The new lectionary will come into use on the First Sunday of Advent, and people around the country are beginning to receive their copies. Our General Secretary, Canon Christopher Thomas, speaking on our monthly podcast At the Foot of the Cross, is encouraging Catholics to be patient, to sit with the text – a text designed for proclamation – and to see its beauty.
We’ll be using the English Standard Version – Catholic Edition, which is a beautiful text. It will be different from the Jerusalem Bible that we’ve used since 1970. When the New Missal translation was introduced in 2010/11, I can remember saying to the people in my parish, “It’ll be like a new pair of shoes. Initially, it’s going to ache a bit and it’s going to scratch a bit and it’s not going to feel right; but after a while, just with a new pair of shoes, the leather gets soft, and our feet fit in there better.” This will be the same with this new lectionary because there is a richness to the new text.
There is a deeper theological understanding. There’s a sense of freshness because we are looking at a text that has been developed. It’s not the same as the Bible. I want to make that very clear. We have used this English Standard Version – Catholic Edition, as the basis of the lectionary, but there are significant differences. The use of inclusive language, for example. Wherever the Greek word adelphoi is used, which means ‘brothers’ in Greek, we shall use ‘brothers and sisters’ in the lectionary.
The Psalms are slightly different. The Abbey Psalms and Canticles, which we are using, which have been developed by Abbot Gregory Polan OSB and come from a Revised Grail Psalter – they’re slightly different. We are very used to the Psalms. Those of us who pray the Divine Office every day, there’s a rhythm to the Psalms that we know and love. So we’ve just got to be very careful about reading what’s on the page as opposed to knowing what’s in our hearts at this time. Hopefully over time, with use, we will be able to love it as much as we love the Jerusalem Bible.
Q: Let’s be honest, we did wonder about “…and with your spirit,” and we did feel unfamiliar with “consubstantial with the Father,” again looking back to 2010/11 and the then-new Missal. But now it feels appropriate and fitting, doesn’t it? So we can get over these initial jolts…
Yes. It requires patience and for us to sit with the text and to see its beauty. One of the things that the editorial board did in the production of the lectionary, which included people not only from England and Wales, but Scotland as well – because Scotland is bringing in this same version of the lectionary – was, when reaching an impasse about a particular text, they actually stopped and read the text aloud to hear the resonance of the words because it is a text for proclamation. It’s got a different timbre, a different feel to it, but it’s not something that we should dismiss out of hand. I think it’s something that we’ve got to sit with. We’ve got to let it get into our bones, as it were, so that we can actually hear the Word of God in an appropriate way.
Q: Do you have any examples to give us of the changes we might encounter?
Well, there’s one which I think is really beautiful. It comes from the Book of Numbers. This text shows what lies at the heart of what God is saying to us. It’s the text where Aaron and Miriam, the brother and sister of Moses, are critical of him because of his marriage to an Ethiopian woman. They are trying to claim that God speaks through them as well as through Moses. So when God invites them to the Tent of Meeting, he speaks to them.
So in the Jerusalem Bible, God says:
“Listen to my words. If there is a prophet among you, I make myself known to him in a vision. I speak to him in a dream. Not so with Moses. To him, my whole household is entrusted. To him I speak face to face, plainly and not in riddles.” So that sounds fine.
But if you now look at what the ESV Catholic Edition says, there is a very significant change.
“Hear my words. If there is a prophet among you, I the Lord make myself known to him in a vision. I speak with him in a dream, not so with my servant Moses. He is faithful in all of my house. With him, I speak mouth to mouth, clearly, not in riddles.”
So the change there is ‘face to face’, ‘mouth to mouth’. If you’re talking face to face with someone, that could suggest disquiet, or confrontation, or a sense of argument. And is God arguing with Moses and Moses arguing with God? No. Mouth to mouth is an intimacy. When you think about the breath of God, which brings life to all things, and the fact that every word comes from the mouth of God and then is spoken by the prophet, what we actually see here is Moses is not in that confrontational or negative relationship ‘face to face’, but in fact, there’s a sense of a conspiracy – breathing each other’s breath as the Word is given. I think this is actually very, very beautiful. When Jesus was going about his ministry, he spoke the Word of God through his own breath into the hearts of others. In St Matthew’s Gospel, he says, “I will open my mouth in parables. I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world.” It’s not the face, it’s the mouth. That sense of opening ourselves, to be conspirators, as in breathing the same spirit, breathing the same breath of God, I think is a very, very beautiful thing. So that’s just one little thing that we have.
The other thing that will be a marked change, because we do use this text quite a lot in the Church, is the shift in the Beatitudes from ‘how happy are…’ to ‘how blessed are…’. The blessedness of God is really something that is deep within. Happy is a surface emotion, whereas to be truly blessed, it’d be very difficult to be happy and mourn, but you can be blessed and mourn because you can feel that experience of God deep within you. There are little things like that, as well as other changes that have had to be made in order to anglicise the text so that it’s a bit more familiar to our own ears. For me, one of the great changes is that when Peter denies Jesus three times, the original text had the rooster crowing, whereas for us, it’s always going to be a cockerel.
All I would say to people is, listen to the text. For those who are going to be proclaiming the Word, read the text beforehand, because there will be differences. Let the Word sit with you. But above all, I think there needs to be a sense of patience. Think of those shoes. When you get your new pair of shoes and you put them on, they’re not the same as an old pair that was soft and worn. They rub a bit. Your feet can feel tired. But when you stick with them and keep wearing them, your feet begin to mould to them in the same way.
I hope that this lectionary will stand the test of time for many years to come.
