Three Anniversaries and a New Beginning

By Terrence Prendergast

October 18, 2011

This year—2011—I celebrated 50 years as a member of the Society of Jesus. I also celebrated the 400th anniversary of the Jesuits' arrival in Canada; the Anglosphere celebrated the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Version of the Bible; and English-speaking Catholics will mark a significant milestone in the life of the Church.

The Catholic doctrine of "transubstantiation" (trans meaning "through," and substantia meaning "substance or essence") is a term used to explain theologically how Jesus can be present in the bread and wine in the Eucharist, how the substances (meaning the essences) of bread and wine are changed by the working of the Holy Spirit at the words of consecration into the body and blood of Christ while their outward species, or forms, remain the same This new translation will help Catholics in recovering a sense of the majesty and awe in the Roman rite and deepen their understanding of the Eucharistic mystery as the once-and-for-all sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross The Jesuit missionaries left an unmistakable stamp on North America, from those first black-robed figures who travelled by canoe to minister to scattered settlements and share the hardships of the native people they encountered, painstakingly learning their culture and language, spending years before they might see one baptism, to those who established schools and other institutions that formed people in the Catholic faith and shaped the culture on this continent A notable and striking change in the new translation is the word "chalice" in the words of institution said over the wine about to be transformed into the blood of Christ: "In a similar way, when supper was ended, he took the chalice, and, giving thanks, he said the blessing and gave the chalice to his disciples, saying, '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 The new liturgical translation offers a different, higher register for our worship: it uses sacral language that is different from what we might use at a pub or hockey arena to remind us that we are addressing God the Father, Christ His Son and the Holy Spirit, whom we worship and adore With a dilution of the mystery of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass has come a diminishment of the nature of the ordained priesthood and of the role of the priest as an alter christus, representing Christ as our one and only High Priest, representing the people to God and God to the people By the time I was ordained 11 years later, in 1972, the Latin was being replaced in stages by the Novus Ordo Mass, and two years later I, like everyone else, was celebrating what I only later discovered was the hurried and rather thin English translation of the new Roman rite

Read more...