www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology moderator please allow me a little room here.

The following is the English translation to the opening prayers of a Tridentine Liturgy:

P=priest, S=server

P.In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

P.I will go in unto the altar of God.
S.Unto God, who giveth joy to my youth.

P.Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause against an ungodly nation: deliver me from the unjust and deceitful man.
S.For Thou, O God, art my strength: why hast Thou cast me from Thee, and why go I sorrowful while the enemy afflicteth me?

P.O send out Thy light and Thy Truth: they have led me and brought me unto Thy holy hill, even unto Thy tabernacles.
S.Then I will go unto the altar of God, unto God, who giveth joy to my youth.

P.I will praise Thee upon the harp, O God, my God, why are thou cast down, O my soul: and why art thou disquieted within me?
S.Hope thou in God: for yet will I praise Him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.

P.Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
S.As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

P.I will go in unto the altar of God.
S.Unto God, who giveth joy to my youth.

P.Our help is in the name of the Lord.
S.Who hath made Heaven and earth.

I posted this more a few reasons: to those Byzantine Catholics who are unfamiliar with it and wonder why some Roman Catholics make a stink about the Novus Ordo.

Also to any Roman Catholics here who may have never attended a Tridentine Mass and wonder why some Roman Catholics make a stink over it.

And b/c they are beautiful prayers that I wanted to share with everybody

You just don't find this reverance or awe of the Almighty in the modern Masses.

Columcille

Dear Columcille,

This ByzCath grew up with the Tridentine Liturgy.

Next door was St Peter's Catholic Church and during the summers it was Mass at the Martyrs' Shrine in Midland (the Jesuit Martyrs).

My mother taught us to make the Sign of the Cross in the Latin way (she just didn't know any better ).

My father was horrified and suppressed the Latin Rite in our home .

The Tridentine Liturgy is beautiful and moving, to be sure.

Alex

>>Dear Friends,
Our Liturgy has "Many" rather than "All," and this is in keeping with the original.
The point is whether this is a question of translation pure and simple, or whether there is some sort of doctrinal perspective being introduced.
Someone once suggested that "All" is a kind of blanket assurance of salvation for all, a kind of "apocatastatis" as Origen said.
Is this true?
Or is it to underline that Christ died for all?<<

The �All� is referring to the second option; that Christ DID die for all (not that all will be saved). Apokatastasis has been condemned in the Church since the time of Origen (who, I think merely suggested it as a possibility, not as something that he actually believed to be true).

>>It could very well be that "all" is the linguistic intention of "many."
But it is better to stick to the original in any translation as closely as possible.<<

I couldn�t agree with you more and am looking forward to responding, �And with your spirit� in the not too distant future!

>>Our bishops are wonderful people, really.
But sometimes, with all due respect, they come up with things that do no real good for anyone.
In Canada, for example, our bishops ruled that certain parts of our Liturgy could be "left out" such as the Second Antiphon, the Litany for the Catechumens etc.
The problem is that now that "could be" has turned into a "mandatory."<<

Part of human nature, I�m afraid. Once you make something an �option� and people figure out it saves time you can forget about it ever NOT being practiced (or omitted, as the case may be).

>>We all seem to be in such a hurry to "get through" the Liturgy, I remember one priest inviting people to come up to venerate the Gospel after the reading, and others in Church angrily looked at their watches.<<

Maybe they had little Gospels attached to their wrists

Actually, this reminds me of a story I once heard when a Latin priest was offering Divine Liturgy once shortly after receiving bi-ritual faculties. He was substituting for a friend who was out of town. When the Byzantine priest returned he was talking to his friend and said, �Oh, I forgot to tell you that some of the older women like to reverence the Gospel after it�s been chanted. Did you let them do that?� The reply was, �Well, sort of�I hit them over the head with it.� LOL! He had no idea why these women were invading his personal space and thought it would be a good idea to get a little elbow room by shooing them back to their places!

