Kyrie Eleison Down the Road that I Must Travel

Now that we know what sin is and the two categories of sin, we can get back on track with our exploration of the Mass.  We started with the Entrance the Greeting of the Altar & the People.  So far, here’s how it’s played out:

The priest & ministers processed to the Sanctuary while the Processional Hymn was sung.  The priest & ministers bowed to the altar (some choose to kneel to the tabernacle) once they reached the Sanctuary, then the priest & deacon went around to kiss the altar.  Then the priest incensed the altar, and proceeded to stand in front of the Presider’s Chair.  Once the hymn finished, the Priest began the Mass this way:

Priest: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

All: Amen.

Priest: The Lord be with you.

All: And also with you.

Now here’s where it’ll start to get tricky in Advent of 2011.  We just encountered our first change in the liturgy as outlined in the Roman Missal.  The greeting will go as follows:

Priest: The Lord be with you. (unchanged)

All: And with your spirit.

Many of the changes in the liturgy are being changed because we’re trying to move back to the Latin roots of the liturgy as we know it today.  When the Catholic Church began to really “take off” throughout the world, Rome was the center of civilization.  In the Roman Empire, they spoke Latin, and so Latin was used as the main language of the church, and even until the 1960s, the Mass all over the world was said in Latin.  Our response to the Priest saying, “Dominus Vobiscum,” (The Lord be with you) was, “Et cum spiritu tuo” (et = and, cum = with, spiritu = spirit, and tuo = your…remember that sentence word order in Latin had different rules from our English notion of word order).  This is just a more direct translation of the English from the traditional Latin phrasing.

Similarly, we move into the Penitential Rite, which will also be undergoing a slight overhaul at the end of 2011.  Currently, we have 3 “forms” for the Penitential Rite,

Form A:

Priest: My brothers & sisters, to prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries, let us call to mind our sins.

All: I confess to almighty God, and to you, my brothers & sisters, that I have sinned through my own fault in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do. And I ask the blessed Mary, ever virgin, all the angels and saints, and you, my brothers & sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God. (Note: This prayer is called the Confiteor, pronounced kun-FEE-tee-ur)

Beginning in Advent of 2011, however, the text of the Confiteor will shift slightly, again to reflect the traditional Latin texts.  It will now read:

All: I confess to almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault (traditional Latin version: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa); therefore I ask blessed Mary, ever virgin, all the angels and saints, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God.

Form B:

Deacon (or Priest): Lord, we have sinned against you, (Lord, have mercy.)

All: Lord, have mercy.

Deacon (or Priest): Lord, show us your mercy and love.

All: And grant us your salvation.

Beginning Advent 2011, Form B will change to:

Deacon (or Priest): Have mercy on us, O Lord. (Latin: Miserere nostri, Domine, literal translation)

All: For we have sinned against you. (Latin: Quia peccavimus tibi – quia-because; peccavimus-peccare,  meaning “to sin,” –imus, the perfect tense first person plural ending, altogether meaning “we have sinned”; tibi, meaning “to you,” or in this case, “against you.”)

Deacon (or Priest): Show us, O Lord, your mercy (Latin: Ostende nobis, Domine, misericordiam tuam, literal translation)

All: And grant us your salvation. (Latin: Et salutare tuum da nobis – et-and; salutare-salvation; tuum-your; da-imperative form of dare, meaning, “to give/bestow/grant”; nobis-to us)

Form C will be unchanged:

Deacon (or Priest): You were sent to heal the contrite: Lord have mercy

All: Lord have mercy

Deacon (or Priest): You came to call sinners: Christ have mercy

All: Christ have mercy

Deacon (or Priest): You plead for us at the right hand of the Father: Lord have mercy

All: Lord have mercy.

No matter which form you use, they all conclude with the following, which is called the Absolution:

Priest: May almighty God have mercy on us, forgive us our sins, and bring us to everlasting life.

All: Amen.

Now, during this absolution (from the Latin absolvere, meaning “to free/release”—in this case, meaning “to free from sin”), you may notice people in the church making the sign of the cross.  This is actually not  part of the rubrics (literally, the “words written in red” which are in the Roman Missal throughout the text that give the priest direction as to what he is supposed to be doing at certain points in the Mass) of the traditional Latin Mass (Tridentine Rite), nor is it mentioned in the Novus Ordo (“New Order” in Latin, though this is not an OFFICIAL name for this revised form of the Mass) of the 1960s (a product of the Second Vatican Council).  What probably happened is that someone somewhere in history realized that what was happening was an absolution similar to the absolution in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and that person decided they wanted to start making the sign of the cross during this absolution.  Well, someone else in church probably noticed it and started doing it, too…and so on…and so on…  Now you’d be hard-pressed to find a church parish where NO ONE makes the sign of the cross at this point.  There’s nothing inherently WRONG with making the sign of the cross here, but let’s think about this for a second…

If you tell someone, “I love you,” you generally say it because you do (or at least you feel like you do).  Now if you only say it to your significant other or your family members, it means a good deal to you, which is why you reserve saying it to only those people.  If you start saying it to your friends, it loses a bit of its meaning than when you say it to, say, your spouse.  If you start, then, saying it to vague acquaintances, well, then it’s virtually meaningless in and of itself as a phrase when you say it to a loved one, and though that person may still take it the way you meant it originally, to YOU, it has lost its effect.  Similarly, the more we do things in the faith realm, such as make the sign of the cross, they will start to lose their meaning and importance to us.  There are plenty of instances in the context of the Mass where making the sign of the cross is called for, and several instances where it is not, and if we start to make the sign of the cross in unnecessary places (like during the absolution, or at the end of a homily) the other times we DO make it might lose their greater degree of significance.  So if it’s not called for, make sure you have a really good, profound, and memorable justification to yourself for why you do it.  Now, if you have this uncontrollable compulsion to make the sign of the cross at this point in the Mass, the Liturgy Police aren’t going to bind your hands & feet and throw you into fiery Gehenna.  Partly because it takes more than that to get thrown into Gehenna, and partly because the Liturgy Police don’t really exist…I just made them up in that last sentence…in case you didn’t know.

Anyway, after the absolution, we round out the Penitential Rite with the Kyrie:

Deacon (or Priest): Kyrie eleison (Greek for “Lord have mercy”)

All: Kyrie eleison

Deacon (or Priest): Christe eleison (Greek for “Christ have mercy”)

All: Christe eleison

Deacon (or Priest): Kyrie eleison

All: Kyrie eleison

This litany of the Kyrie can either be recited or sung, and can either be in Greek (as above) or in English.  This song-like prayer with responses from the congregation is the remnant of ancient litanies of early Christian origins that was kept (in a shortened form) throughout the history of the Mass, and still survives in its present form today.

So there you have it—the Act of Penitence (or Penitential Rite).  This is our way of reconciling our strained relationship with God that will be fully restored later in the Mass when we receive the Eucharist.  Now that we have asked for and received God’s perfect mercy, we marvel in it and give him glory…which we’ll talk about in our next post.