The Language of Liturgy: answering the cult of the contemporary in idiom

As the Council recalls, the Church’s liturgical action is also part of her contribution to the work of civilization (cf. Gaudium et Spes, n. 58). Indeed the liturgy is the celebration of the central event of human history, the redemptive sacrifice of Christ. Thus it bears witness to the love with which God loves humanity, to the fact that human life has a meaning and that it is through their vocation that men and women are called to share in the glorious life of the Trinity. Humanity needs this witness.

People need to perceive, through the liturgical celebrations, that the Church is aware of the lordship of God and of dignity of the human being. She has the right to be able to discern, over and above the limitations that will always mark her rites and ceremonies, that Christ “is present in the sacrifice of Mass and in the person of the minister” (cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 7). Knowing the care with which you prepare your liturgical celebrations, I encourage you to cultivate the art of celebrating, to help your priests in this regard and to work ceaselessly for the liturgical formation of seminarians and of the faithful. Respect for the established norms expresses love and fidelity for the faith of the Church, for the treasure of grace that she preserves and transmits; the beauty of celebrations, far more than innovations and subjective adjustments, makes evangelization a lasting and effective work.

— Pope Benedict XVI, on the occasion of the ad limina visit of the French Bishops, November 2012.

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A monsignor (PW) friend sent a word.doc (The Language of the Liturgy) containing an excerpt on the subject of liturgical language.

The file which PW sent provoked this blogger to rummage through a few resources to add additional flavour to the conversation.

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The Language of the Liturgy

Fr Aidan Nichols OP, from Looking at the Liturgy, Ignatius Press, 1996

1. ‘The language of the Liturgy (I am thinking here especially of the style of vernacular translation, in our case into English) should be, in Tolkein’s phrase, “above our measure”… .

And objecting to the cult of the contemporary in idiom he wrote to a correspondent:

'I am sorry to find you affected by the extraordinary twentieth century delusion that its usages per se and simply as ‘contemporary’ – irrespective of whether they are terser, more vivid (or even nobler!) – have some peculiar validity, above those of all other times, so that not to use them (even when quite unsuitable in tone) is a solecism, a gaffe, a thing at which friends shudder or feel hot under the collar. Shake yourself out of the parochialism of time! (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkein, p. 298)’

2. ‘The 2001 instruction on translation, Liturgiam authenticam had this to say,

‘If, indeed, the liturgical texts, words or expressions are sometimes employed which differ somewhat from usual and everyday speech, it is often enough by virtue of this very fact that the texts become truly memorable and capable of expressing heavenly realities… . Thus it may happen that a certain manner of speech which has come to be considered obsolete in daily usage may be continue to be maintained in the liturgical context. Liturgiam authenticam 27.

‘The American Benedictine liturgical theologian Aidan Kavanagh warned that those who want an immediately intelligible contemporary vernacular condemned themselves to life in a “linguistic slum”.’

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The liturgical prayer of the Ordinariate has a distinct advantage because of its use of a sacred liturgical language that forms and refines our orientation to God. Dr. Clinton Allen Brand brilliantly describes for the willing listener the appropriate orientation for the language of the Liturgy (Antiphon 19.2: 2015).

1. Liturgical language is not so much a tool of edifying information as it is the simulacrum of divine encounter and revelation; it is not and has never been the diffuse idiom of everyday communication; rather it is the Church’s focused, concentrated instrument of mediation to effect, to incarnate our participation in the saving mysteries of our faith and to immerse, to wash the faithful in the figural meanings of Holy Scripture.
2. Liturgical language is stylized, enacted speech with its own kind of mediated intelligibility, and far from excluding archaic elements it welcomes a modicum of traditional expressions and ritualized, formulaic conventions that “reach to the roots,” resonate in the auditory memory, and habituate an experience of worship wider, deeper, older than ourselves, transcending the gathered congregation in time and space to represent and configure our incorporation into the Communion of the Saints.
3. Liturgical language is recursive and immersive; it bears and demands repetition, day by day, week by week, season by season, year by year, without ever exhausting its capacity to stimulate meditation and work ongoing conversion of life; its words are “poetic” in the sense of being athletic, even ascetic, by gently, insistently stretching the limits of expression in order to exercise, train, tune, and elevate our faculties that we might lift up our hearts to God and open out our lives in love and service.

—from Very Members Incorporate: Reflections on the Sacral Language of Divine Worship  by Dr. Clinton Brant.

https://ordinariate.net/documents/2016/3/2015_Brand_Antiphon.pdf

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Reforming the Liturgy by John F. Baldovin, SJ

A Response to the Critics

https://litpress.org/Products/GetSample/6219/9780814662199

Pickstock’s notion of the liturgical stutter and stammer read off the medieval rite is an important reminder that putting the liturgy into understandable language does not make God understandable. Liturgical language still needs to point to the transcendent. Divine grace makes the impossible possible in our worship. One of the persistent problems with the liturgical reform (any liturgical reform) is going to be a kind of Pelagian attitude that we have constructed the liturgy, because reform is always and inevitably self-conscious.

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Compare, for example, the Confiteor of Divine Worship, the Confiteor of the Ordinary Form of the Mass and the Latin of the Extraordinary Form. The elevated English of Divine Worship translates the Latin precisely. The English of the Ordinary Form translates the Latin of the Mass of Blessed Paul VI (Third Typical Edition).

Divine Worship (Ordinariate Form of the Mass)

I confess to Almighty God, to Blessed Mary ever-Virgin, to Blessed Michael the Archangel, to Blessed John the Baptist, to the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, to all the Saints, (and to you, brethren/and to thee, Father), that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word, deed; [they strike their breast thrice] by my fault, by my own fault, by my own most grievous fault. Wherefore I beg Blessed Mary ever-Virgin, Blessed Michael the Archangel, Blessed John the Baptist, the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, all the Angels and Saints, (and you, my brethren/ thee, Father), to pray for me to the Lord our God.

Ordinary Form (Missal of Pope Saint Paul VI, 1969)

I confess to almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do [And, striking their breast, they say]: through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault; therefore I ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin, all the Angels and Saints, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God.

Extraordinary Form (Missal of Pope St. John XXIII, 1962)

Confiteor Deo omnipotenti, beatæ Mariæ semper Virgini, beato Michaeli Archangelo, beato Ioanni Baptistæ, sanctis Apostolis Petro et Paulo, omnibus Sanctis, (et vobis, fratres/ et tibi, pater): quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo et opere: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Ideo precor beatam Mariam semper Virginem, beatum Michaelem Archangelum, beatum Ioannem Baptistam, sanctos Apostolos Petrum et Paulum, omnes Sanctos, (et vos/et te, pater, fratres), orare pro me ad Dominum Deum nostrum.

Due to its tone, i.e., the hieratic vernacular or Prayer Book English, and its pace and the repetition, the Confiteor of the Ordinariate Mass has a lyricism and depth that tugs at and resonates in the heart, enticing the worshipper into a profound contrition. It's content places the worshipper among the angels and saints in a way that has us linger a little longer with them, so that we understand we are not alone. We are supported through the prayers of Mary, the Mother of God, and our other heavenly advocates, in our quest to better dispose ourselves to God's redeeming and transforming grace.

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Additional food for thought.

• Nicola Bux, Benedict XVI’s Reform: The Liturgy between Innovation and Tradition (Ignatius 2012)
• U. M. Lang, The Voice of the Church at Prayer: Reflections on Liturgy and Language (Ignatius 2012)