Getting Closer. . .

. . .t


o using the new Roman Missal

Although many [Latin texts of the Roman liturgy] have already been translated, the work of translation is not drawing to a close. New texts have been edited or prepared for the renewal of the liturgy. Above all, after sufficient experiment and passage of time, all translations will need review. (Comme le Prevoit [On the translation of liturgical texts for celebrations with a congregation], paragraph 1, 1969).

Dioceses and parishes in the United States have catechized in a variety of ways all year. The purpose: to help Catholics worship when the long-planned third-edition of the missal begins to be used at masses in Advent.

Father Robert Barron offers helpful insights, for example, the new version of the missal maintains the “poetry and the scriptural quality of the Latin” in which the prayers were written. That and other aspects of the new translation can, with repeated hearing and prayerful enunciation by priests, “be very beneficial to your prayer.”