February 10, 2011

Ad Te Levavi Animam Meam

From various excited tweets I learn this morning of the release of the proper prayers for the Masses of Advent and Christmas in the new English translation. You can check them out here.

I admit that some of them seem a little awkward, but for the most part, at first glance, I like them and look forward to praying them. Then again, I'm someone who has become accustomed to conducting a significant part of his liturgical life in Latin (through the use of the Liturgia Horarum for those parts of the Divine Office we don't pray in common in my community), so I realize that the ways the prayers are structured in English may be more comfortable for me than it will be for some others. There are lots of little things that might throw off someone who had either lost his familiarity with the Latin or never encountered it in the first place, e.g. not thinking of proprium de tempore when they see "Proper of Time," some priests may not recognize that this is what we have called in English the "Proper of Seasons."

On the whole, I'm really looking forward to this. I appreciate in particular how the in the unity of has been restored to the prayers, and how certain rubrics have been updated, e.g. not 'Mass at Midnight' but simply 'At Mass during the Night.'

2 comments:

Estelle said...

I am so looking forward to the new translation - not as a repudiation of the current one - but as an opportunity to reflect anew on our wonderful liturgical heritage. The slight unfamiliarity of the wording of certain passages will give us pause for thought - and I hope prayer.

Brother Charles said...

Yes! Well said.