Praying the New Mass

I’m still replying, “And also with you,” when I should be saying, “And with your spirit.” The new translation of the Mass introduced at the beginning of Advent has disrupted long-ingrained verbal habits. Like a startled old dog by a warm fireplace, I’m still circling around and pawing at the familiar blanket so that I can settle back into my comfortable state of habitual prayer.

But it won’t be quite the same, which is undoubtedly a good thing. For example, at the end of the Eucharistic prayers the priest elevates the host”“Behold the Lamb of God””and reminds the congregation that it is a great blessing to be invited to “the supper of the Lamb.” The old translation had the laity responding, “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed”” fitting words of humility and trust in God’s grace, but ones that suppressed the scriptural context. The new translation restores it: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.”

The words come from the Gospel of Matthew. As Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion asks him to heal his servant, whom he has left in his house in perilous condition. Jesus responds directly: “I will come and heal him.” The centurion recoils in horror, saying, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only say the word, and my servant will be healed.”

Drawing an analogy to his own ability to command others to do his will, the centurion trusts in the effective authority of Jesus’ commanding words. Jesus certainly does not need to come into the unclean home of a Gentile soldier. As the episode ends, the centurion’s faith is vindicated. Jesus does not go to see the servant; instead, he says the word”“Go; be it done for you as you have believed””and indeed the servant is healed.

One consequence of regular liturgical prayer is that certain words and images get imprinted on our souls, and once there they can enliven and “scripturalize,” as it were, our sometimes too abstract ideas about faith. The old translation edited out the concreteness of the centurion’s response to Jesus’ promise to come to his house. Now, however, “under my roof” is becoming a habit of my tongue and eventually a habit of my mind, one that encourages me to think more concretely of my participation in the Mass along the lines of the story of the centurion. Now I see that when I present myself before the priest to receive the body and blood of Christ I am marching up to Jesus and brazenly inviting him “under my roof.”

In the past I fear that I took my reception of the body and blood of Christ too lightly, too casually. I was encouraged, perhaps, by the deliberate familiarity of the old down-style translation of the Mass, but my own spiritual laziness was the main cause. Now, with “under my roof” on my lips, I see that my participation in the Eucharist is as brash and perilous as if I were a peasant going up to my king and inviting him to a dinner party in my home, one that begins in just a few minutes. It’s a frightening thought, what with the mess in the kitchen and the bathroom that needs cleaning, and the dirty clothes piled on the couch, to say nothing of the fact that I haven’t actually started cooking. My soul? Is it all that different?

Some critics of the new translation complain that it makes the liturgy a bit more remote, a bit more formal, and in this way undermines the fitting familiarity of the old down-style translation. Yet reflection on the centurion’s very pressing and urgent worry about Jesus being under his roof suggests that being so familiar with Christ isn’t always fitting. Instead, it might tempt us toward complacency or presumption.

Christ is indeed intimately close to us in the Mass, but as the restoration of the concrete biblical turn of phrase “under my roof” makes clearer to us, his presence should not only feel easy and familiar but often frightening and perilous instead. Our houses are in disarray and full of diseases that only a purifying fire can rid us of. They are not fit places for a king. And yet he comes to us anyway, and speaks the word that heals our souls.