>>For those of us who care, the only alternative is to educate people at the local parish level and then, with their support, ask their parish priests to keep to the "tried and true" rubrics, in the spirit of Vatican II I might add.<<

What? Vatican II mandated that we keep our traditions instead of getting rid of them all? Huh, that�s news (to some people, anyway).

Dear Ignatius,

I tried and tried to find something in what you've written so that I could disagree with you and write to tell you how wrong you were, and, and . . . how are you doing today?


You are absolutely right on Origen. He wasn't canonized, but I think he should have been. He always submitted his views to the judgement of the Church and does not deserve to be classified with historic heretics and the like.

This reminds me of the case of Blessed Joachim di Fiore, whose theological writings contained errors. But before his death, he submitted them to the Church and said that he stood ready to agree with any corrections that the Church deemed necessary etc., something that was lauded by the Church authorities of his day and he is today in the Roman Calendar as a "Beatus."

Alex

Dear Lance,

A most erudite, learned and comprehensive perspective - congratulations!

As you said, there is an Orthodox version of the Tridentine Liturgy which develops an Epiclesis at the words "May the Angel of the Lord take this Sacrifice etc."

The Novus Ordo is used by a number of independent Orthodox groups, outside the mainstream.

Alex

Dear Serge,

The Orthodox might not want to attend the Novus Ordo Mass after a corporate reunion of the Churches for whatever reasons.

But there is no reason why such could not exist within a reunified One, Holy, Orthodox, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

Alex

>>As you said, there is an Orthodox version of the Tridentine Liturgy which develops an Epiclesis at the words "May the Angel of the Lord take this Sacrifice etc."<<

Still present in the Roman Canon (Eucharistic Prayer Number One, for you post-Vatican II types...like me!)

Dear John,

You remind me of an event in the life of Blessed Pope John XXIII.

He met someone one day and asked him if he was a theologian.

The person replied in the negative and the Pope said, "Deo gratias, neither am I!"

Ukrainians can be stubborn, can't they ?

There are more and more Ukr-English liturgies up here, but Ukies still insist on learning their language and sending their kiddies to Ukie school to do the same thing.

How can that darn language die out when they keep studying it and studying it and . . .

Add to this all the immigrants from Ukie-land, but the people here think their Ukrainian is "Russified."

Also, Sts. Cyril and Methodius didn't really use the vernacular in the Slavonic liturgy - that is a myth.

What they did was make use of Church Slavonic, a "dead" language that no Slav used except in Church.

It was similar to many Slavic dialects at the time.

As those dialects developed, so too were changes introduced into Church Slavonic.

The Russians pronounced Slavonic as they pronounced their own words in Russian.

St Dmytry of Rostov and others also adapted Slavonic texts and even prayers like the Our Father and Hail Mary to more closely resemble the language of the people.

In actual fact, Cyril and Methodius supported not the vernacular but a more understandable liturgical language for the Slavs among whom they worked.

Jan Hus, the Catholic priest burned at the stake in 1415 ("Hus" means "Goose" and it is from him in his letter to Sigismund from prison that the famous phrase "your goose is not cooked yet" comes), made much (and rightly so) of the need for the vernacular.

It was this view that Vatican II adopted in promulgating the vernacular in the Mass.

Alex

The Novus Ordo is used by a number of independent Orthodox groups

Call them what they are: former (Roman) Catholics, vagantes... but don�t call them Orthodox!

Serge

<A HREF="http://oldworldrus.com">Old World Rus�</A>

[This message has been edited by Rusnak (edited 06-07-2001).]

Actually,

I know that the Slovak eparchy in Toronto
use the modified version ( for ALL) at least
in the english version of the Divine Liturgy.

Perhaps someone in Toronto could confirm that since I haven't attented Holy Liturgy there in more than 1 years.

sincerely

Kristoff

Above it was posted:

"Also, Sts. Cyril and Methodius didn't really use the vernacular in the Slavonic liturgy - that is a myth. What they did was make use of Church Slavonic, a "dead" language that no Slav used except in Church. It was similar to many Slavic dialects at the time."

