...We're not going to go and turn every stone on the road, we're just gonna
walk through the history of the Mass
all the way up to today and the changes
today, and I brought three books. I brought the,
this is called the Roman Missal that was used here at
St. Pat's, St. Pat's, St. Pat's.
St. Joseph's, when St. Joseph's was opened in 1871,
this is the book the priest used. The book we've been using since 1964
and then the new book, we'll
start using this November, so we'll look at those
and also
the Roman Missalette, St. Joseph's, this is the new one
with which most of us are familiar, this is the old one with which many of you are familiar.
This was out went out before I was even born. And also, as a reminder,
if you have any questions feel free to ask them but also during the week
you can ring me at the Rectory and say, "Father, you know I have a question..."
Give me time to look it up, I might know the answer off the top of my head,
and I might not. I might have to look it up. A lot of
this outline you can get right in the Catholic Encyclopedia.
Please don't think I'm a genius. It was simply
like a doctor: he looks at your symptoms, he goes to his manual,
looks through and says, this is what you have. And so a lot of this I got right out of the
Catholic Encyclopedia which if you don't have a printed copy at
home, you can certainly go online
at CatholicEncyclopedia.com or whatever it's called. One of the things I noticed
in the new book, this is the old book,
I opened, each book is opened
to the same section. The old book had pictures
and the priest could have a little edification with color,
with pictures, the first letter of the word, Te igiture,
that's a T, it's very artistic,
alright. Some nice print in here and so while you're praying the Mass or reading the Mass
there was some exposure
to some beauty visually not just verbally
and audibly. The
new book, well the new book at the time
in the 60's and early 70's kind of got rid of that.
They still highlighted some of the
first letters of the word, the "R" for Remember, the
"We" for "We come" but there's really no pictures
at all, maybe just a little artwork
up here along the top of the page, okay.
The new book, and they just came last Friday or Saturday. I don't remember what day it was.
As we turned, because of computers
we can go color now and cheaply,
but it has returned to a sort of an artistic,
there's the "T" for "Te igiture" -to you
therefore- and it has some color and some artwork
around it. This design is the same as the one from the
60's, 70's, 80's and 90s but it's
in color and throughout the book you have
just a lot of different things with
the lettering and there's other pictures. The other thing that you'll notice
is this is not a Sacramentary,
it's a Roman Missal, okay.
It is the "Roman Message", the "Roman Sending".
Ite, missa est, "It
has been sent."
And the old book was the
Roman Missal, you can't see
much left "que sallo Romano" of her, not
a Sacramentary which is simply a holy book.
So, it's kind of a return maybe to a little more of the dignity.
I don't want to put down the way I was raised, I liked
it, but I can certainly see why
we're not going back but why we're revisiting and renewing the language that we use.
Next week, we're going to
take a look a little more closely at some of the major changes
and so that we can better understand them and as you know, on Wednesdays
we say Mass for those of you who come, for those of you who don't.
On Wednesday, we say the weekday Mass using the
new Missal so that the people who come to Mass each
day can be out in the congregations on the Sunday Masses
and help, help the people. Father
well I won't, because we're on International
video, I won't mention names, but the Liturgical Director of
the diocese of Syracuse, made a comment
when all the priests got together, and I don't think I've heard as many
priests laugh so hard for so long as I did in a meeting,
as I did at that meeting when he talked about
right when all of you get used to saying the same
thing and nobody mis-speaks,
then comes Christmas and Easter
when all the people who never come except at Christmas and Easter will have
no clue what's going on and one of the suggestions is that
we need to put a warning on the outside of the door, "Warning!
Language has changed." So, the only thing that's going to be the same is the words of
consecration and that's what I wanted to end with because that's where we ended
last week was at the Last Supper and I wanted to end with the words of
consecration today. Now
in the old, in the St. Joseph's
Missal, on page
the priest simply
said, "Take," it says, "He blessed it, broke it, gave it to his disciples saying,
'All of you take and eat of this
for this is my body.'" That's it. And the new one
is "Take this all of you and eat of it
for this is my body which will be given up for you."
So it's a different Gospel, you know. That's the other thing too, is which Gospel. We
talked about that last week, the Synoptics: Matthew, Mark
and Luke, each one has the wording a little different.
