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| The new Altar Missal which will be used for the first time at Masses for the First Sunday of Advent |
The priest's greetings and people's responses of the new translation of the Mass in English have been in use in Church for the last few weeks. On this First Sunday of Advent, we begin the full use of the new translation. The richness of the prayers and, often, the origins of their sentiments in the Scriptures, will be more obvious. Our unity with those celebrating Mass in other languages will be more clear too.
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| The Altar Missal for Sacred Heart Church has been donated in memory of Sinéad Ní Dhorchaidhe by her family. |
Here is a homily given by Fr Hugh on the 9th October last, 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, when the Gospel was the Parable of the Wedding Banquet in Matthew 22:1-14.
People can have different attitudes to getting an invitation to some celebration. I was talking to a parishioner here a few weeks ago who was very excited about getting an invitation to a wedding. He and his wife gladly accepted the invitation and went to the wedding. Sometimes, though, I meet people who aren’t enthusiastic about getting an invitation. They say, ‘Oh, no, another wedding to go to. I might think of an excuse to get out of it.’
Jesus talks about these two attitudes in today’s Gospel parable of the wedding feast. Of course this wedding feast in the parable stands for the Kingdom of God, and the Kingdom is like a great banquet. Jesus is echoing the description of the banquet in today’s first reading from the Prophet Isaiah. Now, the Kingdom of God is the fulfilment of the banquet God prepares for all peoples.
In the parable, the people invited by the king to the wedding wouldn’t come. The King tried again, and the next group didn’t accept the invitation either. They obviously didn’t appreciate the generosity of the king. He had to send his servants out to the crossroads to invite the good and the bad alike, and finally got some guests to come to the wedding. Even then, somebody came without a wedding garment. This represents the calling of sinners. We should be delighted to be invited even though we are sinners, but we are expected to repent and change our ways to come to the feast, and this person didn’t.And so Jesus ends the parable concluding that ‘many are called but few are chosen.’ God invites us into the feast in his Kingdom, but he leaves us the freedom to respond with love. If he just forced us, it wouldn’t be love, and it’s when we love that we are being true to our being made in the image of God, who is love.
That brings me to an aspect of the new translation of the Mass in English. We have the new translations of the priest’s greetings, the people’s responses and the Gloria and the Creed, up and running successfully here now. What will come next for the first Sunday of Advent at the end of November will be the prayers said by the priest at Mass. What will probably get commented on most when this comes round, will be the new translation of the words of Jesus at the consecration of the precious blood. The new translation will say, ‘Take this, all of you, and drink from it, for this is the chalice of my Blood, the Blood of the new and eternal covenant, which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in memory of me.’
Of course, what stands out is that the old English translation said that Christ’s blood ‘will be shed for you and for all.’ No doubt when Advent comes around, we’ll hear people giving out saying, ‘But Christ died for all.’ Why is the Church restricting this to ‘many’ now? Yes, of course, Jesus died for the salvation of all. But he respects our human freedom. It is possible for us to refuse his invitation, to reject salvation. And that’s why it’s better here to say, ‘for many’ rather than, ‘for all’. Jesus died for all, but people are free not to accept the fruit of what he has done. Anyway, that’s what’s in the Latin typical edition of the text, that the English is meant to be a translation of. The Latin says, ‘qui pro vobis et pro multis effundetur’ and pro multis means ‘for many.’ Matthew and Mark wrote their Gospels in Greek, and both of them say ‘for many’ when they tell us what Jesus said over the cup at the Last Supper. The Greek term is tò peri pollôn. It means ‘many’ or ‘much’ or ‘most’, but it doesn’t mean ‘all’.
As I was saying before, this doesn’t mean Mass was any less valid in the old translation. Human language will always be imperfect. The English translators the first time round were impressed by the work of a German Lutheran Scripture scholar called Joachim Jeremias. He reckoned that the words probably used by Jesus in Hebrew and Aramaic would have more or less meant ‘for all’. But, saying, ‘for many’ can still get across that sense of God’s generosity, of multitudes beyond our imagining entering God’s Kingdom. Anyway, we can’t really say that some Scripture scholar knows better than Matthew and Mark, who wrote their Gospels under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And down through the centuries, the Church had always used the expression ‘for many’ at that time in the Mass. So, it wasn’t ideal for the English language to be going its own way on this.
So, the old translation can obscure the clarity of doctrine a bit. Using the correct translation of the ‘for many’ will remind us of the point of today’s Gospel, that ‘many are called but few are chosen.’ It will remind us that we are invited to the feast of God’s Kingdom. Jesus has won our entry. He has won our salvation. Now, it’s up to us to freely choose to accept the invitation and enjoy the fruits of this. This is an invitation given in love, calling for a response in love.
This homily is indebted for some of its ideas to a series of articles on the blog by Fr John Zuhlsdorf, What does the Prayer Really Say?
You can read the 4-part series of articles here for a more in-depth justification of the new translation in the words of consecration over the chalice:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
