STORY - SOURCE AND SUMMIT: More changes to Sunday Mass?

Recently I attended a meeting in Melbourne, along with other consultants and members of the National Liturgy Council. Our task was to produce resources that will assist parishes to be ready to pray with a new translation of the Roman Missal that is hoped to be ready for use in our parishes in Advent of next year. This new Missal – with quite different sounding texts – will replace the current one that has been in use since the liturgical reform called for by the Second Vatican Council. Those most affected by the changes will be priests and music ministers. They will need to study the presiding prayers and put new music to the Mass texts. The prayers we pray will be altered slightly, but the new prayers will hopefully invite all of us to renew our consciousness and heighten our attentiveness and participation. The introduction of the new Missal gives us an opportunity to revisit the nature and meaning of the Mass and to be reminded that each of us has a baptismal responsibility to pray the prayer of Christ for the world.

A recent article by Ron Rolheiser offers one of the clearest explanations to describe liturgical or, as he names it, priestly prayer. Fr Rolheiser says: ‘Our Christian belief is that Christ is still gathering us together around his word and is still offering an eternal act of love for the world. As an extension of that we believe that whenever we meet together, in a church or elsewhere, to gather around the scriptures or to celebrate the Eucharist we are entering into that prayer and sacrifice of Christ. This is liturgical prayer; it's Christ's prayer, not ours. We pray liturgically whenever we gather to celebrate the scriptures, the sacraments, or when we pray, in community or privately, something that is called the Prayer of the Church or the Office of the Church (Lauds and Vespers)’ (The full article entitled ‘Priestly and Affective Prayer’ can be found at www.ronrolheiser.com/columnarchive/index.php and is well worth reading).

Many of us were taught that the priest offers the Mass and celebrates the sacraments on our behalf. Even though it is more than forty years since this was the official teaching of the church, many of us continue to live from this belief. The liturgy is Christ’s prayer, and not ours, and when we gather to worship God at Mass or to celebrate the sacraments the Second Vatican Council instructed that all of us are called to participate fully in the liturgy. Priestly prayer is no longer understood to be restricted to the clergy. Rather, priestly prayer is the prayer of the baptised, ordained and lay, all of whom have a share in Christ’s priesthood and are therefore charged with the responsibility of praying for the world through the official liturgical prayer of the church. If then, it is our responsibility to pray Christ’s prayer, we need to continue to update ourselves to know what it is that we do when we pray liturgically.

The Council of Priests in our diocese has recently approved a program of implementation that will take place over the next eighteen months to prepare us to engage fully in the priestly prayer of Christ when the new Missal arrives. Workshops will take place around the diocese specifically focused on assisting the assembly, as well as the various liturgical ministries, so that we are familiar with the texts of the new Missal before Advent 2010. Perhaps as importantly we will recognise that the liturgy is truly Christ’s prayer and that Christ entrusts us with the responsibility of engaging in that prayer for the world. And for that reason we will offer courses that teach about the meaning and mystery that is Sunday Mass.

For some the new Missal might be greeted with dismay – ‘not again, haven’t we had enough changes in our lifetime already?’ For others the response might be ‘let’s hope the new Missal makes the parish Sunday Mass more life giving and nourishing’. The former question is understandable – for many of us there have been considerable changes in the way we celebrate Mass over the years. But we can take consolation in the fact that this change, although significant, will not be as radical as the reform of the ‘60s. For those living in hope that the new translation will make the Mass more life giving – that will surely happen if we take the time to prepare ourselves well by entering fully into the process of renewal and formation. But more about that next time!

Carmel Pilcher rsj

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