Actually, the good bishop Cyril used an extant Slavic language in northern Bulgaria. Among linguistics scholars, the language is known not only as Old Church Slavonic but also "Medieval High Bulgarian". It would have been impossible for him to translate the liturgy into a "dead" language for which there was no written form up until that time. There was a glagolitic form prior to the arrival of Cyrill and his 'new alphabet' based upon Greek letters. The actual texts were modified over the ages in various locations to suit the linguistic needs in those various locations.

Witness the varying ways that contemporary Orthodox churches pronounce the texts of the OCS liturgy: they impose their own accentuations and vary the consonants and vowels to correspond to the predominant pattern of their own language, e.g., "Gospodu" vs. "Hospodu", "po-MO-lym-sha" vs. "po-mo-LYM-sha", etc. If one looks at the accentuations in the official texts, NO BODY really follows the 'ancient' OCS in their pronunciations. (Check out the 'official' OCS liturgy published in Rome in the early fifties.)

Yes, it is a 'dead' language now, and probably was 'antique' from shortly after its translation, but it was still more or less comprehensible because of its status as an old dialect form of Slavic languages in general.

Blessings!

Dear Dr. John,

Very interesting!

The Orthodox bishop whose lecture on this I attended indicated that while Cyril and Methodius did base their work on an existing dialect, this was not, by any means, a dialect that was share by all Slavs (nor could it have been, as you indicate).

It was close to the Slavic dialects and was understood by them.

In that sense, what they introduced in the lands of the Eastern Slavs was a "dead" language since they didn't use it except for liturgical purposes. And it did become "more dead" over time.

But I will still stick to my earlier conclusion, with your permission, of course, that Sts. Cyril and Methodius did not introduce the "vernacular" into the liturgy as we understand this today.

They didn't go to the Slavs and retranslate the liturgy into each dialect etc. as we have the Liturgy in many languages today.

What they did in their day was oppose the view that the liturgy could only be used in one of the three languages used in the Title of Christ nailed above our Lord's Head on the Cross. In fact, they introduced a fourth language.

Whether the Thessalonian Brothers would be in favour of using vernacular as we do today in translating the liturgies into many "profane" languages is something that simply cannot be concluded based on their lives and work. This view was a Slavic nationalist one whose ideology was based on an interpretation of their legacy, especially within the Cyrillo-Methodian movements.

So I use "dead" in an extended sense, that they constructed a liturgical language, yes, based on a living dialect(s), but handed this down rather than a legacy of many languages.

That Slavonic was influenced by the peoples who used it is absolutely true (!) and Orthodox Church leaders often warned their peoples against injecting their own pronunciations, based on the vernacular of the day, into the Slavonic.

Alex

Dear Ignatius,

Yes, but the Orthodox argued that it was incomplete and this is why the "Orthodox Tridentine Liturgy" was developed.

But this doesn't apply to the Novus Ordo Mass, since the Eucharistic Canons all have (correct me if I'm wrong) an Epiclesis at the beginning of the Words of Institution which is acceptable to Orthodoxy (at least those theologians whom I've read on the subject).

Alex

Alex,

Do you recall the name of the bishop giving the lecture you attended? Also, is there any published work that you know of stating this position (perhaps by the bishop himself).

I find it interesting that all of the monotheistic religions use liturgical languages to some extent.

>>Yes, but the Orthodox argued that it was incomplete and this is why the "Orthodox Tridentine Liturgy" was developed.<<

>>But this doesn't apply to the Novus Ordo Mass, since the Eucharistic Canons all have (correct me if I'm wrong) an Epiclesis at the beginning of the Words of Institution which is acceptable to Orthodoxy (at least those theologians whom I've read on the subject).<<

Well, they all have an explicit epiclesis EXCEPT for Eucharistic Prayer Number One . Looks like an implicit epiclesis is ONE thing that has been retained in the current Missalae Romanum.

Would the Orthodox consider the absence of an explicit epiclesis to make the Catholic Eucharist to be without grace? Or would this just be another "We don't know" situation? (it's not like the Church didn't consider the Holy Spirit to be the one making Christ present in the Eucharist, at least as far as I can tell.)