Last Tuesday, (July 26,2022), Pope Francis celebrated Mass at the Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton. There are many mixed reviews of this event.
One of the most disappointing moments was the switch to the Latin language for the Eucharistic prayer. What was going on here? Who made this decision to use the Latin language?
One of the very important insights and values that the renewal of the Second Vatican Council brought to the Church was the priority of the language spoken by the people to be used in their prayer. We had come through four and a half centuries of using the Latin language for our Mass. The people who could not understand this language reverted to their private devotions – in their own language. We had the very awkward situation of the priest up in front using the Latin language and the people doing something different (i.e., praying the rosary) in their own language. At the time, we did not have the tools to see how mixed-up this actually was.
The people must always pray in the language they speak. It must be the language that resonates with their daily lives. If you are with Chinee people, you must pray in their language, and if possible, in their dialect.
The prayers must also be understandable. Here there can be some serious issues. The prayers that are officially used at the Sunday mass may be doctrinally very correct but hard to understand. There are many times the people in the pews need to ask after the prayer is uttered: “Now, what was that all about?”
English is a very clear and succinct language. We do not try to use a lot of words to express complicated ideas. We try to be to the point, concise and understandable. The French, Spanish, and Italian languages want to use more words than the English are comfortable with in their prayers.
There are a small group of Catholics who want to use the Latin in their Sunday Mass. A very strong feeling here is that the Latin is more holy and brings us closer to the divine. This feeling must be challenged.
Be on guard that our prayers become too polite! We do not embrace the hard and difficult parts of our lives. For example, there are people who will not touch the question of climate change in their prayer life. An honest and mature approach to prayer is to grapple with the issues that threaten our very existence as human beings. Prayer never runs away from the reality right in front of us.
We bring before God the tough issues of life. We ask the Holy Spirit to give us wisdom and courage to tackle that hard issues like nuclear weapons, food shortages, unemployment and the opioid epidemic. Prayer must never be polite, inoffensive and escapist. We pray out of the nitty-gritty of our lives!
Officials in the Church can make bad decisions. The choice to use Latin was a mistaken decision.
May your prayer always be earthy. May your prayer always arise out of the awareness that God is working through all the struggles, the hopes, the failures and the blessings of human life.
No comments:
Post a Comment