For some people this is the moment they have been waiting for, for the last forty years. We are entering a new liturgical year and it corresponds to the liturgical changes that we have been preparing ourselves for. In feel, the quality of Advent is perhaps no different from the last couple of weeks. The focus towards the end of the liturgical year is appropriately the reckoning or the judgement at the end of time. This Sunday, the Gospel seems to continue along the same vein but now it is of wakefulness as we wait for the Lord’s coming. It is signalled by the change in colour making this the other season where violet, purple or lavender is featured. However, the shift is subtle because the mood is not as penitential as it is of expectation. Advent’s “penance” is associated with the air of joyful preparation for Christ’s coming at His birth but with the proviso that we keep in mind at all time His second coming.As we embrace Advent, this spirit of joyful preparation is captured in the prayer of the new Collect which at the same time also gives us the shape of how we ought to prepare ourselves for the Christmas to come. To help us appreciate it, we need to contrast the new translation with the old.
But, before we do that, let me make a small digression with regard to the reception of the new translation. Part of our difficulty in appreciating the new translation may be found in its repetitiveness. The original translators, when they set out to translate Latin into English, took a stance that repetition was somewhat redundant. It was as if we should never say, “I love you”, twice. To praise God, to bless Him, to adore Him and to glorify Him, were all considered to be a tad over the top, to the point of mouthfulness. The criteria they adopted were greater accessibility and less formality and yet, our experience bears testimony otherwise as when we are in love, whispering sweet nothing into the ear of our beloved is considered the norm and we never tire of saying, “I love you”.
Does the profusion of words, in short the language used, make a difference in our approach to God? Listen to the “Opening Prayer”, which we now call, the Collect, of the previous translation of 1973/1975.
“All powerful God, increase our strength of will for doing good that Christ may find an eager welcome at His coming and call us to His side in the kingdom of heaven”.
The manner by which we address God is important. A philosopher, Martin Heidegger, said, “Language is the house of being”. Moreover, we ought to remember that the Word became flesh. Therefore, the language used is important and here, you will note that the prayer is straightforward. It speaks directly to God. However, prayers in the original Latin are often premised on a word of request, “quaesumus”, which can be translated into “beg, implore, beseech and pray”. When formal request is removed in our address to God, then the inevitable “right” [it’s my right kind of "right"] is presumed as the phrasing of the old translation seemed to assume that we already have the strength of will and God merely adds a little more to what we already possess. Imagine the hubris. The truth is we have none and this is reflected in the new translation.
“Grant Your faithful, we pray, almighty God, the resolve to run forth to meet Your Christ with righteous deeds at His coming, so that gathered at His right hand, they may be worthy to possess the heavenly kingdom”.
What is the difference?
There is a strong resonance of scripture and this is important to note. Firstly, the Collect reminds us of the Gospel of the Ten Virgins. We are praying that our lamps will be filled with righteous deeds.
Secondly, to be gathered at His right hand is reminiscent of Christ who will come as the judge of the world. Here, we pray that, with God’s grace, we will be the sheep invited to sit at the right hand of Christ so as to inherit the kingdom prepared for those found to be rich in righteous deeds.
Thirdly, the poetry of the words leads us to imagine our running with resolve to meet the Lord. It is not that we just wait passively, in a manner of speaking, for the Lord’s coming but to remember that as He comes, we may, like the Virgins run, not aggressively, but eagerly forth to meet Him. Not passively, not aggressively but eagerly. The possessive pronoun “Your Christ” in the prayer also suggests the tenderness of our encounter with the Christ of the Father.
The prayer expresses the crux of Advent—how it is supposed to be shaped is encapsulated in this Collect. The preparation for Christ’s coming is intense because it makes the connexion between our faithful love for Him and neighbour: for as much as you do to the least of these, you do it to Me (Matt 25). You might begin to appreciate that the term “Collect” does justice to the prayer before we enter the Liturgy of the Word because it collects all our intentions so as to channel them in the direction of our resolve.
Finally you will always hear this repeated ad nauseam, and perhaps unwittingly, by Protestant-pleasing Catholics, that we do not know the Bible. It is true that we may not know the Bible the way our separated brothers and sisters quote it but we breathe, eat and drink sacred scripture. The Eucharist is the privileged place when and where we have always lived the Bible and now the new translation restores this living principle into our worship. The language of the new translation seeks to uncover the beauty of our faith by removing the grime of poor translation that has shrouded the splendour of truth that Catholicism has always been scriptural in her teaching, in her practice and in her worship.
