By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
Conversation while warming up in the lodge between downhill runs on a recent ski outing turned to faith, as it often does when I reveal to strangers that I am a priest.
One 20-something fellow, whom you might call a “DC” for “doesn’t care,” shared that he doesn’t go to Mass while his parents still do. He made it clear that it doesn’t bother him that he might be omitting something important from his life. This is quite common among young people newly out on their own in the world and can sometimes simply be classified as experimenting with free will and trying to differentiate from one’s parents.
Another fellow in his 30s, however, had a quite different attitude. Matt seemed resentful, characterizing Benedict XVI as a “quitter” because he had resigned the papal office and also expressing peevishness or frustration with the recent, second, English translation of the Mass. This struck me as almost caring too much, quite the opposite of the first case.
No doubt many continue to grapple with the otherworldly humility we see in Benedict, more concerned as he is with his own salvation and the good of the Church which will go on without him. As far as the war over the vernacular, Mass in Latin is ever more available as evidence shows, thus rendering superfluous what were once pitched battles over ownership of the language of the official public worship of the Church.
Matt is trained as a Spanish translator and thus has some expertise in the science of attempting to faithfully render the meaning of words from one language into another. It is not therefore difficult to believe that he has strong feelings on the matter.
To help set the tone for the conversation, I shared with him the adage, “tradutore, traditore” — the translator is a traitor. No language can perfectly reproduce another because they are, well, different languages.
He had become accustomed to the English prayers as crafted some 40 years ago, and did not adjust well to the new change most recently which attempted to render the orations into a more faithful expression of the Latin original. He has problems above all with “consubstantiation” which, as I explained to him, is the transliteration of the Latin “consubstantialem” in the Creed. Although his objection can be rather easily dismissed as eccentric, his point of view does make clear the continuing difficulties presented by the use of English in the liturgy.
In the Gospel for the Mass of Tuesday in the first week of Lent, Christ cleanses the temple. His reaction may seem harsh when considering that what was being sold were animals for sacrifice, as called for by the law of Moses.
St. Augustine writes:
“If, therefore, the Lord would not have to be sold in the temple, even such things as He willed should be offered therein, (On account, that is, of the greed or dishonesty which is often the stain of such transactions) with what anger, suppose ye, would He visit such as He might find laughing or gossiping there, or yielding to any other sin.”
“My house shall be called the house of prayer” takes on new meaning, however, when one considers that the word “temple” takes its significance above all from Christ’s reference to Himself when He says, “Destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up.” The Temple of His Body is Christ’s primary concern in using the attention-getting prophetic sign of turning over the tables of the moneychangers, made necessary by the requirement that particular coinage be used to purchase animals intended for sacrifice.
During the season of Lent, we dedicate ourselves to deepening our baptismal vocation, a gift of the grace won for us when the Temple of Christ’s Body was destroyed on the cross at Calvary. Every Mass is an unbloody, yet real, sacrifice and thus a real participation in Christ’s one self-offering on the first Good Friday.
Perhaps this is what was lacking in the understanding of the first young man I described above: When you reject Sunday Mass you reject Jesus because He is truly present offering Himself in Word and sacrament at every Holy Mass and thus the perfect means of keeping the Lord’s Day holy.
“My house shall be called the house of prayer” becomes through our Baptism a particular invitation for each of us to holiness of life and Life Eternal. The One in whom we pray through the grace of our Baptism offers us with Himself to the Father. A personal sharing in this offering, once and for all perfectly accepted in Jesus’ Resurrection from the dead, is thus offered to us: “Dying He destroyed our death and rising He restored our Life.”
Christ’s action of expelling from the temple those buying and selling the things necessary for the offering of the old sacrifice is, therefore, not a rejection of sacrifice per se but a preparation for the Lord’s own perfect Sacrifice which will do away forever with the Old Testament signs which were a mere preparation for Him.
This also is a symbol of the detachment from those things which will not last: that is necessary if we are to grow in holiness as living temples of prayer in the Lord. Our Lent penitential practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving should be ordered to this end. Whether praying together in church at Mass or living out our vocations in the world, each of us must grow as “living stones” by grace which brings glory to God, built as we are to be Christ’s Body, “living as the praise of His glory.”
Matt seemed to prefer the continuity with the past through the Latin language over the awkward doing and redoing required in the search for an ever-more faithful translation of the Mass into English. The intellectual dissonance presented by the institutional rejection of Latin, when many people already readily learn a foreign language for less salutary reasons than praying the Mass, is increasingly interpreted as a countersign to the Church’s claim of divine foundation. What is in fact old, young people assume, should in some respects appear to be old.
I recommended that Matt check out the Traditional Latin Mass at the FSSP parish in Colorado near his home, as a possible answer to his continuing search for serenity in the life of communal prayer and as an answer to the unsettledness of the business of translating Latin into English. More important than the language in which we pray is the Spirit in which we pray: the peace of the Holy Spirit.
Thank you for reading. Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
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