Sunday, November 06, 2011

Down by the river...

...we were staying with relations and Sunday morning saw us all at Mass in the beautiful little church of St Birinus at Dorchester. As Autumn sunlight dappled the churchyard and its golden leaves, people filled the pews of this exquisite little church and raised their voices in glorious chant and in some lovely hymns ("Immortal invisible..." "Jerusalem the golden..."). The new Mass translation brings out the glory and wonder of what is taking place at the altar.

The New Evangelisation needs this beauty: to give witness to God who is Truth, Goodness and Beauty we need all three: to hear the sacred timeless words of consecration in the context of glorious music and the cherished loveliness of a beautiful building is to experience what the Church is all about...

1 comment:

Malcolm McLean said...

We have Mass in Hebrew here.

It's a bit ironic, because of course the Last Supper was almost certainly celebrated in Hebrew - we know that psalms were sung, and certainly the blessings would have been Hebrew. It was translated from Hebrew to Greek, from Greek to Latin, from Latin to the vernacular, then, probably, from the vernacular back to Hebrew.

However some of the debates disappear. For instance in Latin we say "Dominus vobiscum", "et cum spirtu tuo". In Hebrew it's "adonai imchem", "adonai imcha" ("The Lord be with you (pl), the Lord be with you (sing)". That sounds perfectly natural in Hebrew. In English it doesn't, it sounds like you are challenging the priest.