BIDDING FAREWELL TO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE SACRAMENTARY OF THE PAST FORTY YEARS...........

With the celebration of the Sunday Vigil Mass this evening, American and English speaking Catholics will begin using the 3rd Edition of the New Roman Missal, being promulgated on this First Sunday of Advent.  It will be a whole new liturgical experience, of substantial Mass text changes in the words we use, after forty years of the outgoing Sacramentary we have had as our basic book of liturgical worship.  The Sacramentary we have known has been a very good liturgical resource for the celebration of Masses, of the dynamic equivalence translation that is more loosely based on the Latin from which it was translated, and with more casual language.  The new Roman Missal we are adopting, is more closely translated into English from Latin, and has much more formal and high English, word texts.  It will take all of us quite a period of adjustment in transition to growing completely comfortable and naturally flowing, with the revised word text translations of the new Roman Missal, even as we put away the accustomed texts in our heads.  Going into this 1st Sunday of Advent, I have celebrated 9,802 Masses with the outgoing Sacramentary, since my priestly ordination in 1987.  For the preparation and planning my colleagues and I, have undergone to implement the revised Mass texts, it will take us and our parishioners an appreciable amount of time to be totally familiar and comfortable, with the changes in words and cadence necessary to make our wholistic worship in Word and Eucharist, a flowing and natural prayer and praise of the Living and True God of All Creation, we honor in the Mass...........Fr.  Troy