“AND WITH your spirit.”
Expect this and other new responses in the Mass by Christmas season next year as the Philippines will soon adopt the newly approved English translation of the Roman Missal.
The new English translation will be used starting December 2, 2012, as decided upon by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) in January 2011.
The new translation, which is closer to the original Latin text the rite adopted after the Second Vatican council, is the third edition.
To prepare the clergy for the liturgical changes, Fr. Anscar Chupungco, OSB wrote a book titled “The New English Translation of the Roman Missal: A Catechetical Primer.”
The primer, launched last June 24 at the San Carlos Seminary in Makati, is divided into four chapters: the Introductory Rites, the Liturgy of the Word, the Liturgy of the Eucharist, and the Concluding Rites, with analysis and catechesis explaining the purpose for the changes and how they are closer to the original 1969 Latin text.
One of the notable changes in the introductory part is the response “And with your spirit,” which will replace the response “And also with you” after the priest-celebrant says “The Lord be with you.”
This is the literal translation of the Greek and Latin text, which contain the words pneuma and spiritus, meaning spirit.
The spirit, as stated in the book, represents what is “best and noblest” in a person, and the response “And with your spirit” would be a more courteous way of returning the greeting “The Lord be with you.”
The 1973 English rendition favors “dynamic equivalence which conveys only the “sense” of the original Latin text rather than its exact translation, while the 2010 English translation insists on a literal translation of the text.
In the Nicene Creed, the congregation will now profess the words “I believe in one God,” instead of “We believe in one God.”
Although the Greek version of the Creed is in the first person plural, Latin has consistently used the first person singular form, Chupungco said. The pronoun “we” declares the faith of the Church in general, whereas “I” expresses personal obedience to the tenets of faith, which is also used when professing or renewing the baptismal faith, he said.
Another change is in the Liturgy of the Eucharist, where the celebrant will no longer say “Take this, all of you, and drink from it: this is the cup of my blood” before the communion. Instead he will say, “Take this, all of you, and drink from it: for this is the chalice of my blood.”
Chupungco said the word “chalice” is more appropriate because it has become a sacred word with its liturgical usage. The word “cup” sounds “too secular,” he added.
In the concluding rites, the new English translation adopts the following: “Go forth, the Mass is ended,” “Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord,” “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life,” and “Go in peace” replacing “Go in the peace of Christ,” “The mass is ended, go in peace,” or “Go in peace to serve the Lord.”
Fr. Genaro Diwa, SLL, executive secretary of the Episcopal Commission on Liturgy of CBCP, said confusions and misunderstandings over the implementation of the 1973 English missal were due to lack of catechesis.
This is the reason why the new translation will be adopted by the Philippines a year after the United States and other English-speaking countries.
“One of the important things that the CBCP had emphasized was to develop a catechetical module on this new translation and [for] the re-catechesis of the meaning of the Mass and the liturgy of the Church,” he said.
Priests in Manila have already received a copy of the primer, and the commission will send copies of it to all bishops and directors of the liturgy in the country.
Chupungco, who was once part of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy, said he had difficulties writing the primer.
He worked for years with other members of the committee for the English rendition of the 1969 Roman Missal, which was before Vatican Council II, using the “sense translation,” which rendered the text on how they interpreted it.
However, the Vatican rejected Chupungco’s rendition because it insisted on the literal translation of the Roman Missal.
“I think the Church is more important than personal opinions. Our bishops have made a decision and we must obey [it]. However, it is not easy, at least for me who examined it, to make it as what it should be. My feeling that appears now and then in the book [is that] it could have been different,” said Chupungco.
Coping with the change
Fr. Timoteo Ofrasio, SJ, a professor of Theology and an expert in post-Vatican II liturgy, said that while the translators of the 1973 Roman Missal based its English translation from Latin on the principle of “dynamic equivalence” or rendering the translation on how they understood it, the third edition of the Roman missal is based on the principle of “formal equivalence.”
“There is a higher principle involved here, and that is the law of prayer is the law of belief; that is, we pray what we believe. The new English translation of the Roman missal seeks to convey as faithfully as possible what the Church believes is contained in her prayers,” Ofrasio said.
Other revisions include prayers for the celebration of recently canonized saints, additional prefaces for the Eucharistic prayers, additional Masses and prayers for various needs and intentions, and some updated and revised rubrics for the celebration of the Mass, he said.
“I suggest that we give the new English translation a chance. Let us use it and see if it will help improve our communal worship. The task of re-translation was undertaken to emphasize even more the centrality of God in our worship. It tries to express in human terms the truths of our Catholic faith,” Ofrasio said.
Favoring the new translation, Fr. Antonio Bermejo, STD, chaplain of the University of Asia and the Pacific, said one of the Church’s goals in using the new texts during the liturgical celebrations is to lead all the faithful to a “full, conscious, active, and pious participation in the liturgy.”
“Such participation in the liturgy is both internal and external. Internal because it involves the innermost dimensions of man: spirit, soul, mind, intelligence, and will, sentiments, feelings, affections, memory, and imagination. The external participation, on the other hand, is shown through words, gestures, postures, movements, and silence,” Bermejo said.
Bermejo said he has high hopes for the liturgical reform and added that it may help instill among the faithful a “taste of prayer,” a devise he said was “very dear to the heart of Blessed Pope John Paul II.”
The liturgy reform will be implemented in all churches in the United States on November 27, the start of Advent.
In the country, the Archdiocese of Lingayen-Dagupan went ahead of the implementation of the new edition of the Roman Missal last Ash Wednesday, March 9.
