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Not a lot of people like change so it is not surprising that the new translation of the ordinary of the mass has had a mixed reception. Elizabeth Julian writes about how she has been “saved from losing sleep over the new translation.”
Elizabeth noticed that in the Nicene Creed the words “of one being” have been replaced by the word “consubstantial.” This led her to reflect on the fact that the catechism answer she learned as a child, “God made me to know, love and serve him in this world and to be happy with him forever in the next,” like all the other catechism answers, was an answer to a “question that a nine-year-old more interested in reading Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series didn’t actually have.” But, she says,” I have the question NOW and sometimes I am completely overwhelmed by the enormity and complexity of it.” It has taken her fifty years to “unpack and live out each part of the statement.”
She concludes that “If I follow the same logic, perhaps in 50 years I will have lived into ‘consubstantial with the father’ and ‘it is right and just’ etc. I will have stopped my present wondering about what this obscure word actually means and will have accepted that God is beyond my thoughts and concepts.”
“This realisation has saved me from losing sleep over the new translation,” she said.
New Zealand was the first place in the world to begin introducing the new text. It is being done in stages. The Ordinary of the Mass was introduced last September. The priests’ part will be introduced at Pentecost.
Read Elizabeth Julian in Welcom
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