EXCERPT:
The lame-duck ICEL version’s “All-powerful and ever-living God” for omnipotens sempiterne Deus is not so bad. Quite bad, on the other hand, is their “direct your love that is within us”. The Latin clearly connects God’s own purpose for us and the actions that flow from that purpose. In the ICEL version we have a vague term “love”, rather than the indication of God’s eternal plan. Perhaps this is a bit picky, but when I hear “we may merit to abound with good works”, I think we are abounding because of God’s action within us through the good works He makes meritorious. They overflow from us because of His generosity. In the ICEL version God’s “love” is in us, but this leads to “our efforts”. Yes, this can be reconciled with a Catholic theology of works, but it just doesn’t sound right. Also, I don’t think that “efforts” to “bring mankind to unity and peace” means the same as us “meriting” by God’s grace to “abound with good works”. Please understand: I don’t object to praying for unity and peace, but I think we ought to pray the prayer as the Church gave it to us, what the prayer really says. When we feed the hungry and console those who mourn, visit the shut-in and imprisoned and pray for the dead, sure we are building “unity and peace”, but that phrase is so vague as to mean very little to someone in the pew. The Latin does not say “conatus nostri genus humanum ad unitatem et pacem inducant”. Is it possible that the guitar strumming and all those kumbayas of the 1960’s affected the ICEL translators choice of words? I suppose we could all stand outside the headquarters of the USCCB and sing, “All we are saying, is give Latin a chance!” while swaying back and forth holding our lighters in the air.
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EXCERPT:
There is a great difference between the peace the world can offer and the peace that God offers. This world of temporal goods (and ills) is passing and fragile, always susceptible to loss. The goods of heaven are lasting, enduring, solid and dependable. We must never fall into the sin of putting any created thing or person in the place which only eternal God may properly have. No infinite and passing thing can provide lasting joy or eternal peace. Any created thing can be lost through theft, wear and time. The vicissitudes of this passing world roar over us like an inexorable wave and can sweep away any material thing to which we have clung, perhaps even in idolatry. Our wealth, our family, our health, our appearance and our reputation can be taken in the blink of an eye. God alone endures. Continue reading →

Here are links to my articles on Epiphany which I posted last year.
COLLECT (1)
SUPER OBLATA (1)
POST COMMUNION (1)
Here are some other pieces of the puzzle:
What Does the Prayer Really Say? Epiphany and Mary, Mother of God
ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The … Continue reading →

What Does the Prayer Really Say? Holy Family – Sunday in the Octave of Christmas
ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2004
A liturgical “octave” is an eight day period following and including the feast. In a way, the Church … Continue reading →

EXCERPT:
How often do we hear about something or learn a new thing and then rush to know more, to have personal experience, to see? This is a paradigm for our life of faith. There is an interlocking cycle of hearing a proclamation (such as the Gospel at Mass, a homily, or a teaching of the Church) or observing the living testimony of a holy person’s life, and by this experience coming to know and then love the content of that proclamation or living testimony. The content is the Man God Jesus Christ. By knowing Him we come all the better to love Him and in loving Him we desire better to know Him. An act of faith, acceptance of the authority of the content of what we receive, opens unto previously unknown territory, a vast depth otherwise closed to us. For the non-believer, on the other hand, a miracle is simply something inexplicable having nothing of the supernatural. For a non-believer being nice or hard working can never ascend to true virtue or holiness. For him, the content of the Faith itself (both Jesus as well as what we learn and assent to) appears to be pleasant or interesting, but in the end remains naïve or foolish.
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EXCERPT:
This offertory embodies a word pair describing the attitude of Advent: joyful penance… penitential joy. With the last two week’s of “rushing” in our prayers and doing good works, we have now the added image of eager and unrestrained joy, an almost childlike dash towards a long-desired thing. Have earthly fathers watched this scene all of a Christmas morning? Even so should we be in our eager joy to perform good works under the gaze of a Father who watches us, a Father with a plan. This lame duck ICEL version captures little of the impact of the Latin prayer, that is, God the Father is patiently watching his people as we go about the Advent business of doing penance and just works in joyful anticipation Christ’s coming. But perhaps you will be good enough to respond with an eager and joyfully penitential “Amen” when you hear it pronounced even as you long for a better translation in the future. Continue reading →

EXCERPT:
St. Augustine of Hippo (+430) beat up some Donatist heretics and dismantled their argument that all clerics ordained by a sinful bishop would be automatically stained in the same guilt. He used imagery like that of our prayer today (Ad Donatistas post collationem in CSEL 53:19.25, p. 123 my translation): “The sludge (lutum) their feet are stuck in is so thick and dense that, trying in vain to tear themselves out of it, they get their hands and head stuck in it too, and lingering in that sticky mess they get more tightly enveloped.” The Donatist argument was based in worldly, not heavenly, wisdom.