So, see it here it
is, that hasn't changed, "ring the bell three times" there's three little bells, the
picture there. So
and then the chalice,
"All of you take and drink of this for this is the chalice of my blood
of the new and eternal covenant the mystery of faith
which shall be shed for you and for many unto the forgiveness of sins." That's the old one.
And then the new one is, "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 we talked about that last week when we talked about the
importance of blood
in sacrifice. In the Jewish
tradition, blood could be poured, it could be sprinkled,
it could be spattered, it could be wrung okay, and so the importance of
the, you know, pouring as opposed to spattering
"and poured out for you and for many," no longer "for all"
"for the forgiveness of sins." And we talked about that last week also that "many"
are in fact the words of Christ from the gospels,
not "all". So, so it,
if you think about in the practical, I'm sure
theologians in the Vatican can come up with all kinds of stuff that would amaze all of us,
and but on the practical, what does it mean
for me in Boonville NY. When I see
the "many" instead of the "all" myself now,
that says to me a reminder of freedom of choice
and like I talked about last week, with love
there has to be freedom of choice. There's no room for
control in true love
and if all are saved no matter what,
where's the choice to not want it, hard as it
may be to imagine somebody wouldn't want to be.
God loves us and gives us the freedom
to love him back. He doesn't control
and force us to love him,
so when we say "many", many is that
unnumbered, not not infinite amount,
but an unnumbered amount as opposed to "all"
which is "Hey, everybody's in no matter what" you know.
It's not like the guy from Boston, boy, I could have
punched him right in the kisser. He says to me, we're out on a Destroyer,
"Hey!" He says, "You Catholics," he says, "Ahh, no matter what you do, three Hail Marys and you're back out on the street."
And I'm like, "No,
doesn't work that way," but
that whole misunderstanding. So I don't think you could use the
the old St. Joseph's Missal, no. I have to buy one
cause I, the new ones I use when I go in the Field with the Marines and
with the Sailors. I take it with me to say Mass
because I can't obviously haul a big book like that, so
I bring one of these. The blood and the water, well
there's poetically, you could look at it a couple different ways.
In the Mass, we use those words, "May the mingling of
the body and blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ bring everlasting life
to those of us who receive it." That's when you put the Body and
the Blood together, alright. But then when you,
let's see what the new words are since we're talking about the change, let's
just see what the new words are cause I don't have the new
memorized yet. "When you mingle the water and the wine, we come to
share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to
share in our humanity," and so that's
the blood, the wine and the
humanity, the water. But let's see what it says here:
"May the mystery of this water and wine,
by the mystery of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ
who humbled himself to share in our humanity," so it's the same.
So you can look at it two ways:
primarily, humanity, water,
divinity, blood. Jesus was
fully human and fully divine,
so both are there. The other way you can look at it is
washing. Just as we use water to wash our hands
and our food and our cars, so our soul is washed
by the blood of the Lamb, so it could be, it could be
seen as a combination of humanity and divinity,
it could also be seen as purification
both of body and soul, just as we use water to wash the body, and the
soul is cleansed by the blood of the Lamb, but poetically speaking,
symbolically speaking. But also when the spirit was thrust in and water came out from the
the pericardial, whatever it is, (oh sure) it means He was dead, (right,
sure). It mean that it just showed that He was dead and he indeed did die.
Right, there's the medical side of it too
and I think that's a good point because that was one of the
heresies of the early Church is that people thought, "he didn't
really die, he was awfully close
but..." and the early Church had that battle
and finally it was decided,
determined, defined: He died
just as any man is dead as dead can be at St. Joseph's
or Boonville Cemetery, he was just as
dead. And, so that as
Christ died,
as we die, so that we can rise
as He rose. Did the life of
Mary have an impact on the Gospel writers?
I would say absolutely. Why wouldn't she. She walked with them,
she knew Jesus when he was a little guy, long before they met.
So the stories we have of Jesus when
he was young, for example, the Finding of Jesus in the Temple with the
teachers.
How would they have known that?
So, so to say Mary had no influence
in the writing of the Gospels at all, I think would be wrong,
but to use the word memoirs
conjures an image that I don't think would be correct.
Let me end with where we'll start next week.
In countries in the world where the Catholic Church has been persecuted,
what is the one thing they go after the most? The
Mass.