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| Incarnation | by:Piero Di Cosimo |
During the course of the conversation, we talked about various things and the topic of Angels came up and how they are referenced in the new translation. Which got me thinking about what we do in the Mass, according to the newer Ordinary Form versus the Extraordinary Form (The New Missal versus the older Missal (1962 and before)).
Specifically, I starting thinking about the Creed. If Mass is celebrated according to the usus antiquior (eg a Latin Rite Mass in the Extraordinary Form) we genuflect during the portion of the Creed where we profess our belief in the Incarnation. In the Ordinary Form of the Mass, we now make a profound bow. I then juxtaposed this thought about how our view, in general terms, of the Mass has changed in the last few decades, as a collective.
A Gift...not a Creation
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The Mass is a gift from God, it is a small slice of heaven on earth. A small, small, tiny fragment of the actual reality of Heaven. God is present, we sing in communion of the angels... "And so, with the Angels and all the Saints we declare your glory, as with one voice we acclaim:..." and then we kneel in humble worship. The Mass becomes, is 'incarnated' as Heaven in our presence. It is a descending down of Heaven to earth. This is possible because God descended down to earth and became Man. It wasn't a creation, but a becoming. We once knelt in awe of that mystery and miracle, but now we simply bow during its acknowledgment and profession.
So I thought, does this change in posture have a reflective or theological implication as to our belief as a collective whole? Have we lost an appreciation or acceptance of that mystery of the Incarnation? Does that then transfer to our belief of what the Mass is as a whole? Have we become complacent with what the Mass truly is? Is it to us entertainment? Do we feel as if we create our liturgy as opposed to accepting it as a descent of something greater and Holy?
This is all conjecture and thinking out-loud, but I do wonder if "Lex Orandin, Lex Credendi" comes into play here. I was reading some commentaries on the Mass, according to the usus antiquior, and there was a comment by someone about the "right of the people" to be within the Sanctuary since the "days of the 1962 Missal." The focus of thought was on the fact that the Mass is somehow a right. A right implies there is a duty for someone to give it to us. But who would that 'someone' be? God, the Church, the Bishop? It just gets complicated, and maybe I am the one making it that way, but when we starting thinking of the Sanctuary, Mass, or Liturgy as a right or something owed to us, and owed in a certain way, we have surely lost sight of the fact that is in in fact a gift. It descends to us and isn't created or made by us. Again, isn't Mass an 'Incarnation' of Heaven? Maybe incarnation is the wrong word, but it is something much more than something we as humans can make or do. Just as Jesus was not created or made, he was begotten, Incarnated.
In the end I think we do ourselves a disservice if we don't examine the new translation through a lens of growth and recapture. We must grow in our understanding of what the Mass is and recapture the proper understanding. If we simply make the new translation about new responses and carry on as we always have, we have not only lost an opportunity, but possibly lost the understanding of what properly is a gift and not a creation. We cannot simply make the new translation about new words, it must be more... it must be a new or new-found way of understanding the Mass.
Again, this is just a lot of thinking out-loud, but what say you all?
A little more food for thought, on a slightly although similar point, from Bishop Sample, of Marquette, Michigan (h/t: Pertinacious Papist):
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