One of my favorite historical quotes is from the Emperor,
Charles V (1519-1556) who said
I speak Spanish to God
French to my soldiers
Italian to my women
And German to my horse.
(In those days, unlike today, the French had the reputation
for being the bravest of soldiers.)
Charles prayed in Spanish because it was his primary language—his
everyday language which he knew best and in which he was most comfortable. I am always amused, wryly amused, when people
claim that the Latin Mass was “universal” because Latin is a “universal
language.” A universal language that
(almost) no one speaks and few know. I
am not sure that that qualifies Latin as “universal.” It certainly doesn’t qualify as a language of
prayer except for those few who have not only a rudimentary education in it (4
years secondary or 2 years college minimum) but some genuine facility with the
language. (I am a former Latin teacher
and can pretty much tell how much exposure to the language it takes for one to
have a sufficient level of comfort to more than read it. I remember being at morning Mass one day some
years back at a little parish church in Clifton, Virginia where I was staying
with friends. The priest—a somewhat
young man—came out and began Mass in Latin.
It was painful. I mentioned to
him afterwards that no one present, including himself, other than God and I,
knew what he was saying. He took his
breathes and pauses at times that made no sense, his pronunciation was way off,
accents falling on syllables they didn’t belong, no awareness of the
idiosyncrasies of the pronunciation of Latin letter combinations or
consonants. It was absolutely
dreadful. It was worse than
dreadful. And I wish it were the
exception—but it is far from so among these junior clergy who think a year or
two of seminary Latin has made them ready for their attempts to simulate a
Pontifical High Mass. But I have
digressed too far.)
Prayer is not some mindless repetition of words, much less
nonsense syllables. A recent comment
addressed to this site, in an attempt to justify the Latin Mass as a normal
rite, said “Latin is not mumbo-jumbo.” I
beg to disagree. Unless one knows the
language, Latin—or any other language we attempt to use whether at Church or
ordering in a restaurant or watching an Art Film—is mumbo jumbo. The nuances of Shakespeare are lost on a
person who does not have a pretty deep knowledge of English. The Divine Comedy is best read in translation
if you do not know 14th century Italian pretty well. And so too with the Liturgy.
Ann and Barry Ulanov wrote about prayer:
In prayer we speak to and of ourselves, of what lies heavy on
our minds, of what rumbles in fear at the pit of our stomachs, of the grudges
and resentments we hold behind our eyes below the surfaces of our outward being. We speak what we have to say, whatever that
is, and however we are moved to say it.
This
is not limited to liturgical prayer but extends to all prayer. In prayer we must come truthfully and
honestly into the Divine Presence. It is
precisely why the Church ordinarily begins the Liturgy with a “penitential
rite” that makes us look deep inside and acknowledge the disorder into which we
have fallen. We can’t pray, truly pray,
until we do so. And then the Church
confronts us with the Word of God which is meant to pierce our hearts like a
two-edged sword:
For the word of God
is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far
as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to
judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And
there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid
bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. (Hebrews 4: 12-13).
And we proceed on to make an intelligible affirmation
of our adherence to the key doctrines of the faith in the Creed—an intelligible
affirmation of what we believe and ponder in our hearts. The gifts that represent our lives are then
presented on the altar and the Great Mystery of Faith unfolds. While in contemporary English “mystery” means
something not-understood, in Latin and in the Tradition of the Church it means
something that transcends understanding: something we know in our being without
having to intellectualize it. It is not
meant to be something veiled by human confusion but something that in clarity
reveals the Divine Essence being made manifest in it. That is the splendor of the Eucharistic
Prayer. (Well, not the so called Roman
Canon that delights in that sheer multiplicity of words that Jesus warns us
against in Matthew 6:7). The oldest of
the Eucharistic Prayers, so-called Prayer II on which III and the Eucharistic
Prayer for Special Needs are each modeled, has a very austere outline:
epiclesis (consecratory invocation of the Holy Spirit), consecratory Last
Supper narrative, anamnesis, oblatio,
communio of the Church and its
hierarchs, communio of the departed, communio of the Mother of God and the
Saints, and the Doxology. The simplicity
of the prayer reveals the complexity of the Eucharist and at the same time
keeps our focus on the Mysterium. The prayer reveals the action of the Holy
Spirit as the one who transforms the Bread and Wine—and by extension we who
offer it and whom it represents—into the Body and Blood of Christ. The Prayer centers in the Sacrifice of Christ
upon the Cross and establishes the identity of the Bread and Wine (and us whom
the bread and wine represent) with the Body sacrificially broken on the Cross
and the Blood sacrificially there shed for the forgiveness of our sins.) The
Prayer draws us there gathered into unity with the Church spread through the
world. The Prayer keeps us in union with
those whom we have loved and cherished and who have gone before us. The Prayer celebrates our identity in
communion with the Mother of God and all the saints. And finally the Prayer leads us to the great
Doxology in which we, in gratitude for all God does for us in the Eucharist and
indeed in life, sing the Praise of God.
This prayer, to which we are given access when it is in a comprehendible
language, gives us direct and immediate participation in the Eucharistic
Sacrifice without diminishing the unique ministry of the ordained priest
celebrating the Mass. We are not passive
spectators but can join our entire person—heart and mind—into the great act of
Worship.
What makes the Mass “universal” is not its language, or even
its Rite. The joke was always told that
Mass should not be in a language that only some understood—the vernacular, but
a language, Latin, in which no one understood.
In my travels I have often been faced with attending Mass in a language
I don’t understand—Polish, Czech, Arabic, even Irish on one occasion. It wasn’t a problem because my familiarity
with the Mass in my own language keeps me very much aware where I can pray in
my own language with those whose language is different. But I am familiar with it, know it by heart
at this point, only because day after day I pray it, and can pray it deeply, in
my own language. I am familiar enough
with the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom that it isn’t a huge problem
when I have been at the Liturgy in Greek or Old Slavonic but I must admit that
I not only miss the nuances of the prayers, but much of the
particularities. While I enjoy the
experience—especially the music—I can’t say that I have the same direct and
conscious access to the Mysterium as
when I am praying in my own language regardless of rite.
And then there are times when I am in an unfamiliar rite and
language—the Syro Malabar Rite when I was in India or the Chaldean in
Iraq. They are lovely rites—well, I
found the music to the Syro-Malabar rite non-conducive to prayer but that is my
subjective experience—but it does push me out of the community into private
prayer while those around me are immersing themselves in the common
experience. I like private prayer. I spend a considerable amount of time each
day in silent prayer. But that is not
the Liturgy or the essence of Liturgical Prayer.
I am not saying there is no room for Latin in our worship. There is a treasury of great Latin Music and
like the wise steward we need to bring forth both the old and the new from our
storeroom. A Pie Jesu, or an Ave Verum
Corpus, can offer a respite from the vernacular in which we can give
ourselves over to a moment or two of prayerful reverie, but the Mass is not
meant to be prayerful reverie but our participation in the salvific Death and
Resurrection of Christ.
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