each other. Do we adopt a marketplace, quid pro quo approach, that tests others by how much they give us or are able to benefit us, how good a deal we are able to get from them? Or do regard others as a cherished, holy place, treating each other with reverence, respect and love? Part of the challenge of this Gospel reading, I think, is the challenge of living each day of our lives in the true belief that we are all living temples of God.