Sticky lutum is a metaphor of worldly life. Neglecting God, who speaks in the Church and our conscience, we weak sinners can convince ourselves of anything, over time: down becomes up, back is made front, black turns into white, and wrong is really right. We justify what we know, or knew, to be sinful. Once this becomes a habit, it is a vice in more than one sense of that word. Occasionally our consciences will struggle against the grip of self-deception, but quite often the proverbial “Struggle”, Novocain for the conscience, supplies permission: “I really ‘struggled’ with this, … before I did it!” If we go off the true path into the murky twisted woods, thoroughly mired in sticky error we will not escape the Enemy, the roaring lion seeking whom he might devour (1 Peter 5:8). Nor will we elude Christ the Judge, who will come through dark woods by straight paths. Advent reminds us to prepare for the coming of both the Enemy lion and the Lion of Judah who will open the seals and read forth the Book of Life (Rev 5:5). Continue reading →

What Does the Prayer Really Say?  The 1st Sunday of Advent
ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2004
This is the first offering of the fifth year of WDTPRS.  We begin anew.  In this series we have been examining the original Latin … Continue reading →

EXCERPT:
The first objective of our participation in the Church’s sacred rites is to praise God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and give God glory. Liturgical and Biblical Latin is rich with words and phrases which exalt and express praise of God. In fact, the concepts of “glory” and “majesty” are nearly interchangeable in this light. We, on the one hand, render up honor and glory to God in a way external to God. On the other hand, glory and majesty are also divine attributes which we in no way give Him, which He has – or rather is – in Himself by His nature. When we come into His presence, even in the contact we have with Him through the Church’s sacred mysteries, His divine attribute of splendor or glory or majesty, whatever you will, has the power to transform us. His majestic glory changes us. So, it is right to translate these lofty sounding attributions for God when we raise our voices in the Church’s official cult. Continue reading →

What Does the Prayer Really Say? 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2005
WDTPRS wishes His Eminence Francis Card. Arinze, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and titular Cardinal Bishop of (my) Suburbicarian Diocese of … Continue reading →

EXCERPT:
Some years ago I had an experience which confirmed for me the value of the old-fashioned methods of catechism: long and hard practice, memorization, and repetition. I was called to a hospital to assist in a patient’s difficult death. I gave the man Last Rites and talked with the family as they struggled with the reality of the end of the earthly life of a loved one. A daughter of the dying man had been estranged from her faith and her family for a long time. She was beyond her life’s middle years, which clearly had been pretty rough. She was bitter and cursed life, fate and God for the cruelty of such an end as her father was experiencing. She shouted at me, “Why did God make us if this is all there is?” I responded asking, “Why did God make you?” She became very still and stared at me. Then she said, “God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.” I continued, “What must we do to save our souls?” On cue she responded with something that she hadn’t perhaps thought of for decades, “To save our souls, we must worship God by faith, hope, and charity. We must believe in Him, hope in Him, and love Him with all our heart.” “Did your father do that?”, I asked. “Oh, yes…. oh yes.” She had obviously been taught very well as a child. One can imagine that she was at times forced to study and to learn, to repeat over and over what at the time seemed boring and pointless. She had been drilled at school by the Sisters, whom these days we see mocked and abused in the media by ungrateful cads who benefited from their dedication. More importantly, she had parents who fulfilled their obligations to see that she learned her faith. I imagine they had to work hard to make her work hard. Her father had done his duty to give her what she needed when the battle was joined. Whatever they all did worked. In the moment of truth, by the grace of God and the help of her guardian angel, the gift her dying father had given her years before was rediscovered and put to its proper use. Continue reading →

EXCERPT:
This Collect gives me the image of a person hurrying to fulfill a duty or command given by his master or superior. He is rushing, running. He might even be carrying a heavy burden. While dashing forward, I see him trying to be careful under his burden lest he stumble, fall, or spill what he is carrying and thus lose or ruin it. This could be a description of how we live our Christian vocations sometimes. Each one of us was made in God’s image. We were given something to do here. When we discern God’s will and do our best to live well according to our state in life, we experience heavy burdens. We have the opportunity to participate in carrying the Cross of Jesus. Continue reading →