THE JOYS OF TRANSLATION

My priestly daughter suggested I translate into English the admirable little French book on the Mass about which I wrote here in October 2014, Missa Est by Daniel-Rops with stunning photographs by Laure Albin-Guillot. Little did I think what joy the work would give me. One may read a book, which is already an improvement to skimming it; but when you translate it you read it a far more profound way: you have not only to find the words' equivalents but their meaning, which includes their resonance and their overtones. It is this meaning that must be recreated in the new language.
   (I have since discovered that there exists a 1950s American translation put out under the aegis of the very media-oriented Bishop Fulton Sheen, with photographs by the great Canadian Yousuf Karsh; but I don't want to see it before finishing my own, as you can perhaps imagine.)
   Apart from a whole new appreciation of Daniel-Rops's writing, both in the historical explanations and in the fervent meditations on each part of the ceremony, I've been struck by the intricacy, the structure, the profundity of significance and the potential for spirituality of the 1570 Tridentine Roman Mass. We non-Roman Catholics often grew up with an apprehension of things Papist on the one hand; and on the other, our Roman brethren have now, since the Second Vatican Council, so altered the liturgy that it often bears only the faintest, reminiscent resemblance to its magnificent forebear.

   The intricacy, first: as Daniel-Rops explains in his Preface, not one of its 30 parts can be considered, as the Tridentine Catechism puts it, 'as useless or superfluous'. 'The smallest versicle, the sentence it takes only seconds to pronounce, are an integral part of a whole where are associated and proclaimed the gift of God, the oblation of Christ and the Grace we receive. It is like a spiritual symphony, where all the themes come back, complete one another, and unite in a single intention.'
   The structure, second: we enter with anticipated joy; find our emphatically-imperfect inner mess a block, so confess; are absolved; hear the Church's teaching in readings and homily; include the world in our preparatory prayers; offer the fruits of the earth that will be transformed; assist, in wonder and prayer, at the Consecration; communicate; are brought back to the world in the Postcommunion; are blessed, and go back to our lives. It is as structured as a great play. 
   Profundity of significance. There is not a detail -- as I once explained to student to whom all this was new and fascinating -- that does not have at least six centuries of meaning attached to it; that does not come from years, decades or centuries of intelligence feeding devotion. Take the Confiteor, the General Confession: the priest who leads it, and who is sometimes followed in this by members of the congregation, strikes his breast three times, an ancient sign of humility. These three strikes are knocks: Christ's knocking at the door of our closed and stubborn heart. If we open to them in the Confession, we may be freed from our burden by the Absolution. 
   Finally, the potential for spirituality. If we participate entirely, with our whole being, in such a Mass, we will emerge as from a great tragedy: scoured and cleansed, washed and slightly trembling, but with a renewal of joy, hope and courage for the days to come. 

But where to find such a Mass, today? The international and universal intelligibility of Latin has gone, and visitors can barely follow what is going on. The Mass as I experience it in my cluster of French villages is a travesty; the gestures are hurried if not suppressed, half the words are missing, the atmosphere is that of an amicable chat among friends; the texts are half improvised, the homilies bellowed into an unnecessary microphone --- and yet the villagers are happy. The flow of the liturgy is brutally checked by the exchange of the Peace, as if King Lear were interrupted in the middle of Act IV by a loquacious bumpkin engaging the audience; yet the elderly peasants smile and say 'La paix du Christ' to their neighbours. It is all very Evangelical and sort of Baptist in atmosphere. It is, apparently, what the Council Fathers in the Sixties wanted, and one suspects it suits our present Pope perfectly. 

Yet those who want something else, who need, who crave a true, silent, adoring worship; who need time and stillness for intense prayer but time and stillness not alone but in community; they are short-changed. Those who yearn for worship of the Highest in reverence, in beauty, in quiet, in a movement of the spirit they can join in, in a 'spiritual symphony', are neglected and, if they are not close to some major city where there is an eccentric Church more or less frowned upon by the authorities, have nowhere to go.

   I do not know the answer to this. I simply hope that those of us who have the need for such a Mass (or Eucharist), replete with the history of our faith and of our Church, filled with the wealth of symbolism it carries, will have the courage to make our needs felt and not to let ourselves be treated as antisocial, egocentric and reactionary aesthetes. 
   As for us Anglicans, who have long had good reason to feel dubious (to say the least) about the Council of Trent, perhaps we should look again at this Mass, which our otherwise admirable ancestors dismissed as diabolical flummery: if we look again, with a devout eye and an open mind, we shall find such a wealth of nourishment for the soul as will last us days, weeks, months, and